The relationships between good government in development assistance have come under new scrutiny. There are several reasons for this.
The dramatic events in Europe and the former Soviet Union have foreshadowed movements in many countries to replace one party state constitutions with those that allow elections and more democratic forms of government. The Latin American Summit in 1991 was attended by heads of state only one of which (Cuba) was not freely elected, representing a transformation from the situation a decade previously. Many African countries have taken the first steps towards multi party electoral systems (e.g. Zambia, Tanzania, the Seychelles) and more representative government seems inevitable as events work their way through, even in South Africa. Civil unrest has affected some of those countries which have resisted the trend towards more democratic systems of government (Malawi, Kenya). The Chairman of the OAU is on record as calling for "the dismantling of all apparatus of unrepresentative power" and has suggested a deadline of the end of the century to achieve this (DAC 1991:31). In Asia elections have been held recently in Nepal, Mongolia and Bangladesh. This "wind of change," currently blowing most strongly in Africa, reflects widespread agreement on the need for greater participation of populations in political activity and more effective guarantees of basic human freedoms. As part of a new perspective on development many donors are taking the view that human freedoms are as much a part of development as is economic growth. The UNDP Human Development Reports illustrate these concerns. Moreover, it is increasingly seen as inconsistent, at the very least, for donors to suspend the values they place on human freedoms in their own countries when allocating development assistance. Thus the freedoms enshrined in the 30 articles of the UN Charter of Human Rights have become a legitimate concern of the policy dialogue process. UN monitoring of the preservation of these rights has attracted more attention and several NGOs, notably Amnesty International, have been very active in drawing attention to abuses.
There has been a growing concern that a proportion of development assistance has been mix-appropriated either directly through various forms of embezzlement, or indirectly through the substitution of donor resources to finance developments that would have been funded anyway, thus releasing funds for other activities - the so called fungibility problem. In extreme cases this has further impoverished countries when high placed officials have accumulated vast wealth at the expense of those they claim to serve. Cases have been publicised where personal fortunes appear to approach levels which are significant proportions of national indebtedness and where the source of the income, and the reasons for concealing it in secret bank accounts, are obscure. Repeated scandals related to commissions paid on large government contracts to officials and politicians out of proportion to legitimate services provided suggest another kind of malpractice. These kind of events have prompted UNDP to call for an Honesty International (UNDP 1992:89) that would draw attention to corrupt and fraudulent practices and publish information that would discourage large scale abuse of public funds.
Corruption and fraud are fortunately not characteristic of most development assistance. Where they are endemic they are likely to diminish the effectiveness of aid. But good government depends on far more than good intentions. It depends on good practices which are able to undertake effective management of public resources and deliver services according to publicly agreed policy in an efficient manner. Low motivation, poor accountability, inadequate record keeping, and underinvestment in infrastructure to support the machinery of government all contribute to poor governance. To the extent that this is deliberate, condoned, or merely convenient to those who have the responsibilities for using public funds this represents a serious problem which can compromise aid effectiveness. And to some degree it may be thought to exacerbate the conditions that educational assistance seeks to mitigate. Thus concern for good government has become an important feature of the policy dialogue between donors and host governments. Though it can be seen as undermining the sovereignty of national governments, since it questions internal administrative practice, it can also be presented as a problem where there is a common interest in a solution.
Measuring human freedoms is not an easy task. The indicators that can be used have to be widely understood and accepted. There is scope for much ambiguity when devising a new measurement scale outside familiar territory but a consensus is beginning to emerge. Personal security, the rule of law, freedom of expression, free participation in politics, and equal opportunity legislation are widely valued. Without them development will be impaired especially if these are considered part of the definition of development. It is not possible to establish a direct link between economic well being and such freedoms there are examples of autocratic regimes that deny most of these freedoms whose economies have grown substantially, equally there are many such regimes which have experienced economic decline. Foster (1987:99) argues that existing data do not establish an empirical base for pursuing educational policies based on the presumption that greater investment will necessarily lead to greater stability and more democratic forms of government whilst accepting the possibility that this may be so. The World Bank (1991) has put the case that more popular participation may enhance spending on social sector programmes. Damiba (1991) argues that there is a symbiotic relationship between democratisation of the political process and basic human rights and the capability of governments to successfully administer social and economic development programmes. And there are some signs that where autocracy and the suppression of human freedoms have been commonplace and yet economic development has occurred that increased affluence and economic well being has led to growing pressures for political reform.
