The Art of Governance

The Art of Governance

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When these actors and informal structures disrupt, corrupt and upset the legitimate objectives and ideals of the society, bad governance will result which is considered as the chief problem of the society. Problems deepen and multiply because of bad governance. Inasmuch as economics and politics are interrelated, poor economy is caused by bad governance.

International aids and loans, for instance, are scarce in a badly governed country. What good governance is will therefore be discussed next. They are inextricably related to each other. For instance, without active participation among the various actors in governance, there would be a concomitant lack of responsiveness. Likewise, if decision-making is not transparent, then inevitably there would be no participation, accountability, and decisions are not consensus oriented. Some of the indicators cannot be applied in other forms of government.

For example, good communist governance could never be consensus oriented or genuinely participatory. It must also be emphasized that good governance and development should not be based exclusively on economic growth. Through global persuasion, good governance and development signify a broader spectrum of things, such as protection of human rights, equitable distribution of wealth, enhancement of individual capabilities and creation of an enabling environment to foster participation and growth of human potentials. Participation Good governance essentially requires participation of different sectors of the society.

Participation means active involvement of all affected and interested parties in the decision-making process. It requires an enabling environment wherein pertinent information is effectively disseminated and people could respond in an unconstrained and truthful manner. It also means gender equality, recognizing the vital roles of both men and women in decision-making. A verticalized system, or the top-down approach, refers to a state or government monopoly both of powers and responsibilities. While the government is still the most potent actor in the process of governance, the participation of other sectors is already a necessity because of the always evolving complexity and ever growing needs of the societies, especially in the financial sphere.

The different sectors are considered partners of the government in attaining development goals. Governance should no longer be government monopoly but government management or inter-sectoral participation. Participation in representative democracies may either be direct or indirect, and recommendatory or actual. It could be indirect and recommendatory because in principle the form of government is based on delegation of powers. In the Philippines, which possesses features of both direct and indirect democracy, indirect participation is done through public consultations or hearings, while direct participation is through elections, initiatives and referendums.

The management of highly complex societies and of their ever growing needs requires a participatory form of governance by diffusing power. The move for decentralization is a response to this as it widens the base of participation and allows local government units to exercise governmental powers directly within their respective districts. Service delivery is enhanced because of the proximity of local government units to their constituents, and because of the linking which happens between the national government and regional concerns. Participation is one of the strengths of Philippine governance.

Commentary

The Philippine Constitution is replete of provisions dealing with relational and inter-sectoral governance. The Local Government Act of was borne out of the need for decentralization in Philippine governance. As such, these and other related legislations may be considered as normative standards for good governance. Rule of Law Democracy is essentially the rule of law. It is through the law that people express their will and exercise their sovereignty. That the government is of law and not of men is an underlying democratic principle which puts no one, however rich and powerful, above the law.

Not even the government can arbitrarily act in contravention of the law. Thus, good democratic governance is fundamentally adherence to the rule of law. Rule of law demands that the people and the civil society render habitual obedience to the law.

It also demands that the government acts within the limits of the powers and functions prescribed by the law. The absence of rule of law is anarchy. Anarchy happens when people act in utter disregard of law and when the government act whimsically or arbitrarily beyond their powers. When there is dearth of legislation for curbing social evils, or even if there is, but the same is ineffectual or unresponsive, and when there is no faithful execution of the law, then justice is not attained.

When the justice system is biased and discriminatory, when it favors the rich and the influential over the poor and lowly, or when the legal processes are long, arduous, unavailable or full of delays, then justice is not attained.

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Then when the actors of governance can minimize, if not eliminate, these injustices, then there is said to be rule of law. Rule of law also requires that laws are responsive to the needs of the society. Archaic or irrelevant laws must be amended or repealed to cater to modern demands. The Philippines does not fare well in this aspect of good governance. In spite of being one of the oldest democracies in the region, the Philippines ranked as last among seven indexed Asian countries according to the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index.

Order and security are compromised and criminal justice is rendered ineffectual. Nevertheless, the Philippines has exerted efforts in promoting the rule of law. The series of cases filed against high ranking officials, previous Presidents, members of the judiciary, and high profile persons for graft and corrupt practices prove one thing clearly: In addition, legislations were made to hasten the legal process.

