Gardening Governance At Community Level

Cultivating good governance... crucial at community level.

Governance in general, and OEgood' governance, in particular, have in the last decade or so become a regular and important feature of development dialogue in the Pacific. Politicians, donors, bureaucrats and NGOs seem all to be speaking the same language in prescribing good governance as a way forward.

Indeed, the term has now replaced OEdevelopment' and OEsustainable development' as the fashionable buzzwords.

Like many fashions in the Pacific, though, the governance agenda is largely foreign. It was brought to the Pacific in the 1990s out of the World Bank's analyses of development failures in Africa. It has now been taken on board by both bilateral and multilateral donors in the region.

Good governance in the Pacific prescribes western liberal democracy and market-driven economic growth as its vehicles of delivery. Ethical, educated politicians, modern economic growth and poverty alleviation are its primary goals.

An often unwritten and certainly unsaid ingredient in the good governance recipe is that traditional systems and Pacific culture are seen as intrinsically corrupt, undemocratic, non-transparent and a barrier to economic growth. The systems that have sustained Pacific peoples and their environments for thousands of years, and that to a large extent continue to do so today, are viewed as a problem.

As a response to this potentially thorny problem, good governance projects have by and large ignored traditional systems of authority and focused instead almost exclusively on improving modern, central government. The result is that most Pacific countries are undergoing some form of public sector reform. Leaner, meaner central government is, it seems, the order of the day.

There is a danger, however, that by focusing primarily on government, the good governance effort may be ignoring the Pacific's greatest asset, its people. About 70% of Pacific peoples still live in largely rural communities. Even many of those who reside in urban areas, do so in peri-urban settlements. Each of these communities has a governance system that displays many of the elements of good governance.

Villages throughout the Pacific have leaders who account for their actions to the people who they lead and live with every day‹not every four or five years. Meetings are not OEtop secret' affairs held behind closed doors. Decisions are taken by community leaders in a way that is more often than not pretty clear to members of the community. This is to be contrasted with modern governance systems that make unilateral decisions from afar and OEconsult' with communities merely to inform them of the latest policy amendments.

Modern governance procedures are often shrouded in mystery and there is an assumption that people in rural areas are a little too simple or naïve or uneducated to come to grips with the complexities of modern governance. One does not often read, for instance, about instances when central governments actively facilitate the participation of villagers in decisions.

But these traditional forms of governance operate throughout the region and take advantage of the many strengths that reside in Pacific culture. This wealth, referred to in development jargon as social capital, includes a veritable encyclopedia of wisdom that includes everything from environmental knowledge through traditional medicines to governance, the organisation of resource use, allocation and social well-being. Every day problems are solved, reconciliation sought and accepted, village projects put in place and discussions held as they have been for thousands of years by governance that operates at the level of communities.

Far from being weak or corrupt, as often assumed, community governance has much that can inform politicians and bureaucrats about good governance.

Traditional systems are accessible to people on a regular basis, whereas modern governance for the majority of Pacific islanders resides in a big house, speaks a foreign language and has agents who, like tourists, merely visit, but don't stay. Traditional systems are also familiar and encourage people to think of the good of their community rather than their own individual benefit. Interestingly, it is not often in traditional communities where one finds disorder: crime, corruption and social breakdown.

That is not to say that community governance systems are perfect, by no means. There are problems in communities as there are in all aspects of human endeavours. The con artist, the corrupt leader, lack of capacity in things modern, inadequate participation and gender equality remain issues that need addressing. But these problems will not be addressed if donors continue to direct their efforts at governments, at the expense of communities. So the modern governance effort stands to lose twice.

Once because it does not reach the majority of Pacific peoples and a second time because it fails to tap into a wealth of traditional knowledge and process that the Pacific already has.

If good governance is to overcome these difficulties and to alleviate poverty as it hopes to, it needs to augment its focus on the public sector with community work. Good governance should be OEgardened' from the community level taking on board traditional governance strengths and linking communal and central governance systems in a more meaningful way. Just as democracy and development need to be nurtured in the Pacific, so too does good governance. Outside governance agendas, whether central government or global, will continue to flounder unless they are more inclusive of, and responsive to Pacific people.

€ Lionel Gibson is the Regional Good Governance Program coordinator Foundation of the Peoples of the South Pacific International based in Suva, Fiji.