A recent editorial in national newspaper states: In separate comments, in Islamabad, both the Prime Minister and the Chief Justice have spoken of good governance and how it can be achieved. This shows both men are aware that good governance is an issue that lies heavy on the thoughts of many people.
Awareness on their part about lack of good governance should not be surprising as the demand for good governance, has of late indeed reached a crescendo in Pakistan. In statements of state functionaries, members of opposition parties, representatives of civil society, expositions of pronouncements of courts, international reports on Pakistan, discussions in talk shows or print media, good governance is a persisting and endemic theme.
The focus on good governance is driven by a desire for a silver bullet or panacea for all ills afflicting our polity. In real life panaceas are in a short supply. Having said that one may admit that by achieving good governance a remarkable improvement can be expected in the public affairs of our country. One reason for this optimism is attributable to the fact that good governance is not a single concept, and subsumes multiple dimensions across the entire spectrum of societal activities. It is like a broad spectrum antibiotic and should be able to cure the myriad of ills afflicting our polity.
It is now a conventional wisdom that good governance is the prime means not only for development outcomes, but for the survival of our nation. Good governance is a pre-requisite for ensuring the security of life and property of people, helping in improving their living standards, and alleviating dehumanising poverty. The building blocks of good governance are a number of inter-related factors, including equity and honesty in the exercise of authority, accountability, inclusive policy frameworks, efficient and effective management of resources, meritocracy, protection of individual rights as well as access to information, services and employment opportunities for all segments of the society irrespective of wealth, social status and position. Thus, the popular notion of equating good governance with control of corruption is not correct. The concept indeed covers much more than public probability and demands much more for every citizen of society.
DEFINITION OF GOVERNANCE: There are a number of definitions of governance, but the central essence of the concept is the institutional environment in which power is used to benefit all groups in the society. A definition by the UNDP which is quite appropriate is reproduced below:
"Governance is the exercise of economic, political, and administrative authority to manage a country's affairs at all levels. Good governance, thus, signifies the competent management of resources and affairs in a manner that is open, transparent, honest, accountable, equitable and responsive to people's needs and problems."
The ability of the state to provide law and order is the core of the concept of governance and is its defining feature. Governance should fundamentally possess the capacity of the state to organise social and economic activity according to rules, and to enforce compliance with those rules.
SALIENT DIMENSIONS: Governance's salient features are depicted in the following figure.
CHARACTERISTICS EXPLAINED:
1) Participation: Good governance entails that the decision making process is open and allows for the participation (direct or indirect) of all.
2) Rule of law: Good governance implies the impartial enforcement of fair legal norms faithful adherence to the broad range of human rights, independence of the judiciary and a law enforcement mechanism that is free of corruption.
3) Transparency: Decision-making and implementation follow clearly laid upon rules and regulations.
4) Responsiveness: Good governance assumes that institutions and processes try to serve all stakeholders within a reasonable timeframe.
5) Consensus oriented: Good governance also requires the achievement of a broad consensus on all issues that are considered important by all or any section of the society.
6) Equity and inclusiveness: A society's well being depends on ensuring that all its members feel that they have a stake in it and do not feel excluded from the mainstream of the society. This requires that all groups, but particularly the most vulnerable, have opportunities to improve or maintain their well being.
7) Effectiveness and efficiency: Good governance is about meeting the requirements and needs of the society.
8) Accountability: Institutions including those in private sector and civil society organisations are accountable to the public and their institutional stakeholders.
STATE OF GOVERNANCE IN PAKISTAN: Pakistan in its over six decades long history has indeed failed to evolve a coherent framework for efficient and honest governance. Most of the governance indicators for Pakistan paint a bleak picture of state of affairs. Various reports show that corruption remains pervasive, widespread and systematic and so is the unsatisfying state of other elements of good governance such as rule of law, regulatory quality, effectiveness, political stability and accountability and voice to people.
The world-wide governance indicators (World Bank, 2007), comparing Pakistan to Bangladesh and India, in the table below, depicts an unhappy situation with poor scores in most of the indicators.poe.
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COMPARATIVE GOVERNANCE INDICATORS, 2007 FOR BANGLADESH, INDIA AND PAKISTAN
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Control of Corruption Rule of Law Government Effectiveness Political Stability Voice and Accountability
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Country Percentile Governance Percentile Governance Percentile Governance Percentile Governance Percentile Governance
Rank Score Rank Score Rank Score Rank Score Rank Score
(0-100) (-2.5 to +2.5 (0-100 (-2.5 to +2.5 (0-100 (-2.5 to +2.5 (0-100 (-2.5 to +2.5 (0-100 (-2.5 to +2.5)
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Bangladesh 10.6 -1.10 27.3 -0.70 22.7 -0.77 9.6 -1.54 30.8 -0.61
India 44.4 -0.37 56.5 0.12 53.6 -0.03 16.7 -0.99 58.7 0.45
Pakistan 24.6 -0.77 19.1 -0.92 25.6 -0.73 1.4 -2.16 19.2 -1.01
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Source: World Bank: Governance Matters, 2008
The comparative position needs less to emphasise, is no credit to us. It will only be a cold comfort, that in matter of corruption, we are better than Bangladesh, but much worse than India. In case of the rule of law, we are worse than both Bangladesh and India. The position is same in respect of political stability and voice/accountability. In terms of governmental effectiveness India is way ahead of us.
