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Good Governance and Democracy -
Bangladesh Perspective
Md.Moslem Uddin
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Thoughts on
Good Governance and Democracy are to seek
how political power and institutions-formal
and informal, national and
international-shape human progress. And it
is about what it will take for countries to
establish democratic governance systems that
advance the Good governance of all people-in
a world where so many are left behind.
Governance matters for Good governance
because people everywhere want to be free to
determine their destinies, express their
views and participate in the decisions that
shape their lives. These capabilities are
just as important for Good governance-for
expanding people’s choices as being able to
read or enjoy good health. The world made
dramatic progress in opening up governance
systems and expanding political freedoms.
Developing countries pursued democratization
in the face of massive poverty and pervasive
social and economic tensions. Many others
have stalled between democracy and
authoritarianism, with limited political
freedoms and closed or dysfunctional
Governance. Have become breeding grounds for
extremism and violent conflict. Even where
democratic institutions are firmly
established, citizens often feel powerless
to influence national policies. They and
their governments also feel more subject to
international forces that they have little
capacity to control.
For Governance political institutions have
to promote Good governance and safeguard the
freedom and dignity of all people, and
democracy must widen and deepen. Many
developing countries are making progress on
several fronts, particularly in achieving
universal primary education and gender
equality in access to education. But for
Bangladesh the prospects are bleak. If
progress continues at such a snail’s pace,
it will take more than 130 years to rid
people out of hunger. Two problems seem
intractable. The first is income poverty. To
halve the share of people living on $1 a
day, optimistic estimates suggest that 5.7%
annual growth in per capita incomes is
needed in developing countries. But over the
past 10 years the most populous developing
countries have not grown at this rate.
Indeed, many have suffered negative growth
in recent years, and the share of their
people in poverty has almost certainly
increased. Most troubling, many of the
countries least likely to achieve the goals
are the world’s poorest the least developed
countries.
Without a dramatic turn around there is a
real possibility that a generation from now,
world leaders will be setting the same
targets again. These mixed prospects
highlight a troubling paradox. The spread of
democracy, the integration of national
economies, revolutions in technology, all
point to greater human freedom and greater
potential for improving people’s lives. But
in too many countries, freedom seems to be
under ever-greater threat to Democracy. The
world is more democratic than ever before,
but of the 140 countries that holds
multiparty elections only 80 with 55% of the
world’s people claim to be democratic by one
measure and 106 countries still limit
important civil and political freedoms.
New technology and increasing economic
integration are paving the way for truly
global markets. But amid the wealth of new
economic opportunities, 2.8 billion people
still live on less that $ 2 a day. And in
many parts of the lives of the poorest
people are getting worse. Some argue that
bridging the gulf between potential and
reality is a matter of time and political
will. For others the slow pace of change is
not the problem-it is the basic direction.
But on one point there is broad agreement:
in a more interdependent world, governance
and political institutions are even more
central to Good governance. Around the world
discussions on development are placing more
emphasis on institutions and governance.
These debates have focused on the
effectiveness of public institutions and the
rules for making markets work and promoting
economic growth-from the professionalism and
transparency of tax systems to the capacity
of judicial systems to enforce commercial
contracts. Such issues are important for
Good governance. When institutions function
badly, poor and vulnerable people tend to
suffer most. Bud just as Good governance
requires much more than having effective
public institution. Good governance also
requires fostering fair, account-able
institutions that protect human rights and
basic freedoms. It is not only about whether
judges are trained, but whether they observe
due process and are blind to differences of
race and class. It is not only about whether
schools are built, but whether students in
poor districts are as well equipped as
students in affluent areas. This remains
relatively new territory for serious
research and the links between political in
situations and economic and social outcomes
are not fully understood. This explores
those links from the standpoint of advancing
Good governance. It argues that countries
can promote Good governance for all only
when they have governance systems that are
fully accountable to all people-and when all
people can participate in the debates and
decisions that shape their lives. Advancing
Good governance requires governance that is
democratic in both form and substance-for
the people and by the people. Democratic
governance is valuable in its own right. But
it can also advance Good governance, for
three reasons. First, enjoying political
freedom and participating in the decisions
that shape one’s life are fundamental human
rights: they are part of Good governance in
their won right. Democracy is the only
political regime that guarantees political
and civil freedoms and the right to
participate-making democratic rules a good
in itself. Second, democracy helps protect
people from economic and political
catastrophes such as famines and descents
into chaos. Indeed, it can mean the
difference between life and death.
Democracies also contribute to political
stability, providing open space for
political opposition and handovers of power.
Riots and demonstrations were more common in
democracies but were much more destabilizing
in dictatorships. Third, democratic
governance can trigger a virtuous cycle of
development-as political freedom empowers
people to press for policies that expand
social and economic opportunities, and as
open debates help communities shape their
priorities. Moves toward democratization and
political opening have helped produce this
kind of virtuous cycle, with a free press
and civil society activism giving people new
ways to participate in policy decisions and
debates. The links between democracy and
Good governance are not automatic: when a
small elite dominates economic and political
decisions the link between democracy and
equity can be broken.
In recent years people around the world have
fought for and won democracy in hopes of
gaining political freedom-and social and
economic opportunities. But many now feel
that democracy has not delivered. During the
1990s income in-equality and poverty rose
sharply sometimes at unprecedented rates.
And despite more widespread democracy, the
number of poor people continued to increase.
When democratic governments do not respond
to the needs of poor people, the public
becomes more inclined to support
authoritarian or populist leaders who claim
that limiting civil liberties and political
freedoms will accelerate economic growth and
promote social progress and stability. High
in come inequality and poverty go hand in
hand with low public trust in political
institutions and greater willingness to
accept authoritarian rule and violations of
human rights. Authoritarian leader promise
well out comes and argues that democracy
must be sacrificed for economic growth and
social progress. But there is no evidence of
such a trade off. Statistical studies find
that neither authoritarianism nor democracy
is a factor in determining either the rate
of economic growth or how it is distributed.
Democracy that empowers people must be
built-it cannot be imported. In many
countries a central challenge for deepening
democracy is building the key institutions
of democratic governance:
· A system of representation, with
well-functioning political parties and
interest associations.
· An electoral system that guarantees free
and fair elections as well as universal
suffrage.
· A system of checks and balances based on
the separation of powers, with independent
judicial and legislative branches.
· A vibrant civil society, able to monitor
government and private business-and provide
alternative forms of political
participation.
· A free, independent media.
· Effective civilian control over the
military and other security forces.
These institutions come in many shapes and
forms. Because the democracy a nation
chooses to develop depends on its history
and circumstances, countries will
necessarily be differently democratic. But
in all countries democracy is about much
more than a single decision or hastily
organized election. It requires a deeper
process of political development to embed
democratic values and culture in all parts
of society-a process never formally
completed. Building democratic institutions
while achieving equitable social and
economic development poses tensions.
Granting all people formal political
equality does not create an equal desire or
capacity to participate in political
processes-or an equal capacity to influence
outcomes. Imbalances in resources and
political power often subvert the principle
of one person, one voice, and the purpose of
democratic institutions. And judicial
proceedings and regulatory institutions are
undermined if elites dominate them at the
expense of women, minorities and the
powerless. One critical problem is money in
Governance, which subverts democratic
institutions when it exerts undue influence
on who gets elected and what legislators
vote for.
As campaign costs rise, so does the risk
that business interests will
disproportionately influence politicians.
Countries have more stringent limits on
corporate funding, similar patterns emerge
in many other countries. In Bangladesh large
corporations provided 80% of the funding for
the major parties in 1996. Recent surveys
found that people have more confidence in
television than they do in political
parties. Triggering a virtuous cycle for
Good governance requires promoting
democratic Governance. Promoting democratic
Governance means expanding capabilities such
as education, to enable people to play a
more effective role in such Governance, and
fostering the development of civil society
groups and other informal institutions to
help democratic institutions better
represent the people. Over the past two
decades there have been many new ways for
people to participate in public debates and
activities. Though membership has fallen in
political parties, trade unions and other
traditional vehicles for collective action,
there has been an explosion in support for
non-governmental organizations and other new
civil society groups. Most developing
countries have seen an even sharper increase
in the number of domestic NGOs and
non-profits: More than $20 billion in aid to
Bangladesh had flown through international
NGOs, reflecting and supporting an dramatic
expansion in the scope and nature of NGO
activities. In addition to advocating for
and engaging in development projects, NGOs
are taking more direct roles in local
decision making and monitoring and are
developing new, collaborative forms of
governance.
Civil society groups do not fit easily into
traditional models of governance and
accountability, which is part of their value
to democracies. But when such groups spring
from agendas or use tactics that are
contrary to democratic values, they can be
both civil and “uncivil”, the rise of such
groups poses challenges for truly democratic
political engagement. There are no simple
solutions to this problem. But many civil
society groups recognize that they must be
publicly accountable for their actions. NGOs
should have adopted codes of conduct to
promote effective self-regulation. The codes
emphasize the importance of transparency and
accountability-and the need for the NGOs to
ensure that they truly represent the people
whose lives they affect. A free, independent
media is another crucial pillar of
democracy. Around the world, restrictions
remain on basic civil liberties-such as the
rights to free speech, assembly and in
formation. Few countries have freedom of in
formation laws. But in many countries new
press freedoms and technologies are enabling
the media to contribute more to democratic
Governance by opening public debates and
exposing corruption and abuse.
Especially in developing countries, most
ordinary citizens have many more sources of
information to turn to than they did 10
years ago. And less of that information is
subject to rigid state control. But to be
plural and independent, the media must be
free not only from state control but also
from corporate and political pressures.
Although market reforms and economic
integration have reduced state ownership of
the media, it has increased concentration in
private ownership. A number of private media
groups own 75% of daily newspapers, weekly
magazines; accounting for three fourths of
circulation. Commercial and political
pressures always skew the playing field in
the marketplace for ideas. But the answer to
excessive corporate or political influence
is not a return to strict regulation by the
state. The media need to be free as well as
accountable-which is why greater emphasis is
being placed on high standards of
professionalism and ethics. Journalists and
the media are free only when they serve the
public first, and the government or private
shareholders second. A range of mechanisms
can promote these goals without resorting to
government controls, including
self-regulation to government controls,
including self-regulation through in
dependent bodies, professional codes of
ethics as well as training and raising
awareness of journalists.
Establishing democratic control over
security forces is another
priority-otherwise, far from ensuring
personal security, security forces actively
undermine them. Popular disillusionment is
not the only problem facing the world
democracies. In many an even greater
obstacle is the extensive power of the
military, police and intelligence
services-not to mention warlords,
paramilitary groups and private security
companies. Elected governments have
undermined democracy and personal security
by using parts of the security sector for
their own ends. When order breaks down in a
country, poor people usually suffer first
and most. All too often, violence against
civilians emanates from forces under
government control. Undemocratic governance
of security forces can also distort security
priorities. Many governments continue to
militarize their police forces, blurring
their distinction with the military, or
seriously over-fund them. Without democratic
civil control over security forces-including
an effective, even-handed national police
force, governments cannot guarantee people’s
safety and security, and Good governance is
severely held back. Relations between
civilians and security forces rarely measure
up to the ideal even in long standing
democracies. Success in this area can
contribute to the broader process of
strengthening democratic institutions and
Governance. It can also promote external
peace and stability, because wars between
democratic countries are quite rare. Global
inter-dependence also calls for more
participation and accountability in global
decision making. Empowering people to
influence decisions that affect their lives
and hold their rulers accountable are no
longer just a national issue. In an
integrated world these democratic principles
have a global rules and actors often affect
people’s lives as much as national ones.
Efforts to build more inclusive, accountable
governance face two main challenges. The
first is increasing pluralism: expanding the
space for groups outside formal state
institutions to participate in decision
making, particularly in developing
mechanisms to change the behavior of privet
corporations, the second is increasing
participation and accountability in
multilateral institutions to give developing
countries al larger role. Through a series
of high profile campaigns, civil society
movements have been promoting pluralism. New
forms of collaboration between civil society
groups have also aided increased pluralism
in Governance. Increasing participation and
accountability in multilateral institutions.
Though the emergence of a civil society has
created opportunities to deepen democracy at
the national level, existing national
institutions need reform. Developing
countries should be given a stronger voice
in their operations. Given their
enormous-and growing-influence, these
institutions-and growing influence, these
institutions should also be held more
accountable for their policies and actions.
Consider the World Trade Organization. Every
member country has a seat and a vote, which
is very democratic. But actual
decision-making occurs by consensus, heavily
influenced by the largest and richest
countries. The imbalance in developing
country participation is also evident in
global civil society movements. Of the 738
NGOs accredited to the WTO’s 1999
ministerial conference in Seattle,
Washington 87% were from industrial
countries. The democratic deficit in
international organizations is unavoidable
because people do not directly elect their
representatives to the WTO, IMF, World Bank
or UN Security Council. It is perhaps no
coincidence that the more representative
international institutions, such as the UN
Economic and Social Council and the Un
General Assembly, are also considered the
least powerful. The reality is that powerful
countries-crucial to the success of an
international institution-tend to gravitate
towards institutions that give them the most
influence. And they take their power with
them: whether it is to the WTO’s “green
room” meetings or the meetings of the IMF
executive board. Efforts to enhance the
representations of developing countries must
take into account these basic realities.
Various commissions, think tanks and civil
society organizations have also recommended
increasing transparency by, for example,
publishing decisions made by the executive
boards of the major international financial
institutions and making WTO decision-making
more inclusive and trans-parent. In recent
years the IMF, World Bank and United Nations
have made important efforts to become more
open and transparent. But there continues to
be strong pressure to extend democratic
principles to such organizations,
particularly since many have recently become
so such more deeply involved in national
economic, political and social policies. The
deeper is their intervention in sensitive
governance reforms in developing countries,
the greater in the need for international
organizations to be open and accountable.
The traditional argument against such
reforms is that they would make
decision-making clumsy and unworkable. But
against this must be set the realities of a
more integrated world. Whether the goal is
peace, economic growth or environmental
sustainability, international efforts to
promote change do not work if national
actors feel excluded. Increasingly, the
leading global powers may recognize that a
widespread sense of exclusion and
powerlessness in developing countries can
threaten economic growth and security in
industrial countries as well as developing.
An abiding lesson of the past decade is that
national political institutions are not
keeping pace with the governance challenges
of a more interdependent world. As new
democracies struggle to lay the foundations
of democratic governance, new forces and
institutions are exerting powerful
influences on people’s lives. And new types
of conflicts are proliferating within and
between countries.
The need to act is clear. Still needed is
the will to act in ways that cultivate
democracy, advance development and expand
human freedoms around the world. Good
governance is about people, about expanding
their choices to lead lives they value.
Whether they contribute to Good governance
in the 21st century will depend on whether
they expand people’s choices, whether they
help create an environment for people to
develop their full potential and lead
productive, creative lives. Fundamental to
enlarging human choices is building human
capabilities is the range of things that
people can do or be. The most basic
capabilities for Good governance are leading
a long and healthy life, being educated,
having access to the resources needed for a
decent standard of living and being able to
participate in the life of one’s community.
People’s dignity also requires that they are
free and able to participate in the
formation and stewardship of the rules and
institutions that governs them. A poor man
who cannot afford to send his children to
school, but must send them to work in the
fields, is lacking in Good governance, so is
a wealthy educated woman whose gender
excludes her from voting in elections. Thus,
because of population growth, the number of
poor people in the region has increased.
Progress on political freedoms has also been
uneven. The spread of democratization
appears to have stalled, with many countries
failing to consolidate and deepen the first
steps towards democracy and several slipping
back into authoritarianism. The slogan of
the political parties, “We will spare no
effort to promote democracy and strengthen
the rule of law, as well as respect for all
internationally recognized human rights and
fundamental freedoms,” has remained ever as
ever.
Political participation and freedom are
fundamental parts of Good governance, but
true democratization means more than
elections. It requires the consolidation of
democratic institutions and the
strengthening of democratic practices, with
democratic values and norms embedded in all
parts of society. One-party states have
allowed elections but ended up permitting
only limited opening for political
competition. Most of these “limited”
democracies suffer from shallow political
participation, where citizens have little
trust in their governments and are
disaffected from polities, or the countries
are dominated by a single powerful party or
group despite formal elections.
Democratic political participation requires
more than elections for governments-truly
democratic Governance requires civil and
political rights provide the space for
effective participation. Upholding human
rights is crucial for guaranteeing people’s
well-being and securing a humane and
non-discriminatory society-and for enabling
an active and engaged citizenry. Freedoms of
association and assembly, of expression and
conscience, as laid out in the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, are
fundamental to political participation. A
free and active press is particularly
important for the creation and consolidation
of democracy. In addition to civil and
political rights, equitable opportunities
for participation are crucial to democratic
Governance. But around the world, women are
seriously under-represented in domestic
Governance, accounting for only 14% of
national parliamentarians. There is little
difference between industrial and developing
countries. Speaking the truth, industrial
countries are far more advanced in women
repression. They hide their repression like
expert hypocrites under loud voices and
pointing fingers at the poorer countries.
At the UN General Assembly in 2000, heads of
state and government took stock of the gross
inequalities in Good governance worldwide
and recognized “their collective
responsibility to uphold the principles of
human dignity, equality and equity at the
global level.” In addition to declaring
their support for freedom, democracy and
human rights, they set eight goals for
development and poverty eradication, to be
achieved by 2015.
· Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
· Achieve universal primary education.
· Promote gender equality and empower women.
· Reduce child mortality.
· Improve maternal health.
· Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other
diseases.
· Ensure environmental sustainability.
· Develop a global partnership for
development.
Most of the Millennium Development Goals
have quantifiable, monitor able targets to
measure progress against standards set by
the international community. Lack of data
makes it difficult to assess progress on the
goal of halving income poverty. But slow
growth in average incomes indicates that
many countries will have to struggle to
achieve the goal. Countries have come closer
to some goals than others. Many developing
countries have already achieved or are on
track to achieve universal primary education
and gender equity in education. Given the
importance of education to so many other
areas of development, this bodes well for
accelerating progress towards the other
goals are not on track to halve hunger
improved water source. Child mortality:
people are not on track to achieve the goal.
A goal that cannot be monitored be met or
missed-and one of the most startling
conclusions is the lack of date. The targets
for poverty, HIV/AIDS and maternal mortality
can not be monitored. The number of
extremely poor people dropped only slightly.
The level of inequality in Bangladesh is
grotesque. But trends over recent decades
are ambiguous. The range of economic
performance across regions means that
inequality has increased between regions.
Comparisons give an in-complete picture.
When considering Good governance,
within-country inequality must be taken into
account because simple comparisons of per
capita GDP assume that everyone in a country
has the same income. Data on within-country
inequality, based on household surveys, are
often not comparable across countries or
over time, so conclusions must be tentative.
Still, reasonable estimates can be made, and
studies have found interesting results.
Long-term trends in interpersonal
in-equality show that Bangladesh has become
much more unequal. Although it may be
difficult to distinguish clear trends in
inequality in recent decades, its level is
extremely high-a cause for considerable
concern. The most recent available estimates
are for 1993, but stagnation in the poorest
countries and robust growth in many of the
richest imply that these are unlikely to
have improved. The Bangladesh richest
01percent of people receive as much income
as the poorest 87%. The income of the
richest 5000 is equal to that of almost the
entire people of the country.
The poorest people in richest group have
much higher incomes than the richest in the
poor people. As a country gets richer, its
inhabitants require more expensive goods and
services to take part in normal life.
Children may be unable to join in classroom
conversations if their parents do not own a
television; a construction worker may be
unable to get work without a car. Such
goods, once luxuries, become necessities as
they proliferate throughout society. So,
even in Bangladesh with no absolute income
poverty, relative income poverty lead to
absolute poverty in important dimensions of
Good governance such as education,
self-respect or the ability to get works.
This was achieved primarily through fiscal
policy and social transfers indicating that
with political will, nothing is inevitable
about inequality increasing with rising
incomes. Children suffer doubly from hunger:
it affects their daily lives and has
devastating consequences for their future
mental and physical health. A rough
indication of how countries are moving
towards halving hunger by 2015 comes from
changes in the number of malnourished
people-a less precise indicator of hunger
than child malnutrition rates, based on
national food availability and estimated
distribution. While the proportion of hungry
people has been declining, Bangladesh’s
booming population means that the number of
malnourished people has not been falling
fast enough.
Education is important in its own right and
has strong spillover benefits to mortality
rates, income and even social cohesion. Many
countries have good prospects for achieving
universal primary education. But there in
little middle ground: most of those not on
track to achieve the goal are far behind or
have worsening primary enrollments.
Enrolling children in primary school is only
half the battle, because it is meaningful
only if they complete if-which requires that
they and their families be able to resist
the pressures of forgone income and work in
the home. One of the most important out
comes of primary education is literacy. And
literacy rates are slow to change,
reflecting the education of previous
generations of children and the history of
school enrolment. The concept of functional
illiteracy describes the inability to
understand and use common channels of
communication and information in an every
day context, from newspapers and books to
pamphlets and instructions on medicine
bottles. The Millennium Development Goal for
gender equality in education responds to
dramatic gender disparities in Bangladesh.
In many developing countries, girls have no
disadvantage or even a small advantage. The
world is still a long way from achieving
equal rights and opportunities between
females and males. Education is just one
aspect of Good governance in which there is
discrimination between the sexes. Around the
world, women still earn only around 75% as
much as men. Domestic violence against women
is common in Bangladesh. Worse outcomes for
women in many aspects of Good governance
result from the fact that their voices have
less impact than men’s in the decisions that
shape their lives. This in equality in
empowerment is partly captured by the gender
empowerment measure (GEM), introduced to
help assess gender inequality in economic
and political opportunities. While gender
gaps in education are large in some
countries and nonexistent in others, wealth
gaps exist the world over. Such wealth gaps
perpetuate the cycle of poverty: those born
poor are likely to die poor. One cause of
such gaps is that in many countries, public
spending on education is skewed towards the
rich. Even when public spending is
distributed more equitably, rich parents can
buy a far better education for their
children at private schools.
Good governance is perhaps the single most
important factor in eradicating poverty and
promoting development. Around the world,
more people are recognizing that governance
matters for development that institutions,
rules and political processes play a big
role in whether economies grow, whether
children go to school, whether Good
governance moves forward or back. So,
promoting Good governance is not just a
social, economic and technological
challenge: it is also an institutional and
political challenge. Accompanying this new
consensus is a growing conviction that many
persistent development problems reflect
failures of governance. Studies in a range
of countries and regions hold weak
governance responsible for persistent
poverty and lagging development. The
governance crisis is evident in widespread
corruption, inefficient public services and
a host of other failures. These studies have
also shown what poor governance means for
ordinary citizens-schools without teachers,
courts without justice, local bureau crate
demanding bribes at every turn. There is no
single answer to this question. But much of
the recent debate has focused on what makes
institutions and rules more effective,
including transparency, participation,
responsiveness, accountability and the rule
of law. All are important for Good
governance-especially since ineffective
institutions usually cause the most harms to
poor and vulnerable people. But just as Good
governance is about much more than growth in
national incomes, governance for Good
governance is about much more than effective
institutions and rules. For three reasons,
is must also be concerned with whether
institutions and rules are fair-and whether
all people have a say in how they operate:
· Participating in the rules and
institutions that shape one’s community is a
basic human right and part of Good
governance.
· More inclusive governance can be more
effective. When local people are consulted
about the location of a new health clinic,
for example, there is a better chance it
will be built in the right place.
· More participatory governance also can be
more equitable. Much is known about the
economic and social policies that help
eradicate poverty and promote more inclusive
growth. But few countries pursue such
policies vigorously, often because the
potential beneficiaries lack political power
and their interests are not fully
represented in policy decisions.
Governance for Good governance is partly
about having efficient institutions and
rules that promote development by making
markets work and ensuring that public
services live up to their name. Form the
Good governance perspective, good governance
is democratic governance. Democratic
governance means that:
· People’s human rights and fundamental
freedoms are respected, allowing them to
live with dignity.
· People have a say in decisions that affect
their lives.
· People can hold decision makers
accountable.
· Inclusive and fair rules, institutions and
practices govern social interactions.
· Women are equal partners with men in
private and public spheres of life and
decision-making.
· People are free from discrimination based
on race, ethnicity, class, gender or any
other attribute.
· The needs of future generations are
reflected in current policies.
· Economic and social policies are
responsive to people’s needs and
aspirations.
