Good Governance In Nepal's Context

Dev Raj Dahal, T.U

Governance is a term "that applies to the exercise of power in a variety of institutional contexts, the object of which is to direct, control and regulate activities in the interests of the people as citizens, voters, and workers". It is the "exercise of the political power to manage a nation's affairs". It also means a human aggregate, made of people's representatives who are acting together on a collective task of public welfare. Governance is defined by its task-what it does? And, how? Three concepts are cardinal to most definitions of governance.

"Accountability", which denotes the effectiveness with which the governed can exercise influence over their governors; legitimacy, which is concerned with the right of the State to exercise power over its citizens, and the extent to which those powers are perceived to be rightly exercised; and transparency, which is founded on the existence of mechanisms for ensuring public access to decision-making".

In the days to come, there will be unusual pressure on the ability of the government to govern. Internally, the pressure will be exerted by the special interest groups, such as media, ecological activists, women's bodies, social movements, professional organizations etc.

Similarly, the external pressure will be put by the regional and international institutions for a transmutation of the nation-state. Th success of this transformation process lies in the productive application of national resources for a comfortable adaptation, innovation and performance. Increasingly, unsuccessful governments will have to share their power with other autonomous institutions of the society. How will the political power of the nation-state be exercised for the management of national affairs? How will donors' conditionality be properly put to use as a policy opportunity to enforce the accountability of the government to the poor?

Governance has seized a pivotal space in the modern discourse of the development process. The increased interest in governance springs from a standard notion that economic prosperity of a nation is mainly attributed to a democratic, transparent, and accountable form of government. A proper use of political authority vested in national leadership and its efficient and predictable style of functioning are crucial tests of good governance. Good governance frames policy, maintains law and order, and protects property rights in order to buttress production and investment in the country. It also expresses a national vision and embodies popular aspirations.

Coherence in government's functioning is a crucial test of its policy concentration. If internal friction lessens stability and value, it has a wider impact in a government than in the opposition. This is because governance is legitimately a more utilitarian process, subject to evaluation in terms of not only performance but also the sensitivity of the means it employs, particularly, regarding the media, the account committee of the parliament, the electoral constituency, the court and the general public. Although there are competing views about what good governance means; the quest for a simplified meaning of the role of the government in development can be found in a recent study. The key features of good governance, according to the study, include

# Political accountability and legitimacy

# A fair and reliable judicial system

# Bureaucratic accountability

# Freedom of information, and expression

# Effective and efficient public sector management, and cooperation with civil society organizations".

In order to attain good governance, it is always important to bring a comprehensive ideas and values of the grassroots institutions to press on the policy priority of the government. Working with local leadership can help identify problems and formulate plans necessary for local development. This means governance has to strive for local capacity building so that development becomes self-sustaining. There are six different types of local capacity building:

# Macro economic policy management (a specific managerial or professional skill),

# Professional education (a training task)

# Public service reforms (a structural and legal change)

# Private sector (an untargeted sector wide focus)

# Popular participation in choice of national goals and means ( a political objective), and national   development culture ( a vague and social system wide focus )"

In the context of Nepal, a number of international organizations are involved in the capacity building of local governance and development, making the local self-government an intrinsic part of international system. Efficiency and accountability of public institutions and service, advocated by the World Bank, seem to be oriented towards improving the climate for business, financial management, public enterprise reforms, environment and resource management and women and development. The bank has further identified reforms in public sector management, predictability and the rule of law, and the protection of the freedom of press and human rights. The UNDP, is involved in promoting decentralization, institution-building, and human development. The UN constituted a working group on the right to development in 1993 that catalogued effective measures to

"Eliminate obstacles to the implementation and realization of the Declaration of the Right to Development and recommend ways and means towards the realization of the right to development by all states"

The DANIDA is involved in electoral reforms, local self-government, and training of public and police officials on democracy and human rights. The German Society for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) is basically involved in community participation, urban development, environment management, small-scale industries, and self-help organizations, etc. The recipient country of the official German Development Cooperation has to meet five main criteria: rule of law, human rights, political participation, market friendly economic order and development-orientation of state action.

The USAID policy documents focus on the promotion of sustained economic development, increasing of democratic participation, protection of human rights, legitimate government behavior, and the augmentation of fundamental human values, such as civilian control of military, protection of minority rights, political tolerance, peaceful resolution of conflicts, etc. All these efforts, including the ones carried by other official development regimes, NGOs and INGOs in Nepal are directed  to modernize state institutions, create force to critical level capable of acting as a pressure point for economic reforms and redefine state-society relationships for good governance.

Governance is definitely about public good. But if private firms do not take social accountability and follow the rules of the constitutional game it seriously hampers the governance process. Critics of governance point out that

" de-politicization   of the economy may only be achievable if economic policy-makers are insulated from social feedback, if media criticism is restrained, and if resistance to the new patterns of property ownership is met with the full force of bourgeois (not necessarily democratic) law".

Some of the donors have attached the agenda of governance to the efficiency of aid projects and participatory development while others have found a tension between the two approaches: downsizing of government on the one hand, and the need for small yet adequately powerful government to face up to well-organized pressure groups in society, which are looking for a greater share on the decision making on the other. One critic calls it Thatcher's Paradox-need for a strong central authority for an effective implementation of decentralization". Good governance is corruption free government based on the rule of law and is efficient in public sector management. Unpredictability in the legal environment and the legal system as a whole "creates business costs, discourages investors and obstructs economic development. Similarly, good governance policies also flow from "staff incentives, training of civil servants, administrative and fiscal decentralization, and dialogue between governments and civil society."

In developing countries, the agenda of governance is often associated with the notion of power , decentralization of power. The problem of building government is not solved by concentrating political and economic power at the center but rather by decentralizing and devolving it to the local level. In many modernizing societies, the political system fails to meet this condition because traditional authority always fears the loss of power, authority and institutions once it allows the power to out of their hands. The traditional political system prefers stability rather than democracy, organization rather than aspirations, law rather than politics, and decay rather than development. Actually all these paradoxes are interrelated. And the casual thinking is: decentralization promotes democracy and development and they are preconditions to good governance. How can decentralization   be conceptualized ?

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