From recent debates on governance and governmentality, two key analytical imperatives arise: the need to engage simultaneously with the structures and processes of governing, and the need to recognise the plurality and multiplicity of governing sites and activities. In seeking to address these imperatives, we develop an analytical approach, the modes of governing approach, which engages with the rationalities, agencies, institutional relations, and technologies of governing that coalesce around particular objectives and entities to be governed. Drawing on the example of municipal waste management, we illustrate how this framework can illuminate the dynamic and multiple nature of governing, and outline the key modes of governing which currently shape the policy and practice of municipal waste. © 2007 a Pion publication printed in Great Britain.