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The “Good Governance” Agenda
and its Discontents
Implications for Political Voice
Alina Rocha Menocal
Presentation prepared for the “Governance, Accountability and
Citizen Empowerment” Learning Workshop
Session 1: Bringing Politics Back In
Dublin, 11 June 2014
Outline
Defining Governance
Understanding the “Good Governance” agenda
Have “Good Governance” programmes worked?
“Good Governance” agenda: challenges and
limitations
• Voice & Accountability: bring politics back in
• Key implications and principles for engagement
• Challenges to donor uptake
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Defining Governance
• Governance means more than just ‘government’
• It has to do with the nature of relations between state
and society
• It is also process-oriented – how not just what is done
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Defining Governance
Based on the above, governance can be understood as:
• The rules that regulate the public realm – the
space where state as well as economic and societal
actors interact to make decisions
• and the processes and institutions, both formal
and informal, through which public authority is
exercised
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“Good Governance” agenda
• Term emerged in 1990s from growing concerns about
governance
• “Good Governance” defined as essential to promote
development, build capacity, and combat poverty (e.g. UN,
Commission for Africa, DFID, World Bank, Commonwealth
Secretariat, etc.)
• Concept of “good governance” is broad but there is
agreement on several key principles
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“Good Governance” agenda
 Participation and inclusiveness: involvement and
ownership by a broad range of stakeholders
 Accountability: decision-makers responsible for
their actions; checks and balances in place; etc.
 Respect for institutions and laws: rules apply
equally to everyone in society; corruption is
controlled; etc.
“Good Governance” agenda
 Effectiveness: performing key functions and
delivering basic services
 Transparency: clarity and openness of decisionmaking
 Efficiency: government is effective and responsive;
functioning regulatory framework is in place; etc.
Often ‘good governance’ also implies a properly
functioning democratic system
Have “GG” interventions
worked?
 Since the 1990s, substantial resources have been
devoted to improve governance, including public
sector reform and the way the central government
works

OECD governments spend over US$10 billion a year
on governance interventions

Yet, results have been disappointing—e.g., anticorruption commissions and civil service reforms.
“GG” agenda: challenges and limitations
Three particular areas should be highlighted:
• Normative slant of the GG agenda
• Technocratic approach to development
• Excessively comprehensive and demanding agenda
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“GG” agenda: Normative slant
• Overly idealistic and normative view of the political
process
• Reliance on blueprints and best practices transplanted
from the developed world despite mantra of “no one
size fits all”
• Excessive reliance on standardised approaches
focused almost exclusively on formal institutions.
• Fresh perspectives rooted in local realities have been
lacking.
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“GG” agenda: Technocratic approach
• Tendency to see development as a technocratic
exercise.
• Implicit assumption that “all good things go together”
without sufficiently recognising that politics matter.
• Lack of awareness of the political nature of reform
processes: reforms entail changes in formal
arrangements but more fundamentally are about
changing informal behaviours and altering power
relations.
• Changing the way governments work poses political
risks: e.g., trade-offs between providing public goods
and serving powerful vested interests.
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“GG” agenda: Agenda overload
• The “GG” paradigm implies a very wide range of
institutional preconditions for development.
• It calls for improvements that touch virtually all
aspects of the public sector.
• But the long list may be beyond what is needed or
feasible and is a-historic.
• Asking institutions to do too much too soon threatens
to undermine longer-term capacity.
• There is little guidance about what is and what is not,
what should come first and what should follow, etc.
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Voice & Accountability: What
• Defined as people’s ability to express their views to
influence decision-making processes.
• The past two decades have seen an explosion of
political voice across the developing world.
• This is an extraordinarily diverse and complex
landscape, with people everywhere grabbing
opportunities to express their views in a multitude of
ways:
• (See also “What is Political Voice?” publication for
Development Progress – more analysis and
infographics there!)
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Voice & Accountability: Why
• Critical area of engagement both in domestic
processes of change and international efforts to
support them.
• Seen as having both intrinsic and instrumental value –
eg post-2015 HLP.
• Informed and aware population who can participate
and hold state to account is considered essential in
strengthening governance and state-society relations
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Voice and Accountability: How
• The chain of causality, whether implicit or explicit, is
generally as follows:
• Direct effects:
V  A  improved developmental outcomes (e.g.
poverty reduction; meeting other MDGs)
• Indirect effects:
V  A  intermediate variables (eg improved
governance; stronger democracy)  improved
developmental outcomes
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V&A: donor assumptions
Donor expectations are based on a
assumptions that are not always realistic:
set
of
• Assumed automatic relationship between voice and
improved accountability.
• Assumption that citizens’ voice represents the
interests, needs and demands of “the people”.
