Good Governance in the Middle East Oil Monarchies

Martin Hetherington, Tom Pierre Najem

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9781138362130
• eBook ISBN: 9781134431519
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica

The concept of 'good governance' is of increasing importance, and is used by international organizations to ensure reasonable conformity to high standards in states which participate in the global trading regime and other international activities. This book examines the concept of good governance and how it is applied in the states of the Gulf Co-operation Council. These states are particularly important because of their strategic location and massive oil wealth. Moreover, as monarchies, in most cases without powerful democratic representative bodies, and as Islamic countries, with a different outlook from countries of the West, Western standards of good governance may need to be modified in order for them to be implemented effectively.

1 Good governance

The definition and application of the concept

Tom Pierre Najem

Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to define the term good governance¹ as it will be used in this volume and to place it within a historical and theoretical context, thereby providing the reader with a broad conceptual base for approaching subsequent chapters. The chapter consists of three sections. In the first section, I will examine the origins of the term good governance, consider how it has come to be applied to a broad range of related ideas and sets of policy, and establish a working definition for the purposes of this study. In the second section, I will consider the historical circumstances surrounding the emergence of good governance as the predominant development paradigm of the last decade, identify the different forces driving the adoption of good governance policies in many states, look at the specific priorities and constraints that are particularly relevant to good governance in the context of the GCC countries, and assess the potential impact of the post-September 11 ‘war on terrorism’ with regard to some aspects of good governance. Finally, in the third section, I will raise a number of important theoretical issues concerning the validity of good governance and consider how it fits into the context of broader academic debates about development and the globalisation process.

Defining good governance

The term good governance, at least as a reference to a more or less specifically defined set of ideas and policies, originated in a 1989 World Bank document entitled Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth.² Within the context of this seminal document, the notion of good governance was strongly associated with the types of structural adjustment policies that the World Bank had been advocating for many years: reduced state intervention in economic decision-making; reduced public sectors and more efficient and transparent public sector administration; freer markets and the elimination of unnecessary public subsidies; and increased integration into the world economy generally.³

The argument was that adherence to sound economic development policies (i.e. essentially policies de-emphasising the role of the state) would, in itself, help to promote the appropriate political environment for sustainable economic growth – which, incidentally, would be a more inclusive and accountable environment on the whole than most developing societies had previously experienced. This emphatically did not mean the wholesale adoption of Western institutions and ideals. On the contrary, the document asserted that an important advantage of concentrating the reform agenda on the economic development sphere was that doing so allowed the indigenous elements to design their own political and social mechanisms. This would render good governance a more viable and culturally sensitive alternative to previous development approaches, which had attempted to graft Western models onto arguably incompatible cultural settings. However, the reduced role of the state in the economic life of society would necessarily create important power centres outside the state sphere. The state would then have to come to terms with these new elements, and hence, would almost inevitably become more open and accountable. In short, a considerable degree of political liberalisation, and perhaps even democratisation, would be a beneficial consequence of the recommended structural adjustment.⁴

It must be recognised, however, that since its initial formulation in the 1989 World Bank document, the term good governance has achieved ever-increasing currency in the international development discourse.⁵ Furthermore, the concept has been expanded by the World Bank⁶ and other international aid donors, non-governmental organisations, academics and Western governments and politicians to encompass a much broader and more generalised range of ideas and policies, to the extent that it is not always clear what, exactly, one means when one is using the term. Essentially, the concept of good governance as it is currently used includes all of the following: economic liberalisation and the creation of market friendly environments; transparency and accountability with respect to both economic and political decision-making; political liberalisation, particularly democratic reforms; rule of law and the elimination of corruption; the promotion of civil society; the introduction of fundamental human rights guarantees, especially with respect to political rights such as freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and freedom from arbitrary imprisonment; and the adoption of policies designed to safeguard long-term global interests like education, health and the environment.⁷

Clearly, there are some problems with grouping so many distinct areas of development and policy orientation together under one heading. To begin with, as the concept has been expanded to include a seemingly ever-increasing number of new ideas and sets of policies, some would contend that it has lost much of its initial distinctiveness as a development paradigm. Whereas the concept originally distinguished itself from the much maligned modernisation paradigm by placing a great deal of stress on the importance of allowing different cultures to develop their own institutions and mechanisms for social reform, the broader construction of good governance is more didactic in the political and cultural spheres, and often seems to amount to little more than a wholesale endorsement of Western ideals, practices and institutions. A second problem is that, because good governance covers such a broad spectrum, different organisations and individuals have come to frame their respective interpretations of the term in divergent and potentially even contradictory ways. In short, the current broad usage of the term often seems to beg the question: ‘Good governance for whom and according to whom?’⁸

