Building Good Governance and Resilience in Small States

1. Building Good Governance and Resilience in Small States Paul Sutton

2. Proposition ‘ Nurtured resilience’ result of policy at heart pf policy is ‘good governance’

3. Paper in Five parts Paper in Five parts • concept of good governance • overview of good governance in small states • two areas to improve governance • building more effective government • securing better regulation • -resilence and good governance • -concluding comments

4. Concept of Good Governance • -good governance as a contested concept • -good governance as a process and activity • -good governance as a complex activity (ODI Framework) • 6 functional areas on one axis • (civil society, political society, government, bureaucracy, economic society, judicial society) • 6 basic principles on other • (participation, decency, fairness, accountability, transparency and efficiency) • 36 cell framework • -existing realities of each state/region as starting point

5. Overview of Good Governance in Small States • World Bank Indicators • Voice and Accountability • Political instability and Violence • Government Effectiveness • Regulatory Burden • Rule of Law • Control of Corruption

6. Record on Governance • Data listed for 44/48 states (2004) population 1.5 million or less • Dividing line those above and below world average • Good Record of Governance • 27 above average (Europe, Asia, Caribbean) • 14 below average (Africa) • 3 middling (2 in Pacific) • Dividing by Quartiles • smaller the state the better the record • Per capita income • high per capita income not necessarily related to good governance • overall suggests region matters and size matters

7. On Individual Indicators • Voice and Accountability • 34 plus and 14 negative • pays to be smaller • Political Instability and Violence • 38 plus and 10 negative • pays to be smaller • Governmental Effectiveness • 26 plus and 22 negative • evenly spread • Regulatory Burden • 25 plus and 17 negative • smaller better • Rule of Law • 31 plus and 17 negative • very small is better • Control of Corruption • 28 plus and 16 negative • very small size no difference • Areas where small states are weakest • Government Effectiveness and Regulatory Burden • 300-400,000 and below appears better

8. Toward more Effective Governament • Improving the Public Sector • 4 features shaping public sector • (exaggerated personalism, limited resources, inadequate service delivery, high donor dependence) • not recognised in much development literature • Scale not addressed in public sector reform

9. Encouraging the Private Sector • Competition policy • Policies difficult to put in place • High cost of doing business • Firm scale factors (nano-firms) • Regulatory policy • Meeting high external demands (OFCs) • Technical complexities of home regimes • Regional – but how to measure?

10. Resilience and Good Governance • Where to begin given complexity and lack of research • Does size really matter? • Democracy and size related • But regime choice? • Little change since independence and not toward a specific type of regime • Most parliamentary so should parliamentary regimes be encouraged?

11. Concluding Comments • Lots of assumptions and lots of generalisations but few robust conclusions • In governance sphere still need to demonstrate small states are different (degree or kind) • Need an analytic policy directed work programme – role for Commonwealth Secretariat