Governace & Goverment

What do you understand by the term “Governance and government”? Differentiate between the two.

 

The concept of governance and government has come to be used more commonly in the discussion of civic education, but the difference between the two terms is not always clear. There is a growing body of European literature that can be characterized as "governance without government," stressing as it does the importance of networks, partnerships, and markets (especially international markets). This body of literature can be related to the new public management; yet it has a number of distinctive elements. This article discusses and explain, as simply as possible, what "governance" and "government” means. Recently the terms "governance" and "government" are being increasingly used in development literature. Bad governance is being increasingly regarded as one of the root causes of all evil within our societies. Major donors and international financial institutions are increasingly basing their aid and loans on the condition that reforms that ensure "good governance" are undertaken. 

According to Goran Hyden (1997:98) “The complexity of governance is difficult to capture in a simple definition.” The need for governance exists anytime a group of people come together to accomplish an end. Though governance literature proposes several definitions, most rest on three dimensions: authority, decision-making and accountability. In this paper, working definition of governance reflects these dimensions:

“Governance determines who has power, who makes decisions, how other players make their voice heard and how account is rendered.”Guy Peters (1998).

Ultimately the application of good governance serves to realize organizational and societal goals. The following examples help our understanding of each of the three dimensions of governance. Where a group is too large to efficiently make all necessary decisions, it creates an entity to facilitate the process. Group members delegate a large portion of the decision-making responsibility to this entity. In voluntary sector organizations this entity is the board of directors. In a public sector context this may be a board of directors, a committee or a project management team. One simple definition of governance is "the art of steering societies and organizations." Governance is about the more strategic aspects of steering, making the larger decisions about both direction and roles.

Some observers criticize this definition as being too simple. Kabaso (2010) suggests that, “governance is a straightforward process, akin to a steersman in a boat. These critics assert that governance is neither simple nor neat — by nature it may be messy, tentative, unpredictable and fluid. Governance is complicated by the fact that it involves multiple actors, not a single helmsman.”

These multiple actors are the organization's stakeholders. They articulate their interests; influence how decisions are made, who the decision-makers are and what decisions are taken.

Decision-makers must absorb this input into the decision-making process. Decision-makers are then accountable to those same stakeholders for the organization's output and the process of producing it.

Governance is also a highly contextual concept. The process and practices that will apply will vary significantly given the environment in which they are applied. Governance in the public sector needs to take into account legal and constitutional accountability and responsibilities. In the non-governmental sector, representing stakeholder interests may be a determining factor in the governance to be applied. Even within these sectors, size, shape, form and function will vary greatly from one organization to the next.  When working in the field of governance, one is operating in an area where one size does not fit all.

According to Shape (1988:87) “Governance is concerned with overseeing the responsible, legal, ethical, transparent and effective achievement of national or organizational goals.” In the context of shape definition, it can be said that, Governance deals with the formation and stewardship of the formal and informal rules, laws, regulations and policies that regulate delivery of services in the public and private sectors. Boards (e.g. of Directors, Governors) appointed or elected according to specified conditions usually exercise governance. Governance structures should be independent of executive structures - while including members of the executive - in order to represent the interests of the organization’s investors or stakeholders. Governance is usually exercised by distinguished 'elders', but also by stakeholder representatives.

The traditional conceptualization of the public sector has come under increasing strain during the past several decades. The idea that national governments are the major actors in public policy and that they are able to influence the economy and society through their actions now appears to be in doubt. Some of the strain on national governments has been the result of the increased importance of the international environment and of an arguably diminished capacity of those governments to insulate their economies and societies from the global pressures. Those pressures on national governments come about through international capital markets as well as through supranational organizations such as the European Union (Scharpf 1997).

Government on the other hand is defined  by Hood (1991:98) as a “ A body of people that sets and administers public policy, and exercises executive, political, and sovereign power through customs, institutions, and laws within a state.” Therefore, we can justify that the word Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized. Government is the means by which state policy is enforced, as well as the mechanism for determining the policy of the state.

