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What Is Governance?
Author(s) -
Fukuyama Francis
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
governance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.46
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1468-0491
pISSN - 0952-1895
DOI - 10.1111/gove.12035
Subject(s) - bureaucracy , autonomy , professionalization , corporate governance , government (linguistics) , quality (philosophy) , public administration , political science , state (computer science) , executive branch , public economics , economics , politics , law , management , epistemology , linguistics , philosophy , algorithm , computer science
This commentary points to the poor state of empirical measures of the quality of states, that is, executive branches and their bureaucracies. Much of the problem is conceptual, as there is very little agreement on what constitutes high‐quality government. The commentary suggests four approaches: (1) procedural measures, such as the W eberian criteria of bureaucratic modernity; (2) capacity measures, which include both resources and degree of professionalization; (3) output measures; and (4) measures of bureaucratic autonomy. It rejects output measures and suggests a two‐dimensional framework of using capacity and autonomy as a measure of executive branch quality. This framework explains the conundrum of why low‐income countries are advised to reduce bureaucratic autonomy while high‐income ones seek to increase it.