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Overview Of The Eight Elements Of Good Governance

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1. BACKGROUND Fukuyama (2013) defines governance as “a government 's ability to make and enforce rules and to deliver services, regardless of whether that government is democratic or not”. Good governance is essential in order to achieve a sustainable human development, therefore the United Nations’ Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) has published an official guide outlining the eight elements of good governance that decision-making processes in regards to governing should aim to be in accordance to. The eight ‘ideals’ of good governance are participation, rule of law, transparency, responsiveness, consensus-oriented, equity and inclusiveness, effectiveness and efficiency, and finally accountability. It has to be noted, however, that the above ideals are the westerns’ view and might differ in the number of elements and how those elements are understood and valued by other perspectives of governance. For instance, nations which are God-oriented may define good governance differently than that of UNESCAP’s view. Ahmad (2010) outlined the 11 characteristics of good governance as extracted from the Qur’an. It is evident from his study that the Islamic good governance has similar elements and more, if compared to that of UNESCAP, depicting that Islamic governance may have, supposedly, long practiced such mentioned values and not entirely based on that of UNESCAP’s. Besides religion, culture may also have an impact on the governance of a country
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