Good Governance And Social Capital
NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF POLITICAL STUDIES AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION FACULTY
PUBLIC SECTOR MANAGEMENT
Good Governance and Social Capital
Scientific coordinator:
PhD. Professor Luminița Gabriela Popescu
Graduate:
Pompiliu-Ion Popescu
BUCHAREST
2016
Summary
Introduction
Chapter 1 – Governance
1.1 The concept of Governance
1.2 Governance in the eyes of the European Union
1.3 Governance as an institutional proccess
1.4 Governance from a multilevel perspective
Chapter 2 – Governing vs Governance
2.1 Governing vs Governance
2.2 Corporate governance
2.3 Governance in the European regulatory agencies
Chapter 3 – Good Governance
3.1 The principles of good governance
3.2 Responsibility and forms of responsibility
3.3 Good governance at a local level
Chapter 4 – Social Capital
4.1 Fukuyama’s vision
4.2 Putnam’s vision
4.3 Woolcock’s vision
Conclusions
Annexes
Bibliography
Introduction
The following paper proposes to present the main theoretical, historical and practical aspects in regards to good governance, social capital, the link between them and their effect on our society.
I decided to pick this subject for my dissertation paper because I considered that the notions on good governance and social capital haven’t been fully understood by our citizens. Also, through this paper I tried to answer to the following questions: What does good governance imply?, How does it affect us? What is social capital and how can it get involved in the good governance?, How is social capital affected by good governance?
The paper is comprised of four chapters. Now I will present briefly the content of each chapter.
In the first chapter, I talked about the concept of governance, definitions and interpretations, as well as forms of governance in our society.
In the second chapter, I tried to bring out the different aspects between governing and governance.
In chapter three, I portrayed the aspects of good governance and the implications that this entails.
Chapter four deals with the notion of social capital from a theoretical perspective, but also from a pragmatic one.
What I consider defining is identifying the factors that put in motion, influence and contribute to the formation and development of governance at a local level.
From the perspective of this paper it results that the human factor is one of the determining factors which we must concentrate upon with extreme care, because he is the main reason for the changes in our modern society
Chapter 1
Governance
The concept of Governance
Global governance is based on two types: institutional and corporate. Governance is exerted through international institutions and globalization, but also through the power of the global states. Global governance is manifested at an economic, political and military level.
At the moment, the “locomotive” that drives the global governance is The United States of America (USA), the global leader, a unique super power, for the time being. This position has been held by the USA after the end of the Cold War and the crash of the Soviet Union in 1991. No other state managed to become a contender for the USA, but the European Union and China are two aspirers for the title of “super power”.
One of the largely spread opinions in the press, political spheres, academic environment and influential business groups is that globalization creates problems which can’t be solved in the old institutional framework of international relationships. Economic instability, generated by the recent crisis of the financial markets, the degradation of the environment due to excessive exploitation of natural resources and increased gap between rich countries and poor countries, caused by the unfair economic order, exceed the institutional capabilities and political competences of the current states and international organizations.
Judging by these facts, a remodeling is in order when it comes to international relations under institutional report (rules and norms), but also under organizational report (the capacity to implement and control). The ideas for this reform are kind of heterogeneous because they reflect the visions of a large variety of visions, current political aspects, key opinion leaders and official or nongovernmental organizations. But, in general we can talk about two conceptual categories:
global governance, concept shared by the experts from the Global Bank, International Monetary Fund and some economists;
world governance, concept adopted by the United Nations, politologists and a number of nongovernmental organizations
The traditional model of a hierarchically structured government is totally outdated. Rigid bureaucratic systems with command and control systems, restrictions and operational models are now improper for approaching issues often transcending organizational limits. The hierarchical government model is rather "pulled" by new instruments, which allow for innovative answers to societal issues, than "pushed" by the governments' need to solve much more complicated and complex issues of the society. Focusing on the issues of community/society gives this type of managerial approach. The answer to issues seems to be the result of pulling governmental actions and initiatives from societal groups.
This is a totally different point of view from a strategic traditional approach, similar to the push system in which governmental efforts to push initiatives leads to formulating answers expected by the public. Such demands lead to a new governance model in which responsibilities of the government shift from managing programs to resource organization, in view of creating public value.
In other words, the hierarchical government model loses ground in favor of the flexible structures, network type governance model.
Governance has entered a new era characterized by a complex and diverse set of institutions and processes. Financial crisis, ideology changes, globalization as well as social changes are important contextual benchmarks for the current stage.
Financial crisis that countries currently face are the result of government policies which tried to satisfy a large a number of citizen needs while lacking budgetary increases (an increase in taxes being seen as socially unacceptable).
The reexamination of the state role has become more and more important as ideology against the market changed and simplifications, often associated with the governance framework, have been imposed.
The possibilities and conditions to choose internal policies have radically changed and the traditional instruments for their implementation and control have evolved towards new governance forms. The implementation, for instance, of public-private partnerships represents not only a way of controlling the state budget but also a way to prove that state resources are not enough to satisfactorily answer all the society's development needs.
It is certain that these substantial changes generate frustrations with some categories of citizens, discontent by traditional government being given up in favor of the governance.
If the governance is the decision making and implementing process, the governance analysis involves focusing upon formal and informal structures that have to be taken into account in order to reach a decision and to implement it. The number of actors is large enough at the national level, every one of them being able to play an active role either in taking a decision or in influencing the decision making process.
The initiation of public sector reforms between 1980 and 1990 aimed mainly at the improvement of public service provision and giving up the hierarchical bureaucracy in favor of markets and networks. One has to mention, among the effects of reforms aimed at significantly transforming the public sector, the increase of transnational economical activities as well as the creation of regional institutional structures like the European Union. In other words, the governance concept corresponds to the postmodern forms of economic and political organizations.
The essence of governance is focusing upon grant-government mechanisms – grants, contracts, agreements – which are not only under the authority of the government.
During the last ten years, governance developed as a notion specific to the public policies field cooperation. The development of governance, from the point of view of studying the policies process, justifying their conceptualization in relation to the implementing theory, has been initiated by Hupe and Hill. Governance sheds light upon the nature of changes within the public policies process. Governance particularly demonstrates the increase in field and actor numbers involved in the policies process but also the necessity that they be taken into account.
The governance concept is used to offer a better understanding on the various levels of action and of variable types affecting performance.
The concept of governance can be caught within a general multidimensional analysis framework for the public policies process. Policy mediators make efforts, in this context, to solve disputes on decisions claimed by a single agency – for instance distributing funds or elaborating regulations. The borders of every issue that needs a solution are well defined. Modern governance represents the dispersion of central authority along multiple authority centers.
Governance can be interpreted as a political strategy whose appeal is based on: creating a favorable framework for the involvement of private actors in providing public services under serious budgetary restrictions; a better understanding of the need to cut down expenditures, by new participative arrangements leading not only to cooperation but also to citizen awareness.
The shift from government to governance is underlined, beyond adapting the traditional systems, by the following realities:
internationalization of economies;
Europeanization of internal public policies;
increasing the number of requests coming from the private sector, in the sense of its involvement into public decisions;
institution proliferation at various levels of society;
involvement of non-state actors;
increasing the complexity of public policies networks and intensification of the issues related to their coordination;
the appearance of innovative and capacity consolidation strategies;
the creation of new awareness mechanisms.
Governance means that the interest and analysis of the above mentioned aspects pass beyond formal strategies of the institutions and elected authorities.
The dual process represented by the shrinking of the political and economic resources and by the distribution of power at sub-state and/or suprastate levels resulted in opening up the governance towards other new actors. The hierarchical division between formal governance and the rest of the society doesn't work anymore.
More and more private actors cooperate with the public entities and public actors at all territorial levels cooperate in creating and implementing policies. The new networks of actors are created by crossing the traditional borders between community governance and civil society. This move represents the shift from the traditionally bureaucratic government towards governance, a much more decentralized and participative approach of the political management.
Government and governance define certain types of relationships between the state and the citizen.
The initiation of these reforms aimed mainly at the improvement of public service provision and giving up the hierarchical bureaucracy in favor of markets and networks. One has to mention, among the effects of reforms aimed at significantly transforming the public sector, the increase of transnational economical activities as well as the creation of regional institutional structures like the European Union. In other words, the governance concept corresponds to the postmodern forms of economic and political organizations.
Richards and Smith define governance as a concept which sheds light upon the nature of changes within the public policies process.
Governance particularly demonstrates the increase in field and actor numbers involved in the policies process but also the necessity that they be taken into account.
The governance concept is used to offer a better understanding on the various levels of action and of variable types affecting performance.
The concept of governance can thus be caught within a general multidimensional analysis framework for the public policies process. Policy mediators make efforts, in this context, to solve disputes on decisions claimed by a single agency – for instance distributing funds or elaborating regulations. The borders of every issue that needs a solution are well defined. Modern governance represents the dispersion of central authority along multiple authority centers.
But how should governance be organized? What are the basic alternatives? Questions that made object of long debates oscillated between consolidators and fragmentators from within local governments.
There is a general understanding that decisions upon a variety of public services such as the fire brigade, police, schools, public transport at the community level are better assumed at the local level. But how should these services be organized and for whom? Should the number of jurisdictions for each urban area be limited?
Can this number be reduced to a single unit in order to generate savings in the delivery of the local service and to focus on political responsibility? Or should numerous urban areas exist, coordinated among themselves – local jurisdictions with specific responsibilities for the increase in electing citizens and flexibility?
