The Regional Integration Manual

Quantitative and Qualitative Methods

Philippe De Lombaerde, Renato Flores, Lelio Iapadre, Michael Schulz

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136702037
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Regional Integration Manual brings together different methods for monitoring and analysing regional integration processes in a systematic way. Employing a multi-disciplinary approach, it seeks to provide officials in regional organisations, researchers in think tanks, academics and students worldwide with an accessible set of both quantitative and qualitative tools, useful in their day-to-day work.

The Manual addresses an increasing demand for such tools, in a world where mechanisms and ideas for effective regional government and governance are in dire need, whereas the monitoring and analytical capabilities of official and non-governmental actors often lag behind. It also addresses a rapidly growing academic community studying the determinants, depth, speed and other characteristics of regional integration and co-operation.

Employing a multi-disciplinary approach, The Regional Integration Manual will be of interest to scholars of governance and regional politics as well as policy-makers and those in regional organisations.

1 Assessing Regional Governance

An Indicative Framework for Developing Indicators

Edward Best

Introduction

‘Good governance’ has come to be used in international parlance since the early 1990s as an overarching concept for evaluating the quality of the world’s systems of social organisation, at all levels (local, national, regional or global) and in almost all spheres (state, corporate or civil society). It is accepted that the assurance of basic democratic values, such as respect for fundamental rights and the rule of law, should be accompanied by monitoring of other principles of good governance, such as transparency, accountability and participation. These latter are assumed to be common underlying principles of universal validity which can be used as a guide for decision-making when it comes to institutional design, organisational development or resource allocation. And the degree to which particular governance arrangements conform to these principles is, at least implicitly, assumed to be in principle measurable and comparable.

Few would dispute that this trend has overall been to the global good. It has also reinforced the attention which has increasingly, and very appropriately, been given to the democratic quality and practical effectiveness of the many formal arrangements for regional cooperation and integration which exist across the world.

Yet this whole process has been characterised by a troubling degree of terminological and conceptual confusion: what do we actually mean by ‘governance’ – or by ‘regional’ for that matter? There has also been a lack of clarity as to the underlying theoretical assumptions which are, or at least should be, involved when setting out to develop indicators. Just as there has been, in the second half of the 2000s, a broader questioning and revision of global governance indicators, it is now a task of practical as well as academic importance to establish a more appropriate approach when it comes to thinking about mechanisms for the assurance of good governance in regional arrangements.

It is the aim of the present chapter to propose a framework for regional governance assessment which is both appropriate and ‘actionable’. The starting point is to insist that one should not try to adapt principles or indicators which are specifically related to political processes in nation states, and one should not assume that there are always one-to-one relationships between particular formal mechanisms and actual governance outcomes.

Instead, it is proposed to start from underlying principles of governance that are valid at all levels and in most kinds of organisation, but which can be manifested in different ways according to the specific context and governance challenges involved. The kinds of governance challenges posed in different regional arrangements vary according to both the culturalhistorical circumstances of the group of countries in question and the nature of the regional process. So do the kinds of institutional arrangement which are consequently most appropriate for addressing those challenges.

The first section insists on the need for a specific regional approach. It stresses the need to distinguish general ‘meta-principles’ of good governance from specific principles which are only valid in the context of states, and explains why the most familiar instruments of international comparison, such as the World Bank’s set of Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI), cannot be directly applied in regional contexts.

The second section reviews the kinds of underlying principles and values which have been identified as an underlying feature of universal validity. It highlights the main strengths and limitations of previous approaches, and proposes four ‘meta-principles’: capability, integrity, openness and responsiveness.

The third section turns to specific governance challenges and outcomes in regional contexts. It looks at how governance principles have been applied so far to international organisations in general. It stresses the range of different governance challenges which may be presented in regional contexts: between regional organisations of purely functional cooperation, on the one hand and, on the other, regional systems of governance which, in the few cases that exist, involve common rules and multi-level institutional arrangements.

