Progress in Development Studies 4,4 (2004) pp.

279 – 293

Quality governance for sustainable

development?
Anne Mc Lennan and Wendy Yolisa Ngoma
Graduate School of Public and Development Management, University of the
Witwatersrand, South Africa

Abstract: The meanings of public administration, inclusive governance and sustainable

development in a globalized context are reviewed in order to explore how public
administration can ensure sustainable development in the contexts of limited resources,
poverty and inequality. The key argument is that sustainable development will remain an
imaginary exercise unless attention is given to building institutional capacity. The discussion
moves beyond an examination of the role of the state in facilitating sustainable development to
explore options for service delivery that address poverty and exclusion. Of key importance in
exploring the theme of quality governance for sustainable development is the role of
government in supporting institutions and building institutional capacity. This strategy would
need to be targeted not simply at the institutions of the state – schools, hospitals and agencies –
but also at the institutions of civil society. A reinvestment in public institutions may ensure
sustainability in the context of limited resources.

Key words: Africa, governance, institutional capacity, public administration, sustainable

development.

I Introduction

This paper explores governance and sustainable development as conditions of

institutional capacity. It argues that unless there is attention given to developing insti-
tutional capacity, sustainable development will remain an imaginary exercise. Issues of
governance and sustainability are critical in the twenty-first century. They are
fundamentally about the relationships that define resource distribution globally.


Author for correspondence at: Graduate School of Public and Development Management, University
of the Witwatersrand, PO Box 601, WITS 2050, South Africa. E-mail: mclennan.a@pdm.wits.ac.za

C
W Arnold 2004 10.1191/1464993404ps091oa
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280 Quality governance for sustainable development?

They are also about the consequences of the choices that are made in the name of
development. The challenge of ensuring sustainable development looms larger than
ever in the minds of those involved in public affairs. Policy choices by powerful
governments and international organizations and their concomitant advice have bene-
fited only a small portion of the world’s population. In many cases, nations are not
facing simple development challenges, but fundamental crises in relation to war,
famine, poverty and human survival (Munslow, 2003). Building quality governance
for sustainable development in these conditions is a daunting challenge, especially
when large portions of national revenue in developing countries are aid dependent.
Many developing countries are attempting to deal with these challenges through
the choices they make about governance and development. Africa, for example,
through the African Union (AU), has adopted the New Partnership for Africa’s
Development (NEPAD), in an attempt to build sustainable development through
effective governance (African Union, 2001). The NEPAD Founding Document
acknowledges that many African countries continue to be dogged by dependency,
conflict and poverty. The roots of these problems are complex and related to a history
of colonialism, economic dependency and political upheaval. The new response to
this crisis is to define an African development strategy that emphasizes good govern-
ance practice, effective development management, and institutional and human
resource capacity development (African Union, 2001).
The limited impact of aid in the developing world and the increasing globalization
of poverty as a consequence of world economic crisis offers key challenges for devel-
opment and governance. There is a growing inequity and marginalization within
and across nations. Women, for example, are increasingly impoverished both within
their own countries and globally (United Nations Development Programme
(UNDP), 2002). In Africa this is exacerbated by the high incidence of HIV/Aids.
Unsustainable resource utilization for the purpose of economic growth has resulted
in a squandering of resource bases in the name of development. Consequently, the
nation state has struggled to retain relevance in the face of increasingly powerful
multinational corporations, influential international financial and political organiz-
ations, and security threats and risks (Held et al., 1998). Yet, sustainable development
cannot occur without economic growth.
Advances in technology, improvements in the areas of public and development
management and the extension of democratic practice offer great potential for
improving the plight of the world’s population. The qualifier is, of course, that
this comes about only if managed appropriately with the necessary sensitivity to a
core set of values that can be aligned to sustainable development practice. Revisiting
the impact of past reforms, a new commitment to building quality public adminis-
tration that will support inclusive, sustainable development is required. The current
situation requires a re-thinking of governance and administration in a context of
competing tensions and value systems but with the overall aims to achieve the out-
comes of sustainability, equity and peace.