While a series of authors see governance as an alternative to hierarchical government, others interpret it from the perspective of policies networks as a body of formal governing institutions. More recently, theoreticians have started examining ways in which globalization facilitates the diffusion of political authority at the level of sub-national and international institutions.
Other research focuses on the expansion of non-governmental actors within the international governance.
An important number of consequences of the current governance trend manifest within the current context, the largest part of them being linked to the central idea of democratic participation and of institutions.
Governance expresses the widespread, mass belief that states depend in a larger part on other organizations in ensuring their own intentions, providing their own policies and establishing rules. Governance can likewise be used to describe any pattern of rule, in case the role of the state becomes less and less important.
There is a certain perception referring to governance: governmental business performed by public authorities.
The increase in the role of non-state actors in delivering public services led to the improvement of state's ability to open a dialogue with other actors. The state became more and more interested in different strategies of creating and managing networks and partnerships. Within this context, the state has to implement a multitude of arrangements to audit and regulate other organizations.
The increase in the role of non-state actors within public policies raises a series of questions related to the limits upon which one can expand the involvement of non-elected actors in the context of a responsible democracy.
The increase in trans-national exchanges and in international restrictions imposed upon the states suggest a rethinking of the nature of social inclusion and social justice is necessary.
Governance in the eyes of the European Union
The notion of governance generated, as of 1990, serious and substantial academic debates, while studying the EU, referring to the EU's politically undefined nature and to the rapid collective changes of the EU's public actions.
European governance is not identified with a theory but rather with an approach which "puts" together various perspectives of the same phenomena – mainly the complexity, diversity, dynamism of the interactions between a variety of actors generating collective public actions within a trans-national or international policy.
Despite a wide spectrum of empiric areas it is used in, those who make use of the European governance approach within EU studies agree upon an important characteristic, that is the object of study is not the integration process in itself but the main issues appearing during the operation of the new system.
The focus is not on the factors explaining the process of constructing supra-national institutions (by transferring national competencies to Brussels) but on the issues associated with effectiveness, legitimacy and sustainability of collective political action taken over within this new political order.
Since the creation of the Economic Community in 1950 and up until the half of the ninth decade of the last century, theoreticians have focused on explaining the European integration process. The alternatives to the theoretic framework – neo-functionalism, inter-governmental liberalism and historic institutionalism – developed especially during those years (particularly in the USA) have been tightly tied to the international relationship debates.
The EU institutional construction process was seen as an advanced example of international cooperation and world economical regionalizing whose study can provide many answers on international policies.
Rod Rhodes formulates the most systematical definition of governance, identifying four basic characteristics:
the interdependency among organizations includes non-state actors; changing the limits of the state means that the frontiers between public, private and volunteer sector becomes flexible and permissive.
continuous interaction between the members of the network generated by the necessity of resource exchange and of negotiating mutually shared objectives.
interactions based on trust and regulated by game rules negotiated and agreed upon by the network participants.
a high degree of autonomy of the networks not subordinated to the state, which are self-organized; although the state has a privileged position, directing them can be imperfect and indirect.
Williamson's classification in markets and hierarchies, seen as the ideal types of autoritarian assignment of resources, control and coordination, is completed by the public-private networks governance.
An important aspect of the EU is the complex relationship between the EU level and the national and subnational levels in the process of EU policies.
This particularly refers to the fact that EU is a multilevel governance system in which the policies process faces complex difficulties and adaptation dynamics in the wider field of public and private actors traversing various levels of authority (EU level, national and sub-national level).
Interpreting the EU as a fluid governance system is extremely alike the theory of semi-federal, or quasi-federal, nature of the EU, in which various levels interact with one another.
Developed in the mid-90s, this notion has rapidly gained ground in the EU studies field, mainly because of the visible contrast with the EU vision, from the point of view of the two-level inter-governmentalism game.
The two-levels game notion is formulated from the perspective of interactions between member states and European institutions, perspective in which national governments are the paramount political defendants in defining and negotiating national preferences within the EU policies multilateral arena.
The governance approach is tied to the issue of the EU construction type. The most widespread accepted answer is that the EU is neither a federal state nor an international organization. EU represents a conglomerate of states embedding elements of both structural concepts, taking into account the dual nature of the EU.
The EU is, on one hand, a supra-national political construction because in many political areas decisions are taken with the qualified majority of the member states and because these decisions are later on transferred at the national level (via the EU law supremacy over national law).
On the other hand, in other areas of the public policies, EU is an international organization in which member states enjoy equal veto rights.
This special nature raises a series of political and theoretical questions when studying public actions. Governance theorists tend not to agree upon this issue of the exceptional. The special nature of EU's political system is, for some of them, the logical analytical result of the fact that the EU does not have to be compared to any other political system or international organization, because such an exercise will never provide satisfactory answers on the dual nature of the EU – supra-state and international.
For other researchers, this special nature is no difficulty in understanding the process of public action as compared to other political systems, federal or semi-federal. A systemic comparison between the EU governance system and that of the USA or Germany can provide interesting details, particularities of the interactions between the center and constitutive parts within the current political process.
Governance as an institutional process
From an institutional perspective, the World Bank defines governance as "a way of exercising power in the management of economic and social resources, in view of the development".
Institutions can generally be seen as social constructions through which communities of individuals organize their life in common with the help of social structures and mechanisms, as spontaneously as historical conditions allow it.
Their behavior is governed by cooperation. Institutionalization is understood as the process of doing something (such as a concept, a social role, certain norms and values or behaviors) that would embed in a social organization – such as establishing a norm within a system.
From the perspective of the organizational management, Burns and Scapens interpret institutional progress as a cyclical, non-linear product of encoded activities, adopted and repetitive, between the action field and the institutional field.
This complex and continuous process is framed by the relationships between rules and routines established within a certain organizational context, which can be changed as a result of the institutionalization and followed by the successive cycle.
In Boudon’s view, institutionalization is rather an attempt to "create a disorderly place" resulting from the social complexity in which institutions are erroneously seen many times as formal, rigid, inanimate structures, totally "broken" and separated from the disorder of real things.
If we refer to the EU context, the previous statement becomes even more complicated, at least because of two conceptual aspects. First of all, the institutionalization process is produced within a simultaneous supra-national and national framework. This aspect is at least indirectly taken into consideration by classic supra-national and inter-governmental theories of the European integration. They define institutionalization, although with different flavors, as a process with two stages: an ascending one and a descending one (from the member states to the EU and the other way round)
While the social expertise and institutional encoding stages are placed at the national level (EU member states level) and at the supra-national level, the inter-governmental mediation takes place in the political confirmation stage. More than that, an influential aspect of the general institutionalization process is represented by connecting central decisions with local practices through progressive phases of implementation and policy evaluation, through the possibility of identifying and positioning four main types of documentation sources referring to the institutional progress in the EU.
First of all, the European treaties, the main source for the EU institutional fundament. Their evolution, as that of the subsequent legislation, derives after an extremely tough selection from the emerging proposals of the community institutional process.
In this case, the European Commission plays an important role in stimulating public debates and structuring the agenda for the European Council's final decisions.
From this perspective, the official documents of the Commission represent the second source helping to interpret the concepts and to discover the "unsaid" in the treaties' texts.
Thirdly, regulatory policies and guides are operational documents which explain putting the principles into practice and achieving the objectives.
Fourthly, the inter-governmental documents of member states can provide in an informal manner a point of view on the way issues are perceived, solutions are shared and progresses achieved as they are positioned at the crossroads of this extremely complex process.
These studies provide the approach of the EU governance with a series of instruments adapted to specific issues derived from the dynamics of the supra-national or transnational policies.
Therefore the EU governance approach implies linking it to the analysis of the process of policies from the levels lower than the European systemic level, by examining the normative dimensions and the challenge of political forms involved in the construction of EU policies as post-national political framework.
Governance from a multilevel perspective
During the last decades, the concept of multilevel governance represented a commonplace for the debates on the future of nation states and on redistributing power both from top to bottom and from bottom to top, towards sub-national levels.
The multilevel governance is one of the newest and, in the same time, oldest concepts in the study of public policies. It is new because it offers a different way of thinking about public policies – a way of thinking above the level of formal institutions and public policies' processes taken on by the states and governments; it is old because of the oppositions between pluralist and monist concepts of public policies and the bottom-up and top-down approaches.
In other words, it is a concept that needs systematic reflection on policies and the nature of government. Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks have been, in the beginning of the 1990s, among the first researchers dedicated to the development of this concept.
The concept of multilevel governance has been adopted, to a certain extent, as a result of the significant increase in issues related to the conservation of the importance of nation states and of central governments, simultaneously with focusing attention, on one hand, upon other levels and actors, including non-state actors, and on the other hand on various ways in which the functioning of the government can be transferred to other structure types, different from governmental ones.
Configuring as wider a variety of methods in which political systems are authorized to make decisions and obtain outcomes constitutes a main focus of the study of governance.
Governance has to be understood as "something totally different" from what the centralized state monopoly represents, through which one tries to explain the dispersion of the central government's authority both vertically, to the actors located at other territorial levels, and horizontally, to non-state actors.
The vertical dimension refers to the link between various levels located top-down in the vertical authority chain, including the consideration of institutional, financial and informational, aspects.
Building local capability and increasing effectiveness on sub-national levels are crucial issues for the improvement of the quality and coherence of the public policies.