On this basis, an indicative framework is then offered for the assessment of regional organisations. This framework is presented in the light of an explicit set of reference parameters: an overarching common goal, common underlying principles and outcomes which are relevant, in different ways, in all regional contexts. The second stage is to establish indicators which can accommodate these different demands and contexts. Given the challenge of assessing real results as compared to formal provisions, this may usefully involve distinguishing de jure indicators from de facto indicators on the basis of explicitly identified risks in terms of capacity and practice.

Although it is beyond the scope of the present exercise to enter into detail in all these elements, additional explanation and examples are provided, with particular emphasis on processes of change and learning, given that the aim in the end is to assist specific improvements in practice. Governance assessment cannot be limited to identifying formal structures and rules, certainly not in the assumption that these have necessary relationships with particular governance outcomes in all circumstances. The point is rather whether a regional arrangement effectively incorporates processes of review of its governance performance. In order to assist such processes, assessment should aim at supporting processes of improvement which are driven internally as well as externally, in which case approaches involving self-assessment are likely to achieve the greatest results.

Governance Principles and Indicators: The Need for a Specific Regional Approach

It is tempting, but inappropriate, to try to apply well-known sets of international indicators to the assessment of governance in regional contexts. A variety of such ‘Governance Indicators’ and ‘Good Governance Rankings’ has emerged.¹ Prominent examples include the indicators on Political Rights and Civil Liberties elaborated by Freedom House; the Corruption Perceptions Index of Transparency International; the Country Policy and Institutions Assessment of the World Bank; and the more recent Integrity Indicators (and country score cards) developed by Global Integrity. The predominant model, however, came to be the WGI of the World Bank, first published in 1999 (Kaufman and Zoido-Lobaton 1999).² These measure ‘governance’ according to six aggregate indicators: voice and accountability, political stability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption. These are all based on perception indicators (Kaufman et al. 2009).

In the first place, these indicators cannot be applied in any simple way to regional contexts for the simple reason that they refer to dimensions of governance which are explicitly related to the context of national states. Recognising the wide variety of ways in which governance is understood, the authors have stated that ‘Most definitions appropriately emphasise the importance of a capable state, accountable to its citizens and operating under the rule of law’ (Kaufmann and Kraay 2007: 2). The WGI site affirms that:

Governance consists of the traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised. This includes the process by which governments are selected, monitored and replaced; the capacity of the government to effectively formulate and implement sound policies; and the respect of citizens and the state for the institutions that govern economic and social interactions among them.³

Regional arrangements cannot be assessed on exactly the same basis as national systems when it comes to political rights and processes, even in the case of the European Union (EU). Regional organisations do not shape people’s basic rights, duties and life choices in anything like the same way as state authorities, far less have any coercive powers. The primary level of citizens’ identity in most cases lies at the national level – and the exceptions are generally at sub-state rather than supranational level⁴ – and the national level of government is generally relied upon to ensure proper controls on the regional process.

Beyond this, the WGI suffer from certain inherent weaknesses. These not only make their usefulness for regional contexts even less clear; they also point to some broader concerns about governance principles and indicators that need to be taken into account.

Even though it has generally been recognised, even by critics, that the authors of the WGI have done a large service by focusing attention on governance issues in this way, the WGI started to be questioned in the mid-2000s. Arndt and Oman (2006) drew attention to methodological issues, pointing to the likelihood of a correlation of errors among the sources of the perceptions used; the lack of comparability over time; sample bias; and insufficient transparency as to the data used. Subsequent critiques raised a number of further issues which are relevant for the present discussion.

The first concerns the very basis of the indicators. The WGI are ‘admittedly based on personal and untested notions of governance’, whereas ‘meaningful measures of governance require as a prerequisite specific definitions of governance that draw from available theory’ (Thomas 2010: 47, 50). This weakness has been exacerbated in practice by the fact that the model has been seen to reflect a Western or Anglo-Saxon type of governance ideal that is not helpful in understanding the governance reality in all developing countries, and has met with resistance (Arndt 2008: 282–283).