Of course, we need not be reminded about the sad state of governance in Pakistan through any international ranking. We are faced every day by the chronic deficit of governance. As a matter of fact, poor governance constitutes endemic feature of the machinery of our government at every level. Most pertinently, in Pakistan the governance crisis principally manifests in the state's low capacity to deploy power in providing law and order.
Research findings
In a recent research conducted by Innovative Development Strategies (IDS/GINI 2009), it was found that that there was unanimity on the part of a cross section of people, including bureaucrats, students, lawyers, about the prevalence and persistence of poor governance in the country. A multi faceted diagnosis of the problem emerged which included: illiteracy; an inefficient, incompetent and unprofessional bureaucracy; the absence of rule of law; lack of genuine political leadership; military interventions; indifference of the population; lack of accountability, and corruption; and falling standards of probity; financial indiscipline and ad hocism; elitism and unrepresentative ruling structures.
It was further found that the lack of good governance has a circular relationship with a lack of transparency and responsiveness, weak accountability, poor organisation and motivation, as well as administrative inefficiency. In Pakistan, as in most other developing countries, good governance is inhibited by essentially undemocratic and unrepresentative decision making structures.
Responding to governance challenge: a demand side perspective Good governance cannot be achieved by just wishing for it, lamenting about its absence or by adopting flawed and mala fide accountability laws. To a considerable extent, good governance requires well thought out strategies to identify causes for poor governance and to formulate pragmatic policy prescriptions. Several causes as alluded to above are well known. The task is to muster political will to address them in a systematic and resolute manner.
Building capacity for good governance is essentially a supply side function and in Pakistan, the focus has been on finding supply-oriented solution. However, the goal of good governance cannot be realised without the active participation of demand side actors, including the civil society and the general population. In Pakistan, we have not been giving due importance to the demand side of equation. It is necessary to pay equal attention to the formulation of a demand side strategy, which is expected to invoke a supply side response from societal institutions at all levels.
Demand for good governance connotes the extent and ability of citizens, civil society organisations, and other non-state actors to hold the state accountable and to make it responsive to their needs. As the experience of many countries has shown, the demand side articulation has led to efforts of supply side actors to strengthen the state organs in order to make them more transparent, accountable, and participatory.
Key elements of demand for good governance process are:
(a) The ability of citizens, civil society and other non-state actors to demand better governance. This, in turn, will depend on their access to information, the degree to act effectively on information and capacity to effectively strive for good governance.
(b) Developing programmes and initiatives by the executive authorities as a response to the demand for good governance.
(c) Effective overseeing of the government agencies by the parliament, media, and the civil society. This could take the form of participatory monitoring through citizens feedback surveys of government performance, social audits, and media investigations etc
An active citizenry aware of their importance in the state, knowledgeable of their rights and of ways in which those rights can be demanded and realised is indeed critical for the entrenchment of good governance in the organisational culture and operational structures of the state and its agencies.
The role of civil society In the context of generating and sustaining demand for good governance, the role of civil society is exceedingly important. As Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary General, aptly pointed out that governments can bring about change, not by acting alone, but by working together with other actors...with civil society in the broadest sense. Governments can define norms and principles by laying down policies, and plans of actions, after carefully listening to the views of civil society. But governments need to work with appropriate partners to put those norms into practice.
Strategic empowerment Strategic actions should focus on empowerment of civil society, enabling people to demand and to point the way to good governance and empowering them to act as partners of the government to put into effect agreed norms and principles and plans of actions. In the equation of action, there is a clear relationship between needs and empowerment. When people have a say in the choice of elected decision-makers, express their views in free media, they are able to exert more control over their lives. When people have more access to information about government activities, they are empowered, through building their capacity, to play an informed role in the human development. This helps to ensures that resources voted for the poor are used productively.
The second dimension of empowerment involves building capacity of people to act as government partners, once their inputs are transformed into policy and the stage of concrete action has arrived.
Empowerment through skills To empower civil society would require importing knowledge and skills related to concept of governance, with special emphasis on civil society's responsibility, ethics in public service, knowledge and advocacy skills for approaching accountability mechanisms, including government's complaint handling machinery, ombudsmen institutions and courts, approaching media, legislatures, elected district government officials, building coalitions for good governance, transparency, fundamental rights. They should also be imparted knowledge of public issues, community driven development, social conditioning. This will have to be an ongoing exercise. Likewise, the knowledge and skills of the media should be built.
To sum up, an effective way (much neglected hitherto in Pakistan) for achieving good governance is to work on the demand side of governance equation. No doubt, much needs to be done on supply side, inter alias, building institutional infrastructure, promoting education, developing innovative techniques, reforming administration and ensuring impartial accountability across the board. Supply side and demand side endeavours must combine to yield optimum governance outcome.
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