Against local govt : Amid protests, analyst lectures on good governance

Democracy is not necessarily efficient or effective, says expert.

KARACHI: The seminar on good governance organised by Karachi University’s Area Study Centre for Europe couldn’t have come at a better time: the day before it took place, a notification had been issued to replace Karachi’s commissioner and the riots on the new local government system are still flaring up in parts of the province.

At the seminar, titled ‘EU and the agenda of good governance: can it be a model for the developing world’, academics had a chance to debate about which form of governance was most beneficial for people.

Boris Wilke, a political analyst and consultant at the Bielefeld University in Germany, said that governance refers to an “institutionalised” system of coordination between different actors that ultimately help a state deliver goods and services and design and implement rules. While on the subject, Wilke dispelled the notion that democracy was the only means through which a state could be governed effectively. While quoting a German author, Wilke said, “Democracy is not necessarily good for governance.”

As he tried to decouple democracy from the idea of ‘good’ governance, Wilke cited the Nazi Party’s victory in the German elections of 1932, and the anti-war protests that erupted throughout Europe on the eve of the Iraq War in 2003. “Germany had became a threat to world peace,” even though it had a democratically elected party in power.

While European authorities are still trying to figure out the right balance of power between member states and a central authority, Wilke offered some advice for countries of the ‘Global South’. Some of the issues that these countries face include skyrocketing levels of tax evasion, lack of security, accountability and rule of law. State building has to be the first step, and only then can the claim for sovereignity be successfully defended.

When asked why elected governments in the West support dictators in other parts of the world, Wilke said that there have been occasions where “democratically elected people make undemocratic decisions.”

The centre’s director, Prof. Moonis Ahmar, lambasted the country’s political elite for being “more efficient at multiplying their money than in performing their duties.” He added that the high level of tax evasion in Pakistan meant that there is very little in the coffers, which, in turn, was affecting infrastructure, health and education, among a host of other civic duties. European citizens, on the other hand, expect their governments to take care of them as they pay their taxes.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 9^th, 2012.