II Shifting understandings of governance and development

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer:

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 A. Mc Lennan and W.Y. Ngoma 281

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

And what rough beast its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? (Yeats, 1970: 58)
‘The second coming’, a poem by W.B Yeats that predicts the fragmentation of
the modern world, raises a question about what replaces the certainty and predicta-
bility that characterized the Enlightenment and modernity. It is this same certainty
that founds notions of public administration, governance and sustainable develop-
ment. These concepts are premised on an understanding of a modern self-aware
agency that assumes that people can know the world and act upon that knowledge
(Mc Lennan, 2000). This enables people to conduct their public affairs with a level of
confidence and care.
The phenomenon of globalization, however, shifts these depictions of agency and
is often characterized as the demon of the twenty-first century. Tied to neoliberalism
and capitalism, it is the unknown and unnamed ‘rough beast’ that is either the cham-
pion of free markets and pluralism or the prime cause of poverty and underdevelop-
ment. Globalization, as a phenomenon, is perceived either as a positive force, in the
sense that it brings enlightenment (much like religion and colonialism of the past) to
underdeveloped countries, or as a new form of repression. It is for this reason that
globalization has been identified both with renewed ways to manage global econ-
omic crises and with the growing impoverishment of developing countries forced
to compete unequally in world markets (Held et al., 1998).
The intensification of international economic competition across national bound-
aries has had the effect of structuring social and economic policy to meet the require-
ments of global competition (Held, 2000; Astiz et al., 2002). In particular, two models
are offered, often as choices. The first is that global economic competition provides
opportunities for developing countries to compete in world markets and through
this process to benefit in developmental terms. In contrast, a more developmental
approach is mooted that attempts to combine economic growth with economic
and social development. Linked to this process is a shift towards global models of
polity and administrative rationalization. This is reflected in governments adopting
similar institutional models and strategies for development challenges (Davies and
Guppy, 1997).
Assumptions about globalization and its effects are premised partly on assump-
tions about power. Power is commonly understood as a possession that can be dis-
tributed at will through systems and processes. In this case, power is a matter of
distribution and is concerned with the ‘who really decides’ (Hyden, 1992). If, how-
ever, power is understood as a relationship that operates through institutions and
practises (Foucault, 1986), globalization can be seen as a different process to the
threatening ‘rough beast’. This requires a focus on distributional issues as well as
on the social, economic and political relationships, histories and realities that define
social practices (Mc Lennan, 2000). A key question to ask, then, is not only ‘who deci-
des’ but ‘how did this come about and who is excluded as a consequence?’.
An exploration of how governance, as a concept, was linked to development and
management demonstrates this point. The negative experience of structural adjust-
ment lending, a resurgence of neoliberalism, the collapse of official communist
regimes in Eastern Europe and the rise of pro-democracy movements influenced
the increasing focus on democracy and development from the late 1980s (Hyden,
1992; Leftwich, 1993; Schmitz, 1995). It is during this period that the concept

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282 Quality governance for sustainable development?