The word government is derived from the Latin verb gubernare, an infinitive meaning "to govern" or "to manage", and the Latin noun mente, meaning "mind". [Bealey Frank,1999]

States are served by a continuous succession of different governments. Each successive government is composed of a body of individuals who exercise control over political decision-making. Their function is to enforce laws, legislate new ones, and arbitrate conflicts. In some societies, this group is often a self-perpetuating or hereditary class. In other societies, such as democracies, the political roles remain, but there is frequent turnover of the people actually filling the positions.

It may be helpful to spell out the way that we use the key concepts that are relevant to the discussion in this paper. The notion of state refers here to all institutions that make up the public sector. It encompasses all public officers elected or appointed with a responsibility for implementing policy or, as in the case of police and judges, enforcing and adjudicating laws. It excludes those elected officials with purely representative functions such as lawmakers. Government is typically defined with reference to both elected and appointed officials serving in core institutions at national, provincial, county or city level.

In this paper, we refer to all appointed public servants as being part of the bureaucracy, while confining the term government to only those with overall political responsibility for setting policy and making key appointments to the public service. In many countries they would be referred to as cabinet ministers.

More than anybody else, government officials, as defined above, are responsible for words and action that influence the developmental direction of society. The decisions that they have to make are not merely in immediate response to demands from groups in society.

Government does not only revolve around the aggregation of interests, values and preferences that come up via different channels to the executive level. It also implies trans-formative decisions that involve choices going beyond specific interests or preferences. For instance, this may sometimes mean making decisions that go against particular interests but are viewed as necessary in order to protect what members of the government view as a larger public or national interest. The readiness and ability to make such hard choices is very much a product of the ways the polity is institutionalized.

The rules of the political game vary from country to country in terms of how they affect government capability in this regard. In most Western societies, there is a clear distinction between a government and the state. Public disapproval of a particular government (expressed, for example, by not re-electing an incumbent) does not necessarily represent disapproval of the state itself (i.e. of the particular framework of government). However, some in some totalitarian regimes, there is not a clear distinction between the regime and the state. In fact, leaders in such regimes often attempt to deliberately blur the lines between to two, in order to conflate their own selfish interests with those of the polity.

Since governance is the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented, an analysis of governance focuses on the formal and informal actors involved in decision-making and implementing the decisions made and the formal and informal structures that have been set in place to arrive at and implement the decision.

Government is one of the actors in governance. Other actors involved in governance vary depending on the level of government that is under discussion. In rural areas, for example, other actors may include influential land lords, associations of peasant farmers, cooperatives, NGOs, research institutes, religious leaders, finance institutions political parties, the military etc. The situation in urban areas is much more complex.

All actors other than government and the military are grouped together as part of the "civil society." In some countries in addition to the civil society, organized crime syndicates also influence decision-making, particularly in urban areas and at the national level. Similarly formal government structures are one means by which decisions are arrived at and implemented. At the national level, informal decision-making structures, such as "kitchen cabinets" or informal advisors may exist. In urban areas, organized crime syndicates such as the "land Mafia" may influence decision-making. In some rural areas locally powerful families may make or influence decision-making. Such, informal decision-making is often the result of corrupt practices or leads to corrupt practices.

In summary, the concept of "governance" is not new. It is as old as human civilization. Simply put "governance" means: the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented (or not implemented). Governance can be used in several contexts such as corporate governance, international governance, national governance and local governance. In the governance arguments the State does not become totally impotent; rather, it loses the capacity for direct control and replaces that faculty with a capacity for influence. Government actors are conceptualized as in a continual process of bargaining with the members of their relevant networks. What has changed, however, is that these government actors now bargain as relative equals rather than as with the capacity to resort always to power if the decision that is made is not what they want.

References

Barclay, Harold (1990). People without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchy. Cambridge University Press. United States of America.

 Bealey, Frank, ed (1999). Government". The Blackwell dictionary of political science: a user's guide to

Goran Hyden (2003) Government And Governance In 16 Developing Countries, Chicago, Princeton University, USA.

Guy Peters (1998) Managing Complex Networks, Sega, London.

Hood C (1991) A Public Management for all Seasons, Kansas, University Press, USA.

Flint, Colin & Taylor, Peter (2007). Political Geography: World Economy, (5th ed.) Illinois, Prentice Hall. USA.

Kabaso M.S (2010) Democracy and the State of Governance in Zambia, Lusaka, Article Expert, Zambia.

