GT22D - POLITICS IN THE CARIBBEAN
Topic Five GOOD GOVERNANCE
Lectures 10-12
February 20-22
Introduction.
In the past ten years the term ‘good governance’ has become an important and popularly used political concept.[1] It combines the ideas of democratization, effective government along with sustainable and human development. It has been particularly directed at post-colonial developing states and the newly democratizing formerly communist states of eastern Europe.
Good governance means democratic government that promotes effective public administration, freedom of the market from too much state control and an active civil society, that is both included in dialogue with the state and checks the arbitrary power of the state. Its main thrust is to reform the state in order to overcome such problems as bureaucracy, corruption, the concentration of power and ineffective public service institutions.
Caribbean states are also targetted for reforms. Since independence they had hardly pursued any meaningful reforms.
Good Governance: Perspectives.
There are two competing perspectives about what Good Governance really means or ought to mean. The concept generally means the reform of politics and the reform of policies. The difference betweenthe perspectives is, by what means and for what purpose should governance reforms be pursued.
Developing Countries Perspective:
Developing countries stress the need for a effective state as the means to good governance - one that is efficient and democratic - and sustainable human development as the purpose.
The United Nations and its agencies as well as the Commonwealth Group of Countries have adopted the concept of good governance.[2] The United Nation’s Development Programme (UNDP) for example, supports governance programmes such as activities that promote the reform of politics: free and fair elections, freedom of association and participation, an independent judiciary, bureaucratic accountability, freedom of information, effective and efficient public sector management, decentralization of decision-making and resource management, and government interaction with the organisations of civil society.[3] Many of these chages apply especially to the ex-communist and Afican countries.
The UNDP’s goal of sustainable human development stresses the reform of policies achievable by means of good governance. These require expanding people’s choices and allowing them to participate in the decisions affecting their lives. It demands systems of government that encourage people’s involvement in decision-making and which stimulate economic growth and ensure that the benefits of that growth reach all segments of society.[4]
Good governance is therefore more than and goes beyond democracy. By insisting on an effective state, the concept recognises that a state might be democratic but not effective; by insisting on people’s participation in national life it recognises that occasional elections, even if free and fair, do not allow for meaningful and regular participation in the creation and implementation of policies; and by insisting that the benefits of growth be shared it recognises that democracy by itself does not produce economic and social equality.
The idea of good governance is that both democracy and development are values in their own right but each also supports the other. For instance, democracy will not survive if it is not accompanied by development. Not only will the poor lose faith in democracy if the gap between rich and poor continuously widens but where there is poverty wasteful and undemocratic means such as patronage will be used to secure political support.
An efficient and democratic state will also promote development. Where state procedures are transparent for example, investors will have more confidence in investing because they will be able to ensure that their business with the state, such as processing documents, is not subject to favouritism and that they can pursue their business according to the law and in a speedy way.
But more to the point, the UNDP calls for sufficient government spending on health, education, job creation, skills training, shelter, safe water and basic needs in general.
Developed Countries Perspective:
Developed countries emphasise the restrictive state and market development in what they mean by good governance. They emphasise the expansion of the private sector and market initiatives relative to any expansive role by the state. For this reason, the World Bank promotes public sector reforms to make states more transparent, effective, efficient, accountable and equitable in their dealings, especially with the private sector. At the same time, developing countries at the UN are suspicious of the market oriented policies of the World Bank and seek to ensure that good governance entails human development as well. It is out of these different perspectives that the concept has evolved.[5]
The World Bank’s Report of 1997 is an important statement of what good governance in this perspective entails.[6] Crucial in this is the role of the state. It recommends two basic strategies:
(1) Concentrating on market fundamentals:
- civil and commercial law;
- business-friendly policy environment and macroeconomic stability;
- invest in people, basic social services and infrastructure;
- protect the vulnerable through poverty alleviation;
- protect the environment.
But the bias in all of this is in favour of the private sector.
