Abstract
This guidebook on good governance centres on the role of the State and the idea of a civil society. As the title of the book suggests, the target audience is general public rather than expert scholars or policy- makers. The book focuses almost exclusively on macro-level ideological issues with special reference to the Indian experiences. The six chapters of the book cover general overview of the role of the State, globalization and the extension of market logic and some of the economic transformations in developing societies. The integrative theme of the six chapters being the proposition that good governance needs creative collaboration of state, private sector and other transcending ideological boundaries. The authors claim that good governance of a democratic nation needs to be anchored on responsibility, accountability and transparency. They assert governance can only function on the principles of efficiency, legitimacy and consensus. The outcome of governance needs to be measured in terms of its ability to protect rights of individual citizens, ensuring of material well-being of the society, achieving sustainable progress and enshrining of social justice.
The definition offered by the lead author of the book (pp. 24–25) emphasizes a number of attributes of good governance. It lists participative manner in enacting principles of efficiency, legitimacy and consensus as being the key goals in protecting individual rights and public interest. Good governance is primarily dependant upon two sets of principles that a nation can abide by. These principles are espoused in terms of political principles and economic principles. The key issues of the political principles need to be accountability, primacy of rule of law, good institutional infrastructure as well as freedom of expression. On the other hand, economic principles of good governance require policies that ensure the economic well-being of the society. This, in recent years, has come to mean investment in people through access to quality education, health and other services, as well as the establishment of strong culture of competitive provision of economic products and services. Maximization of economic and social advancement through the encouragement of a robust corporate sector has also become issues of critical importance to the idea of governance. It is, therefore, surprising that the book leaves out discussions on good corporate governance. It may be argued that for any democratic society to achieve economic well-being, the role of corporate leadership is of paramount importance. The re-emergence of India as a significant economic powerhouse can be directly attributed to the rise of new corporate governance models in many new industries, specifically the information-related companies. The changing role of capital markets, Board of Directors, ownership concentration of families and business houses, executive compensation, shareholder primacy versus employee interests, labour regulations in enhancing employee participation, corporate role in the social sphere have all been referred to in this book but could have helped readers to have been addressed in a separate chapter.
With the growing importance of the Asian market economy and particularly the rise of multinational corporations from China and India, global interest in this area has become reinvigorated. The spate of global acquisitions and mergers and other types of alliances are drawing close attention to the governance models being exported by Indian companies around the world. While the six chapters of the book outline some of the transformations of institutional frameworks of the recent decades, they do not expli-citly highlight this crucial area. Contrastingly, in their recent book titled Good Governance Is a Choice, Quinn and Dawson (2011) focus exclusively on the role of Boards in corporate governance. As pointed out earlier in this review, an explanation of what corporate governance is and how the mechanisms of corporate governance are linked to the functioning of a civil society is increasingly of interest to most societies.
Another area symbiotically linked to good governance is perhaps how society guards itself against ethical variations. Mapping the ‘integrity systems’ that counter corruption and generate guideposts for building ethics into agencies that serve as cogs in the wheels of governance is, without argument, critical to good governance. Fighting corruption is fundamental to governance and it inevitably requires reforms in legal and policy frameworks of any government as well as other sectors in society. Corruption is the biggest enemy undermining a civil society and its institutions. It can be argued that the inefficiency in governance mostly takes place at a micro-level. Corruption built into systems of administration can erode even value-driven areas like education, health or sports. As the sociologist Granovetter of Stanford University argued in ‘The Social Construction of Corruption’ that the privileged middle class with their access to power not only to political offices and public sector jobs but also to professions like law, medicine, education, financial services and the media favour ‘status quo’ and resist change that erode their power. They have become the main players of corruption in societies like India (Granovetter, 2007).
The area needing attention is the use of technology in governance. Over the past decade, the adoption of e-governance has definitely enhanced access and delivery of government services to citizens in many poor countries. Transition from a paper-based system can not only restructure the administrative regiment but also may offer improvements in quality, reduce user cost, increase government revenue as well as carry potential to reduce corruption. Examples of success in this area in a number of Latin American countries would have enhanced the value of this book to intelligent readers. Good governance and democracy have become the central theme for most nations as well as global and regional organizations. Prescriptive models of the UN, IMF, World Bank, EU or ADB have deep influence in the way many emerging economies conceptualize their governance culture. Even at micro-level organizations, these normative models have significant influence. For example, the ‘global compact’ of the UN has now become a charter of most business associations around the world. However, as the book implies, it is not clear if these prescriptive governance models lead to successful governance. Chen, Li and Shapiro (2011) argue that the adoption of good governance practices recommended by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has not necessarily improved the corporate performance in China. Many Asian governments have been encouraging their companies to adopt OECD guidelines on ‘good governance’ without success. The book refers to the critique of the World Bank and IMF offered by Stiglitz. The discussion in the opening chapter around this theme on pages 13–17 does refer to UNDP’s Human Development Index as well as World Bank and IMF roles, but perhaps a separate chapter could have been more interesting to the readers of this book, as the debates surrounding the prescriptive models by IMF, World Bank, ADB and OECD should also be of interest to all intelligent readers of this book (Chen et al., 2011).
It can be said that governance inevitably involves decision processes as well as implementation in which ‘government’ is the key actor. China’s transition to ‘red capitalism’, Russia’s effort in presenting a re-emerging governing culture, Indonesia’s search for a new governing ideology are only examples of this very difficult journey. This handbook may be useful not only to intelligent persons but also to many mandarins in the corridors of power. Overall, this book is a very worthwhile effort in broadening the knowledge base of a wider readership and the authors deserve compliments for undertaking this difficult project. Therefore, the wider the knowledge base, the better it is for the cause.