Effectiveness and Efficiency Good governance requires that the institutions, processes, and actors could deliver and meet the necessities of the society in a way that available resources are utilized well. That the different actors meet the needs of the society means that there is effective governance. That the valuable resources are utilized, without wasting or underutilizing any of them, means that there is efficient governance.

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Effectiveness meeting the needs and efficiency proper utilization of resources must necessarily go together to ensure the best possible results for the community. Doing so requires simplified government procedures and inexpensive transaction costs. Cumbersome procedures and expensive costs trigger corruption and red tape.

There must also be coordination among various government agencies to eliminate redundant information requirements. Professionalism in Philippine bureaucracy requires competence and integrity in civil service. Appointments to civil service must be depoliticized and must be based solely on merits. Effectiveness and efficiency also demands that the programs and objectives of the various government agencies are aligned with individual performance goals.

The increases in compensation are likewise necessary for the economic well-being, sustained competence and boosted morale of the civil servants. Although still insufficient, efforts were made to attain effectiveness and efficiency in Philippine governance.

Also, many government departments and agencies pursued a rationalization program to check excessive and redundant staffing. Transparency Transparency, as an indicator of good governance, means that people are open to information regarding decision-making process and the implementation of the same. In legal terms, it means that information on matters of public concern are made available to the citizens or those who will be directly affected.

It also means that transactions involving public interests must be fully disclosed and made accessible to the people. It is anchored on the democratic right to information and right to access of the same. Transparency is necessary not just from government transactions but also in those transactions of the civil society and private sector imbued with public interests. The reason why there should be transparency is to promote and protect democratic ideals.

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War and the Art of Governance

Most Helpful Most Recent. Exceptional Depiction of Remaining Challenges This book captures a very real capability gap in our U. For example, systems of intellectual property rights become ambiguous at the convergence of different industries Rai and Boyle A mathematician may become a new regulatory subject to health authorities if he was to develop algorithms for a new generation of cell therapy Economist Under the banner of synthetic biology, industries that may have previously followed different priorities and been supervised by different sets of rules, may now need to be summoned to the same policy roundtable.

It is this stretching and revamping of our conceptual grid and the subsequent implications for global governance that this paper aims to explore. This paper argues that the border-transcending characteristics of synthetic biology urge us to reflect on the conventional remit of governance.

As practitioners of synthetic biology crisscross organizational turf, governance may not be best framed as a rigid regulatory regime, but as a trans-boundary operation that is adaptable to evolving social needs. Such governance seeks to facilitate effective interactions between the range of current and emerging social actors involved in or affected by scientific and technological developments, to ensure that all parties have the opportunity to express their perspectives and interests at all stages in the pathways of research.

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Before explicating what a new art of trans-boundary governance may consist of, this paper will first demonstrate a few examples in which synthetic biology challenges conventional perceptions relating to governance. There are at least three sets of boundaries that are of practical concerns for global governance of synthetic biology: The artificial windpipe was created with a combination of bioengineering, nanotechnology and stem cell science. However, it may not have been expected by many that, in fact, apart from the synthetic windpipe, all the other examples listed above are projects developed by undergraduate students in the international genetically engineered machine iGEM competition c.

To be sure, similar to many other international scientific competitions, iGEM is first and foremost a platform for nurturing talents. This in turn may expand governance options in normalizing emerging sciences. Since its first competition in , iGEM has functioned as a global hub for young scientists to meet and compete.

It refers to a transnational body that defines and characterises new materials, metrology and testing methods, and provides the grounds for internationally standardisation and regulatory convergence Breggin et al. Regulators and experts are conventionally conceptualised as the primary members of such building blocks.

However, in the case of synthetic biology, evolving standards, codes of conducts, collections and categorisations of biobricks are at least as much influenced by the iGEM competition as by conventional scientific institutions. Meanwhile, iGEM also facilitates global exchange and dissemination of concerns over biosafety, biosecurity, IP regimes, ethics and public engagement in the field of synthetic biology. Thirdly and more importantly, the influence iGEM embodies is not a political endowment by any nation-state or professional community, but has arisen processually, through the external accountability iGEM has developed with various stakeholders around the globe.