(2) Making state institutions effective. This means designing effective rules and restraints to:
- check arbitrary state actions;
- attack entrenched corruption;
- subject state institutions to greater competition to increase their efficiency;
- improve pay and incentives to enhance the performance of state institutions;
- open the state to greater participation through decentralisation in order to bring the state closer to the people and make it more responsive.
All of this is acceptable but again, this is designed to protect and promote private sector interests.
The Caribbean State.
Nonetheless, these reforms from whichever perspective have become acceptable because many states, including Caribbean states have been inefficient in the past.
Trevor Farell believes that the Caribbean state has failed in its tasks of good governance, at least up to the mid-1980's.[7] He identified the problems as:
(1) Entanglement in bureaucratic red tape. This stifles commerce mainly by lengthening the time between conception and implementation of projects.
(2) Featherbedding, that is, overstaffing the state with political appointments through nepotism, patronage and providing jobs for loyal constituents.
(3) Subsidies that comfort businesses resulting in more bureaucracy, business inefficiency, the absence of creativity and bad business decisions.(4) Large losses when the state purchases enterprises that are about to fail after they are no longer viable, including foreign businesses.
(5) Clientilism due to the capturing of the state by special interests that use the state for their purposes, sometimes by secret and informal deals that undermine transparency. Powerful business interests for example might have special relations with political managers that are conducted through ‘back-door’ deals.
Yet, the solution is not to create a minimal state but to make the state more effective in what it does. Certain conditions require an active role for the state:
(1) The weakness of the private sector in the Caribbean -essentially a trading sector - means that the state has a role to play in industrial policy to promote new business;
(2) The history of social and racial inequality and inequality of property ownership means that the state has vital role in ensuring equity in areas such as justice, land ownership, education and social welfare;(3) The state still has a role in the usual spheres of national security, international affairs and training and education, especially in an era of globalisation, human resource development and security against rising crime.
What is necessary is to reform the state to match the new requirements and standards of democracy, globalism, the market and civil society, and to modernize the state to bring it into the post-colonial order.
Factors Undermining Good Governance.
A World Bank report had said that investors perceived Latin America and the Caribbean to be suffering from the poor quality of their public bureaucracies, the credibility of governments, the reliability of their judiciaries and the guarantees that people expect for their personal security.[8] Selwyn Ryan calls for refashioning and re-engineering Caribbean states to achieve good governance and democratic renewal.[9] He identifies the main problems of the present state systems as:
(1) Administrative stress. The range and complexity of the functions of the modern state are often beyond the capability of Caribbean states given their limited material and human resources. Administrative systems become overloaded and overwhelmed by the demands placed on them and they consistently underperform. This is usually shown in long lines and long delays in service in places like the tax office and there is the intention to use the postal system in Jamaica as a collectorate for some fees n order to decentralise the system.
(2) Judicial dysfunction. Judicial processes are often tedious, time-consuming and severely insufficient. Ryan noted that in 1986 there were 75,665 court cases outstanding in Trinidad.[10] The system is burdened by the upsurge in crime and delinquency in the region, the corruption of many lawyers, judges, juries and police by drug money and an often lengthy appeals process.