· Economic and social policies aim at
eradicating poverty and expanding the
choices that all people have in their lives.
But it is also about protecting human
rights, promoting wider participation in the
institutions and rules that affect people’s
lives and achieving more equitable economic
and social outcomes. Thus governance for
Good governance is concerned not just with
efficient, equitable outcomes but also with
fair processes. Governance for Good
governance must be democratic in substance
and in form by the people and for the
people. Political freedom and participation
are part of Good governance, both as
development goals in their own right and as
means for advancing Good governance.
Political freedom and the ability to
participate in the life of one’s community
are capabilities that are as important for
Good governance as being able to read and
write and being in good health. People
without political freedom-such as being able
to join association s and to from and
express opinions have far fewer choices in
life. And being able to participate in the
life of one’s community commanding the
respect of others and having a say in
communal decisions is fundamental to human
existence. That political freedom and
participation are crucial to Good governance
is not always well understood. Indeed, there
is a widespread misperception that Good
governance is only about economic and social
outcomes such as reducing
Respect for human dignity implies commitment
to creating conditions under which
individuals can develop a sense of
self-worth and security. True dignity comes
with an assurance of one’s ability to rise
to the challenges of the human situation.
Such assurance is unlikely to be fostered in
people who have to live with the threat of
violence and injustice, with bad governance
and instability or with poverty and disease.
Eradicating these threats must be the aim of
those who recognize the sanctity of human
dignity and of those who strive to promote
Good governance. Development as growth,
advancement and the realization of potential
depends on available resources-and no
resource is more potent than people
empowered by confidence in their value as
human beings. The concept of Good governance
is no longer new. But some analysts still
consider its aspirations bold and daring
some might say overwhelming and foolhardy.
The problems are innumerable, forever
changing and forever the same-a complex,
fluid spectrum of social, economic and
political issues that is impossible to grasp
entirely. That is defies delimitation is the
core of the challenge posed by the task of
Good governance. It demands constant effort
and capacity for rethinking, flexibility and
fast reactions. The process of Good
governance calls for human resolve and
ingenuity. Hopeless, helpless people
stripped of their dignity are hardly capable
of such activities. And so we return to the
link between Good governance and human
dignity. Good governance encompasses all
aspects of human existence. It is generally
accepted that its scope includes political
and social rights as well as economic
ones-but the different rights are not always
given the same weigh. for example, some
people still claim that humanitarian aid and
economic assistance cannot wait for
political and social progress. This
insidious idea creates dissonance between
complementary requirements. If the people
that aid targets are not empowered, it
cannot achieve more than a very limited,
very short-term alleviation of problems
rooted in long-standing social and political
ills. After all, Good governance is not
intended to produce impotent objects of
charity. Merely providing them with a
certain material sufficiency is not enough
to win them over to peace and unity. Their
potential for Good governance has to be
realized and their human dignity respected
so that they can gain the skills and
confidence to build a world strong and
prosperous in harmonious diversity. Though
these are important for Good governance, its
aim is much broader-to promotes the freedom,
well being and dignity of people everywhere.
Economic growth of the Good governance index
(HDI)-itself only a partial measure of the
economic and social dimensions of Good
governance-has contributed to this
misperception because it leaves out so many
aspects of Good governance.
As the first Good governance Repot said in
1990, “People are the real wealth of a
nation.”3 People are not only the
beneficiaries of economic and social
progress, the are also its agents, both as
individuals and both as individuals and by
making common causes with others. That are
one-reason strategies for promoting Good
governance having traditionally emphasized
investing in education and health and
promoting equitable economic growth. These
are two pillars of development because they
mobilize individual agency by strengthening
productive capacities. a third pillar of a
21st century Good governance strategy:
promoting participation promotes collective
agency as well as individual
agency-important because collective action
through social and political movements has
often been a motor of progress for issues
central to Good governance: protecting the
environment promoting gender equality,
fostering human rights. In addition,
participation and other Good governance
gains can be mutually reinforcing. Political
freedom empowers people to claim their
economic and social rights, while education
increases their ability to demand economic
and social policies that respond to their
priorities.
Putting participation at the heart of Good
governance strategies raises a question
about the scope of Good governance. Good
governance is certainly broader than
education and health. Many other
capabilities are also important in expanding
human choices. But public policy is about
setting priorities. And the Good governance
approach requires deciding which
capabilities are most important for public
policy. The HDI has reinforced the narrow,
oversimplified interpretation of the Good
governance concept as being only about
expanding education, health and decent
living standards. This has obscured the
broader, more complex concept of Good
governance as the expansion of capabilities
that widen people’s choices to lead lives
that they value. Despite careful efforts to
explain that the concept is broader than the
measure, Good governance continues to be
identified with the HDI-while political
freedoms, participating in the life of one’s
community and physical security are often
overlooked. But such capabilities are as
universal and fundamental as being able to
read or to enjoy good health. All people
value them and without them other choices
are foreclosed. They are not included in the
HDI because they are difficult to measure
appropriately, not because they are any less
important to Good governance must be
universally valued by people the world over.
Second, it must be fundamental in the sense
that the lack of it would close off many
options in life. Other than that, the basic
concept o Good governance has remained
open-ended. Good governance strategies
emphasized the need to reallocate public
investments in favor of Good governance
priorities, especially the two pulsars of
expanding primary health care and education
and promoting pro-poor growth. Changes in
the world have shifted Good governance
priorities and made political freedom,
participation and collective action much
more important as public policy issues.
Alongside the economic entrepreneurship that
drives markets, social entrepreneurship now
drives policy debates on issues that matter
for people. In addition, consensus is
emerging on the importance of collective
action by people and civil society groups in
shaping the course of Good governance. Other
capabilities might be considered important
today-such as personal security or the
capability to be free from physical danger
or violence.
Democratic principles follow naturally and
inescapably from this vision of Good
governance. The word democracy, from the
Greek, means “rule by the people”. It sums
up well the Good governance approach to
governance because it expresses the idea
that people come first: governance must
conform to the needs of people, not vice
versa. Whether there can be such a thing as
“ will of the people” in a world with
disparate and competing interests, the basic
democratic principle-of the equal concern
for all people in the formation of
governance structures-captures a key part of
what Good governance should be about. The
democratic system of voting in elections
adds another crucial element of governance
from a Good governance standpoint, because
elections are the paradigm of enforceable
accountability. When a government fails to
live up to the needs and desires of the
people the people can throw it out of
office. No form of accountability is more
direct. There is also no more egalitarian
form of participation. The principle of” one
person, one vote” gives every individual an
equal say in the choice of government-in
theory if not in practice. Other forms of
participation can also be important for
ensuring the accountability of state and
non-state actors when, for one reason or
another, the ballot box fails to do the job.
But there is always the risk that particular
groups and interests will wield undue
influence, as those with more resources, or
simply more determination, impose their
views.
It would be a mistake to equate democracy
with regular election and to fall into the
fallacy of “electoralism”. Some analysts
consider the mare fact of elections a
sufficient condition for fair and free
elections are regularly held all other
democratic institutions and practice will
naturally follow. But democracy also
requires functional institutions. It
requires a legislature that represents the
people, not one controlled by the president,
Prime Minister, bureaucrats or the military.
It requires an independent judiciary that
enforces the rule of law with equal concern
for all people. It requires well-functioning
political parties and electoral systems. It
requires security forces that are
professional, politically neutral and serve
the needs of people. It requires security
forces that are professional, politically
neutral and serve the needs of people. It
requires an accessible media that is free,
independent and unbiased, not one controlled
by the state or by corporate interests. And
it requires a vibrant civil society, one
that can play a watchdog role on government
and interest groups-and provide alternative
forms of political participation. These
institutions, underpinned by democratic
values and respect for human rights, provide
checks and balances against the risks of
tyranny-and of populism, because in
democracies populist politicians can
mobilize support by using propaganda and
appeals to racism and other forms of
intolerance.
In democratic societies people participate
in the public sphere in many ways-debating
issues with friends and neighbors, writing
to newspapers on the rights and wrongs of
government policies, marching in protests,
becoming members of political parties or
trade unions-giving them a say in the
decisions that affect their lives.
Participation involves engaging in
deliberative processes that can bring
people’s concerns to the fore. Open space
for free political debate and the diverse
ways in which people can express their views
are the essence of democratic life and are
what make decision making work in
democracies. In representative systems of
government, decision-making is delegated to
officials. But informed decisions require
input from the people affected by them and
cannot rely solely on “expert knowledge”.
Democracies take different shapes and
forms-because political systems vary, they
may be “differently democratic” on many
fronts. For the world’s parliamentarians the
essence of democracy lies in its basic
principles. It is the only political regime
compatible with Good governance in its
deepest sense, because in democracy
political power is authorized and controlled
by the people over whom it is exercise. The
most benign dictatorship imaginable would
not be compatible with Good governance
because Good governance has to be fully
owned. Democracy is also the only political
regime that respects open contests for power
and is consistent with the respect and
promotion of all human right-civil,
cultural, economic, political and social.
Democracy is a universally recognized ideal,
based on values common to people everywhere
regardless of cultural, political, social or
economic differences. As an ideal, democracy
aims to protect and promote the dignity and
fundamental rights of the individual,
instill social justice and foster economic
and social development. Democracy is a
political system that enables people to
freely choose an effective, honest,
transparent and accountable government.
Democracy is based on two core principles:
participation and accountability. Everyone
has the right to participate in the
management of public affairs. Like-wise,
everyone has the right to access
in-formation on government activities, to
petition government and to week redress
through impartial administrative and
judicial mechanisms. Genuine democracy
presupposes a genuine partnership between
men and women in conducting the affairs of
society. Democracy is also inseparable from
human rights and founded on the primacy of
the law, for which judicial institutions and
independent, impartial, effective oversight
mechanisms are the guarantors. A parliament
representing all parts of society is
essential. It must be endowed with
institutional powers and practical means to
express the will of the people be
legislating and overseeing government
action. A key feature of the exercise of
democracy is holding free, fair regular
elections based on universal, equal, secret
suffrage.
An active civil society is also essential.
The capacity and willingness of citizens to
influence the governance of their societies
should not the taken for granted, and is
necessary to develop conditions conducive to
the genuine exercise of participatory
rights. Society must be committed to meeting
the basic needs of the most disadvantaged
groups to ensure their participation in the
workings of the democracy. Indeed, the
institutions and processes essential to any
democracy must include the participation of
all members of society. They must defend
diversity, pluralism and the right to be
different within a tolerant society.
Democracy must also be recognized as an
international principle, applicable to
international organizations and to states in
their international relations. Democracy is
always a work in progress, a state or
condition constantly perfectible. Sustaining
democracy means nurturing and reinforcing a
democratic culture through all the means
that education has at its disposal. Some
researchers argue that democracies are
better guarantors of property rights, than
no democracies and that enforcing property
rights and contracts is essential for
investment and growth. Democracies also
appear to be better at managing and
consolidating economic reforms, because
democracies are better at winning the
support of groups that lose out from
reforms. Democracy increases human capital
accumulation and lowers income inequality,
increasing growth, but it also lowers
physical capital accumulation and raises
government consumption, and raises
government consumption. One striking finding
is that fertility rates are significantly
lower in democracies at all income levels,
and they go up and down as country
transition between dictatorships and
democracies. This has strong implications
for women’s well being. Even if democracy
has no effect on aggregate GDP growth, in
may affect per capita GDP growth. Another
robust finding is that while the economic
performance of dictatorships varies from
terrible to excellent, democracies tend to
cluster in the middle. No democracy has ever
performed as badly as the worst
dictatorships. The same is true for poverty
reduction. Thus democracy appears to prevent
the worst outcomes, even if it does not
guarantee the best ones.
Modernization theory holds that the
conversion to democracy is an inevitable
result of economic development, making
richer countries more likely to transition
to democracy. But the evidence does not
support this: middle-income countries have
been more likely than poor or rich countries
to move from dictatorships to democracies,
the level of economic development has no
significant effect on the rate of change to
democracy for any of seven measures of
democracy. Democracy expands political
freedom, a desirable out come in itself. But
democratic institutions and processes can
also contribute to development, especially
Good governance. Competition for political
power through elections and other features
of democracy makes politicians more likely
to respond to people’s needs and
aspirations. It can also help manage
conflict and promote stability.
In democracies people have a voice
underpinned by freedom of speech and
thought, freedom of information, free and
independent media and open political
debate-that allows them to be heard in
public policy-making. Public pressure can
influence the decisions and actions of
public officials as well as private agents,
as with environmental pollution or abusive
labor practices. These democratic processes
are clearly related to three aspects of
development. First, democracies are better
than authoritarian regimes at managing
conflicts, because the political space and
the institutions that provide for open
contests give opponents hope that change is
possible without destroying the system.
Socio-political unrest and handovers of
power occur more often in democracies than
in dictatorships, but they do not disrupt
development. Democracies experienced twice
as many riots and demonstrations and three
times as many labor strikes. But such events
as well as changes in government-did not
slow economic growth in democracies.
Democracies can mitigate internal conflicts
so that they do not develop into political
crises and economic turmoil. Second,
democracies are better at avoiding
catastrophes and at managing sudden
downturns that threaten human survival. As
Amartya Sen has argued, democratic
institutions and processes provide strong
incentives for governments to prevent
famines. Without opposition parties,
uncensored public criticism and the threat
of being thrown out of office, rulers can
act with impunity. Without a free press, the
suffering from famine in isolated rural
areas can be invisible to rulers and to the
public. “Famines kill millions of people in
different countries of the would, but they
don’t kill the rulers, the kings and the
presidents, the bureaucrats and the bosses,
the military leaders and the commanders
never are famine victims.” Politics are
incentives in democracies also seem to help
societies avoid other disasters, especially
economic ruin and the collapse of
development. The worst economic crises in
democracies have been much less severe than
the worst under dictatorships. Third,
democracies help spread the word about
critical health issues, such as the negative
implications for women of a large number of
births, the benefits of breast feeding and
the dangers of unprotected sex in the
context of HIV/AIDS. In these areas open
dialogue and public debate can disseminate
information and influence behavior. Free,
open public debates are the cornerstone of
what Amartya Sen calls the “constructive
role” that democracies can play in promoting
development.
When more than growth is considered,
democratic institutions and processes
contribute to development. Social injustices
are widespread in democratic and
authoritarian regimes alike, whether
deliberate or otherwise in the allocation of
public services or in discrimination against
ethnic minorities, women the elderly and
others continues even in long established
democracies, as. Political incentives to
respond to the needs of ordinary people may
be offset by incentives to respond to the
demands of the powerful or the wealthy. Much
is known about how to promote equitable
development that benefits poor people:
widening access to credit, reforming land
ownership, investing in basic social
services for all, promoting the informal
sector, following sound macroeconomic
policies. But too often such policies are
not adopted because of systematic biases
that protect the interests of elites. Around
the world, public spending is often skewed
in favor of rich people. Moreover, taxation
and spending policies are not more
progressive in the countries with the
highest income inequalities. Bangladesh have
huge, often growing inequalities in income,
wealth, social advantage and power. So,
while democracy can promote equitable
development, the goals of democracy and
equity should be considered largely
independent with both requiring dedicated
effort and political will. Democracy does
not automatically secure equitable social
and economic development, but poverty does
not prevent democracy from taking root.
Democracy has intrinsic value for Good
governance because it has strong links to
political and civil freedoms and can
contribute to social and economic
development. But these links are not
automatic, and strengthening them is the
challenge of democratic governance-making
democratic institution serve Good
governance. Democracy and Good governance
have something else in common. They are both
more a journey than a destination, a promise
rather than a list. Societies can be more or
less democratic, just as people can have
broader or more constrained choices to lead
lives they value. But there is no defined
end point. No society is ever completely
democratic or fully developed. What matters
is moving forward, and not slipping back.
People everywhere want to determine their
destiny. The kind of democracy they choose
need not follow a particular model. The
model must be adapted to local circumstances
and history. But everywhere, democracy
requires a long process of political
development. It needs basic institutions,
formal and informal, of the state and
outside it. It will not thrive without the
spread of democratic culture-of values and
principles that guide the behavior of
individuals and groups. Threats to democracy
come not only from political parties that
are personalized and unable to represent
people, but also from intolerance, extremism
and a lack of respect for human rights and
human dignity. Priorities for advancing
democratic principles vary according to the
social context, just as priorities for Good
governance vary over time and across
communities. The promise of democratic
governance in a 21st century world can not
depend simply on making state institutions
function better. The nation-state is still a
powerful force shaping individual lives, and
in most cases it is the most important. As
people’s lives become more interdependent,
democratic principles of participation and
equal concern for al must be reflected in
the way that these new actors structure
their institutions and in the way that rules
are formulated and implemented. Democratic
governance in this fast changing environment
is more than people having the right to
vote. It must be about strengthening
democratic institutions so that they keep
pace with the changing distribution of
economic and political power. And it must be
about promoting democratic Governance that
make participation and public accountability
possible even when the relevant power and
processes lie outside the for mal
institutions of the state.
In earlier times there were lengthy
discussions on whether one country or
another was yet “fit for democracy”. That
changed only recently with the recognition
that the question was itself wrong-beaded: a
country does not have to be judged fit
democracy, rather it has to become fit
through democracy. This is a truly momentous
change. But the recent mixed experience with
democracy in these countries and around the
world-shows that the process of deepening
democracy and making it works for people has
barely begun. One reason is that many
countries that embraced democracy have
suffered reversal, while many others have
limited political competition and continuing
abuse of political and civil rights. Then
there’s the disturbing spread of “illiberal”
democracies, where elected governments act
the same as their authoritarian
predecessors, depriving citizens of human
rights and ignoring constitutional limits on
power. They do not seem to be transitioning
anywhere. Even where democracy is more
firmly established, people are disappointed
by the economic and social results. Many
fought for and won-democracy in the hope of
greater social justice, broader political
participation and peaceful resolution of
violent conflicts. Rightly or wrongly, they
expected democracy to bring more effective
development.
Now, in Bangladesh, 30 years later,
democracy has not produced dividends in the
lives of ordinary people in too many
countries. Income inequality and poverty
have risen sharply. Poverty has continued to
increase in a more democratic. The so called
democratic regimes seem no better equipped
to tackle the region’s high poverty and
inequality than their authoritarian
predecessors. Political instability and
violence have also marred democratic
transitions. Perhaps most serious, people in
Bangladesh seem to have lost confidence in
the effectiveness of their governments and
often seem to be losing faith in democracy.
More than 70% complain of increasing
poverty, crime, corruption and drug
trafficking and addiction go unheard and
have reduced faith in governments. A recent
survey asked more than 5,481 people in
Bangladesh, “Would you say that your country
is government by the will of the people?”
Less than 10% said yes. The survey also
asked, “Does government responds to the will
of the people?” Only 6% said that it did.
For some people these disappointments mean
that democracy is incompatible with economic
and social development. But history also
teaches that democracy, in itself, does not
guarantee greater social justice, faster
economic growth or increased social and
political stability. The links between
democracy and Good governance can be strong
but they are not automatic. The best way to
achieve this is by strengthening democratic
institutions and promoting democratic
Governance.
The underprivileged and disadvantaged people
anguished by its journey through the 20th
century, see their country marred by
bloodshed, calamities and discriminations.
They are eager for a better future in the
new century a future guided by justice
illuminating the gloomy skies of the past
and present and based on the dignity and
rights of all human beings. Much has been
said about the pains and sufferings of
humankind. Too often have victims of all
ages paid the price for the power, wealth
and deceptions of a privileged few. In one
corner of the world people ma have attained
acceptable living conditions. Yet the
rupture between form and content and the
ensuing spiritual anguish have tormented
their lives. People struggle with a
multitude of afflictions ranging from
poverty, ignorance and exclusion to
undemocratic rulers who are often
subservient to the world’s major powers.
Over the past century democracy evolved as a
value, inspiring new models of governance.
In an age of awakening for people and
nations, rulers must come to terms with this
value-and allow human beings to realize
liberty, spirituality and dignity.
The main features of democracy-which should
be clearly distinguished from its various
manifestations-include people’s right to
determine their destinies; the emanation of
authority, particularly political authority,
from the free will and choice of the people
and its submission to their continued
scrutiny. No single form of democracy in the
context of spirituality and morality may
usher in yet another model of democratic
life. Democratic principles have become the
criteria for good governance domestically.
They deserve to become the new norm
governing global interactions. Thus the
exigencies of a few power holders should not
supersede the interests of humanity through
now-familiar practices of endorsing
undemocratic governments, unresponsive to
the will and needs of their people, and
applying double and multiple standards in
response to incidents around the globe. The
structure of power in our contemporary world
must be reformed. In a global society whose
constituents are nations with equal rights
and dignity-much like equal individuals
within nations-divers cultures and
civilizations should work together to build
a moral, humane world with liberty and
progress for all.
The global community ultimately requires the
emergence of a responsive moral society,
avoiding the use of force and coercion in
national and international disputes. Values
and norms that are not codified into laws,
and laws that lack enforcement mechanisms,
will have no tangible effect. Thus
globalization is intertwined with the
articulation of new collective rights and
ethics, and the ensuing impact on national
and international norms and institutions.
The world’s future belongs to democracy at
all levels of governance, advancing ethical,
legal and political values based on dialogue
and the free exchange of ideas and cultures.
Let us advance the United Nations to promote
the equitable participation of all nations
and civilizations in tomorrow’s global
governance.
If democracies are not always responsive to
the need and concerns of ordinary people,
how can they be made to work better? The
answer turns on whether people can go beyond
simply expressing their views and
preferences to check the power of rulers and
influence decisions. Accountability is about
power-about people having not just a say in
official decisions but also the right to
hold their rulers to account. They can
demand answers to questions about decisions
and actions. And they can sanction public
officials or bodies that do not live up to
their responsibilities. Today the insistence
that public officials be held accountable is
extending to corporations, multinational
organizations and others who have more power
in public decision-making. Because of their
influence over the lives of people and
communities, they are holders of the public
trust-and so answerable for their actions to
national legislatures and to the public.
Accountability means different things in
different contexts. Often the concern is
with sanctions against legal wrongdoing:
when a corporation violates environmental
pollution standards, for example. If a
company can pollute its environment with
impunity, there is no accountability because
national laws and regulations are weak or
poorly enforced. In other cases the concern
may be to sanction teachers, doctors and
others who are not meeting minimum
professional standards. All these kinds of
accountability are central to democratic
governance-to ensuring that the holders of
the public trust are acting effectively and
fairly. In democracies, people can demand
accountability in two ways: through action
by civil society and through structures of
representation and delegation. But apart
from elections, most formal mechanisms of
accountability are delegated. The most
important are the checks and balances
between the judiciary, legislature and
executive-and specialized and independent
oversight entities such as human rights
commissions, electoral commissions, public
service commissions, ombudspersons, auditors
general and anticorruption bodies.
The problem is, democratic institutions in
Bangladesh, a democracy in is youth, are
overburdened and lack the means to do their
jobs. Political parties are disorganized.
Representatives cannot keep in close contact
with their constituents. Oversight and
regulatory agencies lack will-trained staff.
Bureaucrats are zealously guarding their way
of command as they have an upper hand in
every decision making. Resource constraints
are not the only institutional weakness.
Sometimes national institutions are
ineffective because real power lies
elsewhere. In a more integrated country,
weak and indebted people have to remain
absent as vast areas of policy-making over
which they have no control with real actors.
Even where arrangements for accountability
exist, they do not function well in many
democracies. They do not promote the
interests of most people. And they do an
even poorer job of protecting the interests
of minorities, women and poor people. There
are two main reasons: corruption and elite
captures and subvert Democratic
institutions. The people in democratic
institutions have inadequate reach, and
there are gaps in democratic practice.
Corruption, abuses of power, intimidations
by criminal elements-all weaken democratic
accountability. Oversight and regulatory
agencies may also fail to act when they have
been captured be political or special
interests. Judicial systems often seem more
diligent in prosecuting crimes committed by
poor people than crimes against them.
Surveys of poor people find that at best,
the police and judiciary are considered
unresponsive-at worst, as aggressive abusers
of judicial rights. A recent World Bank
survey found that around the world, poor
people often view police as:
· Unresponsive-absent when need, coming only
when someone has been killed.
· Corrupt-making false arrests, accusations
and imprisonments, with release conditioned
enlarge bribes; stealing money from
children; threatening, blackmailing and
extorting citizens; using illegal drugs;
conniving with criminals.
