UNDERSTANDING THE GOVERNANCE IN GOOD AND BAD GOVERNANCE

EMEKA EJIKONYE provides some insight in good governance

Public agitations for good governance are now gaining traction in most countries of the world. The most recent seems to be the mass student protests in Bangladesh that forced the Prime Minister to resign and flee to India. Before the Bangladeshi experience, we saw the nationwide Gen Z riots in Kenya and resurgence of military incursions into the democratic space starting with Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. The African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa lost its majority in parliament due to failure to entrench good governance. In Nigeria, agitations for good governance are gradually brewing under the #EndBadGovernance. In fact, the country is gearing for another round of mass protests from October 1 this year. In a recent interview, the former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, warned that the entire African continent is sitting on a keg of gunpowder due to the ravaging effects of bad governance.

In all these social developments, I ponder on how many of these agitators, commentators and practitioners who have really taken time off to deeply reflect on the generic word in these clamors. The meanings of “good” and “bad” we can take for granted but what about “governance”? How many of us really understand the full meaning of this central terminology?

With the benefit of zero-base doctoral research, I will try to clarify this word so as to put it into proper perspective. Simply put, “governance” connotes, “the activity-process through which government uses the resources of a citizenry in delivering services for improving the quality of livelihood of that citizenry”. Within the body of this clarification are three operational concepts that are also easily misunderstood, viz, “government”, “resources” and “delivering services”. Researchers and practitioners alike tend to ignore in-depth clarification, if not outright confusion, of these concepts for proper contextual applicability. This obstructs efforts at achieving good governance. In the absence, bad governance thrives and rides roughshod over human societies.

First, there is a failure to clarify the term “government” for proper delineation. Within the realm of democratic as opposed to authoritarian governance, “government” connotes, “an elite group to whom the citizenry of a polity, periodically, willingly, delegates sovereignty to use the resources of the citizenry in delivering services for improving the quality of livelihood of the citizenry, in strict adherence to a code of conduct laid down by the citizenry for guiding all interactions within the polity”. This clarification reveals that government:

•emerges through an electoral process; and

•refers only to the group of citizens who are responsible for improving the living standard of the population.

Therefore, “government” must apply only to elected officials in the legislature and executive, and their appointees (i.e., legislative aids, ministers, special advisers, special assistants and personal assistants). It should not apply to the judiciary and bureaucracy. “Judiciary” applies to the group of professionals who interpret the “code of conduct laid down by the citizenry for guiding all interactions within the polity”, to resolve disputes amongst the citizenry. Also, “bureaucracy” applies to the group of professionals who create the enabling environment for both government and judiciary to conveniently carry out their assigned mandates. Therefore:

•there are only ‘two’ and not ‘three’ arms of government; and

•the group of permanent staff of each agency of governance exists to assist elected officials in the task of public service delivery.

A second misconception issuing from the improper clarification of governance, which hinders the achievement of good governance, is a tendency to interpret “resources” purely in terms of monetary-possession. In the process, there is a neglect of the primary need for harnessing the human-potentiality of the polity. This misleading notion directly breeds the third confusion from the lack of deep understanding of governance; i.e., “delivering services”. There is a failure to realize that the instrument of public service delivery is budgeting. Sadly, this engine room of the ship of governance is deployed restrictedly as fiscal policymaking focused merely on financial-management. This breeds a false belief that budgeting deals only with management of the ‘economy’ (without regard to ‘society’). Of course, “economy” herein refers to optimal intervention in the financial sector to correct market failures. However, complexity of the public service delivery arena soon reveals how difficult it is to not only read and accurately describe the institutional-structure and interactions of governance but also take the right decisions for corrective action.

Under this deceptive notion, the essence of budgeting in governance, therefore, is the need to link public funds to the spending required for achieving ‘economic’ rather than ‘social’ development goals. Likewise, the task involves discretionary changes in the level, composition and timing of public finance with a set of tools that determine the revenue and expenditure practices of government. Along the same line, the procedure evolves through interactions between officials of the finance agency and their counterparts in the finance departments of other bureaucratic agencies to read governance and develop financial reports that are modified politically as they ascend the agency hierarchy for submission by the executive to the legislature for action. Therefore, the activity elements of budgeting are revenue-mobilization, expenditure-allocation, borrowing and lending.