(3) The Westminster model of governance. Owen Arthur of Barbados said:
"The unfortunate aspect of the Westminster model of Governance is that it has encouraged a 'to the victors the spoils' mentality. It has ensured that at any time almost half the population of any given Caribbean society is marginalised and alienated from participation in the development of their society. It can also be reasonably argued that there has...been too destructive a competition for political office; too heavy a concentration of power in the hands of ruling elites, an un-healthy preservation of anti-development party and tribal divisions, a focus on short-term partisan political concerns rather than long-term strategic objectives, efficient patronage and spoils systems which work against sound and progressive government. Alienation, cynicism and marginalisation have been the results, all leading to a perpetuation of underdevelopment."[11]
(4)Small size and fragmentation. The costs of development and the complexity of the global order make the small and fragmented Caribbean states unable to practice efficient governance. From as early as 1965 Arthur Lewis argued that the problem of governance was especially acute for the smallest Eastern Caribbean states. As a result he recommended a political union for them. To him, federation was the only way to provide good government. Each member country would act as a check and balance against abuses in the others. A federal government would be responsible for law and order and the redress of financial and other abuses.[12]
Owen Arthur points out that in a political union, countries would pool their resources and be able to act more effectively and afford collectively what each could not, acting separately. They would be better able to afford the costs of international representation, the rising costs of health and education services, the collective management of the environment, of responding to disasters, operating the judiciary and planning for development.Arthur said, "The Caribbean will eventually have to move to a single unified governance because the societies will simply sag under the enormous, unprofitable weight of supporting individual systems..."[13]
(5) Political interference. The principle of neutrality is often undermined by political interference by which administration of the state by the civil service is weakened. This is especially severe in racially tense situations that exist in Trinidad and Guyana. There is a call therefore to take politics out of the governance of the state.
Ryan gives examples of what parties accuse each other of doing:
- In Trinidad: Firing Trinidadian chief executives and other officers from state boards for reasons of race; making partisan appointments to Public Services Commissions and Judicial Services Commissions; discriminating in favour of one racial group in the state sector generally; violating the system for the tender of contracts to favour friends and political supporters; using the resources of state companies for political campaigning.[14]
- In Guyana: The ruling party has been accused of ethnic cleansing in the bureaucracy so that one race replaces another but this removes professionally trained staff in ministries and agencies; giving out jobs and contracts to its supporters, whether they were competent or not leading to incompetence and corruption; using the state media to promote the ruling party; politicise state services such as the Customs service so that certain races were given more favourable treatment in matters of customs than others and the services that the state controls, such as electricity, broadcasting, university education and the Armed Forces.[15]
Barbados: While Barbados does not share the same degree of political interference in the functions of the state, the problem is not absent. Courtney Blackman notes that when governments lose elections, new governments too often remove career public servants, professional managers of public enterprises, permanent secretaries are Asent on leave', board members and managers of statutory corporations are dismissed and even the governing boards of secondary schools. These changes affect good governance because they disrupt continuity, organisational morale and the principle of neutrality.[16]
(6) Socio-cultural conditions. The World Bank shows the magnitude of the problems that arise from systems of bad governance, many of which come out of the socio-cultural nature of societies:
- Lawlessness. In Latin America and the Caribbean, among the main obstacles to doing business is weaknesses in the system of law and order. These are problems of corruption, crime and theft. In addition, there is the poor state of infrastructure.[17]
- Corruption. While there is a perception of high rates of corruption in the Caribbean there are no recent studies that make for a good comparison. Transparency International samples a number of countries and its last report placed Jamaica about half-way on a list of about 80 countries. No other Caribbean country was in the survey. Caribbean countries also point to foreign firms as a corrupting influence.[18] Foreign investors, they charge, offer bribes to obtain investment deals.
- Crime and theft. Crime rates have increased throughout the region in recent years. In the mid-90's the World Bank reported that Jamaica’s high crime rate was its main deterrent to investments. Jamaican officials also report the problem of white collar crime such as fraud in the private sector. In fact, the former Commissioner of Police, Trevor Macmillian had said that Jamaica’s private sector was as corrupt as the public sector and white collar crime cost the country more than poor people’s crime did.
- Bureaucracy. The extent of bureaucracy was measured by the percentage of firms reporting having to spend more than 15 percent of their time negotiating with public officials. In the former communist countries of Europe, 52% of firms reported thus. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and Africa 38% of firms did. This is taken as a sign of red tape, slow or confusing rules that businessmen are faced with and which all amount to too much bureaucracy.[19]
Good governance in the Caribbean suffers from many problems: administrative stress and overload due to limited resources; time consuming judicial processes and a corrupted justice system; the costs of small size and political fragmentation; the divisiveness of the Westminster model; a socio-cultural order of crime and theft, corruption and lawlessness; and political interference with the integrity of the public service.
