Government as an institution

6 Key excerpts on "Government as an institution"

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  eBook - ePub

  A Pen Named Man: Our Destiny

  • Newton(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Resource Publications

    (Publisher)

  5

  Government

  G overnment has a major influence upon the lives of people. Its role is to maintain an environment suitable for the conduct of “proper” human behavior, and consequently, institutional governments are established to provide such an environment. Institutional governments draw up and enact rules for acceptable social behavior. Government further has the responsibility to protect human rights and institutional governments are designed to do that. For instance, they afford the privilege to acquire and own property. They also ensure citizens have the right to vote on important issues of the day. Government further provides an atmosphere for economic and social opportunity. Institutional governments appropriately promote this by allowing a person to seek a job of one’s choosing, as well as purchase a home in a neighborhood where he or she wishes to live. Government is likewise designed to maintain social order, and in support of this, institutional governments provide for an individual’s well-being through the installation of a police force and a system of civil and criminal courts. Thus, the role of all institutional governments is to guarantee a controlled social environment wherein people can interact satisfactorily with one another.

  In the previous chapter, we discussed the institution of religion and determined that one universal religion could be held by all mankind. This we can define. We can draw from the several major institutional religions of the world to formulate a theological doctrine that would form the basis of a universal religion. Similarly, there can be one universal government in the world. This too we can define. We can select specific legislative, executive, and judicial components from various world governments to lay the foundation for a universal government. Such a government, which is responsive to the needs of all mankind, can be established on Earth.

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  Governance

  • Anne Mette Kjaer(Author)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Polity

    (Publisher)

  the application of rules, and the enforcement of rules (see also Feeny, 1993: 172). Although this is a broad and quite abstract definition, it nonetheless provides a common ground to all of the different perceptions of governance.

  It goes without saying that such a broad definition only applies at a general level. The sub-disciplines in political science abound with definitions and usages of governance that refer to more substantial policies or features of social systems. For example, Gerry Stoker (1998: 17) has criticized the use of governance as the ‘acceptable face of spending cuts’. By underlining the positive impact on efficiency when involving private sector actors, policy-makers have used governance as a reason to reduce public expenditure. However, as academics, we should not allow governance to be hijacked by proponents of neo-liberal policy.2 Rather, governance analysts explore the processes by which rules about the pursuance of public goods are designed and enforced. Thus, rather than referring to a specific organizational set-up, such as the minimal state, or a specific policy, such as privatization, governance theory more openly explores changes in political practices and their implications for political rules of the game.

  Second, some governance theorists identify governance more closely with government: ‘Governance is the capacity of government to make and implement policy, in other words, to steer society’ (Pierre and Peters, 2000: 1). This definition refers more to traditional steering capacities of states and it introduces an important distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new’ governance (Peters, 2000). Inherent in the old governance is a traditional notion of steering by national governments from the top down. It has to do with the degree of control the government is able to exert over social and economic activities. The new governance has more to do with how the centre interacts with society and asks whether there is more self-steering in networks. Self-organizing networks can block implementation and thus have a negative impact on the capacity to steer, or they can increase efficiency by cooperating in policy implementation. In new governance theory, networks may thus have both negative and positive impacts on steering capacity (Peters, 2000: 40–1). Thus, governance analysts often explore the nature of governance: is it old or new? Has the role of the state declined? Or if it has not declined, has it changed?

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  Health Research Governance in Africa

  Law, Ethics, and Regulation

  • Cheluchi Onyemelukwe-Onuobia(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  “Governance, at whatever level of social organization it occurs, refers to the systems of authoritative norms, rules, institutions, and practices by means of which any collectivity, from the local to the global, manages its common affairs.” 9 It is this generic sense of governance, applicable to regulation and management activities in a variety of institutions and organisations, that is frequently applied to our understanding of the need for controlling health research involving humans. In this respect, according the University of Ottawa Centre on Governance, governance is, broadly speaking, “about the processes by which human organizations, whether private, public or civic, steer themselves.” 10 In a description that presents a holistic conception of governance, a Law Commission of Canada study explains the concept of governance as pertaining not only to organizations, but also to the complex ways in which private, public and social organizations interact and learn from one another, the manner in which citizens contribute to the governance system, directly and indirectly, through their collective participation in civil, public and corporate institutions; and the instruments, regulations and processes that define the ‘rules of the game.’ 11 These generic descriptions of governance, which are applicable to any activity that requires some control, perhaps explain the liberal use of the term, with particular regard to research involving humans, and are helpful for the purpose of analysis in this book. Thus, the concept may be seen by some as allowing some form of control over activities, without necessarily requiring governmental input or intervention. On the other hand, as exemplified by its usage in the context of democratic governance or even the idea of good governance, the role of the state in the process of governance cannot simply be ignored. The generic understanding of governance is pivotal to the analysis conducted in the book

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  Politics and Society between Elections

  Public Opinion in India's States

  • Siddharth Swaminathan, Suhas Palshikar(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge India

    (Publisher)

  4 Political Institutions

  Moving away from attitudes and orientations typically associated with identities in social and political universes, Part 4 reports findings about the citizen interface with government institutions and citizens’ perceptions about these institutions. Governance processes are examined in terms of citizen awareness of, and benefits from various welfare schemes of central and state governments and the institutions leaders approach to get work done or resolve disputes. The extent to which citizens find public institutions trustworthy, efficient, and distributively just is also explored. Findings suggest a wide but uneven distribution of information and benefits across schemes and states, and a widespread citizen preference of local government leader to approach in order to get work done. Public trust in institutions is robust enough to sustain democracy but low levels of citizen trust in key institutions such as the bureaucracy and political parties do not bode well for governance.

