This book documents a worrisome gap between principles and practice in democratic governance. "The State of Access" is a comparative, cross-disciplinary exploration of the ways in which democratic ...institutions fail or succeed to create the equal opportunities that they have promised to deliver to the people they serve. In theory, rules and regulations may formally guarantee access to democratic processes, public services, and justice. But reality routinely disappoints, for a number of reasons-exclusionary policymaking, insufficient attention to minorities, underfunded institutions, inflexible bureaucracies. "The State of Access" helps close the gap between the potential and performance in democratic governance.
India's success is quite spectacular. It is no longer a question whether India will join the coveted ranks of the global powers in the 21st century. One can assert with confidence that this destiny ...is irreversible. The euphoria and adulation that India has evoked, both at home and abroad, is every bit well deserved, but there is an important reason to be cautious about such a narrow business-centric view. It tends to obscure important issues and real challenges that lie ahead. Just as the earlier pessimism detracted us from recognizing the true potential of India, the euphoric focus on globalization and economic liberalization misses two crucial issues.
Innovations in Government GOWHER RIZVI
Innovations in Government,
12/2009, Letnik:
Brookings / Ash Center Series, "Innovative Governa
Book Chapter
In what is often regarded as a pathbreaking collection of essays,Why People Don’t Trust Government,Joseph Nye, Philip Zelikow, and David King (1997) pointed to numerous surveys and opinion polls that ...repeatedly show that citizens’ trust in democratic government has diminished. People seem to have lost confidence in the political and electoral processes as evidenced by the dwindling number of people casting their votes. Politicians and bureaucrats are held in low esteem, and there is a widespread perception that government corruption around the world is increasing; more often than not the voters are using their power of the ballot
No author in world literature has done more to give shape to the nightmarish challenges posed to access by modern bureaucracies than Franz Kafka. In his novelThe Castle, “K.,” a land surveyor, ...arrives in a village ruled by a castle on a hill (see Kafka 1998). He is under the impression that he is to report for duty to a castle authority. As a result of a bureaucratic mix-up in communications between the castle officials and the villagers, K. is stuck in the village at the foot of the hill and fails to gain access to the authorities. The
The Dynamics of Access Jong, Jorrit de; Rizvi, Gowher
The State of Access,
11/2009
Book Chapter
This book is an exploratory attempt to develop a better understanding of mechanisms that impede access to government and public services and programs and innovative solutions that have improved it. ...In the introductory chapter we defined access as a “match between the societal commitment and institutional capacity to deliver rights and services and people’s capacity to benefit from those rights and services.” This definition describes an ideal situation—“a perfect match”—that may actually never occur. After all, both society and its institutions are continuously changing. Getting the access match “right” would require aceteris paribuscondition that cannot be
Six years ago, at the start of 1988, the prospect for
democracy in South Asia did not appear very promising. The military
rulers both in Pakistan and Bangladesh had managed to cloak their
regimes in ...civilian attire and appeared well entrenched even if their
quest for legitimacy had evaded them. In Nepal and Bhutan the hereditary
monarchs showed no signs of conceding to the demands for popular
participation despite the simmering political discontent in both
countries. The democratic traditions of Sri Lanka had proved
sufficiently resilient for the formal representative institutions to
endure but the continued civil strife and violence had virtually reduced
effective popular participation into a farce. Likewise in India, whilst
the ghost of Indira Gandhi's authoritarian rule during the emergency in
1975-77 had been exorcised by subsequent renewals of popular mandate,
the democratic institutions and popular accountability had probably
suffered irreversible damages and it was not uncommon amongst political
analysts to speak of the 'ungovernability' of the country.