To cite just one example that demonstrates both of these problems, some Western organisations, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have tended to emphasise those aspects of governance that stress guarantees of basic human rights. While these organisations do not necessarily mean to suggest that structural adjustment is a less important aspect of good governance, they do contend that those forms of structural adjustment which impinge on basic human rights to health care, education and other essential services are not compatible with the concept. Conversely, those advocates of good governance who tend to emphasise the primacy of structural adjustment policies and/or the importance of cultural sensitivity might contend that too great an emphasis on introducing largely Western-derived human rights into developing societies is incompatible with the concept.

However, even in the course of recognising these problems, I would contend that the broad definition of good governance has now become so widespread and pervasive that it is impossible, for all practical intents and purposes, to insist on a more specific and rigorous definition. It might be useful to attempt to frame such a definition in a purely theoretical work, but, in a study like this, in which the primary purpose is to analyse the extent of good governance developments and the nature of the processes underlying them, a strict definition is actually somewhat counter-productive. Since the major international sponsors of good governance are themselves taking a broad-based approach to encouraging development, it makes little sense to exclude from one’s analysis areas in which there have been significant changes simply because these areas do not happen to fall within a particular organisation’s or scholar’s specific conception of what good governance is really all about. Clearly, to at least some extent, one must acknowledge that good governance is ultimately about what the major international aid organisations, the major trading blocs, the United Nations and the most influential countries that are promoting it define it as, and about what they are actually doing to encourage developing countries to put it into practice. Therefore, it is crucially important to allow for the examination and assessment of developments in every one of the areas commonly associated with good governance. As a consequence of this priority, the working definition of good governance for this study is based on the broadest reasonable conception of the term.

Good governance in a historical context

The genesis of ‘good governance’ and ‘the end of history’

The corpus of ideas and sets of policies that make up good governance has undeniably been the predominant development paradigm of the last decade, and has had an extraordinary, and arguably unprecedented, impact throughout virtually the whole of the developing world. Many Western scholars and policy-makers have not hesitated to represent good governance as the only truly viable approach to sustainable long-term development and prosperity, and even its most trenchant critics have been unable to propose a practicable alternative paradigm.⁹ Furthermore, it must be recognised that the very term ‘good governance’ is intellectually and ideologically quite provocative, seeming to carry within it the rather grave implication that practices and policies outside the boundaries of the concept constitute inadequate, or even poor, governance. It is impossible to understand the overwhelming predominance of the paradigm, in theory or practice, without reference to the unique historical circumstances that coincided with, and contributed a great deal to, its genesis.

Beginning in the 1950s and extending through much of the 1970s, the developmental paradigm adopted by most of the post-colonial countries of Africa and the Middle East, and by a considerable number of countries in other parts of the Third World, entailed: (1) strong state direction of the development process and control of the means of production (particularly in the industrial sphere) to the extent that private sectors were either underdeveloped or non-existent; and (2) protectionist trade practices, designed to secure national sovereignty by minimising external penetration. However, beginning in the late 1970s, another developmental paradigm stressing economic liberalisation, especially free trade and privatisation, began to be asserted by Western theorists and policy-makers.¹⁰ By the late 1980s, partly in response to criticisms concerning the perceived human costs of economic liberalisation, some advocates of this approach began to articulate potential benefits that it seemed likely to produce in terms of political liberalisation and greater government accountability. In short, it was suggested that economic liberalisation might be the key to establishing the societal preconditions for democratic reforms in many countries. As noted previously, the term ‘good governance’ originated in a 1989 World Bank document advancing an argument along these lines.¹¹

The theoretical linkage of economic liberalisation and structural adjustment with increased democratisation coincided with two extremely significant historical circumstances. The first was the decline and eventual collapse of the Soviet Union, which had long served both as the model and as the most forceful advocate of the heavily statist paradigm. The second was the apparent failure of the statist paradigm in many developing countries, which had come to be plagued during this period by endemic inefficiency and corruption on the part of state bureaucracies, increasing foreign debt exacerbated by world economic conditions and a host of other serious structural problems.¹²