of governance was linked to notions of democratic participation and free market

principles of economic development. This faith in democracy and the market led
Francis Fukuyama (1989) to proclaim the ‘end of history’ and the triumph of liberal
capitalist democracy as the only agent of progress. In governance terms, it implied a
shift from a formal bureaucratic system to development partnerships between state
and stakeholders (Hyden and Bratton, 1992; Kooiman, 1993). In public management
terms, there was a growing focus on decentralization, competition, performance, ser-
vice and diverse modes of delivery, as opposed to bureaucracy and regulation
(Mintzberg, 1996).
This popular understanding of governance as incorporating efficient manage-
ment, market development and democracy was reflected in an emerging consensus
among aid agencies and international organizations that ‘good governance’ was a
crucial determinant of development (Landell-Mills and Serageldin, 1991). Good gov-
ernance was seen as comprising effective and efficient management, financial and
political accountability, open democratic practice and limited corruption. For
example, The World Bank’s 1989 report on sub-Saharan Africa identified two dimen-
sions of governance – political and technical. The first was related to the appa-
rent absence of systems of political accountability in many African states and
the second to the prevalence of inefficiency and corruption in state-led productive
activities. This view of governance as the exercise of political power to manage a
nation’s affairs assumed a traditional conception of development (Landell-Mills
and Serageldin, 1991; World Bank, 1992; George, 1995).
What is significant about this conception of democratic governance as a prerequi-
site for development is that it emerged as a global trend that influenced the policies
and strategies of global organizations and nation states. Previously, governance was
conceptualized mostly in hierarchical terms as the relationship between the ruler and
the ruled. The sovereign– subject relationship had characterized public resource dis-
tribution until the rise of the rights-based legal edifice that defined modernizing
democracies (Foucault, 1986). Under this new system, social goods were no longer
distributed through the whim of a ruling sovereign, but through the neutral, legal
system of state governance. The concept of governance had therefore existed for a
long time, referring broadly to the process of running a government or an organiz-
ation, but it is only in the 1980s that it came to be seen as a prerequisite for economic
and social development (Mc Lennan, 2000).
Many theorists have questioned this apparently necessary link between demo-
cratic governance and development (Leftwich, 1993; Munslow and FitzGerald,
1994; George, 1995; Schmitz, 1995). Classic modernization theory argues, in
fact, that democratic development is an outcome of economic development (Rostow,
1960; Eisenstadt, 1966), rather than a condition. In fact, contrary to the claims of the
World Bank and other aid agencies, recent research continues to suggest, in line with
earlier mainstream thinking, that there is no necessary relationship between democ-
racy and development, nor between any regime type and its economic performance
(Leftwich, 1993; Munslow and FitzGerald, 1994; George, 1995; Schmitz, 1995). In fact,
Leftwich (1993) suggests that democratic processes may actually hinder develop-
ment (in the form of economic liberalization) because they limit accumulation in
favour of distribution.
The purpose of this brief exposition of the shifting relationship between
governance and development is to demonstrate the possibilities in moving beyond

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 A. Mc Lennan and W.Y. Ngoma 283

the common dualisms that seem to characterize academic debate in these arenas.
Governance can be redefined within the context of global trends to accommodate
not only the demands of economic liberalization but also the requirements of sustain-
able development. This requires moving beyond the dualisms of developed and
developing, North and South, bureaucracy and managerialism that are commonly
used, to seek new meanings for these taken-for-granted terms. The reality is that
economic growth is required in order to deal with poverty. The notion of sustainable
development offers a way forward only if it combines responsible public adminis-
tration with effective resource distribution and democratic politics.
Adrian Leftwich suggests that there are several conditions for ensuring demo-
cratic development. These include the geographical, constitutional and political
legitimacy of the state, a broadly based consensus about the democratic rules of
the game, a national understanding that no group will be able to guarantee that its
interests will prevail, a national identity, relatively stable economic growth and a
rich and pluralistic civil society (Leftwich, 1993: 615 – 17). These conditions are
evident in Robert Putnam’s research (1992, 1993) on the developments following
the 1970 decentralization in Italy. Putnam’s findings indicate that responsive and
developmental governments are sustained by a legacy of civic engagement (public
participation in public affairs), a commitment to political equality and the common
good, greater trust and tolerance of differences and extensive involvement in volun-
tary associations. These civic communities sustain democratic and developmental
interactions. This leads him to suggest that civic traditions, which he calls social capi-
tal, are a more powerful predictor of development than past levels of economic per-
formance. In other words, market-led development and democracy are more likely
to be sustained in contexts where there are high levels of social trust and cooperation.
He defines social capital as ‘features of social organization, such as trust, norms, and
networks, that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated
actions’ (Putnam, 1993: 167).
It is the notion of social capital that could found an expanded understanding of
how public administration would work to sustain quality governance and develop-
ment. On the surface, however, it might seem that the necessary conditions for
growing social capital are lacking in developing, and particularly in African
countries. Some would argue that the recent social democratization of Africa has
been largely superficial and that it is in fact a lack of democratic politics, rather
than development, which is at the root of the African crisis (Leftwich, 1993; Ake,
1995). The new drive for democratization and development emerging in Africa
reflects an attempt to mediate international influences (the aid community and inter-
national capital) with local concerns and in particular those of poverty alleviation. In
this sense, it provides an opportunity, in the face of world cynicism about Africa, to
build a relevant continental response to the recurring challenges of ethnic conflict,
poverty, environmental degradation, inequality and underdevelopment that con-
front not only Africa but many parts of the world.

