“Governance” is understood in different ways by different scholars:
Oliver Williamson suggests that ‘Governance is a means by which order is accomplished in a relation in which potential conflict threatens to undo or upset opportunities to realize mutual gains’. (The Mechanisms of Governance,1996,OUP,p. 12). He further suggests that governance is also an exercise in assessing the efficacy of alternate modes (means) of organization. The object is to effect good order through the mechanisms of governance. Thus governance is not a static but a dynamic concept of continuously changing relationships in a society which impinge upon the power of the state in many ways.
As global development expands and unfolds itself we witness its implications for development. The issue of state capacity and the processes of democratization were found to be intricately connected in a dialogue for good governance. The World Bank Reports between 1989 and 1994 were pronouncements on good governance, democracy and development. With the World Bank Report on Africa in 1989, a powerful discourse on the institutional structure of State ensued amongst the development scholars. Adrian Leftwich ( The Politics of Development, 1994, Development and Change ,vol 25,no 2, pp.371-372) has given three main levels of meaning to ‘good governance’; systemic, political and administrative.
- From the systemic point of view, the concept of governance is wider than that of government which conventionally refers to the formal institutional structure and location of authoritative decision making in the modern state. Governance is a configuration of loosely spread many different actors influencing decision making.
- The political definition of good governance incorporates a pluralist polity with a freely and regularly elected representative legislature, with the capacity at least to influence and check executive power.
- From the administrative point of view good governance implies a state which is efficient, accountable, transparent and approachable by ordinary people.
The World Bank Report Governance and Development 1992 also elaborates on the imperatives of good governance upon four main areas of public administration and public sector management;
- Accountability
- A legal framework for development
- Information
- Transparency
In the 1990s the debate on the institutional character of state became the main focus. Osborne and Gaebler ( 1992) insisted that the state should not just be small ( minimal & entrepreneurial) but also different. The issue was not just about states and the markets but whether the State can afford to behave like a market with its moral basis in unimpeachable public goods of ‘equity, fairness and justice’. The new state was coming to terms with the ethical foundation of its existence that private profit should not be made where human suffering was involved. State capacity comes to the core of the developmental argument while finding answers to the question ‘why some states performed better than others?’ To understand these manifold arrangements based not just on collaboration, interdependence conflict and reciprocity a comparative study of workable practices became indispensable, not just to prevent policy backfire but also to strengthen conviction in the fact that many grassroot experiments have succeeded where mega programmes fail. Governance Knowledge Centre attempts to explore good and best practices which have been able to transform lives of ordinary citizens and strengthened sustainability of governance. Foundations of an enabling state is possible only through a consistent and mission drives evaluation of what is being done across the nation and compare it with the experience of other nations.
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