WHAT IS GOOD GOVERNANCE?*

P. Madhu.

The concept of good governance is rather new and came into usage since early 90’s. Good governance is a conditionality for receiving international funding assistance either as credit or grant. The World agencies like World Bank, UNDP, ESCAP, OECD, IMF, WTO and others prescribe the ideals of participation, rule of law, effectiveness, efficiency, accountability, transparency, openness, predictability, responsiveness, equity and inclusiveness as the central aspect of good governance. The premise of the good governance argument is that structural adjustment without good governance may not be successful. To quote from the OECD-DAC synthesis of expert group report titled “The evaluation of programs promoting participatory development and Good Governance”:

Two generations of conditionality can be distinguished. The first, propagated by the Bretton Woods Institutions since the early 1980s, is related to structural adjustment programs that have, as their prime objectives, administrative reform, budget balance and market liberalization. In the 1990s, aid donors have also increasingly made official development aid conditional on political reform within recipient countries. The objectives of this second generation of political conditionality are to promote democracy, the rule of law, human rights and good governance. (Page 78).

The notion of good has its trajectory of usage. In the ancient literature that which is substantially good is called good. Good was used in this sense in Plato. Good was explained in terms of virtue and motive in Aristotle. Later good and bad was replaced by right and wrong. In the post-Kantian era good was explained in terms of action and later with the outcome of action. Max Weber notes that as an effect to the emergence of bureaucratic rationality good was defined in terms of following bureaucratic norms rules and regulations. The triumph of form over substance in the bureaucratic logic formally following rules irrespective of its consequences was widely accepted. It is in the present era of market the concept of good has been reinterpreted in terms of profit. Along with the trajectory of the construction of the notion of good, one can observe the goal of governance and the constitution of state have also been changing. The goal of governance was changing from well-being of the citizens to maintenance of * The paper is written based on the author’s lecture sessions on “Good Governance” in the years 2002 and 2003 at Kerala Institute of Local Administration, Thrissur, India, This article was published in the website www.kilaonline.org in 2003. Later a version of this paper was translated into Malayalam and published in Kila Maganize, Vol.1, Issue 1, in 2003. The article translated in Malayalam was republished in a Malayalam journal “Trade Union” in May(?) 2005. “Trade Union” is a publication of AITUC, a trade union wing of Communist Party of India. The paper is written based on the author’s lecture sessions on “Good Governance” at Kerala Institute of Local Administration, Thrissur, India. .

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social order and finally to helping the market forces in reaping profit. The constitution of states also is changing from traditional commune to bureaucratic state and finally to a marketocratic one. In the traditional state, expression of commune or its leadership was based on intuitive logic. Formal rules gain importance in the bureaucratic state. Rule abidance is justified for the reason of maintenance of social order. Maintaining law and order is the objective of the bureaucratic state. Bureaucracy was inevitable in promoting usage, reach, and flow of capital. It is through the bureaucratic rationality the logic of capital could be consolidated world over. The logic of capital with the help of bureaucratised regulations could alienate work, social relations, relation with nature and speculative faculty of Human-lives from themselves and commodify them systematically. Without the emergence of bureaucratic rationality the universalisation of division of labour would not have been possible. Bureaucratic rationality is formal tending to be universal, atemporal and hence by its nature it hardly relates to the rich and diverse everyday reality but rather stereotype and alienate human relation with themselves and with their social and natural environment. The bureaucratic rationality by its formal nature not just aids the alienating logic of capital but also replaces substance with form constraining the creative faculty of substantive rationality. Capital and bureaucracy reinforcing each other alienates humanlife from itself and from its relation with natural and social environment. The alliance between capital and bureaucratic rationality at the abstract level emerges as the alliance between bureaucracy of the governments and market forces entangling the expression of life in the public domain through politics. The age-old association of the rationality of the market and the bureaucracy culminates into the marriage of market and bureaucracy resulting in marketocracy. The forces of alienation and its concrete forms today ‘govern ment’ality of the present state. The emergence of marketocracy coincided with converging states of the world into single unilateral marketocratic global state reducing the earlier sovereign states into national or regional governments. Any administrative apparatus of national/regional /local governments irrespective of its degree of centralisation or decentralisation hence automatically function within the logic of the emergent global marketocratic state.

According to the written Constitution of India, India is a “Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic” committed to social, economic and political justice, liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship, equality of status and of opportunity and fraternity assuring the dignity of the individual. From the point of view of the Indian constitution its people are citizens. From its standpoint, good governance will be the governance mechanism that promotes sovereignty, socialism, secularism and democracy with an ethical commitment to justice, liberty, equality and fraternity in the everyday life of the citizen. Anything that goes against the spirit of the constitution is violation of the constitution. According to the constitution, the governments, bureaucracy, market forces or funding/donor/ external financial institutions or agencies have to work within the framework of the constitution

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A state is a state by its constitution. Unwritten logics of bureaucracy and market can overcome the logics of written constitution and define the actual state of affair. Governments are the administrative mechanism of the state bound to carry out its constitutional designs. In the countries with written constitution governments are legally bound to fulfil the stipulations of the constitution. The political and administrative apparatus cannot have their own designs independent of the written constitution of the state. The political apparatus of the government is bound to practically realise the political will of the citizens of the respective geographical area in the public domain as directed by the constitution of the state. The administrative mechanism is a support system that helps the political system in representing the will of the people.

Citizens are citizens only if they have right to exercise the constitutional provisions the state provides. Without such rights citizens are just subjects. It can be said that reducing citizens to subjects is a sign of bad governance and elevating subjects to citizenship is a sign of good governance. The transformation of subjects into citizens is a political process. Imposing subjecthood on citizens is antipolitical. By its adherence to the principle of equality, liberty and socialism India, by its written constitution is an egalitarian state. Hence any governmental effort to impose in-egalitarian policy either through a political body or through administrative mechanism is anticonstitutional and bad governance.