III The challenge of quality governance for sustainable development

If we ask ourselves why poverty remains an overwhelming global problem, the

related question must be whether the existing models of development are sufficient

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284 Quality governance for sustainable development?

in impoverished or unequal conditions. Some argue that formal governance struc-

tures reach only one-quarter of the inhabitants of African cities. The rest live accord-
ing to codes and practices that do not conform to formal processes in order to
survive. These communities, driven by poverty and lack of access, create platforms
for a different kind of public administration from traditional or Western models
(Swilling et al., 2002). Taking cognisance of this social resourcefulness enables us to
move beyond our comfort zone to imagine new forms of governance that recognize
these relationships and processes.
In contrast to this more difficult and hard-to-imagine option, the more common
response to the development crisis has been to suggest the need for a strong devel-
opmental state and effective development management (Esman, 1991; Hyden, 1992;
Leftwich, 1993). Theorists and aid actors suggest the importance of bolstering the
administrative and management apparatus as a means to sustain development. Pov-
erty elimination, as the real purpose of development, will only be achieved through
stronger government and management rather than a minimal democratic state and
unrestrained economic liberalization. It is often this lack of strength in governance
practices that is blamed for a lack of progress in development.
The sustainable development literature suggests that development is only possible
if we move beyond a narrow concern with economic development to ‘ensuring that
peoples’ basic needs are being met, that the resource base is conserved, that there is a
sustainable population level, that environment and cross-sectoral concerns are inte-
grated into decision-making processes, and that communities are empowered’
(Munslow and FitzGerald, 1994). While the literature on sustainable development
assumes a high level of democratic participation in decisions affecting peoples’
lives, it is less clear about how this should be managed or achieved. This is precisely
what we need to explore. We have to assume, however, that governance for sustain-
able development involves difficult choices and trade-offs between different path-
ways to development and the distribution of social goods.
A redefinition of what quality governance for sustainable development means will
enable us to move beyond this conundrum. The key question is how to work within
the current constraints? The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD),
held in Johannesburg in 2002, provided an opportunity for the public administration
community to reflect on their choices in the context of a global anti-poverty, sustain-
able development thrust. Meeting the challenges faced in the public administration
sphere will make all the difference in ensuring whether the Johannesburg Plan of
Implementation will be put into action or fall by the wayside.
It is clear that issues of governance and sustainability are critical in the twenty-first
century. They are fundamentally about the relationships that define resource distri-
bution in our world. They are also about the consequences of the choices we make in
the name of development. Finding solutions remains a challenge of growing urgency.
The consequences of policy choices made by powerful governments and inter-
national organizations and concomitant advice given by them have turned out, to
date, to benefit only a small portion of the world’s population. In many cases, nations
are not simply facing development challenges, but fundamental crises in relation to
famine, poverty and human survival. Building quality governance for sustainable
development in these conditions is daunting, especially when large portions of
national revenue are aid-dependent and the US’ war on terror, first in Afghanistan
and then in Iraq, diverted a huge portion of aid to these two countries.

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 A. Mc Lennan and W.Y. Ngoma 285

