GOVERNANCE; The Character That Mark Modern State [Archives:2008/1147/Local News]

By: Dr. Adel Al-Weshali
Transforming from traditional state to modern state requires; transparency processes, decentralization authority, and anti corruption system, …etc; that mean applying good governance. The word “Governance” coming from Latin origins that mean “Steering”. World Bank defines “Governance” as “The exercise of political authority and the use of institutional resources to manage society's problems and affairs”.

The term “Good Governance” is increasingly being used in development literature. Governance describes the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented. Good Governance defines an idea which is difficult to achieve in its totality. World Bank as an international financial institutions requires conditions that ensuring the undertaken of good governance to pass any aid or loans.

The logical purpose of governance aim to assure that an organization produces a worthwhile pattern of good results while avoiding an undesirable pattern of bad circumstances, by making decision that define expectations, grant power, and verify performance.

Politics provides a means by which the governance process operates. People may choose expectations by way of political activity; they may grant power through political action, and they may judge performance through political behaviour.

To make a clear distinction between the concepts of governance and of politics, governance conveys the administrative and process oriented elements of governing rather than antagonistic ones. In the other hand, politics involves processes by which a group of people with initially divergent opinions or interests reach collective decisions generally regarded as binding on group, and enforced as common policy.

As a process, governance may operate in an organization of any size from single human being to all humanity, and it may function for any purpose good or evil, for profit or not. So, one can apply the concept of governance to as large a nation-state as desired, to corporations, to non-profits, to NOGs, to partnerships and other associations, to project teams, and to any number of humans engaged in some purposeful activity.

In general terms, governance occurs in three broads ways:

1- Though top-down methods that primarily involve governments and the state bureaucracy

2- Through the use of market mechanisms whereby market principles of competition serve to allocate resources while operating under government regulation

3- Through networks involving public-private partnerships or with the collaboration of community organizations

There are many types of governance, the most important four types are; global, corporate, project, and information technology governance.

– Global Governance used to denote the regulation of interdependent relations in the absence of an overarching political authority, as the example of the international relationships between independent states.

– Corporate Governance consists of the set of processes, customs policies, laws and institutions affecting the way people direct, administer or control a corporation.

– Project Governance used in industry to describe the processes that need to exist for a successful project, it is an active rather than just a controlling role.

– Information Technology Governance is a subset discipline of corporate Governance focused on IT systems and their performance and risk management.

In order to measure the quality of governance of countries all around the world, members of World Bank developed the Worldwide Governance Indicators project. It reports aggregate and individual indicators for more than 200 countries for six dimensions of governance; voice and accountability, political stability and lack of violence, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption. (See country report data for Yemen 1996-2006 at www.worldbank.org\wbi\governance).

Dr. Adel Al-Weshali is Assistant Professor – Faculty of Agriculture, Sana'a University.

He could be reached at drweshali@yahoo.com
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