Promoting good governance

Abstract

From May 31 to June 4,1999 over eight hundred participants from al1 levels of government and nongovemmental organisations attended the World Conference on Governance held in the Philippines. It had been organised by the Eastern Regional Organisation for Public Administration (EROPA), the Philippine Civil Service, and the National College of Public Administration and Governance at the University of the Philippines, in cooperation with numerous international and regional organisations, including the Asian Development Bank, the Canadian International Development Agency, the Economic Development Institute of the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Its theme was From Government to Governance with emphasis on public finance, capacity building and partnerships. But its major concern was promoting good governance, a topic which has been attracting increasing international attention since the late 1980s and has become a key objective of many technical assistance programmes. The World Conference can be seen as a culmination of these efforts to focus on good governance in institutional development and to prepare an agenda for future action by taking account of current ideas and opinions of all those involved. What follows is a brief overview of some major issues that run through the notion of promoting good governance.