Liberty promised by the State of India cannot be reduced to economic liberty of the market forces or the economic liberalisation alone. The liberty, that is the constitutional aspect of the Indian State is essentially political. It is made clear by the expression “liberty of thought and expression”. Any governance mechanism that deprives the citizens of equality of status and opportunity is anticonstitutional and hence signals bad governance. Depriving labour of its rights and dignity is hence anticonstitutional and bad governance. Tampering with judiciary in its effectiveness in upholding the rights of the citizens is anticonstitutional and bad governance.

The ability of the government apparatus in upholding the sovereignty of the state among the states in the world is a sign of good governance and its inability to do so is bad governance. The ability of the government in upholding its citizen’s right is good governance and its inability is bad governance. Upholding the citizen rights can be done at various levels from the Panchayats to the nation-state. Accordingly governance can be good or bad at various levels with upholding the rights of its citizens. It can be good or bad in degrees.

In bad governance form replaces substance. It is good governance if substance is reinstated. Reinstating substance would mean looking at the human being as a being beyond historically built identities and ensure their well-being. Politics, bureaucracy, market or technology should be tuned to address the well-being of humanlife. Humanlives have to be given a social environment easing

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them to be attuned to work for their well-being and keeping cordial warmth in relationship among themselves and with the natural environment beyond capitalising commodifying or monetarising these relationships. To promote good governance, anything that restrains the human possibility of warmth has to be restrained.

An effort is made below to interpret the terminologies like participation, rule of law, transparency and openness, responsiveness and responsibility, consensus, equity and inclusiveness, efficiency and effectiveness and accountability- commonly used world over to refer good governance within the ethical framework of the written constitution of India.

1. Participation.

Participation can mean subjects emerging as citizens and its opposite. It is promotion towards citizenry if they emerge as the part of constituents of the constitution of the state. For that to happen nothing should be intransperant to the participants and they should be well informed so as to express their will in the process of governance not just at the level of local government or self help groups but at the other hierarchies of governance too. The designs of the market forces, their future strategies the liaisons between the government, its bureaucracy and market forces have to be made transparent. The citizen and the political structures available should have the will to demand transparency in all aspects that can make any impact on their lives. Participation when reduced as an event reified with bureaucratic rituals of photographs, minutes and other externalities with a minimal agenda of immediate microscopic needs, it would just be the bitter pill of subjugation coated with the sugary ritual of participation. Participation in bad governance can be used as a tool to camouflage the structural and systemic failure as the failures of the individuals, groups or communities. In bad governance participation is used to blame individuals of the structural failures of the state and society. Participation is a process of good governance only when it is a reflexive process where the participants are well informed of the present state of affair and its intricacies.

2. Rule of Law.

Rules of human society and governance are social constructions with their historical legacy. Citizens are citizens when they reflect upon the presently existing rules and laws and reconstruct or mediate them for the well-being of the Humanlives. Citizens could be reduced to subject hood when rules dominate them. Facilitating citizens to reflect upon rules and reconstruct them is the process of good governance. Capacitating the judiciary to address the substance of well-being and repelling anything that reduces well-being of the citizens is good governance. Anything in rules and laws that goes against the well-being of the citizens is bad governance. In a bad governance the government would be at war with the people with its oppressive strategies and forces at its hand.

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3. Transparency and Openness.

Transparency by itself does not ensure good governance. Transparency is good if it could strengthen citizenry. Keeping the information of people and natural resources open may also promote the unethical market forces to use them for their vested interests. In good governance transparency means making system transparent to citizens to act upon and not laying information about them open to be acted upon and exploited. Information and data about citizens and the natural resources in the computer-networked world may lead to hypercentralisation. Hypercentralisation in an unipolar marketocratic global state would result in vanquish of citizen interests by the profit hungry global market forces.

4.Responsiveness and responsibility.

Government, its political and administrative system and market forces being responsible and responsive to the well-being of the citizens is good governance. If response of the local governments is used as the strategy to contain the struggle citizens take up to reform the system, it is oppressive and bad governance. Responsibility of the governance system at all its level to the citizens is good governance.

5. Consensus.

Consensus can be suggesting good governance as well as bad governance. Consensus if used to contain different voices or voices that differs from the government mechanism or market forces it is bad governance. Consensus can be bad if it is used to tame the citizens of their right for the benefit of external stakeholders. Consensus, if emerges as the will of the citizenry in the public sphere it is good.

6.Equity and Inclusiveness

Equity and inclusiveness are aspects of good governance. Similarly inequity and exclusiveness are of bad governance. In the inclusive sense profit means what is profitable for the well-being of the Humanlives. In the exclusive sense it is capitalising the public for private ends. By equity we also mean providing equitable opportunity for citizens to lead a life of self-respect and dignity.

7. Efficiency and Effectiveness.

Effectiveness and efficiency in good governance is, to be effective and efficient in strengthening citizenry and their well-being. The question is not whether to be effective and efficient but to be so for what purpose. The efficiency

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and effectiveness of the governance and the market in responding to the substantial needs as decided by the citizens is an aspect of good governance.

8. Accountability.

In good governance the governments at the various levels and the market forces operating should be accountable to the citizens and their well-being. A good government would ensure the accountability of all the social and economic forces including itself accountable to the citizens.

In a ‘good governance’ there should be possibilities for the expression of will of the citizens to emerge as the constituents of the constitution of the state within the framework of the well-being of Humanlives. The spirit of the written constitution of India has provisions for such warmth and hence has to be upheld as the guiding principle for good governance.

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