Guest Editorial Rural governance in Australia: Changing forms and emerging actors

This special edition of Rural Society on rural governance in Australia is both timely and long overdue. For more than two decades now, we have witnessed an increased complexity in the way contemporary rule is exercised in Australia – and elsewhere – as a growing range of community, business and other non-government actors become increasingly involved in processes of decision-making and service delivery that were once considered the domain of the state. In this sense, governance is not a recent phenomenon, and scholars and policymakers have been deliberating on the directions of these changes for more than ten years. While initial writings on governance had a tendency to focus almost exclusively on its urban manifestations, it is now well accepted that the nature and impact of rural governance is equally profound and therefore worthy of more careful consideration.