Scalpf (1997) Governance and Government, Chicago, University Press, USA.

Shape (1988) Political Science, San Francisco, Heinemann, United States of America.

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Q2.Outline briefly the resolutions of the Addis Abba conference of 1961 on the development of education in Africa. What Problems have risen in the implementation of these resolutions?

 

 INTRODUCTION

The paper reviews a number of problems that have risen in the implementation of education ranging from combining education with production at the primary level, to the financing of higher education. An assessment is made of how successful the policies have been in achieving their original intention in relation to Addis Ababa conference of 1961. The paper's conclusion is that policy outcomes are far from matching expectations, mainly because of insufficient or no implementation. The reason most educational policies are not implemented is that they are vaguely stated and the financing implications are not always worked out. Another reason for failure is that the content of a policy is based on an empirically unsustained theoretical relationship between instruments and outcomes. The paper makes a plea for the formulation of more concrete, feasible and implementable policies based on documented cause-effect relationships.

The purpose ‘of the Conference was to provide a forum for African States to decide on their priority educational needs to promote economic and social development in Africa and, in the light of these, to establish a first tentative short-term and long-term plan for educational development in the continent, embodying the priorities they had decided upon for the economic growth of the region. UNESCO (2000).

According to Kelly (1998:87) “The first plenary meetings of the Conference of African States on the Development of Education in Africa were devoted to two aspects of serious concern: the development of education in relation to African cultural and socio-cultural factors and an inventory of educational needs for economic and social development.”

 In relation to the statements made on these subjects, it was clear that leaders of education in the countries and territories of Africa knew their needs and their problems. The meeting of these needs, though costly and difficult in the extreme, is urgent in this period of rapid social, political and economic change in Africa. The scale of the problem can be seen from the following: today for the African States as a whole, only 16 per cent of the children of primary and secondary school age combined are enrolled in school. The situation varies, ranging from 2 per cent of the school age group in several States to nearly 60 per cent in others. In the majority of cases, the proportion of children out of school exceeds 80 per cent of the school age population.

According to the recent report by UNICEF (2010:7) “In no more than six years, Zambia has made enormous progress in improving access to primary education.” The study shows that the government of Zambia, in cooperation with its development partners, has achieved remarkable results, considering the state of primary education at the end of the 1990s and a limited institutional capacity and human resource base.

 Investments in the education sector were launched only eight years ago, after decades of neglect. The Ministry of Education succeeded in significantly enhancing access to basic education after years of underinvestment by implementing development plans and abolishing school fees in 2002. Within six years, enrolment in primary education had increased by 67% (from 1.6 million in 2000 to 2.7 million in 2007). Private schools and (especially) community schools have contributed significantly to this achievement, but even apart from their role, the general level of growth is an impressive achievement. Investments in teachers and teacher training, in schools and classrooms and in school facilities and book shave been and are important instruments for reducing dropout and repetition and improving progression and completion rates (MoE, 2009).

However, whereas Zambia was successful in improving access to education, the quality of education, as measured by test and examination results, is still low. Zambia does poorly in comparison to neighboring countries. Approximately 70% of the grade 5 pupils do not attain the minimum level of English, whereas no more than 6% actually achieve the required level. For math, test results are improving but examination results show an opposite trend. Annual fluctuations are relatively large, which suggests a more fundamental problem: at lower aggregate levels, learning achievements are highly unstable. At the school level, test and examination results show enormous annual fluctuations. The findings indicate that specific programmes are unsustainable in the long run. While further research from Mupukwa (2010:8) is warranted, the evaluation points to several weaknesses in Zambia’s basic education system. These weaknesses are related to severe underfunding, a lack of qualified and motivated teachers and head teachers and a lack of effective management capacity at the school and district levels.

First and perhaps foremost is the need for the educational system within the country or territory to satisfy the fervent desire of the people for an expansion of education of quality (Siaciwena (2005:12). Education is desired at all levels, but particularly by and for the youth of the country. The citizens of Africa see in education a means by which their aspirations may be met. They are willing to sacrifice for the attainment of this means for gaining economic and social development. Whatever the financial resources available (national or extra-national), accomplishment of plans are conditional on drastic expansion of school buildings of all types. However this is not so in most African nations, at the primary level, there is an extreme shortage of classrooms and many existing buildings do not meet minimum requirements (Kelly :1998).