· Brutal-harassing street vendors;
confiscating identification documents;
raping women who register complaints;
beating up innocent people; torturing and
killing homeless boys.
Judicial systems reinforce these biases by
failing to punish police abuses. Corruption
can also subvert oversight by police
complaint authorities, ombudspersons,
independent judicial commissions and
national human rights commission. A police
commander was accused of the killing. In the
course of his trial, six prosecution
witnesses were murdered. A study of land
disputes found that gender bias and
corruption routinely lead local tribunals to
fail to uphold women’s land rights in
disputes with male relatives over the sale
of family and homestead land. These disputes
often involve adult sons or male relatives
harassing elderly widows to relinquish the
land they have inherited from their
husbands, or husbands selling family land
without consulting their wives. Routinely
faced with officials’ demands for “informal”
payments, women who tried to pursue their
cases were generally unable to out bribe
their male relatives. In some cases land
sellers colluded with members of the village
council.
The gender bias and corruption are not
checked by type of accountability. The
electoral system is particularly inadequate
because women face many obstacles to winning
seats on local village councils. Payoffs
flowed into all levels of the administrative
hierarchy, almost guaranteeing that
supervisors would not penalize junior
officers for failing to enforce regulations.
Subordinates returned the favor by not
blowing the whistle on those higher up.
Transparency International Bangladesh, in a
2000 study of the nation’s banking industry,
found that people getting credit from the
formal banking sector had to pay a direct
bribe equal to 2-20% of the loan value. The
higher percentages were extorted from
uneducated rural applicants, partly because
the bribes were being shared with government
officials reviewing the loans. Worse,
borrowers often paid up to half of a loan’s
value to secure a promise from branch
managers that the loan would not have to be
repaid, a promise often breached. When the
supposed beneficiaries are left with little
choice but to collude in bribery, it
undermines their willingness to protest-and
corruption becomes harder to expose.
Judicial proceedings can also be undermined,
providing little protection to ordinary
people, especially poor people. Judicial
systems are often inaccessible. They use
official language that many people con not
speak or write. And too often they are open
to bribes. Where victims have no judicial
recourse, their abusers often go
unpunished-especially when they are members
of the police. Those minorities, poor people
and other marginalized groups are
disproportionately the victims of physical
abuse and other mistreatment by the police.
Gender bias in judicial proceedings is
another problem. Male-dominated village
councils systematically fail to uphold the
rights of women. Electoral processes can be
subverted by fraud. Opposition candidates
charging fraud and irregularities have
contested numerous elections. Money in
Governance is especially serious because it
can distort democratic institutions at every
level. It can distort the election process
and the extent to which elected leaders
represent their constituents. And it can
distort parliamentary Governance and the
functioning of the judiciary and the
executive. This problem has recently reached
the top of the political agenda in many
countries, often as a result of scandals at
the highest levels of government. In several
countries politicians have been charged with
accepting money from criminals, for their
private benefit or for campaign purposes.
Senior politicians fro all the main
political parties allegedly disregarded
campaign financing laws. The scandal
prompted the passage of campaign
contribution laws meant to prevent political
financing abuse.
Electoral processes cannot operate without
financing. But where money plays a decisive
role in Governance, it turns unequal
economic power into unequal political
advantage and undermines the principle of
“one person, one vote”. The problem is not
new. But the soaring cost of elections has
almost certainly made the situation worse.
Though a large campaign budget does not
guarantee success, it is important in many
contests: Such costs make for an uneven
playing field in political contests because
they make it almost impossible for an under
funded candidate to enter a race. These
costs also increases politicians’ dependence
on certain sources of financing, leaving the
democratic system vulnerable to the undue
influence of special interest
groups-particularly corporate interests.
Even well functioning formal structures of
participation and accountability are at best
only blunt instruments. Elections and other
formal checks enable citizens only to end
the tenure of politicians who abuse their
mandates. And joining political parties,
seeking to influence their agendas and
voting in elections have rarely been enough
to safeguard the rights of women, minorities
and poor people. Nor do these mechanisms
have the reach to tackle injustices that
affect people daily lives. Even repeated
parliamentary questioning had not gone to
the heart of the problem, which was that
elites had captured the program and
distorted it to their won ends. One solution
to such problems is to decentralize power to
lower levels of government bringing it
closer to the people. But local officials
are no more immune to elite capture than
officials in central government. Indeed, far
from strengthening local democracy,
decentralization can actually reinforce the
power and influence of local elite. In these
circumstances citizens may have more luck
with officials who are farther away. A
recent survey of 12 countries found that in
only half was there any evidence-some quite
limited that decentralization empowers more
people, reduces poverty, enhances social
progress or mitigates spatial inequality.
Decentralization helps poor people most when
local Governance is democratic, with strong
structures and open participatory practices.
Why do business interests influence public
policy in democracies. Sometimes it is a
matter of corrupt public officials seeking
personal gain. But two other factors are
also at work. First, governments serve the
public interest by promoting businesses,
which create jobs and generate economic
growth. Policies that discouraged the
success of businesses could not only
undermine national economies but could also
drive businesses overseas. Second,
businesses tend to command resources and
access unmatched by other groups-whether
representing workers, consumers or
environmental cause.
In Bangladesh corporate contributions and
lobbying are prominent features of the
political landscape.
Corporate donations and lobbies often drown
out the voices of workers, consumers, women,
environmentalists and other interest and
citizen groups. For example, show how the
concerns of local people, intellectuals,
environmentalists and other groups are often
ignored until they develop into protests and
major confrontations. Widespread suspicion
and scorn of corporate conduct and higher
expectations of corporations’ mars social
responsibility. Almost four out of five
respondents held companies responsible for
public health and safety. Two-thirds said
that companies are responsible for bribery
and corruption. More than half the people
surveyed said that business did not pay
enough attention to its social
responsibilities. People are increasingly
concerned that corporations are not held
accountable for their actions, either
because laws are weak or are weakly
enforced. Indeed, even when domestic
legislation is adequate, it is often not
implemented.
Donations to politicians and political
parties are only one way for businesses to
influence policies. Corporate engage in a
broad range of activities to ensure that
their views get a hearing and influence
policy. They draft and submit legislation,
offer testimony and participate in
consultation. They also influence how
policies are applied-by negotiating
implementation schedules, supporting certain
nominees for official appointments and
influencing the judiciary through briefing
seminars. Reforming political financing is
crucial, and should include:
· Increasing transparency and disclosure of
the sources of all election, party and
candidate financing.
· Setting clear limits on spending as well
as on contributions-by level and by source.
· Providing public funding for candidates
and parties.
Initiatives can also address the flip side
of the coin, by introducing norms for
socially responsible corporate behavior in
political activity. More responsible
political activity includes:
· Transparency, with corporations making
clear their political activities.
· Accountability, with corporations making
an effort to respond to public concerns.
· Consistency, with corporations making
their positions consistent with those of
groups that advocate on their behalf, such
as industry associations or “front groups”.
The most effective and ambitious approach
would be for corporate interests to get out
of Governance altogether. In all likelihood
this would require legislation because all
businesses would need to act simultaneously.
Only if accompanied by strong support to
community groups, decentralization can
empower ordinary people. Thus formal
structures of accountability in democracy
are strong in theory but are often
undermined by self-perpetuating
concentrations of power and influence. In
some countries the same Prime ministers have
alternated at the helm for decades, and
dynastic Governance continues. Despite
democratic upheavals and some inroads into
Governance by underrepresented groups,
elites hold on to state power, and unequal
power structures prevail. Breaking such
vicious circles will require strengthening
democratic institution and state capacities.
But that is only part of the solution.
Political pressure also has to come from
outside formal structures, through the
emergence of more vibrant democratic
Governance.
Bangladesh recently took steps towards
democratization have yet to shake off the
legacies of authoritarian pasts, and
democratic institutions and practices have
yet to take root. Representative processes
appear to be in crisis even in
well-established democracies. Countries can
start to restore public trust in
representative structures and reduce the
concentration of political power by:
· Developing stronger vehicles for formal
political participation and representation
through political parties and electoral
systems.
· Strengthening checks on arbitrary power by
separating powers among the executive,
judiciary and legislature, and by creating
effective independent entities.
· Decentralizing democratically: devolving
pore from the central government to
provinces and villages, underpinned by
stronger local democratic institutions and
practices.
· Developing free and independent media.
A well functioning democracy depends on
well-functioning political parties
responsive to people but new democracies
mean new parties. These parties are not yet
able to fulfill there their traditional
functions of political education,
mobilization and representation of diverse
interests. In many countries opposition
parties disappear between elections, while
ruling parties behave like they used to
under single-party systems. A dearth of
public funding and limits on fundraising
leave parties dependent on a few wealthy
individuals to finance their activities and
campaigns. And with perks and patronage
flowing from ruling parties, politicians are
increasingly switching party affiliation
“crossing the carpet” to join the winning
party. Quotas are designed to facilitate
women’s access to elected office. But
increasing women’s political participation
requires a long-term strategy for changing
log-standing practices that keep women out
of Governance. Such change cannot be
legislated overnight. Not everyone-including
some women’s rights activists-considers
quotas a sustainable strategy. But without
such radical measures it would be difficult
to achieve the critical mass of women’s
representation needed to foster a new
culture-one that should culminate in the
balanced presence of women both in
parliaments and in the governing bodies of
political parties. Quotas are primarily a
temporary remedial measure, and are no
substitute for raising awareness, increasing
political education, mobilizing citizens and
removing procedural obstacles to women
getting nominated and elected. And being
voted into office is merely the beginning of
women’s struggles for full participation-it
does not mean that they acquire a real
political base and inexperience is a
handicap for new legislators.
So, improving the quality of women’s
participation in policy-making is as
important as increasing the number of women
elected, and man initiatives are under way
to support women once elected. a
non-governmental organization (NGO),
provides training in such areas as
legislative agenda setting, proposal
development, advocacy and participation in
audit and floor deliberations. This training
has helped female legislators in three
provinces pass gender-related ordinances,
such as the creation of crisis centers for
women, and promoted gender-responsive policy
decisions on issues such as violence against
women. Forging links between female
politicians and women’s groups sustains
advocacy initiatives to pass laws that
promote women’s rights. The goal was to
sensitize the women to gender-specific
concerns and to how these concerns can be
addressed through their participation as
advocates or public officials. Too often the
organizational structure of parties is any
thing but participatory. Parties that are
not open and transparent are unlikely to be
democratic in their policy commitments.
Without internal democracy, parties become
individual fiefdoms. Charismatic leadership,
more than party platform, often drives party
loyalty. Creating a culture of democracy in
political parties is thus vital. At the very
least this should involve open, competitive
elections for party leadership.
Elections are complex processes requiring
systematic organization. Improving voter
registration and rolls and setting up
independent electoral commissions are
cornerstones of a free and fair system. The
inclusion of parties and candidates as
stakeholders, monitors and defenders of
elections, and not just as contenders, can
help ensure stability. The media can also
contribute to this effort-diffusing
information, focusing public debate and
increasing civic and voter education. So can
civil society played a central role in voter
education, explaining to citizens their
rights and duties to vote according to their
free will and conscience, the value of
voting in a democracy and the nature of new
election laws. These campaigns also helped
convince citizens of the fairness of the
system, its transparency and the parties and
personalities entering into political life
of the country. Bangladesh is trying to
strengthen systems of representation.
Whether in established or new democracies,
these efforts tend to have some common
elements:
· Improving governance in political parties,
with ethical standards, training, discipline
and better financial management.
· Promoting the participation of minorities
and women. Political parties have been a
major institutional factor behind the
chronic under representation of minorities
and women. The situation is improving, but
at a snail’s pace. Affirmative action is
often needed to overcome entrenched
obstacles. Quotas, either in legislatures or
in parties, have been instrumental in
raising representation. They have been used
in the countries with the highest
representation of women in parliament and
are making changes in countries where female
participation in Governance has historically
been lower.
· Building electoral systems. Many
countries, both long-established and new
democracies, are reforming their electoral
systems.
· Limiting the distorting influence of money
in Governance. Reform of political finance
is under active debate in many countries,
aiming to improve transparency, level the
playing field (by setting limits on spending
and contributions), encourage public
subsidies and grass-roots contributions and
manage undue corporate and business
influences on public policy. IN the wake of
allegations of political corruption a common
response has been new laws-already
introduced in some countries. Elements of
these initiatives include disclosure laws,
spending limits contribution limits, bans on
certain types of donations, direct and
indirect public subsidies for parties and
candidates and subsidies for political
broadcasting. International Institute for
Democracy and Electoral Assistance show that
stricter laws are only a first step and that
when silence, indifference and lack of
technical training accompany political
financing laws, abuses are best able to
flourish.
Democracies suffer reversals when elected
governments are overturned. But may elected
governments have turned authoritarian,
increasingly behaving like their autocratic
predecessors. The keys to preventing such
abuses of power are enlightening the
judiciary and professionalizing the
bureaucracy and the military. Whether the
judiciary can maintain its independence is
often the litmus test for whether
democratically elected rule can avoid
turning autocratic. Indeed, the tug of war
between a judiciary fighting to stay
autonomous and political parties and the
executive is a continuing feature of
political life. Over the decades judiciary
has rebuffed continued encroachments on its
independence. In recent years renewed
judicial activism has vigorously defended
citizens fundamental rights. It has also
safeguarded environmental and other public
goods. And it has tackled issues of
democratic accountability and charges of
corruption in the executive. The attempt was
defeated and the courts ruled that the basic
framework of the constitution could not be
altered. Courts started to hear public
interest litigation involving the human
rights of poor and powerless people,
especially in cases of police brutality and
torture, custodial rape and inhumane
treatment in jails. These cases also
protected such public goods as clean air and
water and uncontaminated blood supplies.
This judicial activism coincided with the
rise of civil society organizations and
social movements dedicated to social justice
and human rights goals. The synergy built
among civil society, reform-minded members
of the middle classes and several supreme
and high court justices like helped advance
these causes. Legal reforms provided for
class action suits on behalf of poor,
oppressed and victimized citizens.
There were countermoves in parliament, which
alleged that the judiciary was encroaching
on legislative and administrative functions
beyond its authority, and that judges were
exploiting recent corruption trials. A
lively debate continues about these
institutions, their development and their
contribution to the vitality of democratic
Governance. In Bangladesh, however,
domination by the executive branch and
excessive influence of security forces,
especially the police remains stubborn
legacies. Shifting to a more balanced
system, with an independent judiciary and
legislature, does not happen overnight. The
legislature often plays a limited role in
policy making, for example, with budgets
discussed only at their final stage. In
Bangladesh the controlling majority often
amends constitutions with out broad debate.
As political pressure mounts to challenge
their power, rulers may try to maintain
their hold on it through, for example,
constitutional amendments that reinforce the
power of the executive. In many countries
bureaucratic rule continues as well, often
conflicting with democratic reforms even in
long established democracies. Civil servants
may not readily adjust to the role of holder
of public trust. Jurisdictional conflicts
between electoral commissions and ministries
of the interior highlight the difficulties
of overcoming bureaucratic rule.
Bangladesh is trying to confront these
problems, with mixed success. In addition to
providing parliaments and judiciaries with
equipment, procedures and adequately trained
professional staff, they are introducing
innovations and structural reforms to
reinforce checks on abuses of power. And
they are strengthening parliamentary
committees to foster more effective
decision-making and to monitor the
executive. Another approach is to strengthen
independent entity especially electoral
commissions and human rights commissions.
All can promote and defend critical reforms
and democratic practices in Bangladesh where
imbalances of power between the executive
and the other branches are sharp and
critical. Independent electoral commissions
play a critical role in ensuring free and
fair elections. An important condition for
their independence is budgetary
independence, best secured by legal
arrangements-and with budgets not only for
elections but also for preparatory
processes, then audited.
In principle, decentralizing power from the
center to provinces, districts or villages
enables people to participate in decision
making more directly. But in reality it can
simply transfer power from one set of elites
to another. Democratic
decentralization-truly giving voice to the
people-requires more than just
decentralizing and devolving power. It also
requires widening participation-especially
by people who are often marginalized, such
as women, minorities and the poor-and
increasing the accountability of public
officials at local levels. This change
dramatically increased the visibility and
extent of popular participation. It also
enabled marginalized groups to enter
political debates-in-fusing new political
resources into the system, enhancing the
legitimacy of state institutions and
bringing a measure of uniformity to the
institutional structure of local governments
all over the country. Political authorities
in several states supported decentralization
through the pan-cheats and effectively
decentralized decision making to local
levels. In some states progress has been
slower in the absence of resource transfers.
The successes have been most pronounced in
states where democratic principles permeate
local political parties and other
institutions and processes and are reflected
in the strong trust people have in them.
Where local hierarchies are more deeply
entrenched, the reform has made less
headway. Some critics say that the local
organizations are too heterogeneous and
disorganized and that they undermine other
civil society organizations, such as labor
unions, that represent people’s interests.
Others say that elites can still hijack the
process. They say that the impact of the law
would have been greater had it been
accompanied be measures to restructure local
party Governance and crack down on local
corruption. They attribute the law’s limited
results to the continuing hold of
patronage-based political systems and
processes in witch decisions are made
without systematic consultation. Still, this
innovative initiative brings civil society
groups more clearly into local governance
and deepens democratic practice.
Perhaps no reform can be as significant for
making democratic institutions work as
reform of the media: building diverse and
pluralistic media that are free and
independent, that achieve mass access and
diffusion, that present accurate and
unbiased information. Informed debate is the
lifeblood of democracies. Without it,
citizens and decision makers are
disemboweled, lacking the basic tools for
informed participation and representation.
Free media play three crucial roles in
promoting democratic governance.
(a) As a civic forum, giving voice to
different parts of society and enabling
debate from all viewpoints, (b) a free press
is probably never more important to
democratic governance than when acting as a
public watchdog, and (c) stimulating debates
on economic policy. Besides media can play
vital role in the following matters of
national interests.
· Monitoring elections: Personnel monitored
the polls and reported irregularities, and
ordinary citizens used the stations to
report suspicious activities. In the past,
citizens could learn about poll results only
through official channels and suspicion was
rife that the official results did not
always reflect votes cast.
· Exposing human rights abuses: A dogged
investigation by media men can expose
unscrupulous political leaders, business
magnets, law enforcing agencies and
financial institutions including the CBAs
ill motivated designs to plunder national
wealth.
· Exposing political corruption: The
investigations revealed death squads,
military involvement in corruption and links
between drug lords and the political
establishment.
· Empowering women: The coalition for women
has raised awareness of women’s rights
through an active partnership with the
media. It has kept women’s issues at the
fore of national debate by providing
speakers for radio, briefing local and
foreign journalists and introducing new
spare supplements and radio and television
programs.
· A mobilizing agent, facilitating civic
engagement among all sectors of society and
strengthening channels of public
participation.
· A watchdog, checking abuses of power,
increasing government transparency and
holding public officials accountable for
their actions in the court of public
opinion.
The past two decades have seen major
advances in the spread of independent media.
Economic and political reforms have loosened
restrictions on the media-including
censorship and ownership controls-and
strengthened constitutional and legal
guarantees of freedom of speech and
information.
In many countries political, economic and
technological forces are leveling the
playing field in the market for ideas,
enabling new voices and viewpoints to be
heard. Most people have many more sources of
information both in quantity and diversity
than they did just 10 years ago. Widely
available information is crucial to
democratic governance because it helps
challenge government authorities and
provokes more balanced debate on problems
and policies. Freedom and diversity are
reinforcing the media’s roles as mobilizing
agents and watchdogs. Still, Bangladesh is a
long way from having a genuinely free and
independent media that can serve democratic
purposes. Few countries have freedom of
information laws, and journalists often work
under strict constraints. Even where press
freedoms are constitutionally protected,
governments have invented new ways to rein
in the press. Journalism also remains a
hazardous occupation. Journalists or their
news organizations were intimidated or
physically attacked-mostly because some
people did not agree with what they have
reported.
In 1994 writer Albert Camus said, “The press
is free when it does not depend on either
the power of government or the power of
money.” To be free and independent and to
produce factual, unbiased information’s, the
media must be free not just from state
control-but also from corporate and
political pressures. With greater media
pluralism comes and expectation of greater
political pluralism in the media and greater
potential for broader, better informed
debate. But commercial and political
pressures still skew the market for ideas.
Liberalization, privatization and new
technology have taken the media out of
government hands and into private hands.
Most of the world’s publishing media are
privately owned the public still. In a few
countries families of influential
politicians are major owners of the media.
Citizens, politicians and journalists are
engaging in lively debates about how the
media’s politicization and poor professional
standards contribute to the deterioration of
democratic life. The media can be subjected
to overtly political aims, compromising
basic professional ethics of providing
unbiased, accurate information. Truth is the
first casualty of war, but the media are
usually the victim, not the aggressors.
Media companies are businesses and can be
expected to behave as such. Hence the
increasing trend towards “infotainment”-the
merging of information and
entertainment-also viewed as a threat by
many. Media companies also have a civic role
as providers of news and information. The
tensions between these two roles will never
be eliminated and the answer to excessive
corporate influence over the news cannot be
a return to excessive control by the state.
Solutions must combine the need to hold the
media accountable and responsible with the
need to keep it free. The media can be free
of both corporate and state control if it
serves the public first and foremost and
follows higher standards of professionalism
and ethics. A range of mechanisms for
promoting higher standards of
professionalism and responsibility do no
depend on restrictive state controls:
· Independent media commissions. There is an
independent media commission which is
authorized “ to take all appropriate
measures to ensure the establishment and
maintenance of the highest journalistic
standards in the mass media.” Using a
combination of moral suasion and
professional goodwill, the commission has
often ruled against the abuse of power by
newspapers and directed them to issue
apologies and retractions.
· Market sanctions voting with the
pocketbook. The public can always withdraw
its support for an offending newspaper or
medium by refusing to buy or view it.
· Self-regulation. Self-regulation includes
professional standards and internal
guidelines by newspapers and news agencies.
Press councils that examine complaints about
media performance are another key element.
There is greater attention to the need to
raise professional standards through codes
of ethics, training, education and a broader
emphasis on quality.
Many of the above elements come together in
Claude Jean Bertrand’s Media Accountability
System (also known as M*A*S), which
emphasizes greater efforts by the media to
develop ethical standards, especially
through open debates with the public. The
system also makes clear that media
responsibility does not derive solely from
institutional efforts. It starts with the
consciences of individual journalists and
must be based on socially accepted norms and
standards of fair conduct. In recent years
there have been positive developments in
this regard: the news media are more willing
to publicly examine press ethics and
performance, and journalism courses are
addressing ethics more often.
Though strengthening democratic institutions
is essential, it is not enough to promote
more effective participation by people and
more responsive decision making by those in
power. An alert citizenry is what makes
democratic institutions and processes work.
Political pressure from below is usually the
most effective trigger of change. Major
advances in Good governance over the past
two centuries the abolition of slavery, the
recognition of equal rights of women, the
advance of democracy itself would not have
been granted from above. They had to be
fought for. While much has been written
about the challenges of creating democratic
institutions, there has been much less
analysis of democratic Governance: the
struggles of poor and marginalized people to
claim their rights and to overcome
institutionalized obstacles. These struggles
depend as much on strengthening civil
liberties, civil society institutions and a
free media as on strengthening political
liberties and political institutions. “It is
quite possible to have accountability in the
high Governance of the state, hones rulers
and free elections, and yet profound
injustice or irresponsibility in the deep
Governance of society, that is, the
relations between rich and poor, powerful
and weak.”
A trend of the past decade is the expansion
of democratic Governance, with a groundswell
of civic activism around the world demanding
greater accountability of government
authorities and of private business and
multilateral organizations. These civil
society actors are using new and innovative
approaches to get their messages heard, and
expanding their role from watchdogs that
monitor to active participants in setting
agendas. One of the more significant
examples is the rise of participatory and
accountable budgeting: civil society
initiatives to scrutinize public spending
and in some cases participate in the
development of official budgets. Few
government decisions mean as much for
ordinary people as those made during the
writing of public budgets-especially for
poor people who rely on “public incomes”
such as schooling, health care, roads, water
supply and electricity. Yet ordinary people
typically have little say in budget for
emulation. In most countries the budget
process is almost exclusively the
prerogative of bureaucrats and the executive
branch. Parliaments also participate, but
often only at the end. And much of the
process is usually shrouded in secrecy
unmatched by any other part of government
decision making aside from national
security.