Many developing countries are attempting to deal with these challenges through
the choices they make about governance and development. Africa, for example,
through the African Union, has adopted the New Partnership for Africa’s Develop-
ment (NEPAD), in an attempt to build sustainable development through effective
governance (African Union, 2001). The NEPAD Founding Document indicates that
many African countries continue to be dogged by dependency, conflict and poverty.
The roots of these problems are complex and related to a history of colonialism, econ-
omic dependency and political upheaval. The response to this crisis is to define an
African development strategy that emphasizes good governance practice and effec-
tive development management. Institutional and human resource capacity develop-
ment is also emphasized.
The limited impact of aid in the developing world and the increasing globalization
of poverty as a consequence of world economic crisis prompts us to engage with
ways and means to ameliorate the effects of underdevelopment and poverty. In par-
ticular the key challenges for development and governance include:
. increasingly inequitable dispensations and marginalization – within and across
nations. Women, for example, are becoming more impoverished, both within
their own countries and globally. This is exacerbated in Africa, in particular, by
the high incidence of HIV/Aids further reducing their expectation of quality of
life for themselves and more importantly for their children;
. unsustainable resource utilization as the basis for short-term wealth, affluence and
economic growth. This was made evident at the WSSD, especially at the NGO con-
ference which highlighted the many ways in which we squander our resource
bases in the name of development; and
. the struggle of the nation state to retain relevance in the face of increasingly
powerful multinational corporations, influential international financial and politi-
cal organizations in addition to security threats and risks. We know too well the
many conflicts that continue to plague various regions in the world – Africa,
the Middle East and others – which seem to result in nothing more than death
and further poverty.
Despite this, it is important to recognize that sustainable development cannot
occur without economic growth. Advances made in technology, some improvements
in the areas of public and development management and the extension of democratic
practice offer great potential for improving the plight of the world’s population. The
qualifier is, of course, that this comes about only if managed appropriately with the
necessary sensitivity to a core set of values that can be aligned to sustainable devel-
opment practice. In the process of revisiting the impact of past reforms, it will be
necessary to demonstrate renewed commitment to building quality public adminis-
tration that will support inclusive, sustainable development. The current situation
requires us to re-think governance and administration in a context of competing ten-
sions and value systems but with the overall aim to achieve the following outcomes:
sustainability, justice and peace.
Key to this process is an understanding of the role of public administration in
building quality governance. Public administration, like governance, is closely
linked to understanding about social development, because it refers to sets of activi-
ties and processes related to social regulation (Mc Lennan, 2000). The rise of public

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286 Quality governance for sustainable development?

administration as a discipline was linked to the institutionalization of state manage-

ment of economic growth, employment and welfare, which led to an expansion of
government productive and welfare services. The initial growth of the state shifted
assumptions that a market economy thrives under a system of minimum state inter-
vention, thus allowing the ‘invisible hand of the market’ free rein.
A growing disillusionment with the viability of the welfare state and a changing
global economy in the late 1970s led to a shift in conceptions of public adminis-
tration. It is at this stage that management replaces the word administration and
gains currency in public-sector organizations by virtue of its link to private-sector
practices and activities. Declines in state resources in many countries led to the emer-
gence of a new orthodoxy that focused on limiting state expenditure and improving
service provision. In developing countries, this process was evident in the tendency
to embark on processes of stabilization and structural adjustment programmes
linked to public administration reform. In terms of this approach, attempts were
made to limit state activities to functions that could not be privatized, decentralized
or contracted out. The role of public administration was limited to what the markets
did not provide. There was a shift away from a concept of universal service delivery,
achieved through a bureaucratic administration, to demand-driven delivery,
achieved through managerialism (Mc Lennan, 2000).
However, in the process of redefining the role of public administration in both
economic and social development, the tendency has been to ‘have confounded the
whole relationship between business and government’ (Mintzberg, 1996: 75). One
cannot simply be a customer of social service, nor can one simply be a client of pro-
fessional services, given the rights one has as a citizen. Clarifying in some detail what
it means to be a customer or a client, rather than a citizen, is particularly important
given the challenges with which we are confronted. The main challenge for defining
public administration in our current context is to explore ways in which we can
ensure that the rights of citizenship are protected and provided. It is only through
this process that the marginalized or poor in our societies will find a voice that
may enable their needs to be met within current constraints. This implies not only
a formal voice through democratic process, which is important, but also a substan-
tive voice through participation in the decision-making processes about the distri-
bution of the resources required for daily survival. It is for this reason that the role
of public administration and in particular local institutions become crucial.

IV Public administration for sustainable development

What sustainability would mean in relation to the outlined understandings of public

administration would vary. Romano (2001: 92) states
put simply, sustainable development means living within one’s means, assuring that economic
growth protects and preserves both current and future social welfare and environmental resources.
While this seems like an easy definition, when extended to the sphere of public
administration the complexity and the intricacies of the global economic, political
and social arrangements make it difficult to simplify the matrix of responsibilities
that should be assumed by different social agents. There is a multiplicity of powerful
actors who, in most cases, have diverse interests and interpretations of sustainability.

