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Governance & Society

The ability of social actors in a society to interact constructively at many levels is an important factor for a country aiming to develop efficiently, equitably and harmoniously. Donors now recognise that “governance matters” and must be made to work for the poor, although there are different definitions of governance, different ideas as to what constitutes ‘good governance’, and, relatedly, different approaches to the evaluation and measurement of particular aspects of governance.

An attractive feature of the WGA definition (see box) is its ‘multi-actor’ dimension in terms of who creates and maintains the rules. For Mokoro, people are central to development and key governance actors are not only found at the various levels of country (and donor) political and bureaucratic structures where much of the current interest in governance is focussed. They also include social actors with leadership roles in customary political structures, and in both modern and customary ‘civil society’ and livelihood systems, as well as all adults in their (potential) role as ‘citizens’. In recent years these groups have been the targets of various institutional capacity-building and social development interventions.

In our approach governance is understood from three interacting perspectives: the effective rules internal to government structures, the effective rules internal to societal structures, and the effective rules governing relations between the two. When we talk about ‘society’ here, we are recognising that the success of planned development depends on a partnership between government and other social actors, who should not only be able to hold the various levels of government to account, but should also have space to initiate and participate in locally-appropriate development activities. Areas of relevance here include: local impacts of government economic growth and social policy interventions, community(-driven) development; rural poverty, unemployment and agricultural and off-farm livelihood development; urban poverty, unemployment and livelihood development; rural-urban linkages; social protection; and rights-based approaches including gender equity, social inclusion and the wellbeing of children and old people. At this level there are three types of interacting governance structure: local customary governance structures, local government governance structures, and NGO governance structures, and their internal rules and the formal and informal rules governing their interaction have important consequences for local development, poverty reduction and the wellbeing of local people of different social statuses.

‘Governance & Society’ also addresses more macro links between government and society (e.g. decentralisation, fragile state contexts) and what may be required by both government and non-government actors to support development endeavours (e.g. institutional strengthening, capacity building, evidence-based policy-making, and monitoring and evaluation).

Mokoro Experience

On the one hand aspects of governance are relevant to all development interventions and many of Mokoro's assignments which were not seen primarily as ‘governance’ assignments have involved contributions to rule creation and maintenance in both government and non-government contexts. We have also undertaken assignments specifically focussing on governance issues in both contexts. Our experience in ‘G&S’ has been gained from assignments in Africa, Asia, central Europe, the Middle East and the Caribbean. We have worked on programmes and studies addressing both the supply and demand aspects of society-based governance. We have worked, and are keen to continue to do so, with like-minded groups and companies who bring expertise complementary to our own, and on team assignments bridging ‘G&S’ and our other in-house expertise. Mokoro's general approach reflects awareness of a range of cross-cutting themes such as human rights, gender, social ex-/inclusion and social accountability. One of our Principal Consultants is also involved in academic research on governance and local development which directly feeds into our consultancy work.