"Good governance": the metamorphosis of a policy metaphor: "governance" quickly became a household word, but as is often true of buzzwords, there has hardly been a consensus as to what it means, and even less of an idea as how it could be applied more concretely.

• Author: Doornbos, Martin
• Position: Concepts of Governance

For well over a decade, the notion of good governance has served as a general guiding principle for donor agencies to demand that recipient governments adhere to proper administrative processes in the handling of development assistance and put in place effective policy instruments towards that end. Currently, however, the use of the concept as a means to induce reforms within the institutional environment of recipient countries appears to have had its longest day. Instead, new patterns of interaction between donors and selected recipient countries are giving rise to new contents for the good governance metaphor, notably as a pre-condition to qualify for aid. This paper explores the conditions under which the criterion of good governance first became adopted as a donor policy metaphor and now appears to be transformed in favor of "selectivity." Particular attention will need to be given in this regard to successive shifts in the relevant policy thinking of the World Bank.

The concept of good governance became prominent in international aid circles around 1989 or 1990. First launched as a donor discourse, it came just as unexpectedly as the fall of the Berlin Wall, which happened only slightly earlier, and in fact the two developments do not appear to have been entirely unconnected. Prior to these events, aid agencies and other development institutions had not approached program relations with counterparts in terms of good governance criteria. Nor had, for that matter, the term "governance" constituted a significant part of the vocabulary of political science courses at European and American universities. For a long time the word had a somewhat obscure dictionary existence, primarily carrying legalistic connotations, as in respect to bodies having boards of governors whose institutional role required a designation that was more grand than "administration," less business-like than "management," and suggested they handled their political concerns in a discreet but firm manner.

But all at once, the notion of good governance was there, referring to the way in which cities, provinces, or whole countries were being governed, or should be governed. Contextually rather than intrinsically, it soon transpired that these references somehow pertained to states and entities in the South, rather than in Europe or North America where the concept was launched. Moreover, with the adjective "good" added to it, it became unmistakably clear that the concept of good governance could invite judgment about how a particular country, city or agency was being governed. It enabled the raising of evaluative questions about proper procedures, transparency, the quality and process of decision-making, and other such matters. (1)

Looking back at the interval since the launch of the good governance discourse, it is striking to see how quickly the term "governance" became a household word, heading the list of concerns of aid agencies, government researchers and the media. As is often true with new buzzwords, though, there has hardly been a consensus as to its core meaning, and less and less of a common idea as to how it could be applied more concretely. Still, it is there, and it has gained a key function by virtue of its capacity all at once to draw attention to a whole range of often largely unspecified issues concerning processes of public policy-making and authority structures. In that sense it has appealed to the imagination of analysts as well as practitioners, and become a focal point for intellectual and policy discourses.

Today, almost a decade and a half after its rebirth, several questions persist about the use of good governance as a policy metaphor. What exactly was it supposed to mean? What is it used to refer to? Is it a universal concept or does it vary from context to context, and from one perspective to another? What meanings has the donor community, led by the World Bank, attached to the term and how useful has this conceptualization been? What critiques does it invite? What does it offer when judging countries in connection with the allocation of aid funds? And is it useful to make aid conditional on good governance? By imposing conditions on practices and structures of governance, changes in governments have tended to become, at least partly, externally determined. Is this right, and why or why not would this be the case?

A reflection on the origins and evolution of the notion of good governance, especially regarding its use as a reference point in donor-recipient discourses, must ask why it emerged at the time it did and what its track record has been since then. In light of the latter, we should ask whether it is likely to receive the same level of priority it initially drew and what changing policy objectives are now being associated with it. This paper seeks to address these questions.

THE PLIABILITY OF THE GOVERNANCE CONCEPT

From a global policy-making perspective, in its scope and potential coverage, the notion of governance had an a priori attractiveness. It could refer to a good deal more than just sound administration or management, and it could address political structuring and its handling while at the same time including issues of administration and management. Though not to be equated with "politics," let alone "political leadership," it nonetheless opened a window for focusing on how politics or the political process were embedded and conducted within larger structures. Though many practitioners and analysts were used to thinking about politics and administration in a dichotomous manner for years, there was no single phrase connecting these two distinct yet closely related and overlapping spheres. Part of the term's appeal was that it seemed to be able to fill that gap. Curiously, though, while in principle comprising a political dimension, in actuality the use of the term "governance" and "good governance" on the donor front soon seemed to imply and favour a certain de-politicization of political processes: By using the concept to frame an argument, it could seem that aid agencies were passing objective judgment on the ways governments behaved.

However, while the term itself points to a general area of common interest, it hardly carries a specific meaning. Rather, its intrinsic open-ended quality, vagueness, and inherent lack of specificity have tended to generate a good deal of searching and debate as to what its proper meaning is or should be, prompting multiple efforts to appropriate it and define it in particular ways. (2) For bankers, financial accountability might represent the crux of good governance, while ordinary villagers and citizens in various countries might stress the maintenance of security as their prime criterion. The lack of specificity is not particularly surprising: A pliable term like governance, rather than constituting a concept in its own right, is a flexible carrier that can be used to convey varying combinations of messages or consignments, though largely remaining within the same general specialization. Thus, there has come to be a fair amount of oscillation in its usage, some of it more policy-oriented and some more academic.

It is beyond the scope of the present paper to deal with the academic stream of writing on governance, on which a substantial body of literature has developed. (3) Suffice it to say that the academic stream has been largely concerned with developing a better understanding of different ways in which power and authority relations are structured in different contexts, focusing on different modes of interpenetration of state-civil society relations. Interestingly, following their adoption in donor circles, notions of governance rapidly found their way into academic usage, and in recent times they have stimulated lively discussion on various aspects of the themes they denote. One advantage, as Goran Hyden once remarked, is that it does not specify the locus of actual decision-making, which could be within the state, within an international organization or within another structural context. (4) In that regard, a concept of governance facilitates analytical pursuits into the exercise of political power unhindered by formal boundaries, and may fit discourse analysis, embedded structuralism, Marxism and mainstream thinking alike. (5) Today, many political scientists and sociologists, and increasingly also economists, could hardly do without the term.

By contrast, the donor-directed and policy-oriented governance discourse has focused on state-market relations, and more specifically within this context, on state structures designed to ensure accountability, due processes of law and related safeguards. Naturally, there has been interaction between the academic and policy discourses, which can be fruitful as long as both sides remain open to it. But obviously the basic purposes have been different: Academic discourse is primarily oriented toward better analysis and understanding of the institutional linkages between state and society in different contexts, while the donor-driven discourse is geared towards enhancing policy effectiveness and conceptually preparing the terrain for policy intervention. Some would say the guiding motive of this interventionism has been to establish new institutional patterns of global hegemony, through a "disciplining," in a Foucauldian sense. This includes both discipline from above and the governance of "self," and compels state and policy structures in individual countries to conform to the norms set by global institutions. There are intriguing overlaps, though also differences, between notions of governance and Foucault's "governmentality." However, historically derived social, economic and institutional structures, or the specific needs and potential of particular countries, do not figure in as points of...