Over the last five years or so, there seems to be more than usual interest on the issue of governance and the use of word ‘governance’ in developmental and political jargon.
The word being brandished around by multilateral and bilateral donors is ‘good governance’. Many of the southern countries, ours included, have suddenly ratcheted up ‘good governance’ in their national agendas, as if it is a new discovery.
Governance, which has had deep roots in many socio-political traditions, is repackaged and justified by its proponents through use of various theoretical constructs and techno-managerial jargons of what is ‘good’ – increasing participation, building accountability, building capability, political stability, effectiveness etc. – and what is ‘bad’. The ‘good’ is what developed countries have, and the ‘bad’ is what developing countries must be self-critical and contemptuous about, and change.
The concept of good governance appears sweet-sounding especially for the millions who live in misery, exploitation and injustice. Governments use these jargons in their promises, but even where they give out cursory balms (such as an administrative response), things on the ground never seem to change. Unfulfilled targets of poverty eradication form the foundations of newer and louder promises, such as those of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), embellished enough to make these new dreams saleable.
We need to look into these seemingly apolitical jargons and see what these have really meant and implemented. We need to unmask what is behind this good governance discourse, and what the proponents of economic globalization – the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and others really mean by it.
The idea of good simply means good for the markets and corporates; good for the status quo and existing elite. It works on the following premises:
- A push for re-negotiation of the role of the state and markets, where states become regulatory, and overseers of law and order, and markets trump the state;
- A change in the developmental role of the state with a belief that markets will deliver equity and correct historic injustices;
- A push for changing the relations of production, on the basic aspects of production; and
- Push towards privatization of democracy on its economic and other spheres, where economic policy is out of public oversight.
The political intent behind the discourse of good governance is evident, if we just have a look at the “indicators of governance” that governments are induced to work on or forced to adopt – depending upon their own power, economic standing and their existing debt burdens. Thus, the indicators of good governance being used need examination in this light:
The IMF’s indicators for good governance are based on credit rating and security of capital. World Bank’s Development Institute, on the other hand, has churned out six indicators (often known as the Kauffman and Kray Indicators) on assessing good governance.
These Governance Indicator assessments (see examples below) hold themselves liable for interpretation in a very specific manner to propel further the development ideology of high growth, openness, deregulation, trade liberalization, protection of capital, lack of corruption (all together) = development and success of poverty reduction.
- Voice and accountability (VA), the extent to which a country’s citizens are able to participate in selecting their government, as well as freedom of expression, freedom of association, and free media.
- Political stability and absence of violence (PV), perceptions of the likelihood that the government will be destabilized or overthrown by unconstitutional or violent means, including political violence or terrorism.
- Government effectiveness (GE), the quality of public and civil services, and the degree of its independence from political pressures, the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government’s commitment to such policies.
- Regulatory quality (RQ), the ability of the government to formulate and implement sound policies and regulations which permit and promote private sector development.
- Rule of law (RL), the extent to which agents have confidence in and abide by the rules of society, and in particular the quality of contract enforcement, police, and the courts, as well as the likelihood of crime and violence.
- Control of corruption (CC), the extent to which public power is exercised for private gain, including both petty and grand forms of corruption, as well as “capture” of the state by elites and private interests.
These indicators are not only important in what they speak on and the context in which these are located, BUT ALSO IN THEIR SILENCE.
They maintain a studied silence on the basic issues facing poor and excluded citizens from across the globe. These maintain, in their neo-classical, liberal or neo-institutional understanding, a distance from such basic development notions of REDISTRIBUTION and CITIZENSHIP in its substantive sense.
Through the silence of these indicators on vital questions of justice, there is even an attempt to move the question of PEOPLES AGENCY into a minimalist representation of transparency and accountability.
The models of growth which these indications rest on are itself quite problematic. These models continue to rely on highly extractive growth – which is linked to injunctions to follow orthodox economic policies, like the sample of a speech from the deputy head of IMF, Anne Kruger… “Economic growth is the principal route to lasting poverty reduction… Of course the poorest do not benefit as much as they and we would like... but poverty reduction is best achieved by making the cake bigger, not by cutting it in a different way”.
Of late there has been an emergence of another discourse on “good and democratic governance”. Propelled by other bilateral agencies like the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and others, European Community (EC), and United Nations Development Program (UNDP), we see the emergence of yet another micro-discourse on governance. I would call it a micro-tendency, since it also does not question the dominant paradigm of propulsion of markets. This understanding of “good and democratic governance” uses comparatively more radical rhetoric of governance with a humane face, and provides spaces for democratic politics to shape the rights and justice agenda, without however, questioning the role of neo-liberal economic globalization on dimensions of injustice and inequity. This could be understood as a reformist approach to “good governance”.
