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Written Report on Major 7
(Comparative Government and Politics)
Submitted by: Submitted to:
Calaylay, Eddelyn Jessica S. Ms. C. Tobias
BSED III-C (Soc. Sci.)
PRESCRIPTIONS FOR GOOD GOVERNANCE
In this digital age, good governance becomes possible when the following are
present:
1. Transparency of government. Citizens must be kept informed of the decisions
of the state and their justification.
2. Simplicity of procedures. Whether in fiscal matters, investment, or other areas,
administrative procedures need to be as simple as possible, with the number of
participants reduced to a minimum.
3. Responsibility. Public officials must be held accountable and, if necessary,
penalized for offenses.
4. Fight against corruption. Eradication of corruption is imperative for promoting
healthy and efficient economic management.
5. Individual freedom and collective expression. A free and responsible press, in
particular, is an important pillar of democracy.
6. Independence of the legal system. The legal system must be free from
pressure and intervention from political forces or any other organization, to
ensure that its decisions are independent and impartial.
It is observed that the list above has become the foundation of strong
democracies in many developing countries. India, South Korea, Chile, Taiwan,
Mexico, Malaysia, Singapore, Poland and Russia are enjoying relatively high growth
rates and rapid economic development because of good and effective governance
development framework.
TEN NOTES ON GOOD GOVERNANCE IMPLEMENTATION
Dr. Paul Oquist, a governance specialist for the United Nations wrote his “10
Notes on Good Governance Implementation” in the light of the emergent problems
confronting new democracies including the Philippines.
1. Policy and institutional analysis must be combined because policy without
institutions is difficult to implement, rarely successful, and never sustainable.
institutions without policies accomplish little, fail to adapt, and enter to decline
and decay.
2. The statement that politicians formulate strategic policies while civil servants
implement them is a gross oversimplification.
a.) The first reason is that politicians with great vision and strong leadership
capacity are exceptions to the rule, not the rule. Those that have these
characteristics in the right conditions, and with a little luck, can write history.
Those that don’t are heavily reliant on others for information, analysis, vision,
and policies. In some countries strong political parties and research institutes
play an important role. In others the leaders are the parties and there is little
additionality. In all countries pre-decision teams determine policy content,
including almost all of the details. The more technical the world becomes the
more this becomes the case. In all countries civil servants plays roles in these
processes, and in some countries almost all of the laws are written by the
concerned ministries, sometimes with and sometimes without external
consultations. In sum, civil servants are usually deeply involved in policy
formulation.
b.) The second reason is that politicians who do not pay attention to
implementation run the risk of not seeing a policy implemented, of the results
not being successful, and of the impact not being those desired. Most
politicians are working for the next two governments anyway. By the time
policies are formulated and programmes and projects designed, approved,
financed, and implemented, the results are in the next government after that.
If attention is not paid to implementation very little will be accomplished by a
government in its own term. Politicians must be attentive to implementation if
the bureaucracy does not like a policy. All bureaucracies are skilled at rear
guard actions to avoid policies they dislike. The British comedy “Yes, Prime
Minister” that Chief Secretary Anson Chan mentioned in her inaugural
address has been running for decades on variations of this theme. She
mentioned that no one person has the power to stop its implementation. A
minister or even government is simply outlasted—with permanence being the
prime asset of bureaucracy in long-term policy controversies. There are
thousands of means to this end but most can be categorized under the four
“d’s”. The four “d’s” are somewhat similar to the tactics the military applies in
counter-insurgency operations. The military applies in counter-insurgency
operations. The military applies “take, hold, consolidate, and develop”. To
disliked policies, the bureaucracy applies: “delay, dislute, distort, and
destroy”. In sum, politicians who are not involved in policy implementation do
so at their own peril.
3. Bureaucracy is the basic organizational and operational principle of the Industrial
Age while the network is the basic principle of the Knowledge Age. Since we live
in a period of transition between those two eras in human civilization we will have
to deal with the characteristics of both for some time to come. However, this also
entails great opportunities. Networking individuals in different bureaucratic
structures, as well as independents, can create non-hierarchical, results-oriented
work groups. These types of networks can work at both macro and micro levels.
4. At the macro-level, one of the most effective ways to support good governance
reform is to identify where good governance reform advocates and activities
already exist, network them, and promote positive synergies between them.
