The international development and financing agencies tend to view governance as a means of improving project performance focusing on achieving the outputs and outcomes as efficiently as possible, e.g., on schedule, without cost-overruns, less corruption etc. The concept came into focus in the wake of structural adjustment reforms imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on developing countries beginning in the 1980s. This was also the time when political discourse in developed countries, too, moved to right-of-the-centre (Reagan in US, Thatcher in UK, the unravelling of the USSR under Gorbachev, all in the 1980s). There were determined efforts to downsise the state, curtail its pervasive presence in citizens' lives, and promote the private sector and other actors (NGOs, civil society groups) so that they can assume the roles and responsibilities from where the state was receding.
A diminishing state sector and an emerging non-state sector (with all its flaws and shortcomings) created the needed political and economic space for the emergence of the concept of governance where the state, represented by the government and its institutions, seeks to develop and harness cooperation and collaboration with a range of non-state actors to deliver public goods and services. Principles of good governance were enunciated and attempts were made to quantitatively measure governance, mostly based on perceptions, surveys and, therefore, these tended to be more subjective than objective. While these attempts served the purpose of ranking countries in terms of good governance indicators, they had little practical utility in country-specific contexts. For example, take the case of Bangladesh. If you plot the World Bank's World Governance Indicators for the timeline or the Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index (CPI), you would notice hardly any perceptible sustained improvement on any of the scores. But did it prevent the country from achieving remarkable socio-economic progress during this period, including in areas of the UN's key Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)?
Are all principles of good governance really needed for the purpose? Not really. Look at the breathtakingly dazzling performance by China where democratic accountability is zero, citizens' participation and voice in decision-making non-existent, people's capability to replace governments at regular intervals unthinkable, and transparency nil (one of the most opaque states in contemporary world). Corruption, too, is no better than other Asian countries but subdued with harsh draconian measures. The question to be asked: Is representative democracy a precondition for good governance?
Governance, therefore, should be viewed as the ability of a government to do what is needed in order to provide common public goods and services as efficiently as possible. This is the framework that best captures the essence of oft-pronounced, "minimum government and maximum governance".
This refers to capacity building of the government both in terms of its institutions and the quality of its civil bureaucracy. Capacity building is also equally applicable to the private sector and it is the responsibility of the public sector to assist capacity development in the private sector. This calls for suitable managerial and technical skills of the members of the public administration services.
The complexities of the emerging issues such as factors like climate change prompt agricultural innovation and product development, evolving practical approaches to mainstreaming the concept of sustainable crop production. To that end engaging multiple stakeholders in addressing the twin challenges of agricultural production, food/nutrition security and food safety, interacting with the global system of agricultural and environmental governance places onerous demands for professionalism, technical skills and managerial capabilities of senior-level functionaries in the public agricultural administration services.
There is simply no alternative to building capacities and putting durable mechanisms in place for sustaining quality and excellence in the civil bureaucracy which is the face of an elected government. Unfortunately, the electoral systems in many Asia-Pacific countries are not always the best and do not embody the requisite traits for providing capable political leadership. In such situations, temptations remain high for building unhealthy nexus among these elected representatives and inefficient poorly-trained bureaucrats to maintain status quo and continue to provide lip service to new ideas and initiatives. Understandably this undermines and erodes the very concept of governance and stalls the pace of development.
Subash.Dasgupta@fao.org, royindajit@hotmail.com
Improving governance
Subash Dasgupta and Indrajit Roy | Published: January 16, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00
Share if you like