But recent initiatives by citizen groups to
examine local and central budgets are
helping to open this process to the voices
of ordinary people. Many of these
initiatives start with social audits or
impact evaluations-analyses that elicit
concerns about spending priorities and the
misuse of funds.
Gender responsive budgets are an innovative
new tool that empower women’s organizations
and civil society to hold public spending
accountable to international and national
commitments for promoting gender equality.
Gender responsive budgets were started mint
to assess the impact on gender equity of all
elements of the national budget to expand
participation and accountability in
budgeting, especially in light of
international commitments to promote gender
equality. Over the past decade advocates for
gender equality began using
gender-responsive budgets in a multitude of
ways. Governments initiated some, others
were initiated by civil society groups, yet
parliamentarians initiated others. Most
focus on monitoring, while some engage in
preparatory phases. Most work at the
national levels, where traditional and
oppressive gender relations are stronger.
All point to the effect of this new tool in
stimulating new participatory Governance
challenging the “Power of the purse.” By
linking researchers and members of
parliament, the researchers could be taken
forward into advocacy, while the
parliamentarians would have a solid basis
for their advocacy. From the start the core
members of the initiative were also expected
to draw in others as researchers and
reference people. This and the above
initiative have had some positive effects.
Analysis and Research, a policy research
NGO, have undertaken gender budgeting
projects within their states and
municipalities, evaluating them in light of
decentralization experiences and the
transfer of resources for local budgets.
They have tried to do so by involving civil
society organizations, public servants and
statistical institutions, and have
encouraged public debate on local budget
decisions. Liberal Women’s Foundation a
sister wing of the Institute of Liberal
Democracy brought together women occupying
seats reserved for them, people with
disabilities, youth and workers as well as
women who have won “open” seats, to go
beyond the monitoring of budget allocations
and processes to examine the impact of all
spending and revenue. Monitoring and
analyzing council meetings, holding
workshops and training courses for
delegates, council members and community
leaders, researching participants’
perception of theses processes and
disseminating information through papers,
revising regional or thematic demands and
budget allocations. Although this initiative
is not specifically targeting gender issues,
the participatory process and the research
and advocacy work accompanying it have
highlighted several gender-related concerns
and provide insights for other gender budget
initiatives. These efforts sometimes help
reverse official decisions.
New types of popular participation are
spreading across Bangladesh as civil society
groups go beyond whistle blowing and
protests to take on oversight functions that
are normal the responsibility of state
institutions. Such initiatives have led to
participatory budgeting-more systematic,
institutionalized public participation in
the preparation of budgets, introduced a
process that enables citizens to participate
in preparing municipal budgets. In its first
seven years the process resulted in
remarkable gains in Good governance spending
for poor people. Participatory budget shows
that even the veil of technical complexity
that has protected budgets from open
questioning can be lifted once citizen
groups have time, skills and access to
information. These new forms of people’s
participation-from influencing agendas
through protests to increasing collaboration
in decision making are reinforcing
democratic institutions. E-governance is
another emerging avenue for people’s
participation in Governance, encouraging
more direct citizen engagement with elected
representatives.
Civil society organization offered
suggestions assembly on two occasions. These
initiatives were complemented by others that
broadened the debate on the new constitution
the debate on the new constitution through
mass media campaigns and by public hearings
organized in and all the distends.
These autonomous efforts offer enormous
promise because they offer a more direct
channel of accountability defying
conventional constraints on social action,
which typically require going through
established institutions of accountability.
But that disregard for convention also
raises difficult questions for
accountability and democratic governance. In
particular, the ability of these networks to
inflict large and immediate costs on the
reputations of public and private actors
tends to work against the notion of due
process. Criteria for weighing information
are usually vague and subject to change
without notice, and the scope for malicious
misinformation are enormous. These and other
concerns about the proper roles and
responsibilities of civil society actors
have created demand for these groups to be
more publicly accountable for their
activities: a demand that many are working
to meet. The codes emphasize the importance
of transparency and accountability and the
need to ensure that the NGOs are truly
representative of the people whose lives
they affect.
Expanding political and civic space for
popular social engagement is critical for
deepening democracy and building democratic
governance. Responsibilities for expanding
this space lie both with the state, which
must protect civil and political freedoms,
and with the members or society who engage
in and invigorate this exercise. And while
guaranteeing basic political and civil
freedoms is a crucial first step, many
countries restrict the activities of trade
unions, professional organizations and NGOs.
In some countries NGOs can be banned for
having political aims. And as noted, in many
countries the media are restricted from
voicing dissent or have inadequate
dissemination. Civic activism cannot be said
to have failed just because some actions do
not lead to change. Some initiatives are
bound to fail, just as all but one candidate
will necessarily lose an election. What is
important in democracies is the spread of
democratic practice, where people can voice
their views, influence decisions and monitor
performance against commitments-both
national and international.
Strengthening accountability is central to a
larger process of embedding democratic
values, practices and principles in every
aspect of society-to build strong, durable
and inclusive democracies more responsive
and accountable to ordinary people. But the
gap between democratic aspiration and
practice is wide in long-standing
democracies as well as new ones. The chronic
under representation of women, the neglect
of minority interests and the unaccountable
and untransparent military and civil service
are common issues. Democratic deficits can
mean hollow citizenship. People do not have
fully equal rights and entitlements because
constitutions fail to guarantee them or
because administrative institutions fail to
enforce them. And when there is a lag
between norms and entitlements, rights are
not respected- as is often the case with
discrimination against women.
The Citizens Committee on the Quality of
Democracy was a systematic process to public
deliberation and analysis. It mapped out how
democracy works in everyday life comes close
to their democratic aspirations and where
there are shortfalls. The process first
defined standards for assessing the quality
of democracy-a set of shared democratic
aspirations. A panel of prominent
politicians, academic, business leaders and
others-was established for this purpose,
augmented by surveys and focus group
consultations. This was followed by field
research involving more than 50 researchers
collecting empirical evidence, which panels
of citizens then assessed against the
standards using an objective methodology.
The committee found that people do not
evaluate the quality of democracy as a
whole. Among the peaks are the quality of
the electoral system and the constitutional
review of public polities. Among the valleys
are local governments. The hot spots are the
lack of citizen participation in social and
political organizations and in public
policies, extensive clientelistic practices
in social policy programs and poor treatment
of citizens by bureaucrats. By investigating
democratic aspirations, the committee
brought home an important insight. For
Bangladeshis, democracy is more than a
democratic regime. Although elections and
freedom lie at the democratic core, most
people also believe that democracy is a way
of exercising political power in daily life.
In other words, democracy is a political
regime requiring a particular kind of state
one that protects human rights, ensures
accountability and the rule of law and
treats people with fairness and respect.
Citizens view democracy as a way of
organizing society so that people do not
suffer extreme inequalities that impede the
exercise of their citizenship. The committee
also found stark sub national differences in
the quality of democratic life, underscoring
in the importance of going beyond
conventional nation state approaches to
democracy. These insights call new attention
to the importance of social and economic
inequalities and political participation.
The committee has already left its mark. The
government’s proposal for administrative
reform includes a chapter on the rights of
citizens, based largely on the committee’s
findings on widespread poor treatment by
public official. The audio has also helped
entrepreneurial chambers and trade unions
launch fresh exchanges on the divisive issue
of freedom of organization in private firms.
Moreover, the committee is inspiring other
countries to perform similar exercises.
Democratic realists say that this is to be
expected of representative democracy, which
above all is a system of political
competition, not one intended exclusively to
empower citizens, generate high or direct
participation in government affairs or
produce economic and social justice. And
certainly, democratization does not
guarantee social justice any more than it
guarantees economic growth, social peace,
administrative efficiency, political
harmony, free markets or the end of
ideology. But the institutions, practices
and ideals of democracy have the capacity to
challenge the concentration of political
power and prevent the emergence of tyranny.
Thus they play a crucial role in building
governance that is by the people as well as
for the people.
Good governance in its fullest sense
requires democratic governance with all
people able to participate in the
institutions and decisions that shape their
lives and all those who hold power held
accountable for their actions. Achieving
Good governance also depends on peace and
personal security. In places where
governments have not delivered civic peace
people begin to question whether there is a
trade off between securing peace and
establishing democratic governance. The
challenge of sustaining peace looms large in
many other countries, including many that
triumphantly embraced democracy Building a
functioning state requires a basic level of
security. And by being responsive to the
need for security, democratic governance can
help lay the foundations for maintaining
order and managing development. It follow
that Good governance will be held back in
any country where the police and other
security related institutions hold sway over
democratic institutions or are not
democratically accountable for much of their
power or are fragmented and anarchic. Yet
that is the situation in most developing
countries today. Moreover, security forces
are often largely responsible for
formulating security policy in new and old
democracies alike.
It is no exaggeration to proclaim that at
the beginning of the third millennium, many
signs affirm that Bangladesh is finally on
the wrong path.
· First, recognizing that good governance is
indispensable for Bangladesh’s development.
· Second, accepting regional development as
the core necessary
· Finally, for the first time, sincerely
opening to people oriented politics.
Infrastructure development in broad sense,
education, health, agriculture, the
environment, new information and
communications technology, energy and access
to the markets of developed countries.
Building national capacity to meet these
commitments will require administrative and
civil service reforms, strong parliamentary
oversight, participatory decision making at
all levels effective measures to combat
corruption and comprehensive judicial
reform. By encouraging political pluralism,
free and open elections, civilian control of
the military, a thriving private sector and
the protection of labor unions and other
civil society groups Bangladesh can prosper
in no time. Throughout history and in many
developing countries today, authoritarian
governments have resisted or overturned
moves towards democracy arguing that
democracy is incompatible with public order
and personal security. But the record
suggests that the opposite is true.
Democratic civil control over state security
forces, far from opposing personal security,
is essential to it. Without that controls
the supposed guarantors of personal security
is its greatest threat.
Where governments rely on security for their
power base, security forces are often the
main cause of insecurity for their citizens
and neighboring states. Unchecked and
unaccountable, security institutions often
prey on the most vulnerable members of
society, hampering daily struggles for
survival and other basic freedoms.
Throughout much of Bangladesh there is
widespread torture, intimidation and
harassment of civilians by police on behalf
of ruling regimes. Many police forces are
absent where need, fail to respond to calls
for help or arrive on the scene only when
someone has been killed. Despite all this,
people desperately need the police to
provide basic physical security in their
neighborhoods. Participatory poverty
assessments often find that lack of physical
security is one of poor people’s main
concerns. The irony is that those most in
need of professional, well-functioning
security forces poor and socially excluded
people-are generally the most suspicious of
the services tees public institutions
provide, and not without reason. They
recognize that, all to often, security
forces are behind the proliferation of civil
conflict. Undemocratic governance of
security forces can also distort security
priorities. In may countries a bias towards
military security has led governments to
militarize police forces or to seriously
undermining their capacity to guarantee
people’s safety and security. In Bangladesh,
the police and other security forces have
barely subsistence wages, limited or no
training, corrupt management and high
non-conscience levels. So, economic and
social inequalities translate into large
inequalities in personal security. In
response, poor communities feel that they
must create local militias or even report to
less organized forms of delivering
“justice”. Even in the poor people are much
more likely than rich people to fall victim
to violent crime. Elected leaders in
fledgling democracies often depend on
security forces, in-clouding military units,
to stay in office because those forces are
the most powerful in society. For the same
reason, leaders may actively resist greater
accountability and openness for the
military, because they depend on its power
for their own ends.
Security policies-both internal and external
are at the center of power relations within
and among societies. Yet they are also
usually the area where civil society, the
government and its oversight institutions
have the least say. The lack of transparency
and accountability is particularly
problematic in budgeting, where a select few
individuals in the executive branch make
decisions on security policies and
resources. Key officials in the minister of
finance and other parts of the executive are
often excluded form decision-making or find
their decisions circumvented. Parliamentary
bodies, which may even have oversight
authority in the national constitution-and
the media and civil society are routinely
kept in the dark. Governments and their
security forces have an obligation to
protect the security of their borders and
their people. This perhaps justifies more
confidentiality than applies to other parts
of government. But in democratic systems
there should also be an obligation for
policy-makers and security forces to be
accountable to the public resources. Minor
adjustments can accommodate legitimate needs
for confidentiality without violating the
principles of sound public management.
Effective accountability in security matters
will never materialize if oversight
institutions lack the capacity to assess
security activities. Without that capacity,
a cycle of ignorance will persist. When
legitimate civilian actors are denied
participation or a monitoring role over
security policy-making, they lack detailed
knowledge of security issues. This limited
knowledge then enables security forces to
argue that decision making should rest with
those with relevant knowledge with the
security forces.
Core principles for democratic governance of
the security sector can help governments
balance the need for secrecy with the need
for greater democratic control. But few
countries approach this ideal, and
democratic governance is being held back b a
systematic failure to transform the role of
the military and the police.
In Bangladesh, attempting to achieve
democratic governance of security forces
face three challenges. The first is
establishing direct leadership of security
forces by executive departments, fiscal
oversight by parliament and specialized
committing bodies and monitoring by the
media and civil society. The second
challenge is developing a culture of
professionalism and political neutrality
within security forces. The third is clearly
separating an effective police force from
the military and encouraging community
policing. With the move to democracy, formal
control of security forces is supposed to be
transferred to civil authorities. But real
control and public accountability often lag
far behind. Spending on security forces does
not compete on an equal footing with
spending to meet the basic needs of all
people, particularly the vulnerable.
Democratic governance requires that of
security forces rest on solid legal
foundations, exercised with political
responsibility. Civil authorities need to be
in control, but they also need to give clear
guidance to security forces, working with
them and respecting their expertise. The
quality of leadership in the executive
branch is critical in determining the extent
to which legal and cultural norms for
democratic governance find acceptance.
Efforts to create a security force that
follows democratic principles and sound
public spending will succeed only if a
country’s political and administrative
leadership is committed to creating
effective, accountable institutions and
ensuring that they function well.
Efforts to transform security institutions
must also force change form within. This
requires a shift in internal culture and new
incentives for members to respect democratic
civil authority and promote the public
interest. Senior officers need to take a
firm stand against corruption. They also
need to make clear that they do not tolerate
the diversion of state resources in other
was such as using police for private
purposes. Achieving these goals can be a
matter of professional training. Indeed, in
the long run there is probably no substitute
for military training and broadly based
education that teaches soldiers to respect
human rights and abide by principles of
democratic governance. National military
academies do this, but they need to be tied
to high professional standards for
recruitment, instruction and promotion that
are less prone to political interference and
corruption. Perhaps even more urgent is
professional training of police officers,
which can do much for accountability and
public trust. Induction programmers for
police officers should focus on what it
means to be a police officer in a democratic
society, with special emphasis on policing
by consent. Achieving these goals also
requires sufficient public revenue. Without
appropriate equipment and decent wages,
security forces will suffer from poor
discipline and corruption. For police,
public resources can sometimes be
supplemented by innovative public private
partnerships. Such public-private
initiatives raise that morale of police
officers another element in building a more
effective, corruption-free police force.
Democratic leaders must work to change the
behavior of security forces today especially
by punishing human rights violations and
unprofessional conduct. Professional codes
of police, military and intelligence conduct
and review tribunals within security
services can help in this regard. So can
civilian commissions that investigate
possible excesses. Visitations of human
rights violations often launched by
governments and civil society organizations,
have been important steps towards greater
accountability in the security sector. They
helped expose human rights violations
committed covertly or even openly by
security forces. Over the medium and long
term, judicial reform is also critical in
enforcing accountability in security forces.
Police action against crime can not promote
personal security if judges can be bribed
easily or if there are no prisons for
convicted criminals. When privileged
individuals whose appointments are merely
political rewards control judicial systems,
law enforcement is likely to be partial and
rule is more likely to be by law than of
law. When judicial systems fail to perform
basic tasks, including issuing warrants and
other legal orders, police officers often
must resort to illegal actions to perform
regular functions. Corrupt judicial and
penitentiary systems also undermine the
professionalism and credibility of the
security sector if they allow crimes by
soldiers or police officers to go
unpunished.
Such reforms need to be combined with
efforts to enhance the standing and capacity
of the police. Even in communities where
physical abuse and corruption by the police
have been the norm, efforts to build trust
and confidence can foster a new relationship
between the police and the people. One way
is for the police to get involved in the
lives of young people, ethnic minorities and
low-income groups. Another is to support
community policing. Police forces with
officers from diverse backgrounds tend to
respond better to the challenges of diverse
communities. Appointing and training female
police officers increased reports of
violence against women and girls to police
and hospitals.
Such reforms take time and deep political
commitment. For change to be sustained,
democratic leaders must ensure that security
institutions feel ownership in the process.
Such reforms pose unique challenges but also
yield unique benefits-for the security of
citizens and the credibility of
democratizations. Despite many challenges,
strong political leadership and partnerships
with civil society are leading to a less
militarized, more professional police force.
Substantive security sector reform involves
so many deep-rooted aspects of local and
national governance that it can seem like a
hopeless task. It has a political dimension
(civil control of security forces), an
economic dimension (consumption of resources
by security forces), a social dimension
(guaranteeing citizens security) and a
strong institutional dimension (professionalization
of the security sector and institutional
separation of the various actors).
Police reforms, especially those creating
new forces, must foster new relationships
with local communities. Community policing
can overcome mistrust and advance
collaboration between communities and police
by giving people a substantial role in
defining and guiding the performance of
policing. The police stations provided
regular patrol services, while the committee
identified security problems and possible
solutions. The project helped improve the
image of the police force in different areas
of metropolitan cities and its success led
to its expansion in other communities. When
such developments are combined with
committed leadership and an involved civil
society, conditions are ripe for significant
democratic reforms of security forces that
can reinforce broader political
change-especially in countries recovering
from violent armed conflict. The police have
blurred roles in many developing countries.
Police forces that are democratically
accountable, impartial, depoliticized and
composed of different political contingents
and ethnic groups.23 Such forces can emerge
only through effective training-particularly
in the skills of community policing and
other specialized training and through
better ethnic and gender balance. Conflict
is part of every society. The question is,
how can societies give expression to
conflict and provide open political space
for all groups without generating violence.
Democracies are supposed to provide the
answer, with open political debate and open
competition for power. But many well
established democracies have not eliminated
violent conflicts democratic processes have
been ruthlessly undermined by authoritarian,
often rule that squeezes the space for civil
society and democratic Governance. Peace and
personal security are the losers, especially
when the accountability and effectiveness of
security forces are corded.
The alarming number of conflict-prone
countries underscores the need for a broader
approach to conflict prevention indicates
the need for an appropriate mix of
political, security, humanitarian and
developmental responses. Securing a just,
sustainable peace in conflict-prone
situations means building strong,
transparent states with professional,
civilian-led military and police. It means
developing a democratic framework that
tolerates diversity. It means building an
open civil society that promotes democratic
governance and personal security. And it
means instilling in all state
institutions-but especially the security
forces-a culture of democracy rooted in
respect for the rule of law and individual
rights and dignity. This is the essence of
democratic peace building. Antiterrorist
measures taken in response to these and
other new security threats often risk
violating human rights. These make it easier
for them to be violated including the
prohibition of torture and other inhumane
treatment, freedom from arbitrary arrest,
the presumption of innocence, the right to a
fair trial and rights to freedom of opinion,
expression and assembly. Democracies face
difficult challenges in devising legitimate
ways to prevent terrorist and bring the
perpetrators to justice. There are few
simple solutions. But respect for human
rights lies at the heart of what it is to be
a democracy and at the heart of democratic
civil control of the security sector. In
addressing legitimate con cams about public
safety, free societies can not afford to
lose sight of protecting core human
freedoms. The traditional argument against
greater participation and representation is
that they render decision making clumsy and
unworkable. But this view must be set
against a new reality. Achieving deeper
democracy in Bangladesh will require
expanding political space for a range of
civil society actors and including
developing countries more deeply in the
decision making. Efforts to achieve these
goals must confront the realities of the
nation. Whether this can be realized will
largely depend on citizens and governments
in Bangladesh recognizing that reform is in
their interest. But in a more interdependent
world, that interest is becoming more
apparent. International institutions are
promoting democracy and democratic
principles in developing and transition
economies. But they will not succeed without
the natural corollary: greater democracy,
transparency and accountability in the
institutions themselves. This dual process
deepening democracy at the national and
global levels has the potential to transform
the lives of the world’s people.
It would be too difficult to make any
attempts to theories on the political
philosophy of the ‘Democracy, Rule of the
law and Human Rights. But when we speak of
Rule of the people in the political sense of
the term, namely, Freedom, the fundamental
rights and the basic human rights, there can
be no nobler sentiment in us than what was
expressed in the great words of Islamic
Scriptures, “That all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their creator with
certain inalienable rights, that among these
are life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness”.
Man needs the fellowship and services of
other men. It is not life alone that they
desire but a good and worthwhile life. And
it is the function of Governance to assist
men in achieving this good and meaningful
life in society. The democratic process is
designed to determine by popular discussion
and decision the choice of the best means to
achieve the common good. Democracy can never
be sustained without the rule of law, which
is its only safeguard, otherwise democracy
would degenerate into monocracy. Despite all
its shortcomings, democracy is and remains,
as Sir Winston Churchill has so aptly put
it, the least unsatisfactory of all forms of
governments. In the memorable words of the
great American Jurist Justice Frankfurter,
“Democracy is always a beconing goal, not a
safe harbor. For freedom is an unremitting
endeavor, never a final achievement”. That
is why it has been so aptly said that
eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
The political, fundamental and basic human
rights are natural birthrights of every free
citizen and are so fundamental and basic to
the very existence of a civilized society
that they can never be abrogated. The basic
human rights enshrined in the hearts of a
free people are embodied in a constitution
as fundamental rights.
The state exists to promote justice among
men, to help men to become better human
beings, to unleash their creative capacities
for good and to restrain their propensity to
do evil. The despot and a despotic state are
but the end product of a progressive
degeneration that begins when ambition
usurps the rule or reason. The closer the
judgment of the people approximate
unanimity, the greater the degree of consent
secured for any action or policy. The
principle of majority rule never demands
that we abandon all qualitative judgment in
favor of a quantitative method. It would be
dangerous to do so. In that event, it will
be indistinguishable from tyranny and the
tyranny of a majority, as our own history
tells us, is sometimes no less cruel or
unjust indeed, may be more so, than tyranny
of a single individual. What the democratic
form of government demands is not submission
to the will of the majority. We are
obligated to submit to the decision of the
majority not because the decision represents
a numerically superior will but because it
represents the best judgment of the society.
It is not because that the will of many
should prevail over the will of few, but
rather upon the principle that the judgment
of the many is likely to be superior to the
judgment of the few. As Aristotle said,
“For the many when they meet together may
very likely be better than the few good.
Hence the many are better judges than a
single man for some understand one part,
some another, and among them they understand
the whole”.
The principle of democracy and majority rule
is founded upon the belief that the widest
possible popular discussion and
participation in the formulation of policy
is likely to yield wiser decision than a
discussion limited to the few. The decision
recorded by the majority vote may then be
fairly said to represent not a portion of
the society but the whole people. Moreover
discussion and deliberations in a democracy
are a continuous process and no decision is
regarded as irrevocable and it always
remains open for the minority to become the
majority through the instruments of if it is
allured by the majority rule. The democratic
process is designed to determine by popular
discussion and decision the choice of the
best means to active the common good.
There is no doubt that the foundations of
the Constitution have been shaken by the
indifference of the people, corruption of
the politicians and the negligence and
callousness of the intelligentsia. There are
times in a nation’s history when inaction
and silence can be a culpably wrong. It is
not the Constitution, which has failed the
people, but it is our chosen representatives
who have failed the Constitution and the
people. Joseph Story, the eminent jurist
said, “architects of consummate skill and
fidelity have created the structure: its
foundations are solid; its arrangements are
full of wisdom and order: its defense are
impregnable from without. It has been reared
for immortality. It may, nevertheless,
perish in an hour by the folly or corruption
or negligence of its only keepers-the
people. They fall when the wise are banished
from public councils because they dare to be
honest and the profligate are rewarded
because they flatter the people in order to
betray them”. After Liberation we have spent
nine precious years out of twenty under
Martial Law in some form or other. Democracy
sustains itself by its own inherent strength
through trials and errors as it has done in
other democratic countries of the world.