  4.1 The Citizen–State Interface

  Public assessments about citizen–State interfaces are an important feature of politics between elections as they not only shape citizens attitudes toward parties and incumbents but also influence whether citizens view institutions as credible and efficacious. Engagement between the State and its citizens through political leaders and government officials, as well as through welfare schemes and public services provided by governments, is a critical governance process. Governance hinges on citizens being able to access basic services easily and benefit from welfare enhancing schemes. Local political actors, in many instances, also facilitate access to many resources (Sekhri, 2011; Auerbach and Thachil, 2018, 2020; Bussell, 2019). Governance also involves the ease with which citizens are able to approach leaders and government officials. Citizen experiences with State institutions in turn inform the trust citizens give to these institutions. However, are citizens aware of the opportunities provided by central and state governments? Lack of information about services and welfare schemes designed for poor and disadvantaged groups hinder their access to those services (Berry and Coffman, 2012). Improving stakeholders’ awareness of entitlements and providing information on the quality of services can be an effective method of improving service delivery (Afridi, 2017). Despite having information about services and where to access these services, do citizens receive basic services? Do they have access to schemes that have the potential to improve livelihoods? And what sorts of institutions and leaders do citizens approach to get work done or for dispute resolution? These are critical to understanding the processes of routine governance that occurs in periods between elections.

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  Key Concepts in Governance

  • Mark Bevir(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  Sociological institutionalists focus on values, identities, and the ways in which they shape actors’ perceptions of their interests. They argue that informal sets of ideas and values constitute policy paradigms that shape the ways in which organizations think about issues and conceive political pressures. Hence they adopt a more constructivist approach to governance – an approach that resembles the social constructivism we will consider later on. They concentrate on studies of the ways in which norms and values shape what are often competing policy agendas of welfare and administrative reform.

  Systems Theory

  Although sociological institutionalism can resemble social constructivism, it often exhibits a distinctive debt to organizational theory. At times its exponents perceive cognitive and symbolic schemes not as intersubjective understandings, but as properties of organizations. Instead of reducing such schemes to the relevant actors, they see them as a kind of system based on its own logic. In doing so, they echo themes that are developed more fully in systems theory.

  A system is the pattern of order that arises from the regular interactions of a series of interdependent elements. Systems theorists suggest that such patterns of order arise from the functional relations and interactions of the elements. These relations and interactions involve a transfer of information. This transfer of information leads to the self-production and self-organization of the system even in the absence of any center of control.

  The concept of governance as a socio-cybernetic system highlights the limits to governing by the state. It implies that there is no single sovereign authority. Instead, there is a self-organizing system composed of interdependent actors and institutions. Systems theorists often distinguish here between governing, which is goal-directed interventions, and governance, which is the total effect of governing interventions and interactions. In this view, governance is a self-organizing system that emerges from the activities and exchanges of actors and institutions. Again, the new governance has arisen because we live in a centerless society, or at least a society with multiple centers. Order arises from the interactions of multiple centers or organizations. The role of the state is not to create order but to facilitate socio-political interactions, to encourage varied arrangements for coping with problems, and to distribute services among numerous organizations.

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  The Routledge Handbook of Institutions and Planning in Action

  • Willem Salet, Willem Salet(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Their impact on my own thinking has been less fundamental than on some younger scholars, as I was already too ‘institutionalised’ into my own approach. Instead, these contributions have helped sharpen my thinking and forced me to engage in continual ‘translation’ efforts, to see what these different concepts and vocabularies imply for what I have been interested in. The next section outlines how I have consolidated these various inspirations into a version of ‘sociological institutionalism’. 20 Conceptualising Innovation and Transformative Change in Place Governance in a ‘Sociological Institutionalist’ Perspective Grounded in a constructivist and relational perspective, I understand place dynamics in a relational way. From this viewpoint, the assemblages that get to be recognised as ‘places’ are seen as produced by the complex interplay of diverse webs of relations, each with a distinctive spatial reach and temporal range. 21 What have become recognised as ‘place qualities’ are socially produced from the mixture of material experiences and socio-cultural reflections which individuals and collectivities bring forward into attention. I understand governance as a broad term, encompassing the various ways human communities seek to manage their collective affairs. All societies and groups have some form of governance and some kind of governance landscape. Formalised government (comprising the systems and organisations of formal law, politics and administration and the practices associated with this activity) is only one element of this, though in our societies it has become a very dominant one

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