These problems undermine both democracy and development.
Reform of Governance.
Is anything being done? The Caribbean state is modernising and becoming more responsive. The process of reforming governance, however, still has a long way to go. In Jamaica, important new initiatives have come on stream in the 1990's:
(1) Executive Agencies. Public enterprises are being converted into executive agencies in order to apply ‘new managerialism’ to the management of these agencies. The idea is to borrow more techniques from private management, give public managers more autonomy and incentives to meet institutional goals. Jamaica has converted eight agencies to executive agency status.
(2) Accountability. Public bodies are being made more accountable for their actions. The high rate of abuse by the police force, especially the high rate of shootings by the police have warranted the establishment of an Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) within the force to investigate complaints against police action.
(3) Service. Improved service from the public sector is being encouraged through citizen’s charters, departmental and agency Charters and mission statements. Also, there is the establishment of consumer protection bodies to regulate public utilities like the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) which has a Consumer Advisory Committee, and the Broadcasting Commission.
(4) Fair competition. The Fair Trading Corporation also deals with complaints about competitive practices which are unethical or which seek to gain unfair advantage in the private sector market.
(5) Office of the Ombudsman. This office exists to hear complaints from citizens against abuses by the state.
(6) Corruption. Integrity legislation is one of the ways by which members of parliament are expected to comply with the requirements for integrity. Bodies such as the Contractor General’s Department monitor the terms and processes of issuing government contracts.
(7) Waste. The establishment of the Committee to Reduce Waste in the Public Sector and its findings in the Orane Report is an example of trying to make government more cost effective in its operations.[20] Government says it has saved over $500 million to date by following its recommendations. In addition, the Public Accounts Committee, a parliamentary body chaired by the Opposition is a permanent body that studies how government spends public funds and reports on possible waste or anomalies that might reflect corrupt practices.
(8) Transparency and open government. The Moses Report,[21] establishment of a parliamentary committee on taxation and revenue, the reform of local government are examples of attempts to make government more responsive to people’s opinions by opening up the process of government to participation and recommendations. In fact, Jamaica has now opened up all of its parliamentary committee to the public, with the decision in February 2001, to apply openness to the Standing Finance Committee of Parliament responsible for persuing tax and spending measures of the budget. A public debate on the proposed Caribbean Court of Justice has been on-going as well as one on constitutional reform.
The government’s position on the CCJ is to sign the agreement to join but to seek a referendum if membership is to be entrenched in the constitution. This is the fair position because it gives another party that forms the government the right to withdraw if it so wants. To go directly to a referendum would mean that if the referendum is voted against then those who favour membership will suffer; and if the referendum is voted for, then those who are against membership will suffer. It is best to simply sign the agreement without enshrining it in the constitution by a referendum to begin with, until Jamaicans can test the performance of the CCJ and then have a referendum on it.
(9) Bureaucracy and red tape. The government has established a business facilitation committee to speed up the process of approvals for business ventures under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister himself. The Minister of Housing has established a fast track process for dealing with contractors in the housing sector and to get many stalled housing projects on the way. The government wants to improve the pace at which the public business is conducted such as processing mail within 24 hours.
(10) Public Sector Modernisation. Effective and efficient government requires modernisation and with the help of international organisations, critical sectors that link Jamaica with the rest of the world are undergoing modernisation - sea and airports, customs, telecommunications; and agencies that handle the people’s business - registration of titles, water, housing (trust).
(11) Justice. The lengthy process of justice is to be tackled by bringing cases to court within six months and appeals within 12 months. The establishment of a Caribbean Court of Justice is expected to speed up appeals as well. The Office of the Public Prosecutor, newly created, to improve and defend the rights of citizens against the state.
(12) The partnership state. The government pursues a model of partnership between the state, the private sector, the trade unions and the NGO or social sector, a model encouraged by the World Bank as critical to good governance by promoting consultation. This has brought new investments and more stability into the bauxite sector, the water and telecommunications sectors.
