Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Governance

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The Future & Governance
(via Singapore newspaper article)

NO MONOPOLY ON SUCCESS
by SM Goh Chok Tong (last prime minister of Singapore)
12/11/08 Straits Times - summary of his speech in point form
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* Modern financial system is based in trust and credibility and is a "pyramid of promises"

* Western model of liberal historical determinism (post war Washington Consensus)
vs Asian triumphalism & dirigiste economic management

* Both have systems of POLICY + GOVERNANCE

* Article not about superiority or inferiority of any culture, political ideology or system of government.

* As far as POLICY goes it indicates that the ingredients for economic growth are straight forward

*But questions the ingredients for GOVERNANCE indicating there has been recorded growth in all East Asian markets whether they we run by monarchy, multi-party democracies or by one party communism

* It suggests that good governance is not a question of democracy or authoritarian as both models can give growth and as well as have shortfalls, citing that democratic Iceland ended up bankrupt and military Mymar or North Korea are not the richest authoritarian nations.

* Last 200 years has been governed by west and asks how many non-west countries can adapt to a western defined modernity. Only handful have done so successfully, mostly in East Asia, and they had a diversity of political systems eg. (Japan feudal, South Korea & Taiwan military dictatorship when grew but changed to pluralistic one)... Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand cited...

* Current crisis has pointed to fundamental changes in international order. What the role is of emerging economies and East Asia in a MULTI POLAR World is leading to disquiet over sovereign wealth funds, human rights, reform of international institutions etc.

* Especially, East Asian Governments challenges preferred narrative of the west as capitalism flourishes without western style democracy (unlike Japan whose ambition was to leave Japan and join the west after 2nd war.. India and even more so China)

* A restructuring of international order should have strategic salience to the idea that "NO SINGLE STYLE OF GOVERNANCE HAS MONOPOLY ON SUCCESS"...and that the networks of global inter-dependence are too complex to reduce it to simply Asian VS Western contrast

His CONCLUSION is that sustained growth is possible under different political systems but that they should share at least 4 broad attributes
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1. Accountability & transparency - consent of governed by ballot box = democratic and fair elections (competition and support of people) = right supervisory (Buddha) and regulatory mechanisms (Dharma)

2. Long term planning and execution (Karma)

3. Social justice & harmony (Sangam)

4. Identifying and grooming talent for public service = Meritocratic competitive for brightest brains to work in governance (Jivan)
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* He also indicates that liberal democratic economies have adversarial politics; with the resulting governments and its servants coming and going with public harassment. He makes out that this is affecting East Asia too and is not good as deters good people from serving office

* That every country must find its political system that can deliver goods considering its special and specific circumstances. And what works in one historical period may not deliver in another.. But however, societies evolve politically should always have these 4 basic attributes

1 comment:

JiVa said...

East Asian Governments are really all one party monarchy or dictatorship, but Singapore (which MM Goh Chok Tong was teh prime minister of) has been the cleverest in presenting this as an end stage democratic one via its modified west minister cabinet, giving the impression of democracy because it was a small island and population & could control transition to democracy ...

..and adversarial problems in UK and US .. are now changing as people through internet can be informed and not controlled by conglomerates , senate and lobbyist as shown by OBAMONOMCS

Perhaps authoritarian benign monarchy or dictatorship (greater central control hopefully with "healthy" amount of "respect" to govern any anti-social elements to unify forces, focus aims and face challenges) works in developing countries to begin with, but as step down turns to a step up governance with economic development and independence, a democratic seems more effective (with a more educated and knowledgeable general people, individual empowerment, freedom of speech and reasonable co-operation), especially as the internet economics joins the inner net consciousness.