Amos Zehavi, Department of public policy Department of political science Tel Aviv University New governance and policy instruments: are governments going ‘soft’? (prepared for the Oxford Handbook of Governance) General arguments about the shift from government to governance imply significant change in the policy instruments available to government and their effectiveness. More specifically, several commentators have made a distinction between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ instruments, which mainly differ in the degree of coercion that their use involves, and have argued that in the ‘new governance’ age there has occurred a pronounced shift from the former to the latter type of instruments. This chapter argues that not only is the movement from hard to soft instruments questionable, the very distinction between hard and soft policy instruments is an inadequate foundation for analysis of governance effectiveness and feasibility. Instead, it is proposed that the governance literature should make use of Vedung’s carrots, sticks and sermons policy instrument classification. Furthermore, the literature that deals with different characteristics of policy instruments, primarily efficacy and feasibility, should be incorporated into discussions of governance effectiveness. The policy instrument literature provides important insights on both the effectiveness of different instrument mixes and on how specific policy context (e.g., national and policy sector environments) influences the use of policy instruments. A description of the evolution of non- government school governance in Australia, from a policy instrument perspective, is employed to illustrate the proliferation of different types of policy instruments and demonstrate how instrument mixes can achieve effective results. Amos Zehavi, Ph.D., is a lecturer with a joint appointment in the departments of political science and public policy at Tel Aviv University e-mail: amos.zehavi@gmail.com Address: Dr. Amos Zehavi Department of political science Tel Aviv University Ramat Aviv, 69978 Israel