Introducing Governance

 Much used term especially ‘good governance’ and ‘democratic governance’  From Greek word kubernân = to pilot or steer  Originally used as ‘government’ ◦ ‘the act or manner of governing; the office or function of governing’  During 1980s governance started to be differentiated from government  Concern with markets and networks as well as hierarchies in the pursuit of common goals

HierarchiesMarketsNetworks GovernanceAuthorityPricesTrust Basis of relations among members EmploymentContracts and property markets Exchange of resources Degree of dependence among members DependentIndependentInterdependent Means of conflict resolution and coordination Rules and commands HagglingDiplomacy CultureSubordinationCompetitionReciprocity A typology of organisational structures

 Various fields in political science started to refer to governance ◦ Politics and public policy: scholars abandoned idea of apolitical hierarchies; looked at politics in bureaucracy; import of private sector principles into public sector management; decentralisation ◦ International relations: globalisation led to questioning of how far states in control of their territories; non-governmental movements and organisations; conflict resolution; trade regulation ◦ Comparative politics: systematic comparison of political systems; effects of different institutions on outputs

 Kjaer believes institutions are at the centre of governance  Institutions are ◦ ‘formal and informal rules, behavioural codes and norms that constitute prescriptions ordering repeated, interdependent relations’  Institutions may be ◦ Informal ◦ Formal

 Two leading questions about institutions ◦ How do institutions affect political behaviour?  Eg, federal v unitary; two party v multi-party ◦ How do institutions emerge and change?  A much less studied question  But governance theory is mainly involved with institutional change and it involves human agency  Leads to a definition of governance: ‘the setting of rules, the application of rules and the enforcement of rules’

 Stoker and Chhetri note that governance often vaguely defined and used in a variety of ways. They say governance is about ◦ ‘the rules of collective decision-making in settings where there are a plurality of actors or organisations and where no formal control system can dictate the terms of the relationship between these actors and organisations’

 Four issues in this definition ◦ Rules: can be formal or informal; they may be fairly stable over time (‘rules-in-use’); but rules do change and new forms of governance emerge ◦ Collective: collective decisions involve issues of mutual influence and control ◦ Decision-making: from strategic to being embedded in every-day practice; from global to organisational ◦ No one is in charge: can’t control all things in the decision-making process; can be more or less authoritarian but never completely in control

 Governance is about ◦ What is  Low levels of human development in some African countries in part due to failures in national and international governance ◦ What might be  Need for better governance arrangements between parties involved including national and local governments, international organisations, civil society, traditional institutions, private sector  This means that governance should be understood as a set of practices

 Governance is undertaken by human agents who are defined by bounded rationality ◦ Governance is a political activity; about co- ordination and decision-making in the context of a plurality of views and interests ◦ Governance is an intensely human activity partly explained by the limits of our human capacities; governance helps us cope with our limitations of understanding

 Two factors explain rise in interest in governance: ◦ Globalisation ◦ Democratisation  These two forces create intense pressure for change

 Starting in the 1990s increasing interest in governance’s role in development  ADB saw governance as institutional environment for the interaction between citizens and with state  Capacity of institutional environment important  Policy important but governance needed for ‘effective’ or ‘sound’ development management

 To make elements of ‘good governance’ operationally relevant ADB saw need to translate them into areas of action ◦ Accountability ◦ Predictability ◦ Stability ◦ Transparency  No one size fits all for governance system

 UNDP has seen ‘good governance’ as essential for the achievement of the goals of human development ◦ Empowerment ◦ Cooperation ◦ Equity ◦ Sustainability ◦ Security  Need to create governance conditions to enable such development

 UNDP identified 4 types of governance ◦ Economic ◦ Political ◦ Administrative ◦ Systemic  And three inter-related domains ◦ The state ◦ The private sector ◦ Civil society

 Participatory  Sustainable  Legitimate  Transparent  Promotes equity and equality  Promote gender balance  Accepts diversity  Able to mobilise resources for development  Able to define and own national solutions  Strengthen indigenous mechanisms  Operates by rule of law  Efficient and effective resource use  Engenders trust and respect  Accountable  Enabling and facilitative  Regulatory rather than controlling  Service-oriented  Can deal with temporal issues

 Critics of good governance allege that it is ◦ Creating an enabling environment for market prescriptions of neoliberals ◦ That it serves rich country interests ◦ That it has been forced on countries by World Bank, IMF and other multilaterals and bilaterals ◦ That developing country governments pay lip- service to it ◦ That bad governance continues in many places