Whatever the level of education, the need for equipment of all types is urgent. The problem is crucial in technical, vocational and higher education, in laboratories and shops, where at present many requirements can only be met abroad. In addition, as curricula and teaching materials are progressively changed to meet new conditions and the needs of an expanding number of students, there is an urgent need for audio-visual and other teaching aids.

The problem of the production of textbooks adapted to new curricula requirements and African conditions is crucial. On the side of content, scientific and technological books, in many cases produced for non-African consumers, must be adapted to African teaching conditions. In that in most African countries for history, literary and social studies subjects, there is an urgent need for adaptation of textbooks more relevant to African life and culture. This poses important production problems - the material facilities, printing presses, and distribution processes - necessary to meet the expanding African demand. It also requires the training of textbook writers with the needed skills and knowledge to make possible the necessary transformation of textbooks to meet the new conditions.

Facilities for higher education at the present time are far from adequate for the training of the necessary cadres of specialists, researchers, administrators and other leaders. For example, a manpower survey recently conducted in one African State indicated that, despite drastic efforts at expansion of higher educational facilities and through training abroad, the need for men with academic and professional qualifications in the next five years would be in the region of 20,000 while the output of individuals trained locally and overseas in the same period was estimated at 3,000. To meet a similar need, the objective of another African State is to increase its university population from a present 1,000 to between 7,500 and 10,000 in the 1970’s. UNESCO (2000:98) Siaciwena (2005:12)notes that,” Present and projected crucial needs require that considerable numbers of African individuals undertake advanced studies overseas and that an expanded supply of expatriate staff be provided for new higher institutions, universities, technical colleges, research institutes and laboratories.” Further, the expansion of higher academic and technological institutions in Africa should be geared not only to fulfilling the training needs of the States in which they are situated, but also to the requirements of other African States, intra-African hospitality in African universities today being a notable attribute.

Addis Ababa conference of 1961 also agreed that most African countries should accord adequate priority to adult education, especially in the countryside (UNESCO, 2000).Experience in other continents has shown that even among illiterate farmers agricultural extension can affect substantial increases in yields. In general, the quickest way to increase productivity in Africa today, in any industry, is by on-the-job training of adult workers. According to UNESCO, 2009:6)” African countries still face number of limitation as adult education s concerned in that, resources are limited to expand adult education programs to most rural African villages where illiteracy is rampart.”

This form of education is the most closely geared to economic development, and yet the most neglected. Except for in-service training of teachers, responsibility for most of this kind of education rests not with the Ministry of Education but with the Ministries more directly concerned with production.

In conclusion, it is recognized that the twin problems in question are of great importance to a large number of African countries. It is agreed that they are to a large extent the results of educational systems which are not adapted to the countries' needs. Surpluses of unskilled labour are a widespread phenomenon in predominantly agricultural countries, where primary school leavers, without specialized qualifications, tend to migrate from rural areas to towns in the hope of obtaining “white collar” jobs. Thus unemployment tends to grow as education develops, since the extension of education is faster than the pace of expansion of employment in those towns. In some countries, disguised unemployment exists in the form of too many unproductive occupations. All these problems have come as a result of failure to implement education policies effectively in Africa and always looking for external support.

References

MOE (2009) Ministry of Education. Educating Our Future: National Policy on Education,1996 Analysis. Lusaka: Ministry of Education. Zambia.

Mupukwa S.K 2010) Universal Education: A challenge to Africa, Lusaka, KB Association Africa, Zambia.

Kelly, M. J. (1998). Primary Education in a Heavily Indebted Poor Country: The case of Zambia in the 1990s,  Lusaka, OXFAM, Zambia.

Siaciwena, R., Trewby, R., & Anderson, D (2005). Evaluation of the Primary Teachers’ Diploma by Distance Learning. Unpublished Report prepared for Zambia’s Ministry of Education. Lusaka: Ministry of Education. Zambia.

UNICEF (2010) Girl Child Education Report ,Lusaka ,UNICEF ,Zambia.

UNESCO (2000) Conference of African States on education in Africa, Addis Ababa, UNESCO, Ethiopia.

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