In the ideological and intellectual spheres, the West’s victory in the Cold War and the apparent failure of state-led development translated into a considerable amount of triumphalism among the supporters of Western-style liberal democracy and international capitalism. Some scholars, most notably Francis Fukuyama, cited the absence of any conceivable alternative to the globalisation of the world economy and the increasing integration of political systems, and began to assert that the liberal democratic and capitalist form of society can now be recognised as the only truly historically viable and legitimate model for developing societies. In Fukuyama’s view, the communist bloc represented the last great threat to the universal adoption of this model, and the removal of this threat signalled ‘the end of history’.¹³

Of course, many followed Samuel Huntington’s lead in questioning Fukuyama’s optimism and proceeded to identify other potential threats to the triumph of Western democracy in the form of a ‘clash of civilisations’ among Western, Islamic and Confucian cultural blocs. However, at the same time, the vast majority of Western policy-makers unreservedly adopted Fukuyama’s contention that the Western liberal democratic and capitalist model represented the best historically achievable form of society. On this basis, they began to push increasingly vigorously for more rapid and more thorough globalisation and for political reforms that would bring the countries of the developing world increasingly in line with Western ideals and standards of mass participation, transparency, rule of law and human rights.¹⁴

It is probably worth noting, at this point, that it was this transition within the ideological and intellectual spheres that led to the expansion of the concept of good governance from a set of ostensibly culturally sensitive prescriptions for economic and administrative structural adjustment to a broad range of ideas and sets of policies designed, arguably, to reproduce the Western liberal democratic and capitalist form of society almost in its entirety in the context of the developing world. Whether or not the broader formulation is really internally self-consistent and practicable, and whether or not the historical assumptions underpinning it are valid, probably only time will tell.

In any case, irrespective of its ideological and intellectual foundations, it should be recognised that the monopoly of the good governance paradigm is, in practice, largely a function of the current predominance of global capitalism. During the Cold War, it was often possible for developing countries to establish healthy trade relations with, and to attract massive financial aid from, the major world powers simply by adopting the appropriate rightist or leftist political stance. The dissolution of the Soviet Union eliminated the only major financial sponsor for development outside the international capitalist context, and also removed the only compelling reason for Western policy-makers to assign a higher priority to political alignments than to their economic interests. At the same time, the sweeping changes in the geopolitical sphere necessitated a fundamental realignment of trade relations for many states. Furthermore, the massive economic and structural problems confronting many developing countries meant that their respective leaders had no alternative but to seek substantial amounts of Western aid. This state of affairs left the major Western powers in a virtually insurmountable position to dictate terms to the developing world. In keeping with the ideological and intellectual developments outlined previously, the demonstration of a willingness to adopt good governance practices became the basic precondition for financial assistance and increased trade relations.¹⁵

The application of good governance in practice: 1989–2001

General comments on assessing the progress of good governance reforms

When assessing the extent to which the good governance paradigm has been applied in different settings, it is important to bear some general points in mind. First, it must be recognised that good governance is a multifaceted ideal that is difficult, if not impossible, to fully realise in the context of any society. Even the most developed nations have significant and readily identifiable shortcomings with respect to some aspects of the paradigm. To cite just a few of many possible examples, virtually all of the major industrialised nations have struggled to reconcile the reduction of public sector spending with the provision of essential public welfare, education and health care services, and some leading countries (the United States particularly) have been much criticised in the international community for failing to adopt sound environmental policies.¹⁶

Another important point is that no universally accepted or particularly well-defined order of development priorities has emerged as the theory and application of good governance has developed. With reference to the theory of good governance originally articulated by the World Bank, it seems clear that economic liberalisation and structural adjustment are supposed to set the stage for social and political changes. However, to at least some extent, it has been necessary to adopt this conceptual model to account for the proposition, supported by many scholars, that at least basic political reforms are required to facilitate and secure economic reforms. For example, one might...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Good governance: the definition and application of the concept
• 2 The states of the Gulf Co-operation Council
• 3 The politics of participation in the oil monarchies
• 4 Good international governance: implications for Saudi Arabia’s political economy
• 5 Dynamics of GCC press–government relations in the 1990s
• 6 Climate governance in the GCC
• Index