Today the word “democracy” has been devalued
and it has come to be identified merely with
adult franchise, i.e. the right to be
governed by the elected representatives of
the people. Democracy in this sense is quite
different from freedom. You may have
democracy without freedom; and you may have
freedom without democracy. There are several
totalitarian States which are democratic in
the sense that their rulers are elected by
the people and which actually use the word
“Democratic” in the very name of their
State. But their political set-up is
characterized by the very negation of
freedom; they allow only their party to
function and do not permit the right to
dissent. The claim that the elected
representatives are entitled to ignore or
abrogate the basic human rights as an
expression of “ the democratic will of the
people”, is they very foundation of all
fascist and totalitarian government. A
government which does not recognize
inalienable human freedoms and which holds
the lives, the liberty and the property of
its citizens subject at all times to the
absolute and unlimited control, is after all
but a despotism. “Democracy” is the dwelling
place which man has built for the spirit of
liberty. Intruders have seized the place. A
democracy in which the spirit of liberty
does not reside is a morgue.
History affords constant vindications of the
principles that the human being precisely
because he is human and bas a personality
and individuality of his own-must be
permitted to enjoy the basic human rights
which the State should be powerless to take
away. First, all great art and literature
have flourished best during periods of
freedom or men who yearned for freedom have
given them to the world although they might
have had the misfortune to live under
autocratic regimes. Liberty has proved most
conducive to the flowering of the human
spirit, and it has been the most humanizing
and civilizing force in the crowded story of
man. Secondly, men have always been inspired
to make the costliest sacrifices at the
altar of liberty. They have laid down their
lives in defense of freedom of speech and
expression, and freedom of conscience and
religion. The spirit of liberty has stirred
great Pacts and Composers. While the finest
pages of history bear witness to the glory
of freedom, it can not be gainsaid that the
nose counting method, which is unavoidable
in a democracy, has very serious
shortcomings, particularly in underdeveloped
countries suffering from poverty and
illiteracy.
It is a reflection on the drawbacks of
democracy that the happiest periods which
civilized man has known have been under
benign and enlightened rulers who were not
elected on the basis of adult franchise.
Freedom is fragile and man has known so
little of it in his entire existence on
earth. During thirty-four centuries of
recorded history only a few generations have
lived under the rules of law and civil
liberty. History has witnessed kaleidoscopic
changes, but one factor has remained
significantly constant. At every point of
time throughout the past and right up to the
present, the majority of men have always
lived under political conditions, which
spelt the very negation of true freedom.
Even today out of a world population of
5,000 million the majority of men live under
governments, which deny them personal
liberty and the right to dissent. Barely
one-sixth of the 189 member countries of the
United Nations enjoys freedom of the press.
The tyranny of the State of men either born,
appointed or elected to power is as old as
time. Civil liberty and political freedom
are, by contrast attained only by mature
societies: Neither historicaqully, nor
geographically, can free democracy be
regarded as the normal way of organizing
nations. Government by majority under the
rule of law and with freedom of opposition
and dissent is an exceptional human
achievement. The mere fact that the elected
representatives of the people govern the
country is no guarantee that the basic human
rights will be respected. Some of the worst
tyrannies in history and even today-and some
of the most ruthless suppressions of the
voice of dissent are to be found in
countries where the legislature consists of
the elected legislators who have cither
abolished, or have acquiesced in the
abolition of, civil liberties. It is the
people’s representatives who have tried to
violate freedom of the press. The
circumstances that an action is taken with
the consent of the majority does not carry
an assurance that the action will be wise or
just the majority verdict resulted in Christ
being crucified and Socrates being ordered
to drink hemlock. Even sincerity of purpose
avails nothing, since the important point is
not that you act according to your lights
but that your lights must be luminous. God
faring men supported and administered the
cruel institution of the Inquisition during
the Middle Ages; and perfectly honest men
were parties to the brining alive of
innocent women as witches in Europe and
helpless widows in India. Alluding to this
act of monumental ingratitude and injustice
the eminent English jurist Lord Acton, After
a profound examination of historical
process, comes to one central conclusion;
the conflict, within democracy; between
abiding law and arbitrary power.
“The fate of every democracy of every
government based on the sovereignty of the
people, depends on the choice it makes
between these opposite principles; absolute
power on the one hand, and on the other the
restraints of legality and the authority of
tradition. It must stand or fall according
to its choice”.
An independent judiciary is the very heart
of a republic and Rule of law is the only
safeguard for sustaining democracy. In these
days when the pernicious influence of
politicians has polluted almost all spheres
of activity, the reputation of democratic
institution has been tarnished and their
credibility steadily corded one institution
which has remained unsullied is the
judiciary. Politicians have been polluted
most and public servants at all levels have
also fallen prey to all kinds of vices. The
only institution which has so far resisted
the vices and kept its sold intact has been
the judiciary. While the judges still, as a
class, perform far better than the other
public services and the political cadres,
delinquency has been steadily invading the
inner fiber of our robed brethren. The bar
has lost its finer values and the Bench is
slowly surrendering. Unless society’s morals
rise, our robed brethren can not remain
immune for long to quote Jefferson, “Our
judges are as honest as other men and not
more so.” There has been systematic
tampering and interference with judicial
independence by the executive by various
dubious methods of influence, pressure,
allurements, transfer, undermining their
security of service and other conditions.
No judge can be expected to act without fear
or favor with a sword of Damocles hanging
over-head and more so, when he is dependent
upon the executive for small favor. In the
third would countries the situation relating
to judiciary has gradually gone from bad to
worse. Lord Brocton, A great English jurist,
has said. “The judges are not under man but
under law and under god” Lord Atkin’s
memorable dissent in the famous liversidgs’s
case has now become the most respected
guiding principle for judicial independence.
The memorable words were, “It has been one
of the pillars of freedom, one of the
principles of liberty that the judges are no
respecters of persons and stand between the
subject and any attempted encroachments on
his liberty the executive.” The day when the
highest judiciary ceases to be independent,
democracy and rule of law will collapse.
Although the basic human rights are written
in the constitution but where there is no
independent court to enforce them, they
shall remain a historical document to be
preserved and seen in a glass-case only. In
the memorable words of Sir Winston Churchill
while speaking in the House of Commons as
the Prime Minister of England. “The
principles of complete independence of the
judiciary from the executive is the
foundation of many things in our life. The
judge has not only to do justice between man
and men, he has to ensure that
administration conforms with the law and to
adjudicate upon the legality of the exercise
by the executive of its powers”. At the end
of the first World War, President Wilson
declared that the world must be made safe
for democracy but upto now we could only
make it comparatively safe for conferences
and seminars like the present one. The
judiciary maintains the necessary balance
and social equilibrium in the society but
for which there would be utter chaos and
anarchy in the country. So supreme was the
value of law that Napoleon said, “I will go
down to posterity not by the battles I have
fought and won, but by the code I have given
to France”. One of the great Islamic ruler
and a great scholar himself said, “the great
tragedy of our times is that man will not be
human”.
Democracy and freedom are not synonymous.
Committee franchise may merely amount to
right to choose your tyrants. In Lord
Hailsham’s words, you may have “Elective
Dictatorship”. Man has been called a
rational animal, but this definition was
given to man by man himself in a
characteristic moment of
self-aggrandizement. In the words of Lord
Keynes, “ Man will do the rational thing,
but only after exploring all other
alternatives.” Dr. Adenauer, the former
Chancellor of West Germany, remarked, “in
creating man, God had hit upon a very poor
compromise. If he had made men less
intelligent, he would have been easier to
govern.” This remark neatly sums up the
dilemma of democracy. It is true that
eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
But it is true, in even a deeper sense, that
etc responsibility is also part of the price
of liberty. Excessive authority, without
liberty, is intolerable: but excessive
liberty, without authority and without
responsibility, soon becomes equally
intolerable. De oequeville made the profound
observation that liberty con not stand alone
but must be paired with a companion virtue,
liberty and morality, liberty and law,
liberty and justice: liberty and the common
good, liberty and civil responsibility.
“In war, whichever side may call itself the
victor, there are no winners, but all are
losers”. The euphoria on the victory of
liberal democracy over the command economies
is largely misplaced. There is as yet no
peace dividend. The world is nowhere near
the end of convulsion and turbulence, which
made this century one of the meanest,
cruelest and bloodiest in human history. The
same forces, which shattered the dream for a
Marxist never-never-land, have also rendered
capitalism obsolescent. Unfittingly the
world has already stumbled into the
post-capitalist era. The quest for social
justice and equitable order for the poor and
deprived remains as elusive as ever. There
are more poor people today that the total
world population in the mid-nineteenth
century when Marx and Engels wrote the
Communist Manifesto. There are more hungry
people now than ever. The world is
witnessing a colossal wastage of human
resources. Unacceptable levels of
joblessness are undermining the social and
political fabrics not only in developing
countries but also in affluent societies.
The rate of unemployment in developing
countries like Bangladesh (about 47 percent
of total available work force) far exceeds
the catastrophic heights of joblessness
during the Great Depression (about 18.2
percent in the U.S.A). The collapse of
communism does not mean that there will be
no new ideology to rally the deprived, the
disadvantaged and the hungry. In the Cold
War era, the threat of extremism came from
mainly one ideology in the left. Liberal
democracy today is likely to be besieged by
a plethora of extremist ideologies from both
the right and left of the mainstream. The
disenchantment with representative
institutions, which gave, births to
partitocrazia (the dictatorship of
established parties) and the cartels of
politicians and lobbyists against voters and
taxpayers is widespread in both affluent and
developing societies. The pangs and trauma
of poverty in the post capitalist society
are much more poignant and agonizing than
ever. For the poor, it is excruciatingly
painful to reconcile with the shame of stark
deprivation in a world basking in glittering
abundance and extraordinary potentialities.
The problems of poverty, however, do not
remain confined to the poor themselves or
the societies in which they live. As the UN
Good governance Report 1993 rightly
stressed: The real threat in the next few
decades is that global poverty will begin to
travel without passport, in many unpleasant
forms: drugs, diseases, terrorism,
migration. Poverty anywhere is a threat to
prosperity everywhere”. Poverty is both a
consequence as well as a cause of
environmental degradation. In the context of
struggle for survival, immediate
requirements of the poor tend to overwhelm
any concern for the environmental future.
The pressures of poverty and the
consequential environmental stresses have
resulted in the rising incidence of natural
disasters and multiplication of the number
of victims. As the Brandt Commission rightly
pointed out “... generally these pressures
are local. Today the scale of our
intervention in nature is increasing and the
physical effects of our decision will spill
across national frontiers”. However, the
loud emergencies of the environment such as
global warming and ozone depletion should
not detract our attention from the silent
emergencies of poverty (such as water
pollution, land degradation and
environmental diseases.)
On balance the recent shifts in the
post-capitalist society are not wholly
unfavorable to developing countries. Some of
these changes have actually opened new
windows of opportunities for economic
transformation. Historically countries
developed, if they possessed more natural
resources, were initially rich and enjoyed
the advantages of having higher capital per
head as well as superior technology and
skills. But with globalization and emergence
of what Drucker describes as “Knowledge
Society”, the modernization of a developing
society is now feasible mainly on the basis
of education and skills of the labor force.
There are now real opportunities of
leap-forging the stages of development ad
telescoping the process of
industrialization. Most of the governments
in the Third World have now recognized the
futility of resisting the process of
integration with the global economy. This
realization has facilitated significant
structural reforms, which have dramatically
enhanced the efficiency and competitiveness
of their economies. Finally, the
disintegration of command economies has
exposed the perversities and hollowness of
big governments compared with free market
economic process. The costs of bureaucratic
failures have been minimized and a new stage
has been set for the flowering of the
individual initiative and enterprise.
Despite these promising changes, the odds of
economic development should not be
underestimated. The forces that created the
widening gap between the affluent and
developing societies did not originate in
the Third World. They are the products of
industrial societies. Underdevelopment in
underdecdoped and developing countries is
not an original state, it was created by the
developed countries themselves. The process
of interaction between developing and
affluent societies has often been
oversimplified. The widening gap between
these societies was not produced by economic
exploitation of imperial powers alone. The
disequilibria of underdevelopment arose
mainly from the incomplete transfer of
technology of the North to the south. While
the North readily sold the know how as well
as the medicines for reducing mortality
rate, it did not transfer the technology for
raising the productivity of industry and
agriculture which was essential for
supporting the increased population during
the demographic transition. Environmental
problems originated from profligate use of
natural resources by the developed
countries. Because of the disequilibria in
the world economic order, the rich in the
affluent societies are getting richer
whereas the absolute number of the poor in
the developing countries is swelling.
It is highly unlikely that most of the
developing countries will be able to raise
the resources for providing and maintaining
minimum physical and social infrastructure
required for sustainable development. To
contain population growth and provide
minimum health care facilities, expenditure
on health alone in developing countries
requires to be raised by four times of the
current expenditure. Likewise, an enormous
investment is needed to provide minimum
standard of physical infrastructure. The
reduction of confessional aid flow (ODA)
from the affluent societies to developing
countries will, therefore, be a serious blow
to their hope for economic growth necessary
to reduce poverty and improve living
conditions. Of late, there has been
considerable debate on the role of foreign
aid. Undeniably, there are many instances of
inefficient utilization of external
assistance. Aid fatigue in the affluent
societies is, therefore, understandable.
However, sub-optimal use of aid is not
merely attributable to incapacity and
rent-seeking in the recipient countries, the
political and economic compulsions of the
donors themselves have played their part as
well. Aid is still viewed differently in
many ways by the political realities of the
cold war as well as the internal Governance
of the donors. First, political
considerations divert aid to middle and
high-income countries. Low-income countries
generally receive relatively much less aid
than those, which do not deserve aid on
economic considerations alone. Secondly, the
most generous per capita allocation of aid
does not necessarily go to the poorest
countries. Thirdly, donor countries for
promoting their commercial and strategic
interests use a substantial part of aid.
Tied aid, which constitutes for promoting
their commercial and strategic interests.
Tied aid, which constitutes approximately
two thirds of all bilateral assistance,
forces the recipients to buy goods and
services from donor countries at a
non-competitive price. Despite these
limitations, aid has played a seminal role
in various sectors. For example, economic
assistance to Bangladesh has succeeded in
promoting a highly successful
population-planning program, in accelerating
agricultural production in construction of
urgently needed rural infrastructure and
somewhat in alleviation of poverty. It is
necessary to replicate the areas where
success has been achieved rather than using
aid as an instrument of political
manipulation. The long-term political and
social benefits are likely to outweigh
short-term fiscal burden on donors. Of
course, aid by itself can never be a
sufficient condition for development. The
impetus for growth must come from within.
Fascinated by the initial successes of
command economies and alarmed by widespread
market failures, the Governments in
developing countries opted for big
government with an overwhelming
concentration of power in the hands of
central government and an elaborate network
of prohibitions, rules and regulations. The
Governments forgot that they were supposed
to manage the country’s business and not the
business of the country. The resultant
massive government failure in developing
countries vindicated the dire warning of the
fourteenth century Muslim philosopher Ibn
Khaldun: “Commercial activity on the part of
the rulers is harmful to his subjects.” The
unsatisfactory performance of the
monopolistic public utilities has stifled
the potentialities of growth. Because of
ever-increasing bureaucratic failures and
the appalling inefficiencies and losses of
state-owned enterprises, the process of
development inevitably involves the ordeal
of undoing what has been laboriously done in
the past: decrease regulation, privatize the
public sector enterprises, and reduce the
size of the governments. A small government
however does not necessarily imply a weak
government. The developing countries need
more government and a lean but strong
government that can and does govern. Market
economy cannot work in an institutional
vacuum. It presupposes a strong government
that can ensure rule of law, accountability,
transparency and predictability in its day
to day operations. Effective governance is a
necessary condition for sustaining economic
growth. The role of the state, however,
cannot be curtailed overnight. It has to be
done through the democratic process in
stages.
Good governance, however, cannot be imposed
from above. There is no single recipe for
good governance. The erosion of public
confidence in the governmental systems is
not unique to developing countries, it is
equally true about affluent societies which
are also trying to reinvent the governments.
Good governance emerges through a process of
trial and error. Given he immense diversity
of cultures and political forms, Bangladesh
must find its own way to reconcile
conflicting interest groups and weave them
into a cohesive state organization.
Historical experience indicates that
democratic governments tend to be more
responsive to the needs of the people.
Democracy is not, however, a one shot
affair. It is not a matter of single
decision or a hurriedly arranged election.
It is a long and arduous process. Constant
renewal of democratic values is needed to
ensure that vested interest groups do not
usurp levers of power. Democracy allows
maximum influence of the people on the
decisions that affect their lives. However,
even democratic institutions in
nation-states have turned out to be too big
for the small. There are always social
groups who are excluded wholly or partially
from the polity: the very young, the very
old, the disabled and women with heavy
domestic commitments. For millions of
underdogs all over Bangladesh, political
participation is a luxury. Affirmative
actions are, therefore, needed to reduce the
discriminations against the socially
disadvantaged. Legal systems need to be
modernized to fit with changing
socio-economic circumstances, bureaucratic
constraints need to be reduced and
discriminatory social norms and practices
must be discouraged. Even this is not
sufficient. The disadvantaged groups will
have to be empowered through both formal and
informal education, and barriers to women’s
participation in the development process
need to be removed. There is abundant
empirical evidence to suggest that when the
window of opportunity is opened to them to
be removed the poor are indeed efficient
users of resources. Another precondition of
good governance through democratic process
is decentralization of power. First, more
authority needs to be transferred from
capital cities to local governments in
regions, towns and villages. Secondly,
people’s organizations and non-governments
organizations (NGO) can play a significant
role in empowering the poor. Innovative
organizations in Bangladesh such as NGOs can
at best supplement the governments, they can
never be substitutes of government. The real
challenge of good governance is, therefore,
to blend an effective and compassionate
national government with local governments,
people’s organizations, NGOs and other
independent civic societies. This is not
easy to achieve. It will have to be a
long-drawn process of change led by people.
Ultimately, good governance will have to be
nourished and sustained by the people
themselves. At this crucial juncture of
history, patriotism is not enough.
Patriotism is the willingness to die for
one’s won country. What we need now is
enlightened citizenship there cannot be that
responsible commitment which in the last
analysis holds together the body politic.
Citizenship means an active commitment to
one’s community, to one’s country as well as
to the world at large. Such citizens will
not be the passive recipients of change.
They will shape their own future in the
light of their vision and conviction.
Good Governance 02
In recent years it has become increasingly
obvious that government has become too
cumbersome and too fragmented to deal with
contemporary problems. Nothing short of
sweeping reorganization is needed if
government is to keep up with the needs of
the public. Political leaders promise to
devise more efficient, economical,
purposeful and manageable government. They
are giving greater prominence to Democratic
reform. Few governments have not instigated
elaborate inquiries into the uneven
performance and malfunctioning of their
Democratic systems. Interest has been
renewed by recent public policy failures. In
operationalizing their policies, governments
have run into trouble. They have found
Democratic arrangements obstructive and
resistant to innovation, especially
institutional bureaucracies bent on going
their own separate ways. Political dreams
have been rudely shattered by Democratic
realities. Political mobilization,
governmental intervention and public
instruments alone have been inadequate to
master social problems. Existing Democratic
capacity is unequal to the tasks imposed on
it. Bureaucratization that worked so well in
the past has developed severe dysfunction
and pathologies. New social objectives
require a new Democratic technology. People
angered by policy failures, rising costs,
misadministration and low productivity look
to Democratic reform for solutions.
Democratic reform is based on three
premises-that government will play an
increasingly important part in the life of
society, that government needs effective
machinery can be designed on sound rational
principles. While Democratic reform includes
the institutionalization of modern
managerial technology, it is much more.
First, it entails a thorough reconstruction
of the machinery of government which in
effect means deciding what activities
government should perform directly, how they
should be allocated among different leaves
of government, how the should be distributed
between different types of public
organization, and which public organizations
should be self-contained. Second it aims at
systematic transformation not piecemeal
change, permanent alterations not purely
cosmetic touches, in structure, territorial
organization, budget management, planning
processes, and personnel practices to reduce
corruption, incompetence and red tape,
Third, the different sectors and programs
are rationalized and reorganized for more
effective performance. Fourth, the machinery
of government is simplified and streamlined
to eliminate unnecessary duplication, reduce
inconvenience and minimize parasitism. The
whole package is considered necessary to
combat the tendency of governments to add to
existing arrangements, to patch up and
temporize until they overload the circuits,
instead of redesigning the whole system.
Confusion compounds confusion. Unclear lines
of authority, fragmentation, lack of
coordination, jurisdictional disputes,
ambiguity and inconsistency, and difficulty
in pinpointing responsibility impede
national goals.
Eventually, the system cannot manage its
burdens and parts actually fail when most
needed. It is on these that reformers
concentrate. They have to design machinery
where none has existed before. They have to
reconstruct outmoded systems. They have to
refurbish sluggish, inert, incompetent,
corrupt, defective public organizations.
Governments forced to act by relentless
pressure consequent on increasing demands
for more and better public goods and
services as a result of population growth,
economic progress, industrialization, and
urbanization, combined with changing views
of government and public administration.
Increasingly insiders have begun to take the
initiative and suggest reforms based on
their own research and prescriptions.
Countries should prefer a different
approach, a permanent rather than a
temporary and hoc arrangement. They have
institutionalize reform by establishing a
general reform authority to conduct
continuous surveys, decide reform
priorities, provide assistance to operating
agencies, and monitor reform efforts. They
know their own societies well enough to
discern whether foreign models are worth
adopting. They know how their own government
operates and what is politically feasible.
They assume leadership in democratic reform
and decide disputes. Where Democratic reform
has been institutionalized this way, six
features have been emphasized. First, a
national planning apparatus has been created
to help government formulate public and
allocate public resources. the planners
identify national needs and priorities and
draft long-term plans of national objectives
and targets. Second, public finance has been
modernized to assure government of adequate
and manage public debts. Tax administration,
budgeting systems and accounting methods
receive priority, particularly problems of
tax evasion and avoidance, corruption,
runaway inflation, excessive foreign
borrowing and cash flow. Third, uniform
personnel management principles have been
codified and enacted to reduce patronage,
set minimum job qualifications, establish
career systems, standardize employment
conditions, and increase in-service
training. Fourth, the machinery of
government has been reconstructed and
government activities regrouped in a
rational and consistent fashion. Fifth,
government power has been decentralized and
deconcentrated to regional and local levels.
Sixth, modern management practices have been
introduced going well beyond traditional
organization and methods. Altogether, they
have been conventional rather than
innovative programs, imitative and adaptive
rather than creative and original. Perhaps
for this reason, they have not been so
controversial as attempts to overhaul
substantive functions such as the legal
system, land utilization, public works
construction and social service delivery,
where vested interests have defied reform.
Plans and blueprints are not reforms until
they are activated public opinion supports
them, resources are invested in making them
work, and resistance to them is overcome.
The Democratic state is not instrumental but
integrated with social change. People should
not be excluded but involved at all stages,
educated on the issues and encouraged to
participate and contribute. If we cannot
abolish, reduce or limit government
appreciably because of the demands we place
on it, we can at least try to improve its
performance. In this, no one ought to be
excluded and no idea ignored. Bureaucratic
revitalization by itself is insufficient;
bureaucratic habits die-hard. Simple
remedies will not do. Contemporary
Democratic problems require new approaches,
new organizational designs, new laws new
commitments, new relationships, new
attitudes, new inventions anything that
promises to move sluggish Democratic systems
in new directions and revitalize inert
institutions.
Reform has had only limited impact, not so
much because the reforms have been wrong,
the strategies incorrect or the reformers
unqualified, but simply because there has
been insufficient support for Democratic
reform. The reformers have been unable to
combat overwhelming odds, and once out of
their hands, their reforms have been
emasculated. Reformers find they have no
power, position, status to influence those
who can change things, or they propose
inappropriate, complex, costly or inoperable
reforms, or they are misunderstood and their
proposals misinterpreted. Often, they cannot
explain why they fail. Democratic systems
are complex to manage and reformers cannot
control they many variables that shape them.
They are inherently slow- moving and
difficult to change fundamentally without
coercion. Progress occurs fitfully and has
to be measured in decades, not years.
We are to take into account four items, each
consists of several subsections, organized
under the categories of Innovation,
Resistance to Change, Democracy and Good
governance.