Second, the WGI cannot deal with the reality that no single relationship exists between particular types of institutions and governance outcomes (cf. Andrews 2010). ‘While they provide general information about differences between nations, their availability may well have crowded out efforts at measuring the impact of institutions as they really exist in a particular place on real outcomes’ (Langbein and Knack 2010: 367).⁵ The challenge of comparability is partly a question of different historical realities, and partly a matter of immediate circumstance. The existence of a formal structure does not guarantee results in practice; there may be neither the means nor the will to make it happen. Dealing with this challenge is one of the stated aims, indeed, of another World Bank initiative, the Public Accountability Mechanism (PAM), intended to help monitor the behaviour of public officials with regard to asset disclosure, conflict of interest, freedom of information, immunity provisions and ethics training. This approach distinguishes between three levels of reality: institutional arrangements (the formal and informal rules), capacity features (the resources available) and practices (the real performance). It also proposes a distinction between legislative indicators and implementation indicators looking at management and accountability, enforcement and immediate impact.⁶ A similar distinction between de jure and de facto indicators is used, for example, by Global Integrity.

Third, all this means that the WGI are ‘generally not recognised as being useful to help identify areas of reform and measure the success of governance reforms’. There has been slow progress towards developing ‘actionable’ indicators since it is not clear what is ‘actionworthy’ in terms of priorities (Arndt 2008: 280). The World Bank therefore began to develop a data portal on Actionable Governance Indicators (AGI) ‘in response to the increasing demand for governance indicators that could help design specific reforms and monitor their impacts’.⁷ Yet the dilemma remains. The World Bank AGI website explains that Broad Governance Indicators (BGI), often referred to as aggregate or composite indicators, ‘provide a helpful way to summarise, combine, and organise information’. However, ‘[c]omparisons over time are often problematic’ and the BGI ‘do not provide information on precise aspects of governance, leaving policymakers uncertain of the steps needed to improve governance’. The AGI, on the other hand, are ‘narrowlydefined disaggregated indicators that offer greater clarity regarding the steps governments can take to improve their scores or ratings …. Because of the paucity of research, however, it is not clear how AGIs influence ultimate governance outcomes.’⁸

For all these reasons, it is not a good starting point to try to rework for regional purposes the WGI or any other set of indicators which are so explicitly, but also so loosely, rooted in assumptions about the ideal nature of the nation state.

The Starting Point: ‘Meta-Principles’ of Good Governance

A better starting point is to identify underlying ‘meta-principles’ of good governance that are potentially valid at all levels of organisation and in almost all spheres of life, before looking at the specificities of challenges in regional contexts.

In order to understand the potential and the limitations of such principles, it is helpful to recall briefly the origins of the concept. The term ‘good governance’ entered general usage in the area of development cooperation following a 1989 World Bank study on Sub-Saharan Africa. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) thus defined governance as:

The exercise of economic, political and administrative authority to manage a nation’s affairs. It is the complex mechanisms, processes, relationships and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their rights and obligations and mediate their differences … Effective democratic forms of governance rely on public participation, accountability and transparency.

(UNDP 1997: 9)

In other words, development was not only a matter for the state. Good governance requires better government, but also the p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction and summary
• 1. Assessing regional governance: an indicative framework for developing indicators
• 2. Assessing attitudes towards regional integration processes
• 3. How to measure the level of regional conflict and peace?
• 4. Indicators of intra-regional migration and mobility
• 5. Statistical measures of regional trade integration
• 6. Indicators of regional financial integration
• 7. Measurement of regional economic convergence
• 8. Optimum currency area criteria
• 9. Gravity models applied to regional integration
• 10. CGE models applied to regional integration
• 11. Sustainability impact assessments applied to regional integration
• 12. Evaluation techniques applied to large-scale regional projects
• 13. Participatory foresight techniques applied to regional integration processes
• 14. Composite indexes and systems of indicators of regional integration
• Index