Recasting Governance for Challenging Times

For the better part of the last twenty years, a multitude of international conventions, principles, standards have been agreed to strengthen governance and reduce corruption. These have led to a plethora of statements, institutions and regulations, experiments - each with their own valid inner logic. However, if we look for tangible, on-the-ground results, we are in for a big surprise, or rather disappointment. Taken together, the outcomes that have been reported (such as new control and tracking vehicles, anti-corruption legislation, and the like) have been at best intermediate, rather than final results to be sought. Moreover, they have bee difficult to upscale and easy to circumvent by agents that have a dynamism, adaptability and imagination that is difficult to match by the entities and vehicles that have been created to control corruption and facilitate accountability. As a result, impact on the ground remained at best imperceptible in “moving the needle” to achieve tangible progress. It has now been 10 years that some 70 percent of countries worldwide scored poorly (below 50, in a scale of 0 to 100) in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index — with no improvements of significance throughout this period. Growing signs of public discontent strongly suggest a widening gulf between elites and civil societies, and a consequent inability to respond to emerging societal demands. By now, it should be painfully evident that the time has come to take a dispassionately critical review of the approaches taken to date, and see how they need to be recast to respond to the evolving conditions around the world. This article is aimed at contributing to such review and help rethink, where necessary to recast such approaches to generate effective responses for the remainder of the century.