Recently, DFID in its thinking on building effective states, has introduced, along with notions of governance and development, the role of democratic politics. While still on the reformist end, there have been attempts by this “school” to clarify the thinking on key elements of development which underlie governance, e.g. further efforts are being made to systematize and develop knowledge around vital questions of production, growth and economic development. DFID supported the setting up of a “Growth Commission” to explore questions around growth while early indications tell us that these will base strongly on the market enhancing governance capacities of the state.
No doubt corruption needs to be checked, as it robs nations and peoples of their sovereignty. However, the World Bank’s push for containing corruption, which is seen in that discourse as the scourge of Africa and habit of Asia, never acknowledges that the worst corruption is contained in the history of colonialism and perpetuated by the STRUCTURES and RULES of hegemonies.
What are the ECONOMIC PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENTS? Or agreements of forcing countries which receive American aid to procure American food?
Hegemonies are established in various ways - through armies, trade, and culture. More and more hegemonies are established and maintained through knowledge and we need to be wary of such ways.
On the knowledge end, the key to bring to the fore is the control that some of these institutions are slowly and systematically exercising over knowledge collation, development, production and dissemination. The World Bank, we all know has been desperately wanting to TRANSMUTATE into the Knowledge Bank. Its World Development Report that is taken by many countries as mantras for national policy formulation contain dangerous pills of systemic and pathway change. In 2006, it spent a whole 500 page report to make an intellectual case for its hypothesis that MARKETS CAN AND DO INDEED DELIVER EQUITY.
Hence, there is a need to articulate and champion an alternate vision of good governance. The discourse of governance, like the discourse of state, needs to be reclaimed by people, before it is transmutated fully, to suit exclusionary politics.
Such a perspective of governance is inherently linked with the idea that “another world is possible and under construction”. Unless that is clear, the very content and character of governance can be an arena of power manipulations, policy rhetoric and empty promises. After all, the fact remains, that colonialism may have ended, but capital continues to flow from poorer countries to rich ones and from the periphery to the so-called center.
From this perspective, there is need to build not only a theory but a practice of governance based on interdependent dimensions such as democratization, human rights, justice, peoples’ participation, accountability and responsiveness. People are at the center of such a perspective and such a conceptualization of just and democratic governance necessarily includes of inclusive politics as well as working towards a transparent, effective and efficient institutional framework.
From this perspective, the role and the foundation of governance is to transform power relations and society in a manner where people have spaces to interrogate, influence, challenge and change the direction of development processes and practices. Such a normative framework is based on ethics of human dignity and equality of human persons.
The core of such a perspective is the notion of social transformation through justice, inclusive empowerment, solidarity and transformative politics that ensure spaces for people to participate in institutional arenas and socio-political process in their quest to recognize, realize and expand their human rights, freedoms and entitlements.
Central to the role of social movements is the need to define governance for whom, by whom and for what?
Social movements are the ones contributing to building on this discourse of just and democratic governance. It is through the value -driven contestations of social movements that the foundations of just and democratic processes, wherever and in whatever little measure, are being constructed.
A few examples, in the recent past, of what we can broadly call movement contributions to the discourse stand out. Among these are the peasant struggles in Brazil and elsewhere on the land question. Such processes of challenge to power have led to substantive changes in land tenure and to the formulation of policies which ensure elements of redistribution. The movements in India have enabled the formulation of a view of governance that is based on accountability to the people (contrast it to the concept of accountability to the capital) on the issues of land and right to information. The movements around extractives and natural resources strongly questioned the privatization of democracy, and brought the discourse on what is public and what is people’s sovereignty.
There is inherent optimism where the struggles are in a process of being and becoming, but this has also brought to fore immense challenges on the continued peripheralization of people, the need for a re-orientation of the concept of development and the need for a stronger position on people’s sovereignty.
Among social movements, a strongly held view is that alternatives do not come from classrooms, they can only be borne at the frontiers of struggles.
One of the biggest threats, which have been identified by some (including Samir Amin) is the issue of fragmentation of resistance. Once again, developing solidarity among peoples, among those exploited and marginalized from the processes of historical injustices, is a key role of social movements in democratizing the local, national and international governance.
A presentation at the South Asia workshop on People’s Sovereignty and Governance organized by IBON -South Asia last March 2008. The author is Action Aid International's international governance and economic justice coordinator.