The horizontal dimension refers to the cooperation arrangements and agreements between regions and/or municipalities. These arrangements are interpreted as modalities to improve the effectiveness of local public services and to implement development strategies. .
A major gain for the study of governance was represented by the fact that the EU was, first of all, analyzed as a political system in itself and not as a set of agreements among governments.
Initially, the multilevel governance was described as "a system of continuous negotiations between governments placed on various territorial levels: supra-national, national, regional and local". This concept, specific for the EU structural policies, has been lately generalized at the EU level.
The point of view of March and Olsen referring to the definition of governance is the following: "Governance is the context in which action of citizens and governors produces, in which public policies are implemented and civil identities and institutions express".
An European governance model is postulated by: regulating the participation of the public to the policies-related decisions, since the moment it entered the institutional agenda, by constraining governmental structures to transparently manage information; public participation to the public policies decisions preparation; public participation in the preparation of implementing methodologies and in the generally valid compulsory legal instruments.
Within the public field, governance is a political action space in the public policies' elaboration process through which one directly promotes the political interests of the citizens who can participate in the decisional process by active representation.
The elaboration of policies within a governance culture would increase effectiveness and implicitly their success; they could be measured by indicators of access to deliberative processes, of decisional process' transparency, of public access to information as well as of including all political preferences and requests of the partners and beneficiaries in the alternative creation process.
The premises of collective negotiation of the decision start from the moment of the identification of the issue the interest groups try to push into the institutional agenda by creating partnerships with other groups interested either by the issue in itself or by collateral aspects.
The decisional process falls therefore within a model of communication, consulting, coordination, negotiation, compromise, exchange, delegation and leaving decision to the involved groups. As a result, these governmental processes are more vague, more abstract and complicated and, to a certain extent, less effective than in the case of traditional hierarchical governance.
On the other hand, the decisional process could increase the effectiveness of the governing act by putting at the negotiation table non-state actors, non-governmental actors, networks and communities of policy elaboration as well as by changing the role of the state by reconfiguring the borders between public, private and volunteer sectors.
Pollack and Wallace justify the necessity of a governance perspective at the EU level especially because of the non-hierarchical, "network-like" character of policy-making, involving sub-national, national and supra-national actors, and because of a normative interest in the EU democratic deficit, in the sense of the EU potential to become a deliberative democracy.
During last years, the public policies' networks concept is more and more tied to the governance and involves relationships between local, regional, national and European authorities.
In the 2001 White Book of Governance, the European Commission characterizes the European Union as based on multilevel governance, in which very actor contributes its own capabilities and knowledge to the success of the global exercise.
The real challenge of a multilevel system is a clear establishment of rules referring to competency sharing and not to their separation; it is only a non-exclusive vision that can best safeguard the interests of member states and of all EU citizens.
The European Commission characterizes the European Union as based on multilevel governance, in which very actor contributes its own capabilities and knowledge to the success of the global exercise".(White Book of Governance, 2001)
Former president of the European Commission Romano Prodi pinpointed the need to increase the efficiency of the multilevel governance, by underlining the fact that the possibility to reach a real dynamism, creativity and democratic legitimacy within the EU represents the potential existing along various levels of the governance.
The theory of multilevel governance traverses traditionally separated fields of internal and international policies bringing into light, on one side, a difference cancellation between these fields, and on the other side changing the relationships between actors placed on various territorial levels, both in the public and in the private sector.
The theory stresses both the increase in frequency and complexity of the interactions between governmental actors as well as the increase in the dimensions of non-state actors mobilized in the EU policies elaboration.
Thus, the multilevel governance raises a new and important question about the role, power and authority of the state. Compared to the European Union, no other form of international cooperation is that expanded, if we are to take into account the number of fields covered by policies, the scopes of these policies, as well as the development strategies of these
From a certain perspective, the EU is seen as a mix between sovereign states classic inter-governmental cooperation and a wide expansion of the supra-national integration. The persistence of a gray area between inter governmentalism and supra-nationalism is the main difference between multilevel governance and other integration theories. Governance does not solve the issue of state sovereignty but only says that a multilevel structure is created by sub-national and supra-national actors.
One of the main issues of the integration theory, mainly the loyalty and sovereignty transfer between national and supra-national entities, as well as the future of relationships within the EU, are not clarified by approaching governance. Partial identification of political and macro-economic measures is shared between various decisional levels.
Combining common decisions on zones covered by policies results in profound complications between the national and european levels, both of them being responsible for the development of policies. This type of confrontations represents one of the main principles of governance.
The multilevel governance also sees the EU as a political system with institutional interconnections at various levels: European – the European Commission, the European Council and the European Parliament; national and regional.
These levels interact with each other in two ways: along the various levels of government (the vertical dimension) and with other relevant actors within the same level (the horizontal level).
Multilevel governance can be seen as an alternative to hierarchical government, but there are also other points of view, according to which the alternative is represented by the policies' networks defined as a cluster of institutions within formal government.
Chapter 2
Governing vs Governance
2.1 Governing vs Governance
Due to the increasing volume of legislation, on the background of a crowded government and of facing more and more sophisticated issues, one can notice the birth and development of new governmental structures, much more complex than the existing ones. The number of these structures/organizations increased over time and many of them enjoy various levels of independence.
To a certain extent, specialized agencies took the power which traditionally belonged to governmental departments. The demand for inter-sector agencies and trans-jurisdictional involvement has therefore risen. The same increasing trend also manifests on contract, MOU, partnership and alliance demands in view of establishing continuous public-private relationships.
The private sector and the institutions created by communities have a more and more important role in offering public services outside the traditional governmental structures. The key characteristic of these deep mutations is the assignment by the government, by means of a transparent and honest auction, of public services to non-governmental actors.
The aim of this governmental initiative is to value the advantages of an open competition. Auction winning organizations are more autonomous than public agencies in providing public services.
Outsourcing is the delegation of tasks or objectives to organizational segments belonging to external entities that offer a better price-to-quality ratio or expertise in specialized fields of activity. Outsourcing is a strategy by means of which an organization delegates major functions to external providers expert in certain fields of activity, which become "valued business partners".
Governments manifest a stronger interest in directly interacting with the community through public services and in negotiating sharing responsibilities with it.
These new arrangements, many of which still under development, illustrate a full-blooming evolution.
Authority sources and influence become more and more diffuse. Countless voices say, however, that the state is growing weaker and weaker under these conditions.
Decision sovereignty is also drastically affected by international regulations and legislation as well as by the impact of globalization. This leads to a national autonomy weakening. The number of public interventions is cut down in favor of the market.
No matter if strong or weak, governing structures are influenced by the complexity of the organizations with which they are interdependent. "The new differentiated governance forms" distinguish through a series of governing and institutional characteristics (see Table 2).
Table 2. Characteristics of the differentiated governance forms
Source: Shergold, P., 2008, „Governing through collaboration”, in Collaborative Governance: A new era of public policy in Australia, Janine O’Flynn ; John Wanna (eds), ANU E Press, p.18.
In the context of new governance forms, public policy involves a mix of interdependencies between government, networks and markets. Institutional networks, where influence sources are fragmented, replace traditional hierarchical procedures, formal organization, rules and conventions. This is a new type of governance, involving non-state actors, in which the borders between public sector, private sector and voluntary sector become more and more relaxed.
The public sector networks often reflect hierarchical relationships between actors. The government frequently imposes, from the outside, a structure existing within governmental structures. The governmental bureaucracy can, under these conditions, exert power in a hidden way by accessing information and by its capacity of resource provider.
The domination of public service is maintained within such a network. Decision making stays with the government (although it is the object of a tighter control and of civil society influences). The deliberative processes within the network structure usually end in decisions. In the previously detailed situation, decision is taken outside the network. The public services and government operate within the network as being another organization.
Due to the deep changes of the contemporary society, the traditional role of the public service is also changing. Coordination mechanisms are changing, as are the ways in which results are obtained. The command loses the "battle" against cooperation and coordination – processes which take place at the network structure levels (see Table 3).
Table 3. From command to coordination, cooperation and collaboration
Source: Shergold, P., 2008, „Governing through collaboration”, in Collaborative Governance: A new era of public policy in Australia, Janine O’Flynn ; John Wanna (eds), ANU E Press, p.20.
The governance (development and delivery of public policies) is more often requesting the collaboration between a diversity of interested parties. They have different capabilities, different degrees of influence and autonomy as well as different values and expectations.
Collaboration adds public value to the governing process, by offering participants the opportunity to discover new behaviors and new ways to act. These mutual benefits for participants stimulate the development of the inter-organizational culture and contribute to the knowledge creation and management.
Governance involves the acknowledgement of the interdependency of the network actors and the acceptance of mutual interests.
Consensus is not simply accepted because the interests of the parties are often contradictory during negotiations and one can harmonize them only within the processes of interaction and negotiation.
The development of decision making within a structure integrating all interested parties in the decision to be taken adds creative value to that decision and contributes to the improvement of the governance process. The key to obtaining these advantages is appreciating the network structure characteristics and valuating the opportunities it offers.
One has to however mention that success or failure of the governance lays not only within emerging network structures. One also needs new behavioral leadership forms, especially from the perspective of public servants who remain the center of most discussions referring to public policies and administration.
Public policies can no longer be imposed. Their initiation has to be the result of negotiation processes and these negotiations suppose that public servants build a climate of trust within the network by understanding the particular perspectives and interests of all actors within the network.
