Primero, Justine Mae A.

GOVERNANCE AND DEVELOPMENT

BPA 3A

ASSIGNMENT 1
“The Importance of Governance and Development and its Inter-relationship”

1. What is your understanding of the concept of governance? And what is your own
concept of governance?
Governance encompasses more than just government. It refers to the different
ways in which social life or interaction is coordinated in its broadest sense. In line with
this, government can be viewed as one of the institutions in governance and this suggests
that governance can exist without government. As what I have grasped, governance can
exist without government in the sense that governance without government can promote
itself by using governmental agencies. Since governance refers to the institutions and
actors from within and beyond the government, this implies that governance involves
administration of the public or what we called public administration and/or management
done by the administrators in various governmental agencies. With this, governance is
more on processes of governing, the institutions, processes and practices through which
issues of common concern are decided upon and regulated.
Given that governance involves interaction and processes between institutions and
civil society, in my discernment, the concept of governance revolves around control and
administration (on how rules, norms, and acts are structured, maintained, governed, and
held accountable) while government is the involvement of politics (acquisition and
exercise of power). When it comes to governance, the control and administration take
place in policy formulation and implementation. Governance has become a valuable
technique to strengthen the legitimacy of the public domain, whether as an instrument of
public affairs management or as a barometer of political progress. It has also evolved into
a comparative political analytical framework or strategy. For instance, with a good
governance, when it prioritizes serving the people with best and quality government
services, for example in health needs, the government will have a good image to the
people. Hence, governance, specifically a good governance, can lead to an effective
government.
Above all, with all the ideas stated above, governance is the performance or
outcome of the government.

2. Explain the shift of government to governance.

Government is authority-centric. Governance is people-centric. In the shift of

government to governance, we are dealing with shifting to have the focus on people
rather than authority. In this concept, the practice of public administration, which had
previously been dominated by the government, is giving way to a networking between
the government, the market, and collective groups of people known as "civil society."
There has been a gradual shift from a narrow view of government to a broader notion of
governance.
The traditional style to government has depended unduly on bureaucracy, with an
emphasis on hierarchy and obedience to rules and regulations, and with citizens merely
acting as passive acceptors or users of goods and services. Governance is no longer
 centered on officials, with power and authority. This will now be centered on the people
that the government is supposed to govern.
The role of governance has grown in scope as more parties enter the fray, blurring
the lines between the public and private sectors, and government exercising less
authority. The current governance model considers government interacting with many
parts of society and the economy to reach mutually acceptable judgments. Hence, in the
shift of government to governance, it seeks to shift the focus on people not on the people
with position and authority in the government. In the shifting, it focuses on governance
by improving government effectiveness through better policy and program
implementation; involving people and their groups in the governance process, ensuring
the effective delivery of public services, bringing transparency and decentralization into
government operations, prompt compensation of public grievances, and improving
accountability and responsiveness among public authorities. There could be other
measures to improve governance. However, the gist of these policies is that they
concentrate on the governing process rather than on government structure. Nevertheless,
the goal of government and governance must to ensure people's well-being.

3. Discuss the theories of governance and New Public Management.

Governance is a political theory and NPM is an organizational theory. As what

Peters and Pierre (1998) have stated, governance is about process, while NPM is about
outcomes. They implied that governance is ultimately concerned with creating the
conditions for ordered rule and collective action. In line with this, Stoker (1998) claimed
five propositions regarding the governance theory.
Firstly, Stoker (1998) claimed that governance refers to institutions and actors
from within and beyond government but there is a divorce between the complex reality of
decision-making associated with governance and the normative codes used to explain and
justify government. Secondly, governance identifies the blurring of boundaries and
responsibilities for tackling social and economic issues. This shift in responsibility goes
beyond the public-private dimension to include notions of communitarianism and social
capital. However, blurring of responsibilities can lead to blame avoidance or
scapegoating. Thirdly, governance identifies the power dependence involved in the
relationships between institutions involved in collective action. Here, organizations are
dependent upon each other for the achievement of collective action, and thus must
exchange resources and negotiate shared understandings of ultimate program goals. Next
is, Governance is about autonomous self-governing networks of actors. This involves the
emergence of self-governing networks raises difficulties over accountability. And lastly,
governance recognizes the capacity to get things done which does not rest on the power
of government to command or use its authority. This statement represents a natural
development from the broader philosophy of governance to the more prescriptive notions
of New Public Management. Stoker observes that there is a determined push within
governance on new instruments and approaches for steering and guiding.
Meanwhile, when it comes to New Public Management, according to Lynn
(1998), New Public Management is “an ephemeral theme likely to fade,” just as
enthusiasm for innovations such as the planning-programming-budgeting system, zero
base budgeting, and management by objectives has passed on to newer tools and
strategies. Lynn (1998) argues that the logic of governance is useful because it requires
scholars to model policy enactment and program implementation as “formally
hierarchical, essentially political, and loosely coupled”. In essence, governance and NPM
enable researchers to investigate the drivers of policy and policy impacts without being
trapped in the purported dichotomy between exogenous (top-down) and endogenous
(bottom-up) explanations of outcomes or performance.
 To summarize, NPM denotes certain types of management tools that function
under the governance propositions stated earlier.

4. Discuss the significance of governance in the development process.

Governance is critical for progress. Societies with more effective and accountable
governing institutions outperform on a wide range of topics, from economic growth to
human development and social cohesion. However, governance should be viewed as
more than just an input to economic growth.
According to research, improving governance can provide countries with a
significant development dividend. It is projected that if a country improves its
governance from a low to an average level, it can nearly triple its per capita GDP in the
long run while also reducing infant mortality and illiteracy.
In addition, Governance has emerged as one of the most critical ideas in emerging
countries. As a result, many countries are attempting to pursue good governance and
adoption in accordance with the established governance model in order to accomplish the
desired long-term economic growth and development.
For example, Yemen's economy has been in a profound slump since March 2015
as a result of the Saudi alliance conflict. After the conflict, the economy needed to be
restructured using solid and well-defined good governance principles in order to
accomplish Sustainable Development goals. In line with this, a general framework to
implement good governance has been recommended to be considered in the future
national development agenda to tolerate achieving sustainable development based on
research findings and learning from other countries' experiences, development progress
and challenges. Building human capacity is one of the most important needs for making a
qualitative change toward sustainable development.
As Kaufmann says, “governance is not the only thing that matters for
development (…). But when governance is poor, policymaking in other areas is also
compromised.”