What is agrarian governance and how to assess how good it is?

There are huge differences in understandings and assessments of agrarian governance among scholars, practitioners, and official and business documents. The goal of the article is to adapt the interdisciplinary methodology of the New Institutional Economics and to propose an adequate definition and framework for analyzing the system of agrarian governance. Based on a critical review of previous research and practical experience in this area, it is underlined that agrarian governance is to be studied as a complex system, including four principle components: agrarian and related agents involved in making management decisions; rules, forms and mechanisms that govern the behavior, activities and relationships of agrarian agents; processes and activities related to making governing decisions; a specific social order resulting from the governing process and functioning of the system. The holistic framework for assessing the quality of agrarian governance is suggested consisting of adequate good governance principles, aspects, indicators, and criteria. Initial evaluation of the level of agricultural governance found that it is at a moderate level having in mind the EU perspective. The highest performance is attained under the principles of Equity and Solidarity and the Good Working Public Sector while in terms of the Working Private Sector and the Stakeholders' Involvement, it is the lowest.