One advantage of the governance in networks is it provides the optimal framework to identify pressure factors and issues in need of a solution, but also a framework within which involved parties can harmonize their points of view regarding decision making or the establishment of actions to be taken.
The network structure can, in agreement with the previous statement, be considered a common place for decisions whose value increases, on one hand, because of the contribution of actors interested and, on the other hand, because of substantial support from the community. The possibility to formulate new visions on issues is created, along with opportunities to implement change strategies.
A second advantage comes from the fact that networks favor the exchange of ideas, expertise, and also the development of a mutual teaching process.
The networks contribute, thanks to this, to the establishment of development directions for organizational capability, both internally and externally. A considerable number of governmental agencies work together with private providers for the mutual benefit of both parties.
Another advantage is that of generating new organizational forms/interactive workgroups (activating either along consultative bodies or within the influence area of some authorities/policy forums for new intergovernmental bodies), as a result of organizational changes triggered by the involvement of various actors in the network (resource assignment can even be redirected).
The presence of networks in the implementation process has a series of advantages deriving from the fact that roles and responsibilities are first clarified and relevant aptitudes and capabilities are combined so that the policy implementation process succeeds in the long run.
The successful implementation of public policies reflects in the market development and also in the possibility of network expansion by integrating new players that have not been involved in previous stages.
Governments can also be made aware of the malfunctions which might compromise the success of implementation.
A major malfunction is thus the possible disinterest of ministry officials against the creation of such negotiation structures. They can see network creation as a threat against their own position, as a loss of the control they have on a certain field and especially on the expected results.
The cooperation with other non-state actors from various sectors can also be seen by politicians as a loss of decision control, a blurring of the responsibility separation lines and, last but not least, as a threat.
Collaboration is dominated, within the network governance, by organizational culture, and policy-making involves agreements and consensus. Diplomacy abilities, dialogue, joint appreciation, participative involvement and deliberative democracy are needed for this to happen.
New theoretical models of public policies and understandings of governance process are needed not just from the active participants but also from the parliament, media and the population. The issue of responsibility for the decisions taken appears under these circumstances. It is especially brought into discussion in case the decisions taken do not lead to the achievement of the established objectives.
The climate of trust within a network is affected due to frustrations that can appear, under the conditions of interests and/or expectations of actors not being satisfied by the decisions taken. An effective governance is obviously threatened. An increased lack of trust might lead to actors pulling out of the network structure.
We feel it important to make the following statements in order to better understand the motivations of the parties involved. One can avoid blocking the negotiation process if being aware of the fact that every network participant will stay within the structure as long as it hopes to get "something" out of this position.
2.2 Corporate governance
Corporate governance is manifested on the entire globe. Different institutional bodies around the Earth research the concept of corporate governance. It can be defined in two ways:
The first way is a restricted one where the corporate governance is defined by the panoply of economical and legislative means through which the interests of investors are safeguarded and from here we can see the important roles when it comes to types of investments from a state economy in the orientation and support of a strong and balanced corporate governance. Corporate governance is a term used by the rights of ownership regime which exist in every economic mechanism which has the purpose to reinforce its specific character.
The second definition is given in a broader way and is defined by the corporate governance as being an ensemble of norms and control mechanisms applied with the purpose to protect and balance the interests which are in many cases contradictive to all categories of participants to the economic activity held in companies.
The consequences of corporate governance aren’t to be neglected in case of industrial relations. Both are modeled by the interaction of these those factors: degree of dispersion of capital, the role of the capital market, of the banking market in financing the activities of the companies, means of controlling the activity of managers, the legal protection of minority shareholders and last, but not least, representing the interests of employees and managers.
Another important aspect of corporate governance is the degree of corporatism of the national economy. We can define corporatism as a mean of social organization where functional groups exert power and conduct transactions.
Yves Bernand and Jean-Claude Colli in “Economic and Financial Vocabulary” have defined corporatism as a concept which has a smaller area as: “a system which offers a guided role and the power to reglement to unique unions (for employers or workers), constituted on professions.
Corporatism can contribute to the increase of economic performance when it interacts in a positive way with the other components of the international system. It can be said that there are a number of typologies for the market economy.
We can distinguish a vast number of degrees of corporatism in the moment when authorities involve in the development of the economic processes, as well as Aurel Iancu presents it in “Necorporatismul și economia negociată în perspectiva europeană”:
a medium corporatism in countries like Belgium, Denmark, Germany and Irland determines the concentration of the income politics through collective negotiations;
a strong corporatism which is met in countries like Austria, Netherlands, Holland and Sweden where union confederations participate, employers organizations and mediation from the government leads to the creation of conditions to formulate and implement politics in domains of economic and social life, highly important for creating new jobs, reducing the pressure of the inflation, the reform of the pension system and not to mention social security and income politics;
Nowadays, we confront with the necessity of knowing the American capitalist society which considers itself a model of the current world and a strong base for the future of a corporate society, but the 11 September tragedy looked like it changed the entire world rapidly, thus, a campaign against terrorism and unconventional warfare has started, with a lot of unknown factors, which debuted in the new millennia.
Despite the solidarity presented by a large international coalition, there are still numerous drawbacks: economical, religious, racial, etc.
Now there is a difference between the hopes and euphoria that dominated especially in Europe and the North-american continent after the immediate fall of the Berlin wall, where a lot were tempted to adopt the vision of Francis Fukuyama.
2.3 Governance in the European regulatory agencies
The EU institutional architecture includes, beyond the institutions presented in the previous chapter, the institutions of member states, which are both fundamental elements completing this architecture and active partners in the EU policy making process.
The national states accommodation to this expanded European context is still an open challenge. The answer of each member state is different; instead of defensively adjusting against losing policy-making competencies, they tend to rather formulate their approach on integrating the European dimension.
The number of (especially European) theorists who became more and more preoccupied by issues related to decision-making, its implementation and a new emerging patter of collective public actions taken on at the EU level has increased out of the EU's necessity to develop public actions in a variety of policy fields (such as agriculture, competition, trade, technology, consumer protection, environment protection, transport, foreign affairs).
Agencies play an extremely important role in supporting the decision-making process at EU level, due to the richness of technical resources and expertise available at national and European level; this justifies the reinforcement of cooperation between member states and the EU in the field of public policies. Decentralized or regulatory agencies are independent organizations and with a legal status of their own. Most of the 32 decentralized agencies currently existing are financed by the EU budget. These agencies received in 2011 Euro 706.9 million from the EU budget; the number of employees was of approximately 5,000.
During the last few years, agencies have become part of the EU's institutional landscape. Most member states followed the same path, using agencies to offer a different approach to the well-defined tasks.
There are various reasons for which agencies are more and more used. They help the Commission to focus on essential tasks, and therefore being able to delegate certain operational functions to external organisms. Agencies support the decisional process by reuniting technical and professional competencies available at national and European level. Spreading the agencies outside Brussels and Luxembourg also contributes to the support of EU visibility.
An increased number of agencies allows them to fulfill a series of important tasks in various strategic fields.
Agencies are currently allocated considerable resources out of the EU budget. It has therefore become more and more important for the role and mechanisms ensuring the responsibility of these public organisms to be clearly defined.
The importance of agencies in the administrative context of the EU needs a shared vision from the European institutions in what concerns the scope and role of the agencies. This shared vision is currently missing.
The establishment of agencies, performed on a case by case basis – upon the Commission's proposal but following the decision of the Parliament and/or the Council of Ministers – has not been accompanied by a global vision of the place of agencies within the EU. The lack of such global vision has made it even more difficult for the agencies to function effectively and to obtain results at the EU global level.
The Commission thinks it is the right moment to re-launch a debate on the role and place of the agencies within the EU governance system. A coherent political management of the agencies' approach would promote the transparency and effectiveness of an important component of the EU institutional apparatus.
In agreement with the good governance principles the Commission proposed, in the White Book of European Governance (2001), the definition of a common framework to include the conditions on the establishment, functioning and control of the regulatory agencies, which contribute to the improvement of the EU legislation implementation.
The necessary conditions for the establishment of these agencies are evaluated rather negatively, in the sense that the agencies can be given individual decision-making power only in certain specific fields, but not in the situations when general regulations have to be adopted; they can't be given decision power in fields needing arbitrage between various conflicting public interests and can't be given responsibilities in fields in which the Treaty has given it only to the Commission.
The establishment of a new agency is an undertaking generally facing a certain degree of inhibition. A new "construction" with the responsibility of solving an issue is, most of the times, seen as "an issue burial" and not as a way of solving it. For these reasons, the refusal of the Commission to give up power it holds in the regulatory field is no news.
Even if delegating decisional competencies is of nature to determine the emergence of political issues, the proliferation of more or less independent regulatory agencies could not be stopped.
The credibility of agencies bases mostly on their effectiveness; this essentially means simplifying the decision-making process, reduction of costs and granting a certain degree of organizational, legal and financial autonomy.
A joint vision of the regulatory agencies also shared by the EU institutions contributes to the promotion of transparency and to the improvement of the work methods. Specific roles of every regulatory agencies are detailed in the establishment documents. These agencies are independent organisms, usually governed by a council responsible for the supervision of the agency's performance and for appointing the agency director, in his turn responsible for the operational aspects of the agency.
Most agencies are financed from the EU budget and therefore their budget discharge is the responsibility of the European Parliament. The general financial regulations, together with the framework financial regulations, specify joint norms for the financial governance of the agencies.