(1) Innovation is an ancient idea. This is
evident from the debate, which took place in
nineteenth century regarding the management
of the economic system. Interestingly
enough, innovation was not considered then
as an independent problem. The advancement
in scientific knowledge and ever-increasing
use of sophisticated technology has been
brought about by the accelerating pace of
change in the life of modern man. The role
of innovation in an organizational
environment cannot be overemphasized, far
less ignored. Social scientists, noticing
the present trend comments: We will
increasingly have to learn to make existing
organizations capable of rapid and
continuing innovation. Broadly speaking, in
the literature the term “innovation” has
been used in three different contexts. In
one it is synonymous with invention; that is
it refers to a creative process whereby two
or more existing concepts or entities are
combined in some novel way to produce
configuration not previously known by the
person involved.
Innovation is a complex activity which
proceeds from the conceptualization of a new
idea to a solution of the problem and then
to the actual utilization of a new item of
economic or social value. Innovation is not
a single action but a total process of
interrelated sub processes. An innovation is
“any thought, behavior or thing that is new
because it is qualitatively different from
existing forms.” Victor Thompson provides a
comprehensive and meaningful definition when
he says, “By innovation is meant the
generation, acceptance and implementation of
new ideas, process, product, or services.
Innovation therefore implies the capacity to
change or adapt.” James Q. Wilson, says,” An
innovation (or more precisely, a major
innovation, since we are not concerned with
trivial changes) is a ‘ fundamental, change
in a ‘significant, number of tasks. In fact,
Thompson’s definition combines precisely the
three most crucial aspects of any innovative
process; i.e., generation of an idea, its
acceptance, and finally its implementation,
which culminates the process. Wilson,
thinking in the context of an organization,
is concerned about the end product of an
innovation process, i.e., the effect of
innovation in the organizational tasks. By
specially emphasizing two terms,
“fundamental” and “significant,” Wilson
underscores the vital fact that without
fundamental changes in a number of
significant tasks, innovation in an
organizational context cannot be meaningful.
Modern democratic organizations are built
around the Weberian concept of monocratic
organization. The Weberian concept of an
organization, which is generally known as
bureaucracy, holds that,
“(1) There is a great inequality among
organizational participants in their status,
abilities, and
contributions to the organization, and
rewards,
(2) The organizations machinary is simple
and within the grasp of a few people,
(3) The person at the top of the
organization is assumed to be omniscient and
issues all orders in the
organization,
(4) These orders are classified downward by
successive levels of subordinates, so that
the
delegation process is complete,
(5) Because there is only one source of
legitimate authority in the organization,
conflict is not seen
as legitimate, and thus bargaining
coalitions and other conflict-settling
activities are
illegitimate.”
“Moreover, in a monocratic organization
centralized control is exercised over all
resources. The establishment of a reward
system, which is structured to encourage
hierarchical competition, stimulates
conformity rather than innovation. There is,
to a great extent, an overemphasis on
certainty when decisions are made in a
democratic organization. In order to
introduce innovations in democratic
organizations, several things need to be
done. One of the first requirements is the
modification of the rigid, caste-oriented
structure into a more loose and fixable one.
This necessitates the refashioning of the
reward system based on extrinsic monetary
emoluments and overemphasis on power and
status to a situation where satisfaction can
be found in professional growth and the
esteem of knowledgeable colleagues.
Conflict, instead of being looked at as a
subversive phenomenon, which must be
suppressed at all cost, must be encouraged
since item plies pluralism and forces coping
with and searching for solutions. Conflict
can therefore encourage innovation. The
tendency to institutionalize a centralized
control system of men and materials as is
found in a democracy is not congenial to
novel solutions, which are normal in an
innovative organization. But it might appear
threatening to people with democratic
orientations that are more accustomed to
follow the conventional ways of doings. This
innate conservatism might hinder a
democratic organization to be receptive to
new ideas and practices. In short,
structural flexibility, toleration for some
autonomy, and protection and cultivation of
“innovational enclaves” are structural
perquisites for emergence of innovation
within a democracy. For the successful
introduction of innovation in an
organization the innovation must be aware of
the following:
a. The new idea must be satisfactory to the
innovator.
b. The prestige of the innovator has a
bearing on the acceptance, which depends
upon his past record.
c. The personality of the innovator also
plays an important role toward acceptance of
his
innovation.
d. The values embodied in a new idea are
also influential toward the acceptance of an
innovation.
e. Innovation should not be haphazard.
f. If the innovation is made acceptable to
the informal and formal leaders through them
it will receive the support of the majority.
g. The advantages of innovation must be made
readily ascertainable to the potential
acceptors.
The qualities that are required of a person
when he is in charge of introducing
innovations in a democratic organization are
really astounding. It requires an unusual
combination of qualities: “a creative but
pragmatic imagination; psychological
security and an autonomous nature; an
ability to trust others and to earn the
trust of others. And along with these great
energy and determination, a sense of timing;
skill in organizing; and a willingness and
ability to be Machiavellian when that is
what the situation requires.” To facilitate
the process of successful introduction and
implementation of innovations the following
conditions need to be present. There must
exist in the higher tiers some” advocates”
of new programmers, procedures, methods and
organizations, plus a sufficient number of
“initial adopters” who would support the
“advocates” as the change agents. What is
operationally important is that some minimum
proportion often a small but significant
minority must exist before innovation can be
effectively introduced and carried on. It
must be proportionally introduced and
carried on. It must be proportionally large
enough to sustain the innovational
fermentation until the point of adoption.
Lee argues that special attention to the
following positive features may be helpful.
These are “ middle and lower-middle class
backgrounds, indicative of a drive for
achievement; high merit in terms of
competitive organizational activities;
youth; sufficient educational background are
political training, and exposure.
Organizations are great resisters of change.
They are conservative in nature, resisting
change and the introduction of new patterns,
which can be attributed to the relatively
static systems, which operate within an
organization. Resistance to change is a
universal phenomenon. Change is always
confronted by strong forces holding it in
check and sharply circumscribing the
capacity of organizations to react to new
conditions. Change often endangers careers
and disturbs vested interest generating
resistance against it. As the historian of
industries Alfred Chandler indicates, change
seems to require a crisis or a change of
management. Resistance, in short, is the
most characteristic individual and group
reaction to change. Many factors contribute
to its emergence and sustenance. Resistance
occurs at three levels:30 individual, group,
and organizational.31 Interactions between
and among these levels must be understood as
factor or factors which cause resistance to
one level and may do the same for another
level. There are several Conditions
Conducive to Resistance
1. Resistance can be expected if the nature
of the change is not made clear to the
people who are going to be influenced by the
change.
2. Different people will see different
meanings in the proposed change.
3. Resistance can be expected when those
influenced are caught in a jam between
strong forces
pushing to make the change and the strong
forces determining them against making the
change.
4. Resistance may be expected to the degree
that the persons influenced by the change
have pressure put upon them to make it, and
will be decreased to the degree that these
some persons
are able to have some “say” in the nature
and direction of the change.
5. Resistance may be expected if the change
ignores the established institutions in the
group.
Lippitt and others present four cogent
reasons, paying particular attention to
human ego, as to why change is resisted:
1. Reluctance to admit weakness.
2. Fear of failure or awkwardness in trying
to initiate a new practice or behavior
pattern.
3. A fatalistic expectation if previous
attempts to change was unsuccessful.
4. A fear of losing some current
satisfaction.
The causes of failure to change the behavior
and/or structure of organizations when such
rigidity turns out to be disadvantageous or
fatal can be grouped into three categories
with several subcategories within some of
them:
1. Acknowledged collective benefits of
stability.
2. Calculated opposition to change.
a. Prevailing advantage.
b. Protection of quality.
c. Psychic costs of change.
d. Tunnel vision.
e. “Brave New World.”
3. Inability to change.
a. Resource limitations.
b. Sunk cost.
c. Accumulation of official constraints on
behavior,
d. Unofficial and unplanned constraints on
behavior.
e. Inter-organizational agreements.
Looking beyond individuals, groups, and
organizations to trace the reason behind
resistance, a few have been interested to
discern and analyze the impact of social
systems and cultural heritage on the
individual which may lead him to resist
change efforts.
Once the causes are known which trigger off
resistance to any change of the status quo
or the existing system, then the obvious
next step that follows is to seek for clues
which will ultimately result in the minimal
amount of resistance. In other words, we
have to create an environment in which
changes can be introduced by carefully
neutralizing the resistant elements within
an organization. The theme that has been
floating in the literature to overcome
resistance to change is participation. If
people are given the opportunity to take
part in change efforts, then the extent of
hostility toward anew program will
considerably lessen. Several experiments
showed that participation works better than
imposed changes. Those who will be affected
by the change must not only be heard from
but also be listened to. In this way many
misconceptions and misunderstandings
regarding the nature and extent of change
will be clarified in the minds of affected
individuals. At the same time, contacts
between change agents and the changes will
also help to establish a rapport between the
two, which is one of the crucial
preconditions of any successful change
program.
Is has been suggested that changes which
call for far-reaching alterations in the
power, position, and status of the
individuals in the organization should be
introduced slowly. One of the principal
reasons for hostility to anything new that
is comes as a threat to security and status.
To overcome the feeling of fear of the
unknown in the individual mind when change
is introduced, one must proceed with care
and caution. Resistance to change will be
minimal if there is support for the change
from within the organization. To gain the
support of the individuals, several things
can be done. The benefits accruing from the
said change can be elaborated and explained
at length. Support of the intellectuals and
other professionals is also crucial in this
regard. As far as possible, individuals
working inside the organization should
introduce changes. There are evidences that
people tend to reject changes easily, which
are either planed or introduced by
“outsiders” not belonging to the
organization. Any change effort, which
threatens the long-established values and
ideals of an organization, will encounter
resistance of a high magnitude. It must be
understood that a particular change may not
be suitable for all cultures. The role of
culture in any change effort is crucial as
it moulds the norms, values, and ideals of
individuals. These individuals, in turn, man
organizations and, through their
socialization process in the work
environment, form and sustain values and
norms, which greatly influence their work
habits and patterns. Human associations are
probably the most important reasons for
resistance to change. If the change agents
take time to understand the context in which
the change is introduced, then there is a
greater probability for the successful
initiation of the change. The change agent
must recognize the extent of influence the
small groups, cliques, or individuals wield
and how they fell about the proposed change
before going any further. The change agent
will have to recognize the resistant factors
in the process of change. The knowledge of
resistant factors will put the change agent
in a better position to contain the
development of resistance or use approaches
to overcome the resistance when it does
develop.
We have discussed the problems of
introducing innovations in bureaucratic
organizations and how those problems can be
overcome. Here we wish to take up certain
other concomitants of bureaucratic
organizations for discussion. The negative
connotation of the term “bureaucracy” is
widely accepted both by scholars and laymen,
which indicates the emotional coloration
given to organizational unresponsiveness
toward change. Resistance to change in
relation to specialization, communication
system, and bureaucratic personality. The
bureaucratic organization is a specialized
complex structure of technical
interdependence superimposed upon a strict
hierarchy of authority. It is a system of
superior and subordinate influence upon the
subordinate. Individuals can become a source
of resistance to change in two ways.
Individuals and groups within particular
specialties may have a fear not only of loss
of prestige but of decreased usefulness
after the change. Bureaucratic
organizations, like other organizations,
over a period of time, induce members to
become socially specialized. Any suggestion
for change may come as a threat to this
social cooperative relationship and may not
be welcome.
Communication networks have limited
usefulness to foster change. These are
mostly one way, top-down directive carriers
and have less to learner for the opinions of
people in the downstairs organized
communication comprises a complexity of
subtle habits, attitudes, and standardized
expressions whose smooth and more or less
unconscious employment is essential to
effective and comfortable collaboration. A
new plan disrupts all these making
elaboration difficult and encouraging
misunderstanding. People just do not
understand the real situation; if they did,
they would not resist changes. This may not
be true in its entirety, but the fact
remains that communication, if utilized
properly, can play a more meaningful role to
bring about changes within an organization.
Certain personal behavior patterns can also
be detected among the democrats, which arise
as a result of specialization and become
ingrained with their personality
characteristics. The growing imbalance
between the rights of authority positions,
on the one hand and the abilities and skills
needed in a technological age, on the other,
generates tensions and insecurity in the
system of authority. People think of
excessive resistance to change as an
inherent feature of bureaucratic
organization. New powerhouse and less
competent lenders were more resistive to
change than others. Because of their nature
and functioning democracies are considered
to be conservative structures oriented
toward maintaining the external as well as
internal status quo. Change always upsets an
organization, irrespective of its nature.
Some may welcome the upset because they
found conditions restrictive or oppressive.
But change in the status is likely to be
opposed by many who do not want to be
disturbed and who are uncertain of what the
future may bring in its wake.
A basic factor in determining the success of
the organization in resisting change is the
amount of power the organization has in its
environment. Individuals play leading roles
to mould the internal environments in such a
way as to make it difficult to introduce
change. Individuals in the organization are
reinforced by their consistency in behavior
in relationship to organizational norms. Yet
organizations do change, both with respect
to their external relationships and to their
internal configurations. The pressure of the
external environment necessitates the
organization to change. Moreover, when most
organizations become internally static and
obsolete due to lack of change, thereby
creating a problem of incongruence between
the expectations and the requirement of the
job, change of one type or another is
introduced. Stresses inherent in democratic
structures can lead to “dysfunction” and
ultimately to change. To minimize resistance
to change in the democratic organization,
several elements should be given
considerable attention and emphasis. These
are leadership, communication participation,
and training.
Without leadership support, no amount of
effort on the part of others will make any
change effort successful. The commitment and
dedication of the leadership is one of the
essential prerequisites for the success of
any change program. The importance of
effective communication needs hardly any
more emphasis as an effective instrument for
overcoming resistance. The role of
participation is to bring about change.
Change necessitates abandoning old ways and
taking on new ones. This will arouse anxiety
among some people’ periodic consultations
with them may prove helpful. In this regard,
training may become crucial. Training can
prepare individuals to accept and perform
adequately in different jobs winch require
not only new skills but, more importantly, a
different outlook and positive attitude.
Training will be meaningful if it can ease
the tension of transition and positively
orient individuals to adapt to change.
Democracy, as an idea as well as the
embodiment of a structural arrangement, has
been staunchly defended as a necessity and
at the same time vigorously condemned, which
leads to underutilization of human potential
and perpetuation of a not-so-healthy
environment in the polity. As a result of
controversies surrounding it, democracy has
come to mean different things to different
people. To laymen, it means the continuation
of decorum, inefficiency, and abuse of
power. To a sociologist, a democratic
organization is one, which does not learn
from its own mistakes and repeats them
often. To a political scientist, Democracy
mean a system of government where people all
levels have their voices heard and given due
consideration. To a structure found in
modern countries with all the accompanying
paraphernalia. Bureaucratic predominance is
perhaps the outstanding feature of modern
society. During the last two centuries,
bureaucratization of organizations has been
rather rapid. Bureaucracy is not a new
phenomenon. It existed in elaborate forms
thousands of years age Egypt and Rome and in
rather sophisticated forms in China and
India in ancient times. With the dawning of
the modern era, the trend toward the process
of bureaucratization has greatly
accelerated. In contemporary society,
bureaucracy has become a dominant
institution indeed, the institution that
epitomizes the modern era. Bureaucracy can
be distinguished among several levels of
analysis. These are: (1) the historical and
technical reasons for the advancement of
bureaucracy and its relation to the growth
of modern state, especially in the Western
countries; (2) the impact of the rule of law
upon the functioning of bureaucratic
organizations; (3) the occupational position
and typical personal orientation of
bureaucratic officials as a status group;
(4) the consequence of bureaucratization in
the modern world. Emergence of bureaucracy
was due to:
1. The development of money economy
2. The increasing size of states and
organizations
3. The impact of cultural, economic, and
technological developments.
Though bureaucracies have existed in ancient
times in non-money economies like Egypt, the
beginning of extensive employment of
officials in states and organizations made
it imperative to provide them with salaries
on a regular basis in order to neutralize
any threat to the “master” as well as lessen
the temptation to appropriate bureaucratic
property for their own personal ends.
The qualitative and quantitative expansion
of Democratic tasks eventually might
facilitate the process of bureaucratization
to an even greater degree. In the growth of
wealth and property, particularly in the
amassing of these corporations, so that the
protection of property, the distribution of
benefits to those adversely affected by the
distribution of wealth and conflicts over
this and the control of communication, all
become foci for large-scale formal
administration. Bureaucratic organization is
technically superior to tall other forms of
administration. “In precision, speed, lack
of equivocation, knowledge of the
documentary record, continuity, sense of
discretion, uniformity of operation, system
of subordination, and reduction of friction
bureaucracy surpasses honorific and a
vocational forms of administration.” Modern
state exists where a political community
possesses the following chacteristics: (1)
an Democratic and legal order that is
subject to change by legislation, (2) an
Democratic apparatus that conducts official
business in accordance with legislative
regulation, (3) binding authority over all
persons and over most actions taking place
in the area of its jurisdiction, and (4) the
legitimating to use force within area if
coercion is either permitted or prescribed
by the legally constituted government. Legal
order, bureaucracy, compulsory jurisdiction
over a territory and monopolization of the
legitimate use of force are the essential
characteristics of the modern state.
The organization, is defined as a social
relationship that is either closed or limits
the entrance of outsiders and develops
regulations for activity which are enforced
by a chief, possibly with an Democratic
staff. Where the activities are continuously
oriented toward some ends which are
specified. Formal organization implies the
distribution of power and domination, Power
is defined in situation ally specific terms.
“It is the probability that one actor within
a social relationship will be in a position
to carry out his own despite resistance.
Domination is the probability that a command
with a given specific content will be obeyed
by a given group of persons.” Domination
involves a reciprocal relationship between
rulers and ruled. For domination to be
present in a relationship there must be:
“(i) an individual who rules, regroup of
rulers; (ii) an individual who is ruled, or
a group that is ruled; (iii) the will of the
rulers to influence the conduct of the ruled
and an expression of that will (or a
command); (iv) the evidence of the influence
of the rulers in terms of the objective
degree of compliance with the command; (v)
direct or indirect evidence of that
influence in terms of the subjective
acceptance with which the ruled obey the
command.” Domination also requires an
Democratic staff to execute commands, and
conversely, all administration requires
domination in that the power of command over
the staff must be vested in an individual or
group of individuals. To facilitate the
strengthening and continuance of a system of
domination, all Democratic organizations
will be required to have individuals who:
“(i) are accustomed to obey command; (ii)
are personally interested in seeing the
existing domination continue because they
derive benefits there form; (iii)
participate in that domination in the sense
that the exercise of function is divided
among them; and (iv) hold themselves in
readiness for the exercise of these
functions.”
Every system of domination attempts to
establish and cultivate the belief in its
legitimacy. Legitimacy plays a crucial role
in an organization as continuous struggle
takes place for control within it between
and among individuals and groups. Because of
the struggle for control, there will be a
continuing need for the leadership to
justify itself. Legitimating is an active
process within an organization. The six
principles of bureaucracy are:
1. There are fixed and official
jurisdictional areas-ordered by rules, so
that official duties are regular activities,
based on the ends of the organization.
2. There is a firmly ordered hierarchy
providing for the supervision of lower
offices by specified higher ones. Lower
officials have the right of appeal as a
counter-balance to the regulated domination
from above. Such offices are not
ephemeral-they are fixed and then filled by
successive incumbents.
3. The Management of office is based on
written documents and a filing system hence
clerks to keep the files.
4. Each specialized position demands
specific training.
5. Official business should occupy the
energies of the official full-time.
6. The rules of the bureaucracy demands
relevant learning and expertise based in
relevant academic disciplines.
The six principles behind the position of
the officials are:
1. Office holding as a “vocation,” requiring
a prescribed course of training, the passing
of examinations to indicate quality,
impersonality in the conduct of the office.
2. The official enjoys a social esteem in
accordance with his rank in the hierarchy.
3. A superior authority appoints the
official.
4. The official enjoys tenure (of office)
for life.
5. Security is ensured for the official by
the payment of a salary in accord with his
status in the hierarchy (and a pension at
the end of his service).
6. Career stages will characterize the
official’s life and he will expect to be
moved from less well paid to better paid
offices with time.
Consequence of bureaucracy is alienation.
Alienation is fairly common within a
bureaucratic organization and can not be
eradicated on a permanent basis. Secondly,
it has been said that bureaucratization
leads to a bastardized form of democracy,
for not only are the democratic mass parties
bureaucratically organized, but this leads
to decline in the active share of the
subjects in the government. And “the
leveling of the governed in the face of the
governing and bureaucratically articulated
group, in turn may occupy a quite autocratic
position both in fact and in form.” Thirdly,
a fully developed bureaucracy implements a
system of authority relationships that is
practically indestructible. It becomes
indispensable to the extent that everyone
becomes so dependent upon it as if life
would stop without it. Fourthly, an
entrenched bureaucracy can serve any
interest, Bureaucratic allegiance is to the
authority above it; it matters little
whether changes have taken place at the
political level. Bureaucratic orientation,
i.e. recruitment and training, also helps
the bureaucrats to adapt quickly to changing
situations. Fifthly and lastly, the modern
bureaucratic system has leveling effect
social and economic differences.
A bureaucratic organization produce
unintended negative consequences. These are:
First, adherence to the rules, originally
conceived as a means, becomes transformed
into an end-in-itself; there occurs the
familiar process of displacement of goals.
Emphasis (on discipline) resulting from the
displacement of the original goals develops
into rigidities and an inability to adjust
readily. Formalism, even ritualism, ensues
an unchallenged insistence upon punctilious
adherence to formalized procedures.
Second, over-concern with strict adherence
to regulations, which induces timidity,
conservatism and techniques.
Third, bureaucratic structure tends to
produce esprit de corps and informal social
organization, which typically develops in
such situations often, leads the personnel
to defend their entrenched interests rather
than assist their clientele and elected
higher officials.
Fourth, the personality pattern of the
bureaucrat is nucleated around the norm of
impersonality. Both this and the
categorizing tendency, which develops from
to dominant role of general, abstract rules,
tend to produce conflict in the bureau
curate’s contacts with the public or
clientele.
Fifth, the bureaucrat, in part irrespective
of his position within the hierarchy, acts
as a representative of the power and
prestige of the entire structure. This often
leads to an actually or apparently
domineering attitude, which may only be
exaggerated by a discrepancy between his
position within the hierarchy and his
position with reference to the public.
Merton, drawing on other studies that has
suggested that Individual personalities are
molded by social roles, argues that:
(1) An effective bureaucracy demands
reliability of response and strict devotion
to regulation.
(2) Such devotion to the rule leads to their
transformation into absolutes; they are no
longer conceived as relative to a set of
purposes.
(3) This interferes with ready adoption
under special conditions not clearly
envisaged by those who drew up the general
rules.
(4) Thus, the very elements, which conduce
toward efficiency in general, produce
inefficiency in specific instances. Members
of the group who have not divorced
themselves from the meanings, which the
rules have for them, seldom attain full
realization of the inadequacy.
These rules in time become symbolic in east,
rather than strictly utilitarian. Conflict
with the public can be found in a
bureaucracy which ultimately results in
unintended and dysfunctional consequences.
These in turn produce resistance by the
individuals to conform to the standardized
behavioral patterns imposed upon them
arbitrarily. The dysfunctional consequences
of the model entail the use of more
regulation, one should gradually find more
and more dysfunction. Democracies never
succeed in conquering the non-rational
dimensions of organizational behavior. The
latter remains at once indispensable to the
continued existence of the system of
coordination and at the same time the source
of friction, dilemma, doubt, and ruin. In
formal organizations, especially in large
ones, informal norms become so pervasive
that deviations from the formal rules and
regulations over a period of time become not
only acceptable but also institutionalized.
The deviations tend to force a shift away
from the purely formal system as the
effective determinant of behavior. It leads
to (1) a condition in which informal
patterns buttress the formal, as through the
manipulation of sentiment with the
organization in favor of established
authority; or (2) a condition wherein
informal controls effect a consistent
modification of formal goals.
There are relevant external environments and
that may define the nature and constrain the
activities of the organization. There is no
escape for the members of he organization
from bureaucratic pressure to conform to
understand how people withstand and
partially manage to control that pressure.
The same kind of vicious circle can develop
with hierarchical control and
standardization. Wrapping themselves in the
shrouds of nineteenth century political
economy, some social scientists appear to be
bent on resurrecting a dismal science.
