The politics of wisdom - of human rights and good governance

by Ruwantissa Abeyratne (United Nations)

An autochthonous constitution (a constitution rooted entirely in the country's native soil) should be empathetic to the needs of the people and should lay down principles of a public administration calculated to serve the needs of the people and ensure their rights. Although a universally accepted definition of public administration has not yet been accepted, it remains that public administration must essentially be a tool of the government and answer all the questions of governmental activity unambiguously.

This would be the start of diligently addressing citizens rights. Public administration, which should be nurtured in a dynamic environment, must change with the exigencies of time and develop new answers to new issues that may emerge.

Public administration must primarily be the instrumentality that achieves the aims of the government through the effective mobilisation and management of resources. In other words it is the art and science of management when it comes to affairs of the State.

The politics of wisdom should not be invested in only winning an election but rather in continuing to win elections by offering the people an efficient public management which ensures their well-being through the proper administration of their rights.

These rights should be determined with the sole view of correcting deficiencies and wrongs and not with the aim of maintaining basic values enshrined in ancient political philosophy. The concept of 'governance' is as old as human civilisation.

The most simplistic definition of 'governance' would be that it is the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions are implemented (or not implemented as the case may be). Governance can be categorised into several institutional bases and used in several contexts such as corporate governance, international governance, national governance and local governance.

Essentially, since governance represents the process of decision-making which ineluctably involves a process by which decisions are implemented, it becomes necessary for an analysis of governance to focus on the formal and informal actors involved in decision-making and implementing the decisions taken, along with the nature of formal and informal structures that have been set in place to arrive at and implement the decision.

Government is one of the key players in the game of governance. Other players involved in governance vary depending on the level of government that is under consideration. Whilst in urban areas other actors could include provincial councils, municipal councils and urban councils, in rural areas, they may include influential land lords, associations of peasant farmers, cooperatives, NGOs, research institutes, religious leaders, finance institutions political parties, the military etc.

The situation in urban areas is of course much more complex than in the rural environment. In the urban equation, all actors other than those in government service and the military are grouped together as part of the 'civil society.' In some countries in addition to the civil society, organised crime syndicates also influence decision-making, particularly in urban areas and at the national level.

Formal government structures are one means by which decisions are arrived at and implemented. Good governance has eight major characteristics. They relate to participatory, consensus oriented, accountable, transparent, responsive, effective and efficient, equitable and inclusive functions and are carried out strictly according to the rule of law.

These major characteristics ensure that the public is safe from corruption or that corruption is minimised to an irreducible minimum and the views of minorities are taken into account. Above all, overall good governance ensures that the voices of the most vulnerable in society are not only heard but are also taken into consideration in decision-making. It is also responsive to the present and future needs of society.

Participation by both men and women is an integral element of good governance. Participation, which needs to be informed and organised, may be either direct or through legitimate intermediate institutions or representatives.

Whilst representative democracy does not necessarily mean that the concerns of the most vulnerable in society would be taken into consideration in decision making. Nonetheless a participatory governance most often ensures a balanced existence between freedom of association and expression on the one hand and an organised civil society on the other hand.

What then are rights that the citizen would seek? Firstly, it is to have equal citizenship, no matter who a person is or where she lives. This cannot be answered by the simplistic argument that all citizens are equal before the law.

It goes deeper to the roots of livelihood and lifestyle and the right not to be poor. A fundamental restructuring of urban and rural areas is the first step toward attaining equality among people. The popular misconception that a State which provides high level educational services provides good governance no longer holds sway, as it is the awareness and understanding of the people of world and domestic issues and their level of competence at work are what count as results of good governance.

Another determinant is the comfort that people enjoy in their homes rather than the sophistication achieved in house building and repair services. Finally, on the issue of recreation and social interaction, it is not the recreational and social services available that are considered as important but the quality of leisure and cultural experiences people enjoy.

As for measurement of the quality of life improvements, it would not be difficult for a government to determine the overall holistic quality of life of its subjects by conducting a survey as to how many are happy or content with their quality of their lives and what they lack.