What misses, however, is a set of general regulations referring to the creation and functioning of these agencies. More important is the observation that there are no clear rules establishing responsibilities for their actions.
The independence of regulatory agencies is mutually conditioned by their responsibilities. In view of consolidating the legitimacy of EU actions, it is necessary to establish and delimit responsibilities of the institutions and agencies.
Chapter 3
Good governance
3.1 The principles of good governance
The new governance can be interpreted as a political strategy whose appeal is based on: creating a favorable framework for the involvement of private actors in providing public services under serious budgetary restrictions; a better understanding of the need to cut down expenditures, by new participative arrangements leading not only to cooperation but also to citizen awareness.
If the governance is the decision making and implementing process, the governance analysis involves focusing upon formal and informal structures that have to be taken into account in order to reach a decision and to implement it. The number of actors is large enough at the national level, every one of them being able to play an active role either in taking a decision or in influencing the decision making process. In the situation in which informal structures are favored at national level for decision making, this is the result of corruption practices or can lead to "corrupted practices".
The White Book of European Governance (2001) includes a set of proposals approaching the need of participation intensity, improvement of policy effectiveness and the need to redefine the role of EU institutions.
The White Book provides five principles of good governance: participation, transparency, responsibility, effectiveness and coherence – all of them additional to the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, already set up in the treaties.
Satisfying these exigencies means taking into consideration the need to revise both the horizontal dimension (relationships between institutions and citizens, as well as relationships built along sectorial policies) as well as the vertical dimension (relationships between the levels of policies) within the decisional and European policies implementation process.
A "deeper involvement" means, under these circumstances, communicating with citizens at a regional and local level and under a democratic framework. This undertaking involves a major responsibility on the "general policies' coherence" assumed by the territorial impact of the EU policies in fields like transportation, energy or media.
These policies should be part of a coherent construction. It is necessary to avoid fragmenting specific sectors. Local and regional decisions should likewise be coherent with a broader set of principles referring to the sustainable and balanced territorial development at the EU level.
Participation
Participation is a real touchstone for the good governance. It manifests either directly or by means of legitimizing mediator or representative institutions. It is important to mention that representative democracy does not necessarily involve taking into account the most vulnerable voices of the society in the decision making process.
Participation involves being informed and organized. This manifests in the freedom of association and of expression, on one hand, and on the other in the organization of the civil society.
The adoption of a model centered on the citizen in policy making is a manifestation of the fundamental commitment to enroll citizens into the governing process – a characteristic of any democratic political system. From a broader perspective, the commitment reflects in the efforts of activists and theoreticians to promote what has been labeled as "deliberative", "direct democracy" or "participative democracy".
At a much tighter level, the commitment reflects in local initiatives through which various governments aimed at involving citizens in the decision making process for the decisions that directly affect them.
During the last decades of the 20th century, the debate on citizen’s participation in their own government tends to bring forward the exploration and implementation of fluid and particularized approaches. Habermas stated that citizens will see governments and therefore laws, policies and legitimate interventions as being democratic just to the extent that the democratic process, as it is organized and implemented, guarantees that results are the reasonable products of a deliberative process, favorable enough to the inclusion.
Participation is the deliberative process through which citizens, organizations of the civil society and governmental actors are getting involved even before a public policy decision is taken. The deliberation represents debates in order to prepare the political decision and which examines for and against arguments. The public participation completes the conventional ways of policy making, where elected representatives decide largely based upon their own perceptions on the issue to be solved.
One can argue that public participation counts as much to the decisions where, on one hand, there are strongly adverse interests and, on the other hand, social harmony or where resource engagement needs a collective answer.
Public participation can be interpreted as an opportunity to strengthen representative processes but also as an "antidote" for national political elites or technocrats.
From an etymological and conceptual point of view, participation has an active component; it refers to "being part of" or "taking part in".
Consulting and participation are processes aimed at contributing to the improvement of the decision quality and at configuring new opportunities to "model public policies" thanks to the flows existing within the network structures which include both governmental actors and actors from all social segments (business environment, NGOs, civil society, citizens).
The wisdom, knowledge and expertise of citizens offer reasons in favor of the previous statement. Both the increase in decision quality and the achievement of better regulations are based on this hypothesis.
Moreover, as a result of diminishing the resistance to change, resources used in the implementation process could be fewer.
According to the European Institute for Public Participation (EIPP), there are four conditions for a successful public participation:
clearly defined constitutional framework for public participation;
an increase in the degree of trust and public participation can be reached only by an explicit agreement accepted by politicians and citizens, and this will lead to realizing the democratization potential;
systematic approach of public participation methods that will help organizers of public participation processes to choose the most appropriate and effective methods;
strict evaluation of public participation in view of developing a participative culture and systematizing participative methods.
Citizens can be more or less open to public involvement, function of a variety of reasons such as the urgency of preoccupations, issue relevance, nature of previous participation experiences (if it is the case).
Citizens, as participants, should ideally be informed in order for the public dialogue to really take place and for the motivation to exist. They need the courage to articulate and defend their own points of view (and to change them when appropriate), politeness to listen to the reasons of other participants and to take into account adverse opinions, as well as the ability to appreciate the obvious and evaluate "losses". They should be able to postpone their immediate needs or personal preferences in the interest of long-term benefits or of public well-being.
Even if the network center has initially reigned supremacy, it gradually releases control over to other actors within the network. The government gets, under these conditions, a special significance, because it includes the cooperation efforts of all actors within the network.
This is a new approach, totally different from the traditional one in which government played the main role. This paradigm change brings into focus the debate on the position of central administration but also on the position of the other network actors.
Broadening the role of other actors in the network does not involve a reduction in the role of the administration but the development of additional decisional forms, as a reaction to the increase in complexity and interdependence.
The significance of the political decision concept gets extremely complex dimensions within this context. The decision making process follows a model of communication, adherence, coordination, negotiation, compromise, exchange, power delegation among network groups/actors.
As a result, these governmental processes are more vague, more abstract and complicated and, to a certain extent, less effective than in the case of traditional hierarchical governance.
Network political systems can be seen, like within organizations, as mixed structures of vertical and horizontal interdependence.
One advantage of the network system is that it can be used to divert attention to a structure with a higher degree of independence. Instead of supposing that influences manifest through direct and visible interactions (such as personal relationships or relationships between representatives of institutional interests), the network structure approach facilitates the examination of the way in which a structure influences the behavior of individuals, the content of decisions and the public policies implementation efforts.
The functions of the governance network differ from the ones of other network types. Dominant functions, within companies'-created networks, are transactional and cooperative. Coordination and regulation functions within policies' networks are significant; horizontal interdependency is much more important than the vertical one, as in the bureaucratic vision.
Pragmatically, the achievement of such a structure involves taking into consideration a multitude of changes.
Transparency
Transparency means decision making is done in such a way so that rules and regulations be observed, information be available and directly accessible for those to be affected by the decisions, and so that a large enough and easy to comprehend volume of information be provided to those affected.
The difficulties of the period we are crossing represent a major challenge for citizens, who are extremely worried about the current crisis and also about the potential economic comeback solutions adopted within the EU and within the country. This state of uncertainty also illustrates a relative lack of trust in the main democratic institution of the state.
This profound lack of trust manifested by citizens is the expression of their refusal to accept public policies made behind closed doors, practice by which decisions are not transparent and without public consultation.
In an ideal world, elected officials are making all decisions on public policies. In fact, the border between administration and politics is pretty difficult to note so that cases when bureaucrats get involved in political decisions or when politicians cross this border are pretty frequent.
The administration is directly involved in the development of the whole process of public policies. In certain cases, this can even be a source of new public policies proposals, thanks to the links it has with the ministerial agencies and departments responsible with policy implementation. In other words, the success or failure of a policy is determined by the actions of administrative structures responsible for the implementation of the respective policy, by the knowledge and expertise of the administration, absolutely indispensable to the implementation of any specific policy.
The power of bureaucracy derives therefore from the knowledge, expertise and discretionary authority it holds. This power can be strengthened by gaining support from the interest groups involved in the development of a certain policy – for instance parents, students, teachers (in case of educational policies), farmers (in case of agricultural policies), etc. These groups are capable of exercise considerable influence in support of the policies of any interest to them.
The pressure exerted by these groups in view of directing budget resources to certain fields of activity can lead to compromising governmental investment programs, especially during difficult periods such as the current one.
Moreover, the existence of these groups is a significant capital for certain administrative structures to which they resort when they want for a new program (not specified in the parliament-approved budget) to be financed or to increase the financing of already running programs. This is a method to involve these groups in various political disputes, leading to the decredibilization of their participation in the public policies process and to the decrease of public trust in the institutions responsible for the policies' process management.
It is imperatively necessary to adopt the principles of decisional transparency within the current context of the total mistrust of citizens in the state institutions, in order to increase participation and public trust.
In other words, decisional transparency is an answer to citizens' and stakeholders' pressure to achieve better regulations that should contribute to giving back citizens their trust.
According to Romanian Law 52/2003 on decisional transparency, citizens and organizations will be able to express their opinions and interests on elaborating normative regulations and on administrative decisions. The instruments that Law 52/2003 provides citizens are: being consulted by public authorities on draft laws and participating in the public meetings of these authorities.
The lack of decisional transparency, together with other deficiencies of the regulatory activity, leads to a low degree of trust in the force and importance of legislation. The lack of consultation leads to norms being frequently modified or replaced, fact that determines a strong legislative instability and does not offer the necessary security to the already existing Romanian legislative framework.