In fact, when envisaging a governance structure for synthetic biology, few would initially have thought that an undergraduate competition would, or should, play a role. Primarily an international student competition, iGEM naturally has its limits of regulatory impact. However, the point is to highlight that the iGEM presents but one example in which traditional assignments of roles in the scientific hierarchy may be altered and the normalisation of power may take effect through new channels.

Viewed in this perspective, the most profound impact of synthetic biology may not be what it can produce materially, but how it may re-structure the constitution of scientific communities through its development. Synthetic biology should be seen as multi-lateral interdisciplinary research. It is interdisciplinary because it seeks the collaboration of expertise among previously specialised lines of research.

It is multi-lateral because it interconnects different aspects of social and economic practice and calls for consortiums of diverse relevant social actors in resolving problems. However, the actual practice of interdisciplinarity and knowledge integration cannot be taken for granted. Previous studies on the biological sciences Bruggren et al. In fact, issues such as disciplinary dependent concepts and vocabularies, difficulty in getting work published and recognised, and institutional barriers to intersectoral collaborations Bruggren et al.

Similar scenarios can also be seen in synthetic biology. In fact, a practicality pointed out by Royal Academy of Engineering Consequently, to achieve effective governance, it is more prudent to recognise potential difficulties synthetic biology may encounter in operating and communicating across different scientific fields, rather than assuming it will automatically unify all branches into one. For example, Drew Endy pointed out that a pertinent question in meeting biosafety and biosecurity challenges is how identified risks can be communicated and understood across disciplinary boundaries:.

Endy in Lentzos For scientists in the field, such as Endy, the view is not so much that synthetic biology has automatically overcome disciplinary differences, but rather that practitioners have to work with these differences on a day-to-day level. One reason may be that top-down funding alone fails to create incentives for parallel communities such as biology, engineering or computing communities to gain mutual trust and responsiveness from each other. Similar to many modern sciences, another practical concern that must be taken into consideration in the governance of synthetic biology is that it is being simultaneously developed in different parts of the world.

Chinese scientists have sought state sponsorship and nation-wide coordination Zhang However, the global development of synthetic biology is catalyzed by transnational funding programmes. Therefore, a fuller picture of the global development of synthetic biology, as with many other modern sciences, consists of both national particularities and increasingly entangled inter-national relations. These cross-border linkages may be of financial and professional origin, but their implications over governance are at least twofold. Firstly, while national characteristics can still be traced, and the promotion of related research still relies on regional context and development paths, there is also a growing occurrence of governance propositions produced by multinational groups, cross-border financing strategies, and the transnational administration of research infrastructure and data.

In this sense, one could argue that as transnational communication becomes part of the social condition in scientific research, there is an emerging governmentalization capacity to govern of non-state actors. With the transnationalisation of research funds and scientific networking, different social actors shape the governance of synthetic biology in their own ways; but each of these actors can only ever aspire to partial legitimacy: It provides each social actor with leverage in exerting their influence, but at the same time such leverage remains partial and contested.

Globally speaking, the effective governance of synthetic biology requires not only that nation-states pass down their authority into a plurality of civil institutions and networks, but also requires nation-states to transform their authorities into other transnational agents such as international conferences, iGEM and other cross-border research initiatives. Before summarising the various conventional boundaries that synthetic biology may obscure or even alter, let me first illustrate a regulatory contradiction which much grey literature on this subject seems to struggle with.

To put it more bluntly, while in a general sense, the novelty and scale of synthetic biology research seems to urge that something be done, when the examination of regulatory agendas becomes issue-specific, there always seems to be arguments that nothing else can be added. The characteristic of synthetic biology is not its rupture from previous science, but how it further proliferates the sophistication and hybridity of science by simultaneously crossing positional, disciplinary, sectorial and national divides.

The three examples demonstrated in the previous section all contest a conventional regulatory matrix, and shed light on different aspects an effective global governance should take into account. Firstly, the case of iGEM demonstrates possible challenges to pre-conceived orderliness e. Effective governance, then, should not be pursued along the line of prescribing how things should be, but to elicit and steer potential ways in which things could be.

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