• Assumption that more effective and efficient
institutions will be more transparent, responsive and
accountable.
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V&A: donor assumptions
Donor expectations are based on a set of
assumptions that are not always realistic:
• Assumption that CV&A interventions can be supported
via a focus on capacity building and formal
institutions.
• Assumption that democracy leads to improved
developmental
outcomes
(including
poverty
reduction).
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V&A: Bringing politics back in
But Informal institutions, processes and power
relations are key:
• Fundamentally shape the way formal institutions operate.
• May limit the outcomes and impact of CV&A interventions
intended to transform formal institutions.
• Significant political relationships and personal incentives
shape the behaviour of both state and non-state actors.
• These include social
corruption, etc.
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and
cultural
norms,
clientelism,
V&A: Bringing politics back in
• Voice is often treated as an unproblematic concept
often assumed that the poor can exercise their voice
easily.
• Essential to ask whose voice is being heard (eg ICTs!)
• The voices of the poor are far from homogeneous.
• Many voices may compete with one another.
• There are power differentials within civil society, and
different organisations have different motivations,
interests and capacities to engage.
• The state may be responsive/ accountable to some
groups and not others.
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V&A: Bringing politics back in
• So the struggle for greater voice, inclusion,
accountability and representation is an ongoing
process of negotiation, contestation, and even
confrontation,
• And it is about nothing if it is not about altering
existing power relations.
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Key lessons and implications
• Starting with the local context:
– Develop solid understanding of domestic dynamics
at work, and
– Tailor interventions accordingly.
• Moving away from normative prescriptions encouraging
multiple paths to institutional performance:
– “Best fit” over “best practice”
• Recognising development as fundamentally political:
– Be realistic about what is feasible
– Focus on fostering enabling environment and
influencing incentives
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Key lessons and implications
• Focusing first on basic reforms and sequencing
reforms accordingly:
– Modest and selective entry points can have
partial success and can lay the basis for later
progress.
• Recognising long-term nature of promoting
development.
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Principles of engagement
• Build/sharpen ability to engage in a politically
aware
manner
in
CV&A
policies
and
interventions on the ground:
• Undertake strategic PEA: focus on interaction between
formal and informal institutions and actor incentives.
• Analyse
operational
implications
for
CV&A
interventions.
• Share lessons emerging from such work to develop
shared understanding.
• Monitor and update analysis continuously in order to
inform on-going donor programming.
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Principles of engagement
• Work with the institutions you have, and not the
ones you wish you had:
• Learn to live with the informal institutions and
practices that continue to predominate/trump formal
ones in the country settings they work in.
• Engage with these informal systems more thoroughly
and explicitly rather than ignoring them or dismissing
them.
• Focus on how to best work ‘with the grain’ (i.e. what
is already in-country) rather than transplant formal
institutional frameworks from the outside.
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Principles of engagement
• Focus capacity building not only on technical but
also on political skills:
• Continue to support technical capacity building of both
civil society and state actors, particularly at the local
level.
• But focus on political capacity of both state and nonstate actors: the capacity to forge alliances, build a
case and influence others.
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Principles of engagement
• Continue to explore and exploit opportunities to
support CV&A mechanisms that address both
sides of the equation within the same
intervention:
• Support interventions that work with both V and A
more consistently, strategically, and systematically.
• Strengthen national mechanisms that bring the state
and citizen together: e.g. parliaments, ombudsmen.
• Strengthen mechanisms at the local level: local
development committees and consultative councils.
• Support to media & RtI also essential (but based on
principles)
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Principles of engagement
• Diversify
channels
and
mechanisms
of
engagement:
• Move beyond “usual suspects”
• Work more with non-traditional civil society
organisations like religious organisations, trade unions
and social movements, and MPs!
• Pay attention to issues of integrity, quality and
capacity.
• Choose experienced partners that can reach otherwise
marginalised and isolated groups (especially in the
rural areas).
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Principles of engagement
• Improve
key
design
and
implementation
features of CV&A interventions:
• Establish more realistic expectations for interventions.
• Provide longer term and more flexible support.
• Build in sustainability features and exit strategies.
• Empower partners to take over donor roles and work
to build the sustainability of projects.
• Explore ways to join up small and focused projects at
the local level to a broader national programme to
facilitate scaling up.
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Challenges to donor uptake
• Donors have begun to grapple more seriously with the
limitations of the GG agenda, take context as the
starting point, and recognise the political nature of
development.
• But there is still a big gap between rhetoric and
practice.
• It has proven difficult for donors to absorb and act on
lessons .
• Truly internalising these would require undertaking
reforms to their own organisation, values, practices
and behaviour, which is not easy.
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The views presented here are those of the speaker,
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