A real implementation of the transparency principle leads to a higher degree of trust in legislation and regulations, since they were adopted with the consultation of all interested parties. Trust in the legislative framework will result in a higher degree of law observance and positive consequences on the development of economy and on maintaining cooperation between government and the citizens.
The transparency can lead, under certain conditions, to a policy vacuum.
An example of policy vacuum is the state of confusion, negatively perceived by those directly interested by the result of these negotiations, generated by contradictory pieces of "almost certain" news sent out to the public all during a negotiation process.
Efficiency and effectiveness
Good governance means processes and institutions producing results which correspond to the needs of the society while available resources are best distributed.
The concept of effectiveness, within the context of good governance, also refers to the sustainable usage of natural resources and environment protection.
Focusing on resources (inputs) necessary to a ministry/department says very little (or nothing) about how that ministry/department intends to use the assigned resources. This input-based approach represents a substantial threat both to the parliament, who controls the government, and to the policy makers, who should know how well a certain ministry/department works. It is difficult enough to appreciate how well resources have been spent.
A second option is where the budgetary distribution is done in such a way as to provide more information about the outputs either produced or acquired with the resources assigned.
The outputs represent products/services of an institution according to its own objectives, for which the institution is fully responsible.
In case of a university, for instance, concentrating on inputs involves taking into consideration amounts necessary for personnel payments, building maintenance and logistics acquisitions. In the second example, that of focusing on outputs, budgetary issues concern the number of students who can be admitted every year, the annual number of graduates, the number of programs that can be introduced.
The output-based approach provides the parliament or the decision factors (policy makers) consistent information on how well did the government use public funding. Yet the output-based approach generates a series of controversies.
For instance, although the parliament or the policy makers have clear information on the number of graduates of a certain university, they cannot judge whether they all deserved their diplomas, whether all major subjects really are necessary on the labor market or whether public funds assigned by the government could have been better spent in other fields of activity. The necessity to get answers to such questions determined a shift in attention from outputs to outcomes.
Outcomes represent changes/benefits produced in economic, social or cultural environments. These benefits are preceded by outputs within a certain timeframe. For instance, just a certain percentage out of the total number of graduates (outputs) manages to get employed in the field of activity they studied for within 12 months since graduating. This is the result (outcome) expressing the fact that funding has indeed been effectively used.
Current talks on outcomes state that what matters in the analysis made by the policy-makers or citizens is first the outcomes and then the inputs and outputs.
Governments create public policies in order to change something within the society. Inputs and outputs are just the necessary means to achieve the expected change; the change is defined by its outcomes.
From a managerial perspective, this means correlating the budget with:
inputs, that is the necessary resources;
outputs, that is goods and services obtained with the assigned funding;
the effectiveness of using the resources in order to reach the outcomes.
A step of paramount importance is the establishment of a clear-cut link between results (outcomes) and resources. This does not mean, however, that talks on budgetary spread can be reduced to an algorithm.
Responsibility
Responsibility is a key requirement of good governance. Governmental institutions, the private sector and also the civil society organization have to be held accountable by the public and by all actors interested.
An organization or institution is generally held responsible by those affected by the decisions taken or by actions initiated. Responsibility cannot be assumed without transparency or without the rule of law.
By presenting the principles of good governance, one can see that this is an ideal and hard to achieve model. Very few countries and companies got close to achieving good governance in its integrality. Responsibility can be seen as a policy acting upon bureaucracy from the outside. The objectives of this accountability policy (customer and customer interests' identification) are vaguely defined and the pressure towards accountability place the administration in front of a major battle.
A series of well-known models, including managerial approach models, have been abandoned upon wide citizen request, whose exigencies are increasing in number and complexity.
This is, for instance, the case with the objectives-based management (MBO), dropped in favor of the MBR.
Within a hierarchical bureaucracy, activities are performed as per general rules and previously established norms. The main objective of the leadership and control structures is to ensure the observance of these rules and norms. In such a system, the improvement of effectiveness and efficiency involves the adoption of changes in legislation.
Knowledge of the objectives and measurement of results represent two imperatives of the change type public managers should focus on, proving they are capable of effectively organizing and using resources (including informational resources), of getting involved in achieving objectives and in identifying ways to motivate employees.
In other words, a different focused managerial approach is needed that should focus on defining and accepting performance. The configuration of a new MBR constitutive context involves first of all the need of designing new models for developing relationships between central and local administration, between administrations and citizens from local and regional communities, between administrations and various citizen groups.
Secondly, there is an imperative demand for a structural reform at the level of central and local administrative structures, in view of streamlining them (so that they become compatible with network-type flexible structures) but also of increasing their decision making capability by involving citizens and community-representative interest groups in this process.
Pragmatically, the achievement of such a structure involves overcoming a variety of changes. On one hand, are citizens aware of the importance of their engagement? Are they really motivated to get actively involved in such a structure?
On the other hand, how prepared are the representatives of public and political authorities to accept to cooperate with various categories of citizens? One has to first of all emphasize the quality of civic culture necessary for the achievement of such construction. Secondly, it is about responsibility proven by political factors and public authorities in what concerns focusing their efforts to the development of a civic culture meant to change this structure into a functional form.
3.2 Responsibility and forms of responsibility
The evaluation of the effectiveness of public officials' or public structures' results makes one certain that they have provided added value to public services, they have contributed to the increase of trust in the government and are responsible for the community they represent.
The responsibility concept can be classified in agreement with the type of responsibility and/or the responsible person, group or public officials. The contents of the various forms of responsibility, as showcased by current debates, is best conceptualized by referring to opposed forms of responsibility. Thus, the main forms of responsibility are described below.
The dominant point of view is that the responsibility institutions, such as the parliament and justice, provide what is commonly called horizontal responsibility or the capability of a network of relatively autonomous powers to "ask questions" and perhaps punish the improper way in which an official unloads his responsibility.
Horizontal responsibility represents, in other words, the capability of state institutions to control the abuses of agencies, governmental departments and ministries.
Vertical responsibility is, consequently, the means through which citizens, the media and the civil society try to strengthen the performance standards that officials have to observe. The parliament is important for vertical responsibility while it also is seen as a key institution in building horizontal responsibility.
Citizens and the civil society ask their elected representatives to step in in the case of incorrect or inadequate actions of the government. By resorting to public meetings, investigations committees and public petitions, the parliament can become a vehicle for the "voice of the public" but also a means for the civic groups to question the government and, in certain cases, demand it being penalized by the parliament.
The parliament and justice exert a horizontal constitutional control on the executive power. The role of these two institutions can be delimited in the sense that the parliament controls the government from the point of view of political responsibility while justice controls the government from the point of view of legal responsibilities.
This sharing of responsibilities derives from the fact that the parliament is a political institution while justice can only claim issues related to the legality of actions. Together they continuously supervise governmental actions.. The parliament and justice can, in their endeavor, be helped by other institutions such as the audit ones, the Ombudsman, human rights' institutions, the Court of Auditors etc.
Secondary institutions, that is autonomous responsibility institutions, are created in such a way as to be independent of the executive power.
Political responsibility usually manifests via the individual ministerial responsibility concept, the real touchstone for the responsibility of the government.
The principal – agent relationship works in courts, where the classic hierarchical top – down structure exists. According to it, if the principal delegated the agent, then the agent is the one who is held responsible by his direct superiors all the way up the chain of command. This is a form of vertical responsibility. Public officials are responsible to the head of the ministry agency/department; the latter is responsible to the minister; the minister to the parliament and the parliament to the citizens.
The parliament is the key actor once again. In terms of responsibility, the parliament is the main agent. In this quality it can request the government and governmental officials (as agents) to implement laws, policies and programs it adopted and take responsibility for their performance.
The situation is different in the parliament – electorate relationship: this time, the parliament is the agent and the electorate, who votes for the legislative body in order for it to adopt laws and monitor governmental activities, is the main agent. The electorate, in this case, is the one by which the legislative is held responsible; in case the electorate is not happy with the legislative body's activity, it will direct its votes to other electoral offers in the next elections.
There is also social responsibility, which is an approach oriented towards building a responsibility based on civic commitment, referring to citizens and civil society organizations, direct or indirect participants to the exigencies of the responsibility. When such responsibility manifests, a society is configured led by the horizontal responsibility.
Social responsibility does not refer to a specific type of responsibility but rather to a particular approach (or a set of mechanisms) expressing exigencies to the concept of responsibility. Social responsibility mechanisms can be initiated and supported either by the state, by the citizens or by the state and citizens.
Most often they are demand-driven (led by demand, therefore by citizens and/or civil society) and operate bottom-up. It is of common knowledge that social responsibility mechanisms are an example of vertical responsibility. In case various actors/stakeholders take on the responsibility on voluntary basis and without any of the main parties' intervention, one can talk about horizontal responsibility.
Social responsibility initiatives are varied and different: taking part in budgeting, administrative procedures, social auditing and citizen reporting – all of them involving citizens in processes of supervising and controlling the government. Legislators can often assume the role of representing social responsibility.
A member of the parliament can, for instance, represent a certain cause by questioning a minister, during parliamentary questioning sessions or by directly requesting information from the government or from a ministry.