The Human Development Index (HDI) of The United Nations, launched in 1990, the latest of which came out in 2003, aims at reinstating people in the epicenter of the development process. The HDI, which is an annual publication, ranks nations according to their citizens quality of life rather than their economic status. Some of the criteria used by the United Nations in this evaluation are life expectancy, educational attainment and adjusted real income.

In 1997, the European Commission launched its European Urban Audit with the primary intention of sharing information among European cities with regard to quality of life enjoyed by EC citizens. The evaluation started with 58 pilot cities and has now reached the number of 200 cities within Europe.

Perhaps one of the most useful analogies is the Compass Project of the Bertelsmann Foundation of Germany, which aims, with a four pronged strategy, to improve some cities and local administrations.

The first of these strategies is to develop a long term external vision and strategic objectives with the assistance of and in consultation with the citizens.

The second is to build a set of quality of life indicators which admits of comparison between the pilot cities and administrations. The third is to develop proposals for improvement through data and information collected, and finally an evaluation is made as to the extent to which the action taken met with expectations.

Another step toward ensuring human rights is to root out any man made dual citizenship aimed at ensuring equal civil, political and social rights with no racial or religious discrimination. The first step - elimination of dual citizenship - is a task for public administration whereas the other issues largely lies within society itself, calling for a change of ideas as well as the need to abolish obsolete institutions and insidious traditions. While urbanization should be left to the government, localised governance should be left to the citizenry with some autonomy.

Equal employment is yet another right that should be restored if a society were to have lost it through mismanagement of government over the years. This has to do with the creation of employment opportunities through expansion of commerce and trade.

In this context, and indeed with regard to other rights mentioned above, an effective analogy is the new public management (NPM) which embraces private sector norms and values, including a focus on customers and an abiding dependence on market mechanisms, the fragmentation and decentralisation of public services and the revision of working practices within such institutions which would all go towards achieving more efficient services and facilities for the people.

A government committed to such an approach (which has enjoyed immense success in the European Community) would have to ensure a sustained commitment by the top leadership in government; acceptance of the need for change by the stakeholders; the presence of a coherent vision and opportunities for wide participation in analysing and diagnosing problems and finding solutions.

Human rights should be viewed as something more than a concept which acts as a cultural artifact. They transcend fundamental rights, which are essentially political and civil rights, and expand to more basic rights such as the right to be equal to anyone with regard to the basic universal need for nourishment, shelter, clothing and education.

In order to make sure that they are enjoyed by all of humanity, any community will have to make sure that human rights are a matter of course and are ensured by a guaranteed and contrived effort by all. Human rights and their worth cannot strictly be evaluated.

Traditional modes of evaluation, with which the voter usually goes to the polls in a democratic environment to select the government, are value for money, efficiency of service delivery and customer satisfaction.

At best, these yardsticks have largely been political and economic abstractions which have prompted some academics and practitioners to consider the subject of governance-evaluation as being immeasurable or too much trouble. The issue is further aggravated by the fact that there is no scientifically approved or accepted model to assess the quality of public governance.

The bottom line is that human rights are enjoyed by the citizen through good governance. The first conclusion that one can reach is that good governance is no longer assessed by the provision of services by a government or other governing body but rather by the extent to which improvements were made possible to the quality of life of the individual.

The second is that good governance has an international connotation, in that it should be assessed with the assistance and application of international standards. Also, good governance must be rewarded, for example, through rewards along the lines of the Nobel Peace Price for best practices in good governance. Recognition should be given through satisfaction surveys where a direct causal nexus could be drawn between the manner in which the governed was enabled to reach a level of satisfaction with governance provided.

Positive changes in expectation and results obtained should be weighed against perceived adequacies of government in the provision of services. Trust in government, through increased levels of health and well being ( which must necessarily include a sense of security of life, habitation and movement) both from cultural and religious perspectives should be a primary indicator.

The elimination of corruption is a key to good governance, and civil society, which has been overwhelmingly proactive in building awareness on human rights issues, has succeeded in persuading the international community of the value for transparency and honesty in public transactions.

Arguably, the most important key to good governance is benevolence and understanding. A good government must assure its people that it has their well being at heart and proactively move towards achieving that goal.