In a few weeks the Arab League will meet. The 2002 Arab Peace Initiative will again be placed on its agenda with the hope to push for the quest of a two-state solution. Many people are hoping for an end to this conflict that has brought hardship and pain to people on both sides. There are many envoys trying to mediate. There is no lack of plans and initiatives on how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be settled; rather detailed ideas exist.
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What follows is a discussion of two of the many challenges that often bedevil efforts to bring out pro-poor social and political change and an approach that is a way of dealing with them. You know the deal: well-meaning technocrats try to introduce a bit of governance reform...by stealth. Then it runs into trouble- usually due to vigorous attacks by vested interests likely to lose out if the reform succeeds - yet the potential beneficiaries are not organized, do not even know that they might benefit from the reform. And so the reformers are defeated. Or the reform, if it has already been introduced, is reversed or stalls. The problem is that many technical specialists are uncomfortable with the public sphere and all it entails: people, the media, controversy and debate, 'noise'. But unsupported reforms tend to become orphans and street urchins.
For the past few weeks, the Philippine media have been intensely focused on a controversy regarding a foreign loan meant to fund the creation of the National Broadband Network (NBN), a project envisioned to seamlessly link all government offices across the archipelago via the Internet. Whistleblower Jun Lozada alleged in a senate committee hearing that a former high level official was poised to receive $130 million in kickbacks, a claim that has been repeatedly denied.
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I want to thank all those who commented on my blog 'Public Opinion and Authoritarian Regimes'. The replies raise fascinating issues that are important aspects of the subject. Here are my responses. Posted under:
Political transformations are challenging processes; they can be messy; the signing of a peace accord is often only the first step in a long process. Opening up the political space, particularly in places that experienced years of domination, will increase the number of voices that call for more participation and a say in the process. These calls can feel threatening to an elite still used to the principle of exclusion and patronage; they require a change of political mind-set and acceptance of a fundamentally changed political framework. And yet, in countries emerging from violent conflict measures that head these calls and effectivly address issues of social and political exclusion are central to achieving long-term stability. Posted under:
Last November 2007, CommGAP organized a workshop entitled Generating Genuine Demand with Social Accountability Mechanisms in Paris, France. Since then, we have been reflecting on the word “accountability” and what it really means in the work of governance. I recently recalled that Dr. Kathleen Hall Jamieson defines the term in the context of political campaigns as candidates (and I would add officials and elites in other public settings) speaking in their own voices, thus keeping themselves open to challenge and criticism. Simply put, the essence of accountability in political discourse is being answerable to others for what one says in public.
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Welcome to CommGAP’s blog People, Spaces, Deliberation. We hope this platform will be a useful tool for all of us to share knowledge, debate, and discuss ideas about how to secure good governance and accountability. My colleagues and I will blog on a weekly basis on various topics and we hope you will join in the conversations. |
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Interesting news from China: 
Many years ago, in a class on the English Epic as a literary genre, one of my professors asked: 'What is an anthem?' We all struggled to come up with definitions of an anthem, as in the national anthem of a country. We thought that an anthem was a song set to music commissioned by the leaders of the country and declared to be the national anthem. He said that was not the case. He explained that a song simply acquires the status of an anthem over time. His definition, and I still remember it clearly, is as follows: 'An anthem is one man's song that strikes a responsive chord in the minds of millions of others.'
The importance of governance and state-building for stability in post-conflict situations has been recognized widely among the multi and bilateral aid policy-set. This belief is now being shared by the US military strategists according to 
Tom Jacobson, Professor and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the School of Communications and Theater, Temple University. 
Caroline Jaine, 
Taeku Lee, Associate Professor of Political Science and Visiting Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. 