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 A. Mc Lennan and W.Y. Ngoma 287

A reconceptualization of public administration and governance will enable us to ident-

ify pertinent pathways to facilitate operational means for sustainable development to
complement the Rio Declarations of 1992 and the Johannesburg Action Plan of 2002.
Nevertheless, we need to reflect on how particular understandings of quality
become the standard and operate as mechanisms of discipline and compliance.
For example, in the workplace employees are not just subjected to rules but are
tracked through mechanisms such as performance appraisal (Townley, 1998). For
individuals the performance appraisal document serves as that compliance mechan-
ism. For public administrations, it is performance indicators that define quality. In
either case, the individual or the administration is expected to declare weaknesses
in the form of a rating. The bottom line is that the desire to classify, quantify and
measure is deeply rooted in a rationalist perspective that began with Taylorism
and its need to maximize efficiency of production. It should not be translated into
the notion of quality governance as it would reduce its significance.
Bearing in mind this process, we still need to construct our own sense of what we
mean by quality governance. To do this we may want to delineate what quality gov-
ernance is not.
(a) Quality governance does not constitute unprecedented unilateral power as it is
conscious of the relational and the bilateral nature that power serves. It rather
ensures that there are checks and balances that facilitate continuous accountabil-
ity at all levels. Accountability in this case takes the form of public information
and education about institutional progress and achievements.
(b) It is not an individual possession but an institutional property. This means it can-
not be left to the discretion of an individual to decide what it means, when and
how. Instead, it needs to be part of institutional cultures and strategies so that it
informs the rules and activities of operations across institutional settings.
(c) It is not a product of chance based on vague ethical considerations. Instead,
ethics and integrity become part of the foundational knowledge processes
from which various institutions base their operations.
Given the predominance of the economic approach to governance discussed earlier,
we need to ensure that the notion of quality governance does not simply serve to
judge how well an institution manages within tight economic prescripts. The chal-
lenge is to expand the boundaries to assess what quality governance means in
addition to efficient economic management. While an emphasis on efficiency, effec-
tiveness and accountability is essential in contexts of limited and often scarce
economic and social resources, the notion of quality governance needs to incorpor-
ate, along with these, a much broader sense of the benefits of participation. In par-
ticular, the practicalities of including the voiceless and marginalized should form
part of the indicators we develop to define quality governance. In this sense, public
administration and governance for sustainable development is about distribution as
well as empowerment.

V Towards an inclusive concept of public administration

Haque argues that many developing countries have followed the path of new public
management (NPM) by focusing on a narrow economic interpretation resulting

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288 Quality governance for sustainable development?

in a strong focus on efficiency and marketization (Haque, 2001; Argyriades, 2002).

The key challenge is how public administrations create a balance between the ‘tradi-
tional responsibilities of the state’ within the new economic focused game plan. In other
words, are the basic social services provided that would alleviate poverty, ensure
economic growth, and build social capital? There is definitely no easy answer to
this. But at the very least, social as well as economic investments are needed to
ensure sustainability.
Even the intellectual debates around public administration do not provide clear-cut
answers. One could argue that the introduction of market economic policies has driven
the pendulum to the other end. The passion to rid public administration of inefficient
bureaucracies, corruption, poor decision-making and lack of quality performances
resulted in formulas like NPM to sort out bureaucratic ills. Of course, there is no single
version of NPM as its implementation varies between countries, regions and even local
departments. However, its fundamentals are generic and have been implemented in
various countries. Perhaps it is not the different versions of NPM per se, but its
interpretations, which tend to vary as determined by the local context. The bottom
line is that NPM has been one of the most influential strategic tools to operationalize
market economic policies at organizational and administrative levels.
This does not imply that the tools of managerialism are not useful and relevant. In
fact the focus on fiscal discipline and accountability is essential. The point is that the
marketization of the economic spheres and their domination has found ways of
expression within the public administration discourse. Public administration has
assumed the role of maximizing resources and working within the parameters of
existing economic discourses of efficiency and effectiveness. The challenge is to
develop inclusive practices within these economic constraints.
The concept of sustainable development can operate as a new form of conscious-
ness about the way we do things. It is a challenge to the inherent practices that have
been formalized over time when thinking about issues of development. Global econ-
omic growth is not sustainable in the face of massive poverty and deprivation. How
we conceptualize this sustainable future is critical. Of course, the lack of precedence
in dealing with sustainable development may be a point of anxiety, but such a lack of
historicity has become advantageous in blurring the artificial boundaries between
various countries. The point is that sustainable development touches the fundamen-
tals of human survival and it is survival that has become a rallying point for self-
preservation and continuity.