Professional literature does not offer convergent definitions of this type of responsibility. Diagonal responsibility tries to directly engage citizens in the horizontal responsibility activity of the institutions. This is an effort to increase the effectiveness of the civil society in its function as a watchdog, by breaking the state monopoly on the responsibility to supervise executive officials. The principles of diagonal responsibility are the following:
taking part in the horizontal responsibility mechanism The community takes part in the institutions responsible for horizontal responsibility rather than creating distinct and separate institutions for diagonal responsibility. This way vertical responsibility agents try to get in themselves in horizontal axes, in a more direct way.
transparency of information The community has the opportunity to access information about governmental agencies which is usually limited to horizontal axes (such as internal performance). It can, moreover, access the discussions and rationales on the decisions taken by horizontal responsibility institutions. The community brings, first of all, its expertise on the performance of governmental agencies within the responsibility process.
officials are held accountable The community is joined by the authorities of the horizontally responsible institutions in order to hold governmental agencies responsible;
the capacity to penalize The community demands horizontally responsible institutions to strengthen the influence upon the election of officials.
Civil society can, by exerting pressure upon institutions, contribute to the increase in their effectiveness. This type of participation is not a direct action against "sloppy work", as in the case of vertical responsibility, but rather the expression of a society led by horizontal responsibility. Active citizens and groups of the civil society can work with the elected representatives for the improvement of the parliament's representative role.
Certain opinions suggest that the administrative responsibility exerted, first of all, through quasi-legal forums (such as the Ombudsman, auditors or independent inspectors directly or indirectly reporting to the parliament) is a form of control, independent financial supervision and external administrative supervision.
The World Bank argued that social responsibility includes the mechanisms for diagonal responsibility. It also argued that diagonal responsibility mechanisms can be considered a form of social responsibility.
If one sees social responsibility not as a specific responsibility type but as a particular approach, it is possible that it includes diagonal responsibility.
In other words, diagonal responsibility mechanisms can be components of a wider approach, that of social responsibility. This contradicts a series of opinions clearly distinguishing between diagonal responsibility and social responsibility.
According to these opinions, the state is often resistant to citizen supervision, trying rather to encourage new forms of social responsibility that can be turned into an opportunity for the civil society to inform the government on the public perceptions of governmental behavior.
Parliaments are key actors in what is called the chain of responsibility.
These are, along with justice, key institutions of horizontal responsibility, not only in its own fields of activity but also as institutions which are being related to by many other autonomous institutions. They are the vehicle through which political responsibility is exerted.
They make up, together with the civil society organizations and the media, important institutions for the vertical responsibility.
We should also take into account the new emerging forms of responsibility: social and diagonal responsibility. The first one is defined as "society driven horizontal accountability" and aims at determining the direct responsibility of government in front of citizens. The members of parliament and other elected representatives are another important vehicle by which citizens and civil society can be strengthened. Irrespective of the way in which the second form of responsibility is defined, parliament is one of the diagonal responsibility institutions.
3.3 Good governance at a local level
During the last decades, the "local-democratic governance" concept has become part of the local development approaches, and it offers rational support for decentralization reforms and for the construction of local governments' capability.
The good governance at local level expresses quality, effectiveness and efficiency of the public administration and of the services provided, quality of the public policies and of the decision-making procedures, their inclusiveness, transparency and responsibility as well as the way in which power and authority are exercised at the local level.
The governance area includes state and non-state institutions, mechanisms and processes through which public goods and services are provided to citizens and through which citizens can articulate their own interest and needs. It intermediates differences and imposes the observance of rights and obligations.
The concepts of governance and decentralization are totally different, although sometimes they are seen as interchangeable. Decentralization is a political, institutional and fiscal process which takes place at national level. .
Local governance and decentralization evolve within a constantly changing political and social context.
Holistic analysis methods point out how many elements mutually interact and influence one another. This approach implies, on one hand, a prioritization of the political analysis, configuring connections between various aspects of the local governance and decentralization and, on the other hand, establishing links between reform processes (both political and public) and processes meant to encourage the coordination of development actions.
The key to democratic governance is the decentralization of the development governance. In turn, this is seen as undoubtedly important for the development of society by empowering institutions and citizens at all levels of the society.
Local authorities and international organizations show a high level of interest in defining the universal principles which can serve as a reference for the local governance and decentralization reform (“First Global Report on Decentralization and Local Democracy”, United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) 2007)
These principles have an undisputed place including in the establishment of priorities for the local governance.
The decentralization process needs concentrated efforts in building capacity and institutional reform and it should therefore be associated with the consolidation of local authorities;
The participation by citizens' inclusion and empowerment has to be a basic principle in local decision making, implementing and supervision;
Local authorities have to acknowledge various groups within the civil society and should spare no efforts in getting sure all these groups are involved in the progressive development of the community;
The non-discrimination principle has to apply to all partners and collaborations between national and regional governments, local authorities and organizations of the civil society.
The representation of citizens within local public affairs management authorities should be strengthened by their participation in all the stages of the public policies' process, if possible.
Local authorities should adopt, in view of consolidating civil engagement, new forms of participation, such as community councils, participative budgeting, e-democracy, civic initiatives and referendums, if such forms are applicable to the specific context;
Records and information should be preserved and provided to the public not only for increasing the effectiveness of the local authorities but also for offering citizens both the possibility to access public information and for offering them a motivation to getting involved in the decision making.
Measures for the building of the local authorities' capacity
A significant increase in the methods and instruments that can improve the understanding of the deficits and weak points of the governance, as compared to the development of the outcomes, has existed.
When it comes to evaluation it can be an important instrument to systematize information and data related to governance issues, especially to the quality of local governance. Evaluation is a consistent source, made out of objective proof, for the elaboration of the future public policies. It can empower reformers within the public administration and civil society in order to attracting public opinion towards reforms.
Also, evaluation doesn't have to be seen as a subsequent or decayed form of the national governance evaluation. Evaluating local governance provides information on specific issues at local level, such as policies and decentralization, participation and local responsibility. One of the main differences between evaluating national governance and local governance is the latter being much closer to the issues of the real world.
Despite national governance, focused on systemic policies, local governance focuses on intensive interaction with citizens. Evaluating the local governance needs more attention to be paid to the stakeholders groups' and certain local community segments' needs.
The evaluation of local governance features multiple motivations and purposes:
identifying potential gaps and constraints in implementing local policies;
identifying the development of needs-specific capabilities and monitoring the results of the capabilities' development efforts;
formulating change plans and requesting assistance for the improvement of local governance-specific aspects;
involving the civil society and private sector in local governance;
In terms of local governance evaluation, there are four fields that can be evaluated, and these are: local governance, the decentralization process, local democracy and local government.
The evaluation of decentralization reflects the various types of decentralization processes, various degrees of decentralization as well as deconcentration and delegation, both linked to the decentralization process. There are, for instance, measurement indicators for the fiscal and administrative decentralization, for the political decentralization and for the decentralization readiness of the environment (laws, institutions, policies).
The evaluation of local governance aims at evaluating the main dimensions and determinants of governance at the local level, such as the local political system (elections, human rights' observance, degree of law implementation, civil society, free access to information), the issues of institutions (corruption, public administration, financial management, public procurement, etc.), social issues, public policies' process, budgeting, public services delivery, gender issues, environment sustainability) and business environment.
Local democracy or the democracy at local level is a concept that can be evaluated both from the perspective of the local administration institutions (such as the mayor, local council, administrative services) and of the perspective of organizations and activities developed by the civil society. Local democracy means fair elections, the right of the majority, of the minorities and of opposition groups to influence the public policies' making process, as well as observing civil and political rights of the citizen’s members of the community.
The two essential forms of local democracy are the participative (or direct) democracy and the representative democracy. Measuring local democracy has to include both formal mechanisms, able to establish whether the local government is a transparent, representative and responsible one, and expertise or perceptions of the citizens related to community issues.
Local governance and the performance of local governance currently refer to the results achieved in providing public services, community income and expenses of the local government. From this perspective, measuring performances gets down to the question of the performance of a municipality in providing public goods and services. Measuring the performance includes the volume, quality, effectiveness and results (outcomes) of the services offered.
These could also include measures focused on institutional, financial and human resources capability necessary for the development, implementation and evaluation of municipality policies and programs. Some of the measures take on "multisectorial" performance aspects while others focus on just certain sectors.
Chapter 4
Social Capital
The social capital expresses the degree of citizen involvement in the public affairs of the community. Social capital also represents an argument and a pressure factor for the performances of the social and governmental institutions.
Also, social capital represents “the aggregation of actual or potential resources tied to the possession of a sustainable network of more or less institutionalized intercommunications, when it comes to responsibility and mutual acknowledgement – in other words, resources tied to a membership of a group – providing every member with the support of the community capital, the right which entitles you to credibility, under the many senses of the term".
The simple membership to a group can be a resource in itself. "The existence of a network of ties is not", however, "a natural or social trait of a primordial act of institutionalization". It is, by contrast, the result of a long course of continuous institutionalization and re-institutionalization efforts, of "individual or collective, conscious or unconscious investing strategies meant to establish or reproduce social relationships which are directly usable on long term or short term […]"
They have been lately developed by James S. Coleman (1998). In his opinion, the social capital is an important analysis instrument which adds up to the other types of capital. The size of the social capital is variable over time and directly related to the interaction among social actors. It is perfectly possible to create or destruct this resource, just like in the case of the other forms of capital, and therefore the creation of a vicious circle of decline or mistrust is highly probable.
4.1 Fukuyama’s vision
Frances Fukuyama (1992) finds the key of the cultural determinants of progress and economic prosperity in the logic of the social capital. The political implications of the social capital are, for Fukuyama, equally important as, or even more important than, the economic progress based on the combination between rational economic actions and traditional virtues of the civic communitarism.