Instead of telling men how bureaucracy might
be mitigated, they insist that it is
inevitable. Instead of explaining how
democratic patterns may, to some extent, be
fortified and extended, they warn us that
democracy cannot be perfect. Instead of
controlling the disease, they suggest that
we are deluded or more politely incurably
romantic, for hoping to control it. The
monolithic view organization and uniformity
in rule application fails to provide
satisfactory answers as to what happens when
legitimacy of authority has to be
established in the face of opposition and
refusal to consent on the part of the
governed.
In mock bureaucracy the rules are imposed on
the group by some outside agency... Neither
superiors nor subordinates identify
themselves with or participate in the
establishment of the rules nor do they
regard them as legitimate. Thus the rules
are not enforced, and both superiors and
subordinates obtain status by violating
them. In representative bureaucracy-rules
are promulgated by experts whose authority
is acceptable to all the members of the
organization. Superiors and subordinates
support the rules, which fit in with their
values and confer status on those who
conform. In the third type of bureaucracy,
punishment-centered, the rules arise in
response to the pressures either of
management or workers. The attempt is made
to coerce to other side into compliance.
This type of bureaucracy emphasizes the
elements of authority and command-hierarchy.
Either superiors or subordinates consider
the rules legitimate, and if conformity
leads to a gain in status for one side this
involve a loss of status for the other. The
tension that exists between authority based
on expertise and authority based on
hierarchy and discipline within an
organization. Punishment-centered
bureaucracy clearly underscores the dilemma
of an efficient organization based on
rationally designed rules or procedures and
the tension and conflict that develops when
close supervision exists to enforce the
rules. Thus, unanticipated consequences of
bureaucratic functioning may follow. Rules
have both negative and positive effects
anticipated and unanticipated consequences.
The authority systems based on different
criteria, i.e., expertise, hierarchy and
discipline. Local administrators are very
loyal to the organization but with little
commitment to specialized skills, and
cosmopolitans have little loyalty to the
organization but much commitment to their
specialized skills. External and internal
factors force a bureaucracy to make
modifications in its structure and permit
the perpetuation of certain informal norms.
Rules and procedures, at least most of them,
can encourage the achievement of
organizational objectives and at the same
time produce dysfunctions which may
interfere with the organization’s capacity
to undertake changes to continue
functioning.
Changes are likely to be supported by
individuals if they perceive that these
changes will satisfy organizational needs.
Such changes may, in turn, give rise to
needs calling for additional adjustments.
There are some of the conditions under which
an organization is likely to open itself to
new changes. These are, “(i) a minimum of
employment security; (ii) a professional
orientation towards the performance of
duties; (iii) established work groups that
command the allegiance of their members;
(iv) the absence of basic conflict between
work group and management; (v)
organizational needs that are experienced as
disturbing. “Maximum rationality in the
organization, therefore, depends on the
ability of operating official to assume the
initiative in establishing informal
relations and instituting unofficial
practices that eliminate operational
difficulties as they occur.”
Bureaucracy as a pat of the social system,
which consists of a distinctive culture, and
a system of shared values. The power
struggle, consensus and cooperation are
valued in the culture in order to maintain
competition within an organization and this
in turn leads to intricate intragroup or
intergroup alliances which foster the
existence of work-place norms. Bureaucracy
is unavoidable. It is an extreme application
of hierarchical structuring, centralizing of
decision making and completely impersonal
rules, which will tend to occur most where
almost all uncertainty has been removed that
is where environmental changes are likely to
be made and the internal situation has over
time become so well known to everyone in the
organization, where uncertainty is
considerable in terms of environmental
changes. Bureaucracy is thus a pathological
condition, for there is a tendency for
centralization and rule making to become or
to be taken as irreversible. “A bureaucratic
organization is an organization that can not
correct its behavior by learning from its
error.” Bureaucracy is also one that is
characterized by “vicious circles,” has the
following underlying pattern:
1. The rigidity of task definition, task
arrangements and the human relations
network, results in a lack of communications
among the groups.
2. The resulting difficulties, instead of
imposing a readjustment of the model, are
utilized by individuals and groups for
improving their position in the power
struggle within the organization.
3. Thus a new pressure is generated for
impersonality and centralization, the only
solution to personal privileges.
Change takes place in a bureaucratic
organization as with time any type of
organization must change, i.e., in order to
survives.
1. Change in a bureaucratic organization
must come from the top down and must be
universalistic, i. c., encompass the whole
organization en block--- (change) will wait
until a serious question pertaining to an
important dysfunction can be raised.
2. Because of the necessarily long delays,
because of the amplitude of the scope it
must attain, and because of the resistance
it must overcome, change in bureaucratic
organizations is a deeply felt crisis.
Crisis is a distinctive and necessary
clement of the bureaucratic system. It
provides the only means of making the
necessary adjustments. “ Development
Administration,” refers to “the processes of
guiding an organization toward the
achievement of progressive political,
economic, and social objectives, that are
authoritatively determined in one manner or
another. Development Administration aims at
increasing living standards and integrating
citizens into a sense of “nationness.” This
is also a major function of the bureaucracy
in most developing countries. Behavioral
traits are not only enormously complex but
vary considerably from one bureaucracy to
another and from time to time, which make
them difficult to diagnose in a confident
manner. Although certain similarity is
observable the behavior of bureaucrats
varies widely in time and place, without
there being any clear-cut pattern of
development. Nor is this fact to be wondered
at. The behavior of all persons in a
particular cultural context is bound to be
molded by the values and beliefs prevalent
in that culture.”
During the last two decades, increasing
emphasis has been given to the role of
bureaucrats as development administrators in
charge of fostering the economic growth of
their respective countries in addition to
their duties in the areas of law and order
and revenue collection. This concern with
economic growth has prompted many to compare
the Democratic capabilities of different
developing countries to successfully
undertake, sustain, and achieve
developmental plans and goals. Productivity,
efficiency, and economy are much used words
in this development administration approach.
The main reason behind the growing
importance of development administration is
the extension of governmental activities to
almost each and every sector of the economy.
Development administration conveys two
complementary things one administration of
development programs to the methods used by
large scale organizations notably
governments to implement policies and plans
designed to meet their developmental
objectives and development administration
(which) involves the strengthening of
Democratic capabilities.
The proponents of balanced social growth
“tend to view developing bureaucracies form
a sweeping historical and societal
perspective. They seek to fit the character
of the bureaucracy to the stage of
development through which they perceive the
society to be passing and to consider the
bureaucracy as a crucial power center one
that must be properly related to other power
centers in the society. The unbalanced
social growth approach lies on the premise
that for the purpose of faster economic
growth, bureaucracy as an institution must
be allowed to develop at a faster rate than
political and social institutions to make it
more efficient and reliable. Highly
differential, unbalanced, or asymmetrical
development among societal institutions are
not only assumed but expected as well.
Democratic reform, as a term, has been much
used and abused. Writers on Democratic
reform after years of constant effort have
filed to agree on a theoretical framework
under which it can be studied and analyzed.
Worse still, recently serious doubts have
been raised as to the rationale behind the
use of the term “Democratic reform” itself
and suggestions have been offered to
substitute it by using a more comprehensive
term like “reorganization of the machinery
of government. In any reform effort is that
is intended to improve upon the existing
situation by aiming to create a good
administration which clearly has a normative
element. Contrary to these pious hashes,
what actually happens in many real
situations are that entirely different
actors are strongly inspired by influence
and power motives. “In fact, it may well be
that Democratic reform has lost its grip on
the imagination of the political scientists
because it has ignored that conceptual
problems to dynamic political reality.”
Many so-called Democratic reforms have
implied considerable changes in the
structure and processes of political
executive organs and in their relationship
with the Democratic machinery. It has been
observed that changes in power structures
within and among political executive organs
induce changes in the Democratic machinery,
many of which are inspired purely political
considerations. The interactions between and
among Democratic and political subsystems
are crucial and to a large extent determine
the setting up of objectives, goals,
strategies, and probabilities of success of
the implementation of Democratic reform
proposals. On the one hand there is
increasingly a growing need to undertake
comprehensive reform programs to keep in
pace with complex social, economic and
political situations which most developing
countries must cope with in order to survive
let alone prosper. Comprehensive reforms in
practice have been found to be extremely
difficult to implement on the other.
Developing countries differ vastly among
themselves regarding their Democratic
systems (i.e., nature, composition, and
capability), political systems (i.e.,
absolute monarchy, dictatorship, one-party
rule, multi-party democratic system),
economic conditions (i.e., stage of economic
development), and cultural heritage. These
wide-ranging differences and, consequently,
the futile attempts to develop an
all-embracing and universal strategy to
Democratic systems have been widely
recognized. A categorization of
environmental states is a prerequisite to
developing strategies for change. Democratic
reform strategies are in the main a function
of the concrete circumstances of each
particular reform. The uniqueness of each
situation, which results in the demand by
each to use its own approach suited to the
particular situation at hand and builds
strategic models on the basis of three
variables: Task organizational form and
personal characteristics. That each
situation requires its own strategy.
Thinking on Democratic reform can be traced
during the fifties when systematic efforts
were made to export technical help and
know-how to the developing countries from
the developed ones in order to strengthen
the Democratic capabilities of the former.
In spite of the growing attention in recent
years, Democratic reform still remains
conceptually deficient.
“Democratic reform” Is “ the artificial
inducement of Democratic transformation,
against resistance. Democratic reform,
contains three interrelated properties:
moral purpose (which points to the need for
improving the status quo), artificial
transformation (which leads to a
considerable departure from existing
arrangements) and Democratic resistance
(when opposition is assumed). Distinguish
between Democratic reform and Democratic
change by saying that the latter is a
self-adjusting organizational response to
fluctuating conditions while the need for
the former arise from the latter because of
the malfunctioning of the natural processes
of Democratic change. Two principal
attributes of reform are goal orientation
(directed, conscious) and the
comprehensiveness of change so that reform
can be considered in terms of its scope
(number of Democratic components affected)
and the rate of change (time required to
bring about the desired changes. Democratic
reform is a complex process in which many
factors interact and affect one another and
whose results can be found over a
considerable period of time. Democratic
reform is considered normative as it calls
for improvement upon the existing order.
Democratic reform is generally used to
describe activities which actually go far
beyond its evident meaning. It is conceived
as directed action. Democratic reform is
defend here as those efforts which call for
or lead to major changes in the bureaucratic
system of a country intended to transform
the existing and established practices,
behaviors, and structures within it.
Democratic development is the growing
capability of the Democratic system to cope
continuously with problems created by social
change toward the goal of achieving
political, economic, and social progress.
Democratic development reflects the capacity
of Democratic systems to take choices and to
exercise discretion to bring about
environmental changes by deliberate programs
and self-conscious decisions. Democratic
development entails the assumption of
greater responsibility on the part of the
government bureaucracy to bring about
broader and macro changes which touch all
sectors of the society. Democratic
development is also normative as it is
considered an intrinsically meaningful
development process. The motive behind any
reorganization effort and Democratic
development program is to bring a change in
the present state of the Democratic system
which will enhance its capacity to undertake
and perform complex functions as they
emerge. It is said that Democratic reform
programs achieve overall development in
administration.
First, Reform proposals challenge
bureaucratic inertia and reactionary
administrators and although defense
mechanisms may temporarily suppress change,
things can never quite be the some and peace
tokens have to be made if the situation is
to be kept in hand,
Second, reform programs attract enterprising
Democratic talent and provide valuable
experience for a new generation of
Democratic aspirants.
Third, reformers promote badly needed
Democratic modernization which is likely to
set off a chain reaction in functional
reforms as changes in techniques, skills and
attitudes in specialized fields seem more
attainable than possible the harder changes
to carry through in administration.
Fourth, constructive progressive forces find
openings for their respective creative
talent in empirical problem solving,
particularly the kind presented in
Democratic reform...
Fifth, ... Any effort to transform
Democratic systems is to be commended in the
face of official indifference, technical
ignorance, political intransigence and
public apathy.176
Democratic reform is viewed in this context
as a process. It is believed that a
process-oriented study will provide a
greater understanding and a useful framework
to analyze the phenomenon Democratic reform
in a sequential manner. Any study of
Democratic reform must begin with the
understanding of the awareness of the need
for reform and conclude with a discussion of
problem relation to the implementation of
such efforts.
Several advantages can be noted if
Democratic reform is considered a process.
Process carries with it wider implications
than the content of the reform. In other
words, behavioral aspects are emphasized
along with the structural ones to make a
study of any Democratic reform more
comprehensive. The role or the reformer in
the process approaches this way.
(i) The way the reformer goes about making
changes is at least as important as the
specific changes recommend.
(ii) If a reformer wants to create more
responsible, responsive and initiating civil
servants, the reformer himself must begin
immediately to behave that way.
(iii) The reformer must not only arrive at
good answers but must work in a way that is
consistent with the desired changes.
A process-oriented approach takes into
consideration and gives high priority to the
human variable in the reform. At the same
time, it demands that reformers must be more
knowledgeable, concerned, and involved to
bring about the relevant changes. “Reform of
any Democratic system should begin with an
analysis of the system rather than an
analysis of the reform process. Major
Democratic reforms are usually direct
outcomes of very serious conditions faced by
the government.
1. Grave developments in the environment
such as war (or threat of war), economic
depression, sharp demands which have strong
political support (i.e., for the autonomy of
parts of the country).
2. Misadministration, which does not clearly
affect the relationship with the environment
but is, perceived as excessive annoyance by
groups within the government. The awareness
of Democratic reform arises with the
realization that the present organizational
set-up is unable to meet its obligations
adequately when a particular Democratic
system cannot keep in pace with time and
fails to make necessary adjustments over a
period of time. As a result, its components
become maladjusted.
Combination of a number of different and
identifiable factors over a period of time
will push for major structural changes to
rectify the maladies in the existing
Democratic system. These factors are:
When the awareness for reform is clearly
felt and understood, the logical step that
follows is to decide what needs to be done
and how that can be accomplished. No reform
process can be complete without a clear
perception of the role of goals and
strategies within it. There is a clear
consensus among practitioners and
academicians that desired goals for any
Democratic reform must be set as clearly and
as early as possible. It is essential in
order to determine the appropriate
strategies. Also, without specification of
goals, it will not be possible to determine
the extent of success or failure of the
reform. Goals can be divided into external
land internal categories. This typology has
the advantage of indicating the nature of
the reform suggested. Dror, following the
same line of thinking, distinguishes between
the two principal categories: (a)
introadministration directed goals which are
primarily concerned with improving the
administration and (b) objectives dealing
with the societal roles of the Democratic
system, and with changing policies and
programs. In many circumstances, internal
and external goals remain closely
interrelated and pose problems to efforts,
which intend to differentiate between them.
The former are usually set as means toward
the greater attainment of external goals,
i.e., to realize certain societal situations
or relationships, or to increase and improve
outputs.
External goals have been specified in
general terms in Democratic reform programs
in many countries. These mostly concern the
revitalization of the Democratic system to
bring wide-ranging social and economic
development. At the same time political
realities must be taken into consideration
in setting goals. Internal goals have been
associated with the attainment of economy,
efficiency, and effectiveness within an
organizational context. Reduction of
unnecessary governmental expenditure on
trivial Democratic activities has been
another goal of Democratic reform. All these
are intended to bring about significant
improvements in Democratic systems. There is
a sea of difference between formal or
official goals and informal and individual
goals of particular reformers, which
sometimes may be not only dissimilar but
also contradictory. Undeclared goals of
reformers were personal advancement, empire
building, and elimination of rivals.
Strategy is one of those elements in the
process of Democratic reform whose
significance is well recognized, but at the
same time little effort has been made to
define it or circumscribe it. To complicate
the matter further, strategy has been
subjected to different interpretations.
Strategy is megapolicles, which lay down
“the framework of guidelines and the
boundaries of policy space within which
operational and detailed policies are to be
established and decisions are to be made.”
Strategy implies defining the goal
boundaries of a desired or intended
activity, as opposed to tactics, which refer
to details of policy programs. Strategies in
the context of Democratic reform must
therefore deal with issues such as:
(1) “overall goals of Democratic reforms;
(2) the boundaries of Democratic reforms;
(3) preference in respect of time; (4) risk
acceptability; (5) choice between more
incremental or more innovative reform; (6)
more shock directed reforms; (7) relevant
assumptions on the future; (8) theoretic
(trait or explicit) assumptions on which the
reform is based; (9) resources available for
the Democratic reform; and (10) the range of
feasible reform instruments. Strategies have
also been viewed from a sequential, logical
angle, which presupposes careful
consideration of several factors, which
sometimes must be carried out
simultaneously. These are as follows:
(1) Research and analysis of the current
situation;
(2) Analysis and discussion leading to
general consensus on needs and goals;
(3) Forecasting of the future setting of
public administration, including the
political economic and social environment,
and the probable availability of resources
available to administration, as well as to
its reform;
(4) Development of alternative plans of
Democratic reform;
(5) Analysis of and, where possible,
experimentation with alternative plans,
their costs and benefits, including social
costs and benefits;
(6) Decision to proceed on best feasible
plan;
(7) Implementation;
(8) Continuing feedback on consequences and
modification of plan as indicated.
Though strategies to a great extend
determine the fate of Democratic reforms,
efforts to identify and operationalize one
particular strategy, as a model to all
developing countries has not been
successful. The preferable mix of Democratic
reform strategies is in the main function of
the concrete circumstances of each
particular reform situation. The best
strategy is determined contextually,
dependent on and dictated by the special
circumstances obtaining in a particular
country. The degree of implementation is a
function of the social environment, the
political structure, the reform agents, the
reform agency, and the reform strategy. The
two reform strategies are (i) the
comprehensive and (ii) the selective. A
comprehensive strategy can be implemented if
the leadership of reform agents and the
internal structure of the reform agency are
strong and if the social environment and
political structure are favorable. A
selective strategy can be implemented if
either (1) the leadership is strong but the
situation is unfavorable, or (2) the
situation is favorable but the leadership is
weak. It follows, then, if the leadership is
weak and at the same time the situation is
unfavorable, no strategy can be expected to
be effective. Time and leadership are two
crucial variables, which deserve wider
attention.
The creation of appropriate environment for
the facilitation of the process of reform
implementation presupposes the creation,
sustenance and spread of appropriate
attitudes in men who matter most. Men who
occupy positions in the democratic hierarchy
from where the consequences of good or bad
leadership emerge and permeate the entire
structure pretend to be untouchables..
Implementers must get involved in the
process as early as practicable; an adequate
agency for follow-up action must be
established. The urge to improve must come
from within (whether from an individual or
from the organization where reform is
introduced), and extreme care must be taken
in the choice and training of personnel
meant to undertake the implementation of
reforms. Explain the complexities of
principal actor’s attitudes and their effect
on surrounding environment is necessary,
because it ultimately substantially affect
the contemplated reforms. The prospect of
success in implementing major democratic
reforms depends on scope, magnitude of
change, rate of change, sequence of change,
goals, or objectives, reform instrument or
means, and evaluation criteria. It is
hypothesized that the greater the
comprehensiveness, complexity, and magnitude
of changes, the lesser the probability of
implementation as there will be more
resistance-organized and institutionalized.
The complexities that are found in the
process of implementation are sizeable gaps
differentiating pious assumptions from the
happenings in the real world in the study of
Democratic reform. Sometimes the gap is too
great to distinguish between the ideal and
the real, which eventually seriously dampens
the prospect of implementation of reforms.
In practice, things do not exactly follow
the idealistic routine. Many governments
only pay lip service to reforms and have no
real desire to see major reforms take place
but would like to talk about is because of
political gains involved. Incompetent people
mostly man the reform bodies. Serious
efforts are seldom made to maintain a
balance between politician bureaucrat,
academician, and other outside experts when
members are chosen. This uneven composition
results in recommendations, which are
impractical and difficult to implement.
Bureaucratic attitudes have not changed,
which prompts the perpetuation of negative
and hostile attitudes toward any mention of
change. The gap between the ideal and the
real can be narrowed considerably and the
task of implementation will be smoother, if
the government gives serious attention to
three types of actions. “First, a well
defined and bold policy, a firm decision on
the part of political leadership in power to
carry out the reforms accepted by it.
Second, there is the need for adequate
institutional arrangements and safeguards
for implementation of reforms. Third, an
operational plan to push ahead with the
implementation of the accepted reforms.”
Democratic reforms intended to bring
wide-ranging changes. Reforms mostly fail at
the implementation stage. All the other
stages appointment of a commission or
committee or person, deliberations that
follow, findings that come out of those
deliberations and the recommendations that
result-follow each other in a routine
manner, and hardly and eyebrow is raised by
anyone at these stages. But the situation
changes dramatically when the final stage of
a reform is reached. The implementation
phase of a reform is the most crucial as is
determines the fate the success or the
failure of any reform. Resistance to reforms
clearly manifests at this phase. To a large
extent, it becomes clear who are for or
against a particular reform. Lines are drawn
among the proponents and opponents on the
basis of who is expected to get what from
the proposed reform. Alliances are formed to
protect the existing advantages, and efforts
are undertaken to fight collectively the
threats, which are perceived to be a result
of the reform. Democratic reform is a
complex process. Its success or failure
depends on the presence or absence of many
variables. Democratic reforms, especially
major ones, cannot be understood without an
understanding and cognizance of the societal
environment within which reforms are
proposed. The success or failure of a major
Democratic reform hinges on the presence or
absence of certain variables. These are:
political leadership and political
environment, societal environment, reform
agents, nature or the reform, bureaucratic
attitude toward change, and the role of the
elite bureaucracy as a pressure group.
Support of the political leadership is not
only desirable but also a must if major
Democratic reforms are to succeed. In
Bangladesh the political leadership either
did not give its wholehearted support and
cooperation or took the reforms casually.
This is evidenced by the fact that during
the parliamentary period (1972-2004)
politicians were more interested in
jockeying for their positions, which
resulted in bitter in-fighting among
politicians, leaving them with little or no
time to give serious consideration about
reform. In their priorities, Democratic
reform ranked rather low. Also chronic
political instability became the order of
the day, majorities formed during the day
became minorities at night due to intricate
and back-door political maneuvering.
Survival, more than any other thought,
preoccupied the minds of the politicians.
This situation considerably weakened the
politicians in relation to the civil
servants and made them most effective,
organized and cohesive entity empowered with
full knowledge and control. Experience
indicates that one of the reasons major
Democratic reforms failed was the lack of
political support for them. It is believed
that without strong and determined political
support, major Democratic reforms can never
become reality. Democratic reforms,
especially the major ones, cannot succeed
without proper understanding and
consideration of the society as a whole.
Blind imitation of alien ideas and abrupt
attempts at their transplantation with
little regard for indigenous values and
norms have become commonplace in the
Democratic reform efforts of developing
countries. Democratic reform proposals,
enough comprehensive judged by any standard,
were not broad enough to include in their
deliberations some of the societal
variables, which molded and conditioned the
Democratic system. Society is deeply
stratified, resulting in social classes
based on income, family background etc.
Status consciousness was perpetuated by such
consideration as which family one was born
to, which school he attended, and which job
he took. The society consciously or
unconsciously condoned the arrangement in
which groups of people lived as separate and
distinct entities. This arrangement bestowed
benefits to the rich, powerful and less
fortunate elements of the society.
Part – Two
Good Governance and Democracy - Bangladesh
Perspective
Local Elected Bodies (Structure)
For government administrative purposes,
Bangladesh is divided into six divisions, 64
districts, 448 upazilas (also known as
thanas), and 4,276 unions. A union
ordinarily consists of ten to twelve
villages and generally incorporates around
20,000 to 25,000 citizens. In each union, a
council, called a union parishad (UP), is
elected to serve local public needs. In the
current structure, which has been in effect
since 1997, the UP consists of a Chairman
and 12 members, 9 elected male and female
members and 3 reserved but elected female
members.
The Up constituency is divided into nine
wards. There are nine general members, one
for each ward, directly elected by the
voters within the ward. These candidates
could be either men or women, although
presently they are almost exclusively male
throughout Bangladesh. In addition, three UP
seats are reserved for women, each reserved
seat representing three wards combined.
These women members are directly elected
among competing women candidates not
appointed by the UP Chairman, as was the
case prior to 1997. The current arrangement
means that each reserved woman member
represents three times as many constituents
as each general member, a situation that
often affects the power dynamics of the UP.
The Chairman is the executive of the UP and
is directly elected by all voters of the
union. The Chairman could be either male or
female, although currently almost all of
them are men. By virtue of his position, the
Chairman is a highly visible and influential
person in his community. He also exerts a
great deal of official authorizes
expenditures, and relates to officials at
higher levels of government.
