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Abstract
Government and Governance in 16 Developing Countries,
World Governance Survey Discussion Paper 6
A great deal of how citizens perceive an assessment of the
regime occurs in the context of how well the government deals
with broader societal issues. Is the regime so structured
that citizens believe that government cares about their welfare
and security, whether individual or collective? As part of
a project to undertake comprehensive governance assessments,
we focus here on the nature of the rules (formal and informal)
that affect the government arena. In this paper, "government"
refers to all public officials with overall political responsibility
for setting policy and making key appointments to the public
service. How rules in this arena are structured influence
the developmental direction of society.
This paper presents the findings on the government arena
in 16 developing countries. The first key finding of relevance
for both researchers and practitioners concerns the need to
make a distinction between government and regime. Our study
shows that it is possible to get a more detailed appreciation
of how government relates to regime and, importantly, that
type of regime doesn't really matter that much with regard
to key functions that government performs vis-à-vis
society. In this arena, governments associated with a variety
of regimes (e.g. Jordan, Thailand, Chile and India) score
well. Even the communist government of China is viewed as
doing quite well with regard to the various key functions
assessed in this arena.
A second point is that government generally scores lower
on ability to ensure adequate standards of living for its
citizens than on ability to provide security for them. Our
respondents indicate in their qualitative comments that the
political rhetoric of governments is correct but practice
differs for two reasons: lack of commitment or lack of resources.
The third and final observation concerns the role of the military.
We have noted that there is a general sense that the military
these days is ready to accept civilian control. This doesn't
mean, however, that everything has returned to 'normal'. It
is important that the international community through its
various agencies continues to pay attention to how the military
in developing countries can be further professionalized.
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