The World Bank and the OCDE see the development of the social capital as a strategic endeavor focused on encouraging the value of the community and the good governance.
One needs, for the development of social connections and participation, that civic traditions (behavioral rules and trust) be brought forward; premises are thus created for joint objectives to be achieved by effective actions taken at the community level.
4.2 Putnam’s vision
In R. Putnam’s view, "social capital refers to aspects of social organization – networks, norms and trust – allowing the participants to act together in a more effective manner in order to achieve joint objectives"
From this perspective, the social capital is closely connected to what certain authors call "civic virtue", which is much stronger when incorporated within a network of social relationships. A society with many isolated virtuosos is not a society that can take pride in its substantial social capital resources.
In other words, interaction allows people to build communities, help each other and work together in the social factory. Affiliation and material experience of the social networks (and of the trust and tolerance which can be involved) bring considerable benefits to citizens.
If we are to conclude, we can say that the central idea introduced by Putnam, referring to the social capital, is that the social networks have value, are the bearers of a significant number of benefits emerging from trust, information exchange and mutual cooperation.
Putnam's reasoning in support of these statements results from his research from the perspective of government effectiveness in certain regions of Italy where a radical reform has been started in the beginning of the 1970s. The reform succeeded in some regions while in others it failed.
The regions in which the reform succeeded, the so -called civic regions, are characterized by the existence of numerous community-active organizations, citizen involvement more in public issues and less or not at all in the patronage ones.
Values specific to a civic community are: solidarity, civic participation, integrity, and for its leaders law observance, honesty, and morality. Democracy really works in this type of communities.
Putnam pinpoints that the success of the reform in these regions was not due to the fact that they are civic but due to the fact that they are very rich; but they are rich because they are civic.
In the regions that Putnam calls non-civic (Calabria and Sicily), the citizenship concept is weakly configured, the participation in various social and cultural associations is weak and public affairs are seen as the affairs of others. Almost all members of the community agree upon the fact that laws exist only to be broken; in the same time, everybody asks for a tightening of the rules.
As a result, there is a ubiquitous atmosphere of authoritarianism. Caught between these vicious circles, the members of the community feel they have no power, they are exploited and unhappy. The government is obviously less effective than in the civic communities/regions.
For Putnam, civic engagement is the one that facilitates an effective government, even if it cannot substitute it. Yet, Putnam notes, social capital is no cure-all for all the diseases of society. The investments in its development are not an alternative but a complementary dimension of a general policy of economic (physical and financial), human and social capital development.
The conclusions drawn by Putnam, confirmed over time by other researchers, emphasize the fact that public institutions and policies exert a major influence on the social capital and that a high level of social capital can contribute to minimizing the role of the state in society.
Although it may seem as paradoxical, this conclusion is supported by the unbreakable bond between the social capital and the civil society.
Both conceptual categories are analytically independent from political regimes but their role is either stronger or weaker, function of the conditions various political regimes have created them and of the way in which relationships between the state and the civil society are organized.
We will try to prove that public institutions and policies play a substantial role in the construction and development of the social capital.
Researches done in the beginning of this century focused on the institutional dimension of the social capital determinants, resulted in consolidating the importance of public policies and formal structures in what concerns the top-bottom approach of the construction of social capital.
The studies of Putnam, presented above, illustrate that there are also important reserves of social capital within the (economically, politically and socially) developed communities. What happens, though, in the less developed communities? How could they benefit from this such an important resource?
Recent researches showed that the institutions can promote social capital by creating mechanisms to facilitate the participation of citizens in the public policies' process.
The institutionalization of participative governance, by including even "pedagogical processes" generates trust, encourages the existence of a set of values jointly shared by the members of the community and contributes to the creation of a cooperation climate within the community.
The new institutional arrangements through which citizens' and non-state actors participation in the public policies' process is encouraged contribute to the increase of the social capital but favor, in the same time, the abandonment of government in favor of the governance.
We note that openness towards the community and the preoccupation for exploiting this resource is a characteristic of mature and sophisticated public organizations, that is those organizations which:
operate on the basis of democratic principles;
are rather flexible than bureaucratic;
use stimulative mechanisms capable of promoting open spirit and engagement towards the organization;
emphasize teamwork and cooperation in general;
show interest in finding innovative solutions and are really preoccupied by getting closer to the citizen
Based on these facts we can state that public institutions are capable of influencing social norms and values and that social capital gets important dimensions in promoting the reform of the public administration and policies.
Implementing such significant changes means giving up on the bureaucratic model so challenged during the last decades due first to the political control, seen as inadequate and illogical, second because the bureaucratic structure ceased representing the universal model of effectiveness and third because bureaucracy is more and more seen as a barrier in the road of freedom and economic effectiveness.
The traditionally conflicting relationship between the public service provider and the public service consumer is replaced with a relationship of creative cooperation and collaboration between the actors of the governance.
As the main beneficiaries of the public services, citizens should be involved all along the whole process of providing public services. This new governing philosophy needs new arrangements, materialized in a new institutional design able to stimulate the involvement of citizens.
A thorough analysis of the differences between various types of social capital and typologies defined by professional literature is beyond the scope of this book but is useful in the understanding of the social capital concept.
Narayan (1999) offers the following classification of the social capital, function of the effects it has to the development plan:
the social capital created by the existence of relationships between groups (called bridging social capital) The relationships that are established among groups, even weak, prove to be productive from the point of view of the social development of the whole community;
the social capital created by the existence of relationships inside groups (called bonding social capital) This, in the absence of the bridging social capital, has negative effects on the global development.
4.3 Woolcock’s vision
Woolcock (2000) distinguishes a special bridging social capital type and calls it "linking social capital", identifying it by the vertical links established between the citizens and the officials occupying key positions in the formal institutions of the social system.
One of the consequences of this capital type's existence, that is social trust, has a strong effect on the functioning of the government, in the sense that stimulating the participation interest in the community's public affairs is possible just by creating institutions providing trust both at the level of the organization and at the level of the society.
We have associated this new type of institutions to a state governed by principles of the rule of law, in which corruption is under control.
The major danger represented by corruption is the contamination of the motivational climate by destroying social trust, which in turn leads to a drastic reduction in the social capital. We take into account the fact that the process of rebuilding destroyed climate is a long-term process whose costs cannot even be evaluated.
The increased interest for the concept of social capital relies on the belief that it has a very big influence over the efficiency of the institutions, economic development and also, the general welfare. Besides that, the acknowledged importance of the social capital is based on the fact that social networks rely on moral and cultural norms assumed by the community, which in turn, refers to the common valors shared in the society, which can sustain an economic and social evolution.
Social capital is also improved by the intervention of public decision factors. By increasing the public investments in education and research, their productivity transfer effects can have a long term effect on the human evolution, employment sustainability and increase in profits as premises for the individual welfare.
Adding to that, the social public policies are sustained by a double fiscal system which accepts competition between companies on one side and on the other, it prevents the polarization of the personal income as a fundamental right, fir an equitable redistribution.
Another example would be that the citizens and social society can ask the chosen representatives to intervene in the cases where incorrect or inadequate actions are being taken by the Government. Through public meetings, investigation committees and public petitions, the Parliament can become a vehicle for the “public voice”, but also an option to question the Government and request for it to be sanctioned.
Because social capital has many facets and it is the result of well-maintained networks in the communities, which has been modeled by historical, cultural, educational, moral, religious and economic factors, our approach depends on the dynamic changes of the modern world from a micro and macroeconomic level.
Based on these considerations, we can conclude that social trust is a characteristic of stable democracies, with a low degree of economic inequalities and in which corruption can be controlled.
Conclusions
After analyzing a series of relevant information from specialized papers and renowned authors in regards to the good governance and social capital, it can be concluded that there is in fact an interdependency connection.
Based on the decisions, norms and measures taken by a governance, negative or positive effects can be seen over the general satisfaction of the social capital.
However, we must take into account the moment when the governance affects in a negative way the social capital. Maybe we won’t see an instant response at the beginning, but as the situation deteriorates we shall witness a general mobilization to rebalance the situation.
To reinforce the above statement, I have conducted a survey in municipality X, with 360 citizens, aged between 18 and 60 years old. The purpose of the survey is to prove the implication of the social capital in the good governance of the municipality.
The result received from the respondents was conclusive as you can observe in Annex 1. Some of them have confessed that in the near future they want to get involved in the governance of their town, because they haven’t noticed any efforts or steps from the current local administration to take care of the notified problems and to improve their image as a transparent, responsible and efficient institution.
Last, but not least, we have to take notice of the involvement and common effort of the authorities, organizations and civil society from other areas of Romania, which have proved to us that they can make a common front in the defense of certain principles which can stand at the base of a good governance.
Annex 1
Survey regarding the implication of the social capital in the good governance of municipality X.
1. How much do you trust the administrative structure from your town?
2. Are you happy with the current activity of the administration from your town?
Yes
No
3. Based on Law 52/2003 you have the right to participate at the local council meetings. Do you exert this right?
4. Do you think that the town citizens have a direct contribution to the decisions/projects of the local administration?
Yes
Don’t think so
Don’t know
5. Have you ever participated at political gatherings?
Yes
No
6. Do you think that politics and politicians can affect the good working order of the local administration?
Yes
No
7.Are you part of an organization or association with a social character?
Yes
No
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