VI Reconfiguring the playing field

When thinking about continuity in the realm of public administration it is important

to consider different approaches that could advance the development of humanity.
Development in this case is posed in a normative way, where its purpose is seen
to advance equitable societies by incorporating marginalized communities into the
mainstream through empowerment. How this should be done is not predetermined.
However, it might be useful to consider Hyden’s point on the change of rules as a
starting point (Hyden, 2001: 18). He states that:
the conventional needs approach that has dominated international development assistance relies
more on the distributive side and does not ask for changes in the rules of the game to achieve its

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 A. Mc Lennan and W.Y. Ngoma 289

objectives. SD [Sustainable Development] on the other hand, which focuses on empowerment and
enhanced access to resources, calls for a change in the rules and, by implication, a shift of power
relations. Sustainable development, as an approach to poverty reduction, therefore, requires atten-
tion to the constitutive side of politics, for instance, governance.
The distributive side in this case addresses ‘who gets what, when and how?’, while
the constitutive side addresses ‘who sets the rules, when and how?’. In many modern
societies, it is almost accepted that it is the superpowers at national and international
levels that determine the frameworks for governance. Usually it is also assumed that
such ‘top-down’ and ‘expert-driven frameworks’ advance prosperity for all human-
ity. While it may be so, Hyden reminds us that (p. 19):
development becomes sustainable if it is owned and generated by real people working together . . . it
calls for realigning relations between state and society, government and citizens. That is why the SD
approach must emphasise greater reliance on local resources and strategies to cope with social and
economic issues, empowerment of local actors, and the need for improving their access to additional
resources that can help them make progress on their own.
What is interesting about this approach is a recognition of human agency where
people are seen as resources to change their destinies. If the inclusion of margina-
lized communities is fundamental to sustainable development, it is appropriate to
rethink inclusive development. Fundamental to this is to use existing spaces to create
new concepts and vocabulary that is sensitive to improving the lives of the voiceless
and impoverished populations of the world.
The challenge in achieving this lies in shifting the way in which we understand
accountability. Traditionally, accountability has been understood largely in financial
terms. Public administrations are accountable through politicians to the public
for public expenditure and thus for resource distribution. However, in examining
programme successes, it is imperative to critically assess the role of experts in the
production, selection and choice of strategies. It is often these strategies and the
language that defines them that operate as exclusionary mechanisms for the poor.
This implies expanding the understanding of accountability to include the concerns
and voices of local communities. One of the ways to do this is to empower the public
so that mediocrity is not tolerated. Public administration has to set the ground rules
for this process in order to protect its citizens. It can do this by building local insti-
tutional capacity.

VII Building institutional capacity

The challenge remains – what does public administration need to do to ensure qual-
ity governance for sustainable development? We have had many decades of
implementation of various types of development strategies and programmes. The
results of these have been mixed. A key constraint in the implementation of develop-
ment programmes is a lack of attention to the local institutional capacities required.
This is particularly important when resources are limited and the only real means for
sustaining development are local communities. In these contexts, schools, local auth-
orities and clinics become the key mechanisms for sustainable development. Within
these institutions, a key challenge is to empower the organizations and the people
who drive them to make decisions about local development which recognize local
conditions and constraints.

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290 Quality governance for sustainable development?

