We often talk about democratic governance as the concept that defines countries’ quality of political institutions not just during, but between the elections as well. Governance, as a concept, captures the idea that democracies must work on the day-to-day basis – not just during the times of electoral promises and grandiose statements. I mean, how many presidential or parliamentary candidates will openly come out in support of corruption? Probably none. Yet, while many will promise to tackle corruption, few will take concrete steps in reforming governance institutions and actually reducing bribery and extortion.
Watching over electoral scandals over the past few months got me thinking that weak governance also undermines the quality of elections, just as lack of free and fair elections undermines governance. It is often said that countries have free and fair elections yet fail to improve governance. Recent events, however, suggest that this is hardly possible. See this Foreign Policy piece for example. It details quite nicely just how electoral processes can be manipulated by governments plagued with a typical set of governance problems – little accountability, lack of transparency, limited citizen participation, patronage, etc.
Take Kenya and the recent violence that noone seems to be able to halt. It is not that democracy is unsuitable for Kenya, as some have argued – it just happens that elections coupled with weak governance institutions produced devastating results. In other words, it was not elections that produced violence in Kenya – it was the underlying set of deeper, structural problems.
Tom Carothers recently wrote a great article on sequencing of reforms. The arguments he makes apply well in the case of governance and elections. It would be foolish to suggest what countries should tackle first: have free elections or build governance institutions. There is a tendency these days to suggest that one can first build up governance institutions and then open the country to free and fair elections. Yet, the reality is that you can’t have one without the other. The challenge is to figure out how to move reforms forwards on both fronts at the same time.
Published Date: February 06, 2008