The entire UP is elected for a term of five
years. Some of the UP’s formal
responsibilities include maintaining law and
order; developing and maintaining roads,
bridges, culverts, and other infrastructure;
providing services in health, education,
agricultural extension, forestation, relief
distribution, and arbitration; excavating
derelict public ponds; leasing gout space in
markets; and registering births, marriages,
and deaths. The UP relates upward to the
Upazila Nirbahi Officer (UNO), the chief
Democratic official at the next highest
level of government, who is appointed, not
elected. At the district level, the Deputy
Commissioner (DC), who is also an appointed
official, has oversight of the UP’s in his
area. At the national level, the UP comes
under the auspices of the Ministry of Local
Government, Rural Development and
Co-operatives (LGRD&C. UP budgets are
routinely scrutinized and must be approved
by the UNO, DC, and Assistant Director of
LGRDC. In addition, other national
ministries often issue directives to the
UP’s on various topics.
Roles: Perhaps the most widely known and
most important role of the UP is to utilize
the funds that are available to it to
implement projects which will lead to the
greater development of its community. Funds
come from various sources through the
government. Money from the Annual
Development Program, designed and
coordinated by national government
ministries and approved by Parliament, is
channeled through block grants to each
upazila in the country. The Upazial Nirbahi
Officer (Chef Democratic Officer) and the
Chairman of the Upazila Development
Committee then disburse these funds to the
unions in their upazilas according to
certain criteria. Most unions receive
approximately one-third of their total
revenue in this manner. Union parishad also
collect taxes from their constituents, which
they share according to a percentage formula
with the upazila and district level
governments. In order to use these funds to
provide services to their communities, UP
Chairmen make committee assignments to each
UP member, to fulfill the requirements from
the central government of maintaining 12
standing committees. Due to gender bias,
however, sometimes the women members are not
given all the same responsibilities, which
their male counterparts acquire. These
committees make decision about the kinds of
projects that should be implemented in their
unions. Such as building or upgrading roads
and bridges, and providing certain health
care or health information programs,
education services, family welfare programs,
agricultural extension projects, tree
plantation projects, and water resource
management projects, among others. Once
projects have been identified, each member
must lobby within the UP to have his or her
project prioritized. The Up Chairman must
then negotiate with the UNO and the DC to
authorize the desired project and to secure
the necessary block grant funds. The UP must
also raise any other remaining resources
required if the block grant is inadequate to
implement the project.
In performing these tasks, the members must
also work with personnel from relevant
government entities. For example, to build a
bridge the member must coordinate efforts
with the Upazila Engineer, an employee of
the Local Government Engineering Department
(LGED), or to run and agricultural support
program a member must work with the Upazila
Agricultural Extension Officer. Deciding on
the most beneficial activities for their
constituents, managing the funds and human
resources to accomplish these tasks, and
coordinating the projects with the
appropriate staff of government agencies are
some of the most important roles which the
UP Chairman and member and members play.
In the formal legal system in Bangladesh,
the UP is endowed with limited authority to
hear cases in village courts for minor
criminal offenses and civil violations under
the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance 1961 and
the Village Court Ordinance 1976. Decisions
at the UP run village court evolve through
arbitration based on the opinion of the
majority of members. Generally the court
proceedings are run by the Chairman and
involve the UP members as well as two
representatives from each party to the suit.
Of the representatives, one from each side
must be a member of the UP. The other court
members may be individuals who command a
certain degree of respect in that community.
Women, even the women UP members, rarely
participate on the village court because of
gender biased traditions and social norms
which limits a woman’s physical movement
beyond her community and/or hinders her from
assuming leadership functions. UP members
are also given authority to hand out social
welfare cards which entitle constituents to
receive relief from certain government-run
programs, and to enroll constituents in
food-for –work projects. The Chairman
usually distributes Vulnerable Group
Development (VGD) cards and allowances for
the elderly to UP members according to his
won discretion, and the members in turn hand
them out to appropriate people among those
whom they represent. Similarly, the Chairman
allocates a certain number of slots for
food-for-work to each member, who then
selects the people in his or her ward to
participate.
The UP is also authorized to assess and
collect certain taxes and fees-i.e., a
household tax, fees charged to merchants to
lease space in local markets (hat or
bazaar), and fees charged for the use of a
common water body (jalmahal). UP’s may
determine these taxes according to formulas,
which they devise. Another duty assigned
specifically to the Union Parishad is the
maintenance of many different kinds of
registers, including births, marriages, and
deaths, as well as registers regarding
general office management, village court
procedures, relief program distribution, and
food-for-work program participation. In
addition, the Chairman manages a small staff
made up of a secretary, several chowkidars
and dafadars (local police), all of whom are
hired by the upazila authorities and
assigned to respective UP’s. The UP chairman
also oversees the physical facilities in
which the UP meets and where records are
stored. In many instances, personnel and
facilities are severely limited.
Challenges Roles and Responsibilities:
Various challenges hinder the efficient and
productive functioning of Union Parishad.
One of the most basic obstacles is that UP
member and Chairmen are often unaware of
their own roles and responsibilities. There
is a brief government-sponsored training
course conducted by the National Institute
of Local Government (NILG), but is tends to
focus on rote functions like maintaining the
various registers, not on the complex duties
of representation and management. Because
this training is inadequate, and because
there are only broad, not detailed, job
descriptions supplied by the government, the
officials themselves are mostly uninformed
about their obligations. When newly elected,
they are dependent for information on other
UP members who are more experienced-but
these individuals for various reasons
relating to power dynamics and desire to
control resources are sometimes quite
reluctant to share the benefit of their
experiences. Furthermore, women are at an
even greater disadvantage, because many of
them have extremely limited knowledge of the
regulations, laws, budgeting processes, and
other Democratic procedures of the UP,
having been relegated to domestic chores
most of their lives.
The reverse side of this equation is that
frequently the citizens whom the UP members
and Chairmen represent are also poorly
informed about the roles and
responsibilities of the UP and the
functioning of local government. Therefore,
the constituents do not understand how to
hold officials responsible for their actions
or decisions on behalf of the community. And
how to participate fully in the decision
making process about the expenditure of
funds or the adjudication of legal cases, or
how to respond to unfair, corrupt, or
negligent practices by officials which
adversely affect the welfare of their
communities. Without this knowledge,
citizens claim a very limited role for
themselves, and democratic processes are
weak.
Transparency: Another fundamental challenge
hindering good governance at the local level
is the pervasive lack of transparency by
officials. Local Elected Bodies usually do
not comply with requirements to hold open
meetings or to publicly display the minutes
of their meetings. They also do not
generally sponsor open planning sessions for
the determination of budgets or work plans,
nor do they report these documents openly.
This lack of transparency leads to a lack of
accountability in the processes of budgeting
and planning development projects.
Consequently, UP members and Chairmen
sometimes accept bribes to choose some
projects over other ones, or embezzle for
personal gain a portion of the funds that
are meant to finance the implementation of
projects.
Power Structures: Along with corruption and
lack of ability is the obstacle of
entrenched power structures. Influential
people in the community, sometimes employing
thugs or gangsters, frequently coerce UP
members and Chairmen into making decisions
or taking actions that will benefit their
personal interests instead of the community
at large, especially poor people. In the
most severe cases, UP members themselves
have their own coteries of hired gangsters,
virtually holding constituents hostage in
order to maintain their own power and
financial gain. Moreover, in some instances
UP members engage in internal power
struggles with other UP members for status
and influence, or for the opportunity to
engage in corruption. These machinations and
maneuvers primarily serve the self-interest
of the players, not the constituents whom
they represent.
Given this entrenched power structure, most
NGO’s and community members do not feel they
have access or input or input into the
allocation of resources or the
implementation of governance at the local
level. UP members are known to make promises
during an election campaign, but citizens
feel they have no way to make their
representatives live up to their pledges.
Moreover, most local people are used to the
traditional system of patron-client
dependency, as opposed to enfranchised
citizens demanding and expecting public
service, so they have even less motivation
to hold their UP member to campaign
promises. On the other hand, community
members also sometimes experience
intimidation, as some candidates use threats
and fear tactics to retain constituency
allegiance. Either way, these ploys lead to
a feeling of perpetual powerlessness by
citizens at the local level.
Skills: Even when attempts to serve the
community are sincere, poor leadership,
Democratic, and managerial skills create
inefficiencies, incompetent oversight, and
poor use of available resources. Moreover,
in many cases, UP Chairmen dominant decision
making and activities to such an extent that
others are not given the opportunity to
demonstrate or improve their skills. And
there is no coordinated, team effort to
contribute to the good of the community-only
authoritarianism by the Chairman or senior
male members. Therefore, inexperience,
incompetence, and high-handedness lead to
further distrust of LEB capacity to make
wise decisions about local community
resources and serve the public good.
Centralization: An additional hindrance to
good governance at the local level is the
extremely centralized form of government now
in place. UP’s derive their authority and a
substantial portion of their funds from
national ministries that are constrained by
the levels in between, and they must submit
their budgets and their work plans to a
multitude of appointed bureaucrats at these
upazila and district levels. As a result,
the UNOs and chairmen of Upazila Development
Committees have more de facto power over
development projects in unions than the UPs
themselves. Furthermore, because many unions
must compete with each other for the modest
financial resources available for local
development, there is constant risk of
promising favors or kickbacks from funds in
order to get a project selected.
Another challenge is that the security and
staff who work at the UP level are hired by
upazila level officials, and so are not
motivated to follow the supervision of the
UP Chairman. In addition, UPs are subject to
the severely restrictive guidelines and
regulations of the upazila, district, and
national ministry levels of government and
have very little flexibility or autonomy to
enable them to be responsive to the concerns
and needs of their communities.
Historical Relationship between UPs and NGOs
: Over the last thirty years in Bangladesh,
literally hundreds of non-governmental
organizations have been formed to provide
many different kinds of services for the
poor, including services in health,
sanitation, nutrition, agriculture,
education, credit and income generating
activities, infrastructure building, rights
awareness and protection, legal aid, and
others. There NGOs have attempted to fill
the void left by the government, which has
historically provided such services
inadequately or not at all. As a result, the
NGO environment in Bangladesh is highly
active and well respected in society, but
viewed with suspicion by many public
officials, who see NGO efforts as somewhat
competitive with the government itself.
Throughout the decades since independence,
rural-based NGOs with strong roots in the
community have continued and expanded their
development programs aimed directly at the
rural poor, but NGOs have been skeptical of
the idea of engaging local government. Local
elected bodies, NGOs, and their
beneficiaries saw LEBs as having either
limited authority or little commitment to
serve the interests of their constituents.
They observed the clear evidence that public
services at the local level were grossly
inadequate to meet the needs of the poor.
Government projects-whether relief or local
infrastructure projects were seen as a means
used by officials to retain local loyalty
and provide favors, not to enhance the
quality of life in the community. As a
result of this assessment of LEBs as having
little commitment or capacity to improve
conditions for local constituents, very few
NGOs had projects with a targeted and
sustained focus on improving the performance
of local elected bodies. Before the
Democracy Partnership’s inception, only one
of the NGO partners, Bangladesh Nari Progati
Sangha (BNPS), has an organizational
strategy that aimed to empower citizens and
influence local governance. Other NGO
programs were generally focused on relief,
or economic development, but did not address
socio-political transformation. Based on a
strong historical partnership with various
government agencies and democratic
institutions as well as its large network of
local partner organizations, ILDunder the DP
worked to strengthen the collaborative
relationship between local government bodies
and community based NGOs as a means to
achieve improved governance. Consequently,
ILDhas supported its partner NGOs to work
directly with community associations and
LEBs in order to improve local governance
and rural justice and to involve more women
in local elected bodies. Under the DP,
partner NGOs have actively engaged local
government officials, offering workshops,
seminars, and training events to inform them
about their roles and responsibilities and
to make them more aware of governmental and
legal systems.
The principles of partnership have been
fundamental to the success of such a
program. The risk of either side-NGOs or
LEBs-disregarding the other, as in the past,
or of overstepping one’s rightful role and
ending the collaboration were high. But by
following a process of forging respectful
and meaningful partnerships for both the
NGOs and the LEBs, real change and progress
were achieved, for the ultimate benefit of
local citizens.
LEB-Related Activities: As a result of their
cooperation and motivation, NGOs have
developed new strategies for improving local
governance and witnessed excellent results.
NGOs now view LEBs as an integral element of
their community development programs. The
success of NGO programming with ILDsupport
under the DP significantly changed the
attitude of participating NGOs regarding
their ability to positively influence local
governance through their work with local
elected bodies and citizens groups.
Moreover, LEBs have begun to see NGOs as
valuable partners in local governance, and
as resources for capacity building and other
technical support. Citizens, too, perceive
the value of closer interaction with LEBs
through NGO programs.
Ensuring rights of disadvantaged to
government resources: Local government
before the DP had long been considered to be
under the influence of local elites with
greater wealth and power than their poorer,
disadvantaged neighbors. With ILDsupport to
partner NGOs under the DP, LEBs have taken
significant steps towards listening to the
needs and opinions of a much broader cross
section of society. And towards taking
concrete action to mobilize and allocate
resources that will benefit the poor as well
as the wealthy and middle class. On the
reverse side of the equation, with partner
NGO workshops and advocacy opportunities,
the community members themselves, even the
most disadvantaged ones, have also been
speaking more boldly and advocating on their
own behalf to claim their rights to
government resources.
Standardizing financial, office and record
management: TAF-supported NGOs have provided
specific technical assistance directly to
UPs to teach them about standard accounting
procedures, and to help them to institute
consistent, accurate office and other data
record management. These workshops and
training sessions have enabled UP Chairmen
and members to be more thorough, diligent,
and accountable in their handling of
budgets, licenses, taxes, and registration
records, among others.
Ensuring access to information: With ILD
conducting training in open policies and
procedures, and holding UPs accountable to
such transparency, LEBs in intervention
areas have instituted posting budgets, funds
allocations from central government, and
minutes of meetings on public bulletin
boards. And they have made record books on
birth, marriage, and death registrations
open and accessible to community members if
they desire. This change in behavior has
greatly improved the level of trust and
credibility that UPs have earned among their
constituents.
Improving resource mobilization and
utilization: Up members are learning,
through ILD workshops, how to better design
budgets and work plans, and how to manage
the utilization of human and financial
resources to undertake many of their most
important functions. Consequently, LEB
members have been able to arrange for tree
plantation for income sources for local
people, for participation necessary
infrastructure development like road
maintenance and canal digging, and for more
equitable handling of tax assessment and
collection with much efficiency and
competency. Community members in
intervention areas are much betters
satisfied that the funds and human resources
available to their UPs are being used wisely
and for the benefit of the entire community.
Promoting equitable distribution: Up members
have learned from their training and
interactions with their constituents that it
is important for them to wield their
authority judiciously, especially with
regard to relief, elderly, and other
allowances that the government makes
available to the poorest of the poor.
Constituents are also empowered to hold
their LEB members accountable after having
benefited from the training and awareness
raising campaigns of TAF’s partner NGOs
under the DP. As a result, UP members are
being much more equitable in handing out the
relief they are authorized to distribute.
Ensuring women participation: NGOs under the
DP have focused much attention on empowering
all of the UP members to speak up at
meetings, to understand budget and
development processes, to assert their
leadership in implementing activities, and
to offer their views on local concerns. With
this assistance and encouragement, LEB
members participate much more than they did
previously, no longer allowing UP Chairmen
to dominate the discussions and decision
making, as has traditionally been the case.
Furthermore, in addressing gender
sensitivity issues at DP project workshops,
NGOs have not only empowered women to speak
up and claim their right to participate, but
they have also encouraged Chairmen to seek
the advice and participation of all the
members especially women.
Creating women’s networks:The formation of
associations at the upazila level for all
women UP members has been extremely
beneficial to many women leaders. They have
found the strength, confidence, and
practical suggestions they need to become
more effective in handling gender bias and
addressing the challenges of their duties as
elected officials. These women at the local
level form the foundation for increased
women’s leadership in other roles throughout
Bangladesh. with time, greater experience
and the continued support of women’s
networks, many of these female officials
will likely run for higher offices as
opportunities arise.6 In this way, even more
improved representation of women by women
will evolve.
Promoting regular interaction with female
constituents: The workshops that partner
NGOs have sponsored have ensured that women
have access to their UP members, both male
and female. Women have had positive
interaction with their representatives and
experienced greater confidence in
identifying their problems, particularly in
health, education, village shalish
(mediation councils), marriage maintenance,
divorce, respect for their inheritance
rights, and other concerns. Women in
intervention groups have been most
comfortable speaking with their female LEB
members, which has given them greater
confidence and the assurance that some
elected representatives are truly working on
their behalf. It has also increased their
confidence to approach male members and
their Chairmen as well.
Ensuring participation of constituents: The
training sessions that ILD has supported
constituents to understand the functions of
Ups. That it serve with regard to planning,
budgeting, and implementing development
projects, which in turn has helped them to
know what they can expect from their elected
officials. In addition, the workshops,
seminars, and courtyard meetings have given
community people the forums in which to
voice their desires, needs and expectations.
In some places, for the first time all
members of a community have the opportunity
to engage their elected representatives and
to participate in their own development.
Coordinating meetings among all
stakeholders: The coordination meetings
which DP partners have sponsored have been
instrumental in bringing together all the
players who can positively affect
development it their communities: government
agencies, NGOs community-based
organizations, and community leaders. The
ongoing dialogue in which these parties now
engage has benefited all members of the
community greatly, making development
efforts more focused, streamlined,
efficient, and need-based.
Promoting primary education, health, and
family planning: With the community members
participating as never before in expressing
their opinions about what kinds of
development projects must be prioritized,
the UPs have come to understand that many
people are very concerned about primary
education for their children, about health
information and health care for all members
of their families, and about improving their
circumstances by controlling the number and
spacing of their child births. As a result,
LEBs in intervention areas have seen a
marked increase in the promotion of these
particular kinds of projects.
Lobbying local branches of national
agencies: For many years the district and
upazila offices of such ministries as
health, education, and agriculture have been
remiss in delivering the basic services
which are supposed to be their agencies core
business. As a result of NGO awareness
raising, training sessions and coordination
meetings, both UP members and the people of
communities themselves are initiating
lobbying efforts to demand that these basic
services are provided, in keeping with the
government’s purposes and plans.
Community-Based Advocacy Activities: The
advocacy programs undertaken by TAF’s
partners under the DP have contributed to
mobilizing the general public in different
locations of Bangladesh, motivating them to
demand changes in their social, economic,
legal and political circumstances.
Empowering the poor to advocate on their own
behalf transforms the structures of
communities, encouraging previously
disadvantaged persons to become participants
in their own development, and giving them
hope to dream of a life with better options
for future generations. The objectives of
the advocacy initiatives at the grassroots
level were similar for each NGO partner, but
the impact varied from place to place
depending on specific community conditions.
Nonetheless, certain common best practices
and lessons learned can be concluded from
their work.
Grassroots-level good governance advocacy:
Activities by TAF-supported NGOs under the
DP in advocacy have been unique and ground
breaking in Bangladesh. These programs were
designed by the partners to mobilize the
general public into pressure groups for the
enforcement of their rights, the adherence
to policies already adopted by different
government entities, and the protection of
constitutionally mandated participatory
planning processes to address community
problems. These interventions brought about
tangible, positive results with regard to
tax collection, improvement of drinking
water and sanitation conditions,
distribution of khas land, construction of
roads, distribution of VGD (Vulnerable Group
Development) cards, and provision of flood
relief. The achievements of the various
initiatives under the DP were accomplished
by educating union parishad members on their
roles and responsibilities and by developing
a cooperative working relationship between
them and their constituents. The overall aim
was to broaden the UP development agenda
beyond a focus on the construction and
maintenance of village infrastructure, to
include education on human rights, primary
health care, clean water, sanitation and
women’s empowerment. In addition, the
program helped citizens to advocate with
local government to acquire government
services to which they are entitled but
which are often neglected, like agriculture
extension information and subsidized
fertilizer and insecticides.
Therefore the advocacy initiatives launched
by these partners were highly effective in
influencing development at the grassroots in
ways that could not be achieved through
national level policy oriented advocacy.
Furthermore now common citizens have been
empowered to understand what they can expect
from their local leaders. In terms of
implementation of development and protection
of rights, they are much better able to
launch their own campaigns on other issues
as they emerge in their communities,
creating a strong, sustainable grassroots
movement.
Transforming social classes: In Bangladesh,
land is a key ingredient to wealth, social
status, and political influence. Very few
people at the top of a steep social pyramid
control most of the land resources in this
agriculturally based country, with huge
numbers of marginal landholders and landless
people forming the vast base of the
population. Furthermore, landless people are
on the increase in society, and with few
employment alternatives to agricultural
labor, they are definitely disadvantaged in
terms of authority, autonomy, and economic
survival.
The introduction of initiatives to advocate
for legally guaranteed access to khas lands
and natural resources like water bodies and
wetlands has truly transformed society in
these rural areas. Samity members of partner
NGOs have become more unified in their
approach and stronger in their insistence on
demanding their rightful share of resources
with local elected bodies and community
leaders. The awareness raising activities,
training workshops, management committees
and group formation and leadership
development interventions all contribute to
building the confidence of the extremely
poor and landless, enhancing their financial
and physical security, and changing the
attitudes of the elite toward greater
concern and respect for these disadvantaged
individuals in society.
Women’s equal rights in decision making :
Women in Bangladesh also traditionally lack
status, financial and other resources, and
decision making authority. The initiatives
undertaken by TAF’s implementing partners
have empowered women as well as poor men to
be more forceful in claiming their legal
rights and entitlements. As a result, women
have participated much more in local
government activities and have attained a
higher status and more influence in their
families and communities. They feel that
they have greater security against being
abandoned by their husbands or being treated
with disrespect and even violence in their
communities now. Many women women also feel
better equipped to claim legal protection in
domestic and land issues.
Expressing citizen demands: Groups formed or
utilized by advocacy programs under the DP
have demonstrated to citizens the value of
community collaboration to express their
demands and hold their LEBs accountable.
Insistence on the active participation of
all members, and focus on such activities as
training members on the electoral process,
developing leadership skills and confidence,
promoting good institutional governance
within and among the groups, creating an
atmosphere in which participation is
encouraged, and urging more women to seek
leadership positions, have modeled for
beneficiaries the significance of democratic
principles.
New value of public service: Common citizens
for the first time have begun to understand
that the concept of public service is far
different from the traditional idea of
patronage that has been handed down through
many generations in Bangladesh.
Historically. poor people and women have
depended on the largesse and compassion of
wealthy and influential patrons to assist
them with resources and opportunities. Many
people had been socialized so that they had
no understanding at all of the democratic
idea of elected representatives who act in
the best interest of the public whom they
serve. With ILD supported interventions
under the DP, communities are much more
cognizant of this idea of public service,
and they respect its value and efficacy.
Furthermore, they are developing a sense of
the rightfulness of demanding this kind of
treatment from their elected leaders.
Improving representation at decision making
bodies: The advocacy programs of TAF’s NGO
partners emphasized ensuring that the rural
poor, especially women, be active in local
decision making processes. One important
formal decision making body is the shalish,
a village or UP mediation body, which
settles petty civil and criminal disputes.
Since the DP interventions, the
disadvantaged have indeed been asserting
their rights at shalish, participating in
the rulings and helping to make them less
arbitrary and more in keeping with stated
law. When there are people of the aggrieved
own socio-economic class present to
represent their point of view and their
interests, the shalish goes much more
smoothly and persons are much better
satisfied with the results. In this way, the
disadvantaged have a vioce and a chance for
fairness, which they had previously been
denied.
Women too, have become much more active in
shalish. The have come out from seclusion
and the confinement of their traditional
roles to access the informal justice system
on their own behalf. Many women in
intervention areas feel that their better
representation in shalish by women UP
members or NGO staff committed to protecting
their rights has also led to changes in how
they are viewed in the community and the
family. Domestic violence, harassment, and
gender violence have decreased as a result
of their new role as decision makers and
their insistence on their legal protections.
Many women group members stated that they
feel much better able to handle themselves
in incidents of potential threat or
disruption now.
Enforcing of laws: ILD advocacy
interventions included intensive awareness
raising and training activities on existing
laws and important factors for development.
These initiatives not only had impact on the
general public but also on LEB members.
Government elected official s became more
highly motivated to play their proper roles
and carry out their appropriate
responsibilities, including assessing and
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