An emerging consensus suggests that the development of civil society, reflecting the necessary and desirable cultural differences that exist between countries and groups, should be seen as an integral component of the development process. Without the institutions that this embodies, and the protection that these provide to the citizenry from arbitrary, autocratic or oligopolistic government which may degenerate into the fascism of the right or the left, it is difficult to defend a development strategy. Education, and the freer flow of information, are central elements in this process and this is where educational assistance has the most obvious role to play. Literate citizens are better able to play a full role in civil affairs. The abilities of collating, analysing and interpreting information are skills encouraged by educational experience. Levels of awareness of both the immediate and more general context in which decisions have to be taken on development issues are also enhanced by the possession of higher levels of education. At a more specific level support for good government, the development of human rights and the democratisation of political systems has at least four elements. Economic reform is seen by some as a necessary pre-requisite with movement away from centrally planned economise towards market or market like systems of production and marketing of goods and services. These arguments are generally based on the presumption that economic growth is more likely, and human resources better used, in market economies where a bureaucratic state does not dominate. This obviously has ideological overtones as does the whole of this debate. An implication is that assistance predicated on this assumption has to recognise that adjustment from one economic system to another may not be simple and may require considerable support to cushion immediate effects on employment, the availability of basic commodities and on prices. Without some measure of assistance instability may be precipitated and ground painfully won to increase human freedoms rapidly lost. It may also imply changes in the character of education and training and therefore types of assistance that are appropriate.
Institution building is a second element without which good government in terms of efficient administration, and human rights guarantied by a legal system, are unlikely to flourish. Adequate education and health services are generally argued to be at the centre of institution building programmes which can provide human resources of sufficient quantity and quality to support the growth and consolidation of social and economic institutions. They also encourage and facilitate greater participation through increased literacy and numeracy, higher levels of development of cognitive skill, and more widespread access to access to labour markets that require educational qualifications.
Thirdly, some reform of the public sector may be implied. This may or may not involve changes in its relative size, with concomitant implications for employment in those countries where it consumes an inordinate share of the wealth generated by economic activity. It is likely to involve assistance to improve procedures, and introduce criteria for efficient performance into accountability systems at the departmental and individual level. As part of this improvement assistance for more reliable and valid assessment procedures may be appropriate. This applies both to the school system as a whole, where educational qualifications may be used to identify those likely to be interviewed for jobs, and to specific selection methods where bespoke selection instruments and procedures need to be developed. Civil service reform may also be justified where greater transparency is needed to safeguard public money and ensure that salary levels are sufficient to provide reasonable living standards (and thus discourage inefficient employment practices and petty corruption). It may also identify areas where services might be delivered more efficiently, with appropriate safeguards for equitable access, by parastatals or private sector organisations Structural imbalance in public expenditure over-expanded military budgets, excessive borrowing - may also be a legitimate item for discussion in the policy dialogue.
An emphasis on good government and the development of civil society necessarily implies greater concerns for the developmental status of marginalised and underprivileged sections of the community. This has been considered an increasingly appropriate matter of concern amongst donors. Though donor relationships are essentially government to government this has to be reconciled with individual donor priorities that, for example, place emphasis on poverty alleviation. Marginalised groups are, by definition, those that are likely to benefit least from developments in mainstream society. In different countries this embraces groups consciously or inadvertently overlooked by development assistance in the past. These may include ethnic minority groups, inhabitants of remote areas, nomadic peoples, women, and refugees and stateless people. It seems that as part of any new emphasis on good government as a factor in donor decision making the extent to which such groups are the focus of national development efforts should be a consideration. Such an orientation may have powerful support from research that shows that interventions can lead to direct gains on key indicators of development and poverty alleviation. This might apply, for example, to assistance targeted at improving levels of education amongst girls and women in those countries where opportunities are unevenly distributed (see below). In other cases, where it may be more difficult to show that assistance leads directly to economic and demographic benefits, the rationale for assistance may be more heavily dependent on the moral imperative of directing assistance to those in greatest need, with the poorest living conditions and the least prospects of improving them.
