| In the development of the political civilization, especially the democratic politics, of human kind, government is all the time confronted with the pressure of proving the legitimacy of its charge of political power to the citizens within its jurisdiction. This point has become particularly prominent in the historical transition of social change. Any kind of new political ideas and theories as well as the political practice under their guidance are nothing but a set of theoretical excuses and ruling style aimed at reconstructing the government's legitimacy when facing the challenge of legitimacy at the time of transformation. The rise of governance is a response to the government's poor efficiency in offering the public products and public service, which agrees with the public's demand for public affairs' management efficiency and has the purpose of enjoying more and better public products. Meanwhile, the traditional bureaucracy-centered administrative management of the government in fact rejects the public's participation in the public affairs, which has violated people's appeal for democratization and posed a threat to the government's legitimacy. The crisis of government's legitimacy is the direct reason for the rise of the governance theory and its practice. It can be summarized that governance refers to a management process in which government and market, government and society, and government and citizens participate together, cooperate with each other and interact two-way. The direct purpose of governance is to pursue the maximization of public interests. For this reason, the traditional dichotomies between government and market and public and private should be surmounted, new public affairs' management techniques will be energetically explored and adopted. The subject of governance can be governmental agencies as well as the combinations among private organizations, nongovernmental public organizations or various kinds of agencies. The redistribution of public power between government and society and between the superior and inferior governments in their centralization makes governance characterized by comparatively obvious new democratic value.Since the rise of governance is a response to government's poor efficiency in offering the public products, in line with the public's demand for public affairs' management efficacy and aimed at enjoying more and better public products, it is thus provided with strong color of instrumentalism. The purpose of governance lies in realizing the best disposition of social resources and creating relatively better economic performance with new ideas and by new means. The responsibility for providing public goods does not only rely on the government only, but also on non-governmental and private organizations that even have better supply efficacy. Therefore, it is advisable that private enterprising spirit be employed to transform public agencies with the expectation of enhancing the efficiency of providing public goods. Governance emphasizes on the introduction and application of new technology, e-governance, government's performance assessment and etc. that contribute directly to the promotion of public service delivery efficacy. The efficacy promotion is nothing but to offer more goods for people's utilitarian material consumption, thus setting up a stable expectancy for the governmental service supply and establishing further the solid material base for its legitimacy.The substantial rationality of governance is shown as the demand for democratic values. Governance affirms the principal-agent relationship in democratic politics, reflects the demand for making this relationship become a regular practice, challenges the legitimacy of the governments monopolizing the public goods and emphasizes the importance of the "third sector" as civil society in social management and service, which embodies the tendency of returning the power back to people. With political democracy as its political prerequisite, the rise of the idea of governan...
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