The result is a view of public budgeting as, “estimation and authorization of the revenues and expenditures of government”. Alongside, public budget becomes, “a line-item compilation of the objects of government expenditure” while duty of the budgeting agency is, “speculative allocation of funds to a line-itemization of the objects of government expenditure developed by bureaucratic agencies”. The product of this misconception is utter neglect of the institutional-resource-management concerns of budgetary practice. These are unavoidable for achieving the primary purpose of governance, which, from our clarification, is, “improving the quality of livelihood of a citizenry”.

However, there is an alternative viewpoint that deploys budgeting as strategic planning with broad focus on institutional-resource-management. Herein, the primary concern is with efficient and effective deployment of human-capacity towards the optimal performance of government in public service delivery. Thus, public budgeting becomes the instrument for not only laying the foundation of good governance but also nurturing the public service delivery effort to sustain the advancement of ‘society’ (and not merely ‘economy’).

Under this alternative viewpoint, the essence of budgeting in governance is the need for coordination of all government activities to link public-resource-inputs to administrative-performance-outcomes. The task unfolds through routines for aggregating decision-making-information for elected officials who often lack the time and energy to sift through all the information provided. The procedure thrives on an institutional-structure for integrating all activities of the bureaucracy into a coherent field of administration that is controlled by elected officials. From herein emerges the activity elements of public budgeting as:

• objective-setting”, for aligning the vision-statement of government with the social aspirations of the citizenry to eliminate tunnel-vision from governance and connect elected officials to the citizenry;

•“program-implementation”, for mobilizing and deploying the institutional-resources for efficient and effective actualization of the thus-aligned vision-statement of government; and

•“operation-control”, for binding bureaucrats to the government mission.

To this extent, the alternative viewpoint expands the duty of the budgeting agency beyond mere allocation of funds to expenditure items to embrace:

• monitoring and evaluation, for assessing the budgeting process to guarantee efficiency and effectiveness in the development and execution of all government policy programs; and

• apportionment, for quantifying the institutional-resources for achieving all government policy programs.

From herein derives a new view of public budgeting as, “efficient and effective deployment of institutional-resources for the development and execution of all government policy programs for the delivery of services for improving the quality of livelihood of the citizenry”. Alongside, the public budget is, “a compilation of the executive summaries of all government policy programs for the delivery of services for improving the quality of livelihood of the citizenry”.

The achievement of good governance in any polity, therefore, hinges on in-depth clarification of “governance” “government”, “resources” and “delivering services” for proper delineation. This will reveal the essential elements of good governance, thus:

• governance unfolds through bureaucracy that is not part of government but professional-support-group that is functionally located in-between elected officials and the citizenry;

• bureaucracy is structured into different fields of activity that are managed by human beings who pursue the task from their narrow points of view and interest; and

• need for government to coordinate bureaucracy through constant and consistent monitoring and evaluation of the public service delivery procedure for the aggregation and feedback of administrative-performance-information.

These essential elements, in turn, reveal the rule of good governance as, “constant and consistent monitoring and evaluation of administrative-performance for guiding continuous and holistic decision-making-interaction between elected officials and bureaucrats regarding problems and successes encountered in the public service delivery process”. The product is a governance that thrives on administrative-performance-auditing for effective-control and full-deployment of the bureaucracy. Transition from the existing to the alternative viewpoint calls for budgetary reform and responsibility for initiating the reform rests squarely with elected officials: #BudgetaryReformFirst. For more insight into this body of knowledge, please read the book, “public budgeting as key for public accountability and good governance”: https://www.cambridgescholars.com/product/978-1-0364-0569-4.

Ejikonye is a

Specialist in Public Budgeting,

Emeka Ejikonye, PhD