This process of building local institutional capacity in the absence of consensus

about the rules of the game could lead to an investment in social capital and long-
term sustainable development. There has been a tendency to centralize power
(despite stated policy) in order to control development. The challenge is to ensure
that management practices and the distribution of voice and authority levels fit the
principles to be achieved. The interaction between the structure, the functions that
define the levels of management and the systems that facilitate interaction and com-
munication, are critical to the achievement of sustainable development. It is only
once these structures and systems are integrated and functioning that local insti-
tutions will be able to manage and govern themselves.
Capacity development is understood in a range of different ways, from economic
capability for development, to institutional performance, to the more commonly
understood individual competence. There is general awareness that capacity is
required at all these levels and that capacity development is a long-term investment
in sustainability. In this context, capacity development includes a wide spectrum of
interventions ranging from training programmes to institutional development.
A key aspect of capacity development is a focus on empowerment. This implies
that capacity building should be directed towards enabling people and institutions
to assert control over their development. In practical terms, an empowerment
approach involves increasing levels of access, participation and control over the
distribution of resources. This incremental process would operate at individual,
institutional, regional or continental levels. Equality and empowerment would
increase as one moves up from basic access to services to control over distribution
(see Figure 1).
Given the emphasis on empowerment, an integrated understanding of capacity
development (described in Table 1) implies a focus on three areas (Mc Lennan, 1997):

1 ethos and practice: articulating and implementing the principles of good practice;
2 institutional development: designing and supporting effective structures, systems
and procedures for improved services and institutions;
3 people development: skilling managers, professionals, members of civil society
and others by building their competencies and providing support.

If capacity development is not limited only to the development of individual ability

but also includes the institutionalization of appropriate working practices and strat-

Figure 1 Conceptualizing empowerment

Source: Mc Lennan (2001).

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 A. Mc Lennan and W.Y. Ngoma 291

Table 1 Capacity development

Component Description

Context Understanding the context of development is critical to understanding the

capacity challenge. Context comprises the political, economic and social
frameworks that define capacity development initiatives. It also requires an
understanding of the key stakeholders and other factors that determine needs and
challenges.
Competence The right skills, knowledge and ability to achieve what is required to be done in
specific contexts and organizational settings.
Ethos and practice Ethos encourages a sense of motivation and initiative. Ethos is underpinned by
values and practices and comprises a set of more or less tangible results.
Institutional These are the appropriate structures and systems to support growth and
structures and development. The institutional context comprises those elements that determine
systems the capacity of the institution to perform – to fulfil its mission in its own
context ndash; strategic direction, human resources, financial resources,
infrastructure and linkages.

egies, linked to norms of behaviour, the strategy for implementing and sustaining
capacity development must be differently conceived (Mc Lennan, 2000). The
challenge then is to define not simply the training programmes, but the structures,
systems, practices, codes and processes that will sustain these initiatives. This
implies that capacity development plans must operate on several levels
simultaneously.
The challenge is that many public institutions operate at such low levels of func-
tionality that to expect them to become empowered institutions, with the help of a
little organizational development and training, is unrealistic. Under present circum-
stances, a first step is to normalize relations at these institutions. A key challenge of
building institutional capacity to deliver in the context of scarce resources is to enable
institutions to set their own goals and priorities within national parameters and
requirements. This will empower them to challenge and change embedded inequal-
ities not only on the formal level by reiterating national goals, but by challenging, in
their specific institutional context, patterns of interaction and distribution.
Developing frameworks for change and sustainable development is necessary to
ensure some level of justice and quality. Utilizing local capacities and recognizing
diversity as forces for change, instead of exacting compliance through regulation,
will enable communities. This does not mean passing the buck – but building the
capacity to manage the chaos that characterizes development to achieve what is
possible within narrow constraints. This small start may lead to a move beyond
dependency through collaboration to self-management.

VIII Conclusion

This paper has argued for a conscious development of institutional capacity as a

means to ensure quality governance and sustainable development. It has examined
emergent philosophies of governance and administration and in the process pushed
for the recognition of social capital as a critical element in the context of developing
countries. Also there is an attempt to understand quality governance in the broad
realm of public administration. The last section of the paper emphasizes the

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292 Quality governance for sustainable development?

importance of reconfiguring the development playing field through institutional

capacity building. It is in this section that we suggest that attention be given to
empowerment. It is our view that empowered individuals and institutions are
more likely to challenge local patterns and practices of inequality. This may evolve
to broaden access and participation in governance and sustainable development.

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