Support to an expanding universe of networks of change agents can constitute a
movement. Historically and in our time there are impressive examples of the
potential power of networks. To take but one example, when Rachel Carson
wrote “The Silent Spring” forty years ago she was practically alone in pointing out
the damage the industrial age does to the environment. Today the level of
consciousness on these issues is high, although enormous tasks lie ahead both
in terms of consciousness and policy. The environmental movement at the
international and national levels, including people from both the public and
private sectors at both the central and local levels, is largely responsible for the
higher levels of consciousness and some of the policy breakthroughs, such as
the Montreal protocol. Transparency, accountability, anti-corruption, devolution,
empowerment, poverty reduction, inclusion, including gender equity and minority
rights, as well as peace, can also benefit from good governance movements.
5. At the micro-level, mission-specific, time-bound, ad hoc working groups or task
forces can bring together the best national talent available, from all sectors, for
policy formulation and consultation, as well as for the monitoring and evaluation
and implementation. They are non-official networks but their products are
officialized. These networks works best when they products are officialized.
These networks works best when they are accompanied by political will and
commitment at the highest are accompanied by political will and commitment at
the highest decision-making level, and used only for top priority issues that must
be accomplished and/or those that are so multi-sectoral, and remain for several
iterations of the policy process. This allows for participation in consensus
building, change management, phasing and sequencing, policy differentiation in
the territory, and policy adaptations across time, in sum the rigorous prioritization
of policy actions. Hawkins says that time in nature’s way of ensuring that
everything doesn’t happen all at once. A rigorous prioritization of a small set of
top priorities, and phasing the sequencing is also necessary to ensure that the
government doesn’t try to do everything all at once.
6. Bureaucratic organization and operations are sectoralized while networks are
holistic. The opportunities and problems emerging in the globalized knowledge
age tend to be inter-sectoral, requiring holistic attention. Attempts have been
made to deal with issues through inter-sectoral or inter-institutional coordination
committees and/or by designating lead institutions. If a programme must be done
or if it is so inter-sectoral that it won’t work unless multiple institutions effectively
participate, the will and commitment of top level political leadership are
necessary. The networked working groups provide a channel for this approach.
7. Information is a basic raw material of governance in all institutional and
organizational forms. However, its role is different in the bureaucratic form of
organization and operations as compared to network organization and
operations. In bureaucratic organizations everything that is not explicitly
permitted is forbidden, all information is secret unless explicitly made public,
information access is on a need-to-know basis, and information is power, for the
few. In a networked environment everything that is not forbidden is permitted, all
information is public unless explicitly restricted, there is the right to information,
and information is empowerment of the many. In sum the transition from
bureaucratic to networked institutions is also the move from information as power
for the few to information as empowerment for the many. Both the market
economy and democracy can be optimized by open access and the free flow of
information. Rights, however, entail responsibilities and issues of individual
privacy and press ethics are highly relevant to getting the right mix in these
policies.
8. The combination of democratic values, humane governance objectives, a
networked policy approach, and a customer-service orientation requires citizen
voice and participation in policy iterations. Systematic information and analysis
methodologies at the grass-roots level are returned to the community, but they
have been linked to local decision-making and planning at best. It is important
that they also be consolidated at the provincial and national levels. This is most
effective if there is representative national sample of communities involved.
9. Learning experience is a term preferred to best practices because of the
prescriptive nature of the term. This is for two reasons. First, there is a strong
tendency to copy models rather than construct policies that take national reality
as the point of departure and the point of arrival for analysis and action. Second,
what is best practice in one context can be the worst practice in another. Also,
learning should take place with regard to negative experiences just as much as
from positive ones.
10. Governance in conflict situations requires a holistic approach. Protracted social
conflict is a symptom if institutional breakdown that requires holistic treatment.
Dealing with protracted social conflict requires a combination of system theory-
based changed management and chaos theory-based risk management. The
holistic approach is also necessary because several of the following processes
can be present at the same time: conflict prevention, conflict containment, conflict
resolution actions, ceasefires, demobilization, peace agreements, remobilization,
displaced persons, resettlements, transition support reconstruction, and
development. In the most complex situations all of these elements are present at
the same time.