Governance

Close to 30 government officials from seven Asian countries* recently participated in CommGAP’s workshop on communication and governance reform.  Entitled People, Politics, and Change, the workshop was held in Manila, Philippines from April 20 to 23.  The participant pool included a few high level officials, both cabinet ministers and national parliamentarians.  Also in the group were governance specialists from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), and the World Bank’s newly established regional governance hub in Bangkok.  Observers included representatives from the Asian Institute of Management and the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication. 

Public trust, legitimacy of governments, and good governance may be more valuable than pushing more and more money into poor countries - money that may not even reach those who need it. This observation comes from World Bank President Robert Zoellick. He spoke at the Open Forum of the Governance and Anti-Corruption (GAC) Council this week, and paid tribute to issues that go way beyond classical development economics, such as governance and accountability. Success in these areas need to mean as much to us as the traditional loan agenda, Zoellick asserted.

A reader's comment to the blog post Whose Will Constitutes 'Political Will'?

"Political will" is surely one of the more elusive terms in the international development community.  Sina captures much of its ambiguity well in his posting.  In addition to what it is, we might also ask where political will comes from.  In some cases it originates with an individual, generally situated somewhere within the state apparatus (best if at a high level) who becomes the "champion" that Sina refers to.   But political will can also stem from civil society advocacy that puts enough pressure on the state to develop the political will needed to bring about action.  The civil rights movement in the USA had champions over many decades, and they made some progress (e.g., Eleanor Roosevelt and the Marian Anderson singing controversy of 1939, recently commemorated on its 70th anniversary at Lincoln Memorial this past Easter in Washington).  So there was some political will in high places that helped.  President Truman's desegregation of the US military in 1948 offers another example.  But it took another 20 years and a huge, sustained civil society effort to accumulate the pressure needed to strengthen political will sufficiently to pass the landmark civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s. So it was a combination of political will on the inside and civil society on the outside that moved civil rights along over the years, with each reinforcing the other.  More recent examples abound (e.g., environment, women's movement). Analyzing the synergy involved and crafting ways to support it should be a critical focus of CommGAP.

Harry Blair

“Global problems require global solutions,” a newspaper editorial recently asserted in its analysis of the current economic crisis.  From a communication studies perspective, stressing a particular aspect of an issue – in this case, the global nature of the crisis -- is called “framing.”   To further one’s position, advocates frame an issue by emphasizing some aspects of the phenomenon and deemphasizing others.  Contrasting frames on economic issues have been ubiquitous in the media for some time.  Compare, for example, the ways in which The Economist and CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight interpret economic realities.  Given the current crisis, the framing battle is even more apparent.  Protectionists might prefer to focus on a country’s deteriorating local job market and claim that the most pressing need is for government to protect domestic employment or a “domestic jobs frame.”  In contrast, those who believe in free markets might argue that protectionist policies will lead to contracting national economies and that the solution is greater liberalization or a “free trade frame.”