At present signs of more open and responsive can be seen in:
- The Street People Enquiry;
- The Walker Report on the Salaries of Public Sector Executives;
- The Senate Investigation into the financial crisis;
- The Orane report on waste, the Moses Report on better budgeting, and the Nettleford Report on Governance.
- The Michael Gayle special investigation.
- The opening up of the committees of parliament to the public, includint the Standing Finance Committee on budget spending and taxation.
These investigations have been done at the initiative of the government, the opposition (salaries) and civil society (street people).
The success of implementing and sustaining reforms towards good governance, according to the Commonwealth group of Countries lies in the extent of support for economic development. As the Commonwealth says of poorer countries, "as long as their economies remain fragile and exposed, their fledgling democracies will be under threat."[22]
Bearing this in mind, the Commonwealth calls for a programme for the developing countries that will sustain economic and social development, debt relief and support for international trade, technical assistance and the development of human resources.
It has taken particular note of the problems of small states.[23]
Conclusion.
Reforming the state is an important step towards good governance. Yet, as Owen Arthur and others point out, one needs to look at the Westminster model of politics and the divisive and alienating aspects of party competition and the winner-take-all distribution of power. In other words, one has to pursue constitutional reform.
Making the state more effective is not enough. The private sector has been entrusted as the ‘engine of growth’ and therefore it needs to enter the era of corporate governance. It needs to practice more public, social and civic responsibility towards workers and stakeholders; reduce its own waste and corruption; become more self-reliant and less clientilistic where it depends on the state for subsidies, bail-outs and privileged market positions.
Trade unions have to end their old class-based adversarialism and make their members more productive. They need to move beyond merely bargaining for wages and into training and stakeholder schemes and partnerships with communities, government and private sector.
Society as a whole must change its culture - its old habits and the old ways of doing things. All figures of authority - teachers, policemen, lawyers, parents - must accept the new paradigm of accountability and responsiveness. Its members must participate. Parliamentary committees and public commissions complain that enough persons do not appear before or make submissions to these bodies.
The state alone cannot change everything.
[1] The term 'good governance= is used here specifically in the sense that the World Bank=s report of 1997 uses it. It is a more acceptable term than structuctural adjustment and combines liberal democracy, market oriented reforms with ideas of human development and an effective state. See, World Bank, World Development Report: The State in a Changing World, 1997; and for a critique of the report, see, Goerge Philip, AThe Dilemmas of Good Governance: A Latin American Perspective", Government and Opposition,34,2,1999, pp.226-242.
[2] The Commonwealth of which the Anglo-Caribbean is a part, adopted the principles of good goverance at the Harare summit in 1991.
[4] Ibid.
[5] I understand and use the term as one that reflects both the thinking of western donor agencies such as the World Bank but also those of developing countries through associations such as the Commonwealth countries and organisations such as the UNDP.
[6] World Bank, op.cit..
[7] Trevor Farrell, AThe Caribbean State and its Role in Economic Management", in Omar Davies (ed.) The State in Caribbean Society,1986, pp.6-27.
[8] See, Selwyn Ryan, Winner Takes All, 1999, p.341.
[9] Ibid, p.318
[10] Ibid, p.320
[11] See, Ryan, o.cit, p.317.
[12] See Ryan, op.cit., p.312.
[13] Ibid., p.314.
[14] Ibid., pp.244-246.
[15] Ibid, pp.159-161.
[16] Ibid., p.32.
[17] World Bank, op.cit., pp.41-45.
[18] This was the finding of a survey by Transparency International, 1998.
[19] World Bank, op.cit,p.43.
[20] See, Task Force to Reduce waste in the Public Sector: The Orane Report, 1997.
[21] See, The Moses Report: The Moses Committee=s Recomendations on Alternatives to the High Gas Taxes,1999.
[22] Report of the Commonwealth Secretary-General,1995, p.6
[23] Ibid., pp.6-11.
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