GOOD GOVERNANCE

Recently the term “good governance” is being increasingly used in development literature. Bad governance is being increasingly regarded as one of the root cause of all evil within our societies.

Like New Public Management the concept of Good Governance is also the product of the 1980s which emerged out of the synthesis of development administration and the neo liberal restructuring of government. The concept is elusive and value laden. Thus proved to be difficult to define accurately.

Two documents attempted to sketch the outline of the concept. Firstly, the World Bank’s 1989 document on Sub-Saharan Africa, and secondly World Bank’s 1992 document. In its document of 1989 World Bank cleared the concept of Governance with three parameters;

1.      Public Sector Management and Accountability

2.      Legal framework for development

3.      Information and transparency

In the document of 1992 entitled ‘Governance and Development’ the World Bank stated three applications of the concept of governance;

1.      In the form of political regime

2.      The process by which governmental power is exercised in the management of a country’s economic and social resources

3.      The capacity of governments to design, formulate and implement policies

It is imperative to understand that present need to reconceptualize the governance is felt out of the compulsion of regulating developmental assistance given by the international financial institutions like World Bank to the Third World countries. The World Bank after its establishment in 1944 in the Breton Woods Conference, is committed to provide developmental assistance to the underdeveloped and developing countries for the purpose of poverty reduction, education, health, empowerment of weaker sections, environmental sustainability etc. Around 1980s the World Bank from its lending experience in many developing countries observed that despite of sound policy design, programmes and projects have failed due to institutional failures in those countries.

World Bank experts identified some of the problems as;

1. Governments in these countries are not determined enough to implement the policies.

2. There is an absence of proper accounting or budgetary system

3. Widespread corruption is prevailing in these countries.

4. General lack of popular participation due to public apathy and misinformation among the people.

In order to overcome these difficulties lending agencies like the World Bank insists on ‘structural adjustment programmers’ for the recipient countries which emphasize on downsizing the bureaucracy, opening up new sectors to the private sector for development and redefining the state role as an ‘enabler’ rather than a ‘provider’. The development aid was linked up with promotion of open, market friendly competitive economical readjustment of the national economies, support for democratization and improvement of human rights records and insistence on the new package called ‘good governance’.

OECD further clarified the expectations of lending countries vis-avis recipient countries under the following heads;

•         Participatory Development

•         Human Rights

•         Democratization

•         Legitimacy of Government

•         Respect of human rights

•         Rule of law