Governance and Reform in the South Pacific.

Abstract

Governance as practiceWho does 'good governance'?In developing countries, the ombudsman, auditor general, and the courts report and speak out on 'good governance' issues.Independent newspapers and radio stations report what they say, or m • ake their own inv • estigations of corruption and mismanagement.Developing country non-governmental organisations, trades unions and opposition politicians speak out on good governance issues.Local banks and chambers of commerce urge public sector reform, while local law, advertising and accounting firms profit from processes of privatisation.Aid agencies and multilateral banks try to institutionalise 'good government' assessments as part of their aid and loan programming.The longest pressure for 'good governance' has come from non government organisations like Oxfam or Community Aid Abroad.Like bilateral government donors, they came to realise that development projects were failing because of bad governance.Their fund raising activities made them sensitive to popular suspicion that Incoherence Parts of the 'good government' agenda sit uneasily with others: democracy, for example, with unpopular economic reform.Statements about governance do not necessarily 'add up'.Such incoherence is a by-product of the processes of accommodation and compromise that go into negotiating agreement on a text. False assumptionsThe link between democracy and economic development is unproven.True, countries with higher per capita GDP tend to be democratic, but systematic comparisons between many countries in many periods, and attention to the flow of causation leads to more tentative conclusions.Th us a careful study by Lane and Ersson (1996) finds few strong correlations between various measures of democracy and development.The strongest is a positive relationship between democracy and quality of life (Lane and Ersson 1996:66 ).All they can conclude is that democracy is 'not an obstacle to economic growth or fair income distribution' ( L ane and Ersson 1996:67).In any case, it is not clear which causes the other.A study of democracy in the South Pacific concluded that existing democratic institutions were probably threatened by development (Larmour 1996a:245).For policy purposes, however, while the link between democracy and development is unproven, it is at least arguable, and apparently plausible. Just wordsMuch public policy activity consists of negotiations around the content of speeches, memoranda, reports, and so on.Chinese officials, for example, have been critical of the Asian Development Bank's 'governance' policy.The word, they say is 'too political'.China prefers 'development management' (Emerging Markets 2 May 1996).Words 'open secrets' have become part of the policy discourse.There are leads and lags between the policy discourse, theory, and practice.There is no single direction of flow, up from practice to policy to theory, or down from theory through policy to practice.The emerging, often vague and incoherent, discourse of policy draws, sometimes indiscriminately, on theory and practice.Flows of ideas between levels are embodied in grants, appointments, promotions, and attendance at conferences.In some ways the policy discourse on 'good governance' has run ahead of academic theorising.As part of such a to-and-fro process, the British Overseas Development Administration (ODA-now called Department for Public sector reformUntil the 1990s, the main issues in public sector reform were localisation, decentralisation, and the relationship between politicians and officials.Localisation was part of the process of decolonisation that took place between 1962 and 1980, and involved the replacement of colonial by local officials, or short-term consultants.Advocates of decentralisation pointed to the islands' dispersed populations, uneven development, and the concentration of services in the capitals.Many people identified with precolonial units of government that were even smaller than the states introduced by colonial rule.In the contest for power between elected politicians and appointed officials, ministers pressed for greater control over senior appointments.The collapse of the Soviet Union led to a sharper international consensus in favour of privatisation, smaller government, and more liberal trade.Australia turned from grants to Papua New Guinea's budget to support for particular programs in health or infrastructure.Australian ministers referred to their own country's public sector reforms in order to urge reform on others.New Zealand's radical reforms of its own public sector showed up the unreconstructed character of the public services in its former colonies, Niue and Cook Islands.Britain had tapered off budget support to former colonies, and began to murmur about 'good government'.The territories still dependent on the United States became vulnerable to Congressional Local ismThe chapters show strong local pressures on MPs in general, and ministers in particular.The pressure is enforced by a high turnover of candidates in elections.May distinguishes these pressures from the strictly corrupt use of public office for private gain.The public, formal payments made by candidates to village committees in Samoa, for example, are different from bribes to ministers though the expenses of re-election may make ministers more vulnerable to corruption once they are in office.Burton shows how intense localism prevents the Australia, Department of Foreign Affairs and Tr ade 1997.'Promoting Good Governance and Human Rights through the Aid Program,' Address by the Hon Alexander Downer MP, Minister for Foreign Affairs at the DFAT /non-government organisations Human Rights

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