Governance, the New Public Realm and Civil Society Organisations


	UNESCO, and in particular its MOST Programme, is starting to work on governance processes and structures basically because of their strategic and practical importance, and also because they have direct implications for UNESCO’s ethical and intellectual mission.



	Historically,the first use of governance is related to the research on firms (“corporate governance”), and structural adjustment programmes and decentralisation projects promoted by the World Bank. At the origin of the debate on governance we can already find a major ideological risk related to who governs and how (legitimacy of the political actors), and on behalf of whom. It is true, however, that this discourse on a market-based governance finds its legitimacy in the increasing development of corruption schemes and other social forms of “anomie”. That is why governance may stand for a new strategic top-down and hegemonic speech, and the debate on its dimensions may be very controversial. Thus, one of the major stakes for development actors such as UNESCO in the coming years is to give governance more content and to make development policies stand aloof from the ideological background of the notion of governance. Ethical and political dimensions of governance are of central importance in this endeavour.

	There is a shift in the way the public realm is shaped. In a globalising economy, the state has no longer the same exclusive and classical roles in terms of development and power; non-state actors have gradually a more important say in these processes. Transnational problems of major relevance to the system-wide functioning of the world (the financial crisis, uncontrolled economic globalisation, the environmental degradation problems, forced migration, the crisis of the urban planning, the drug trafficking, the increasing importance of global civil society, etc.) transcend the responsibility of the single monolithical nation-state. The notion of a public realm encompasses both state and society, and draws the line instead between private and public. What is of interest in the governance debate is the extent to which there is a civic public realm, and how it is being processed and sustained by political actors, some in the sate, others in civil society.

	The years 2000/2010 will see a greater need to answer questions of political and ethical nature for the constitution of a public opinion. One basic question is how civic institutions, like government departments, media, NGOs, unions, all of which participate in the public realm, enjoy respect and legitimacy. Another question is raised by the increasing role of private voluntary organisations and private companies in global decision-making processes on common goods.

	As a result, collective action around the promotion of public goods is changing. Governance can be a useful social science approach insofar as it devises new techniques for managing joint affairs. Constant innovation is needed to discover more sustainable options for future development. Partnerships and civic engagement are crucial in stimulating innovation, as part of decentralisation, devolution, participation and empowerment. Integrative strategies are required across local and central governments to create linkages between key policy areas (education, culture and science policies). The notion of governance encourages interest specifically in the new social co-ordination mechanisms that make multiple policy action possible. In local policy making related to urban development, for instance, environmental problems need a combination of policy instruments of financial, regulatory and strategic nature, in order to achieve multiple policy objectives and thus be effective.

	Finally, there is a major shift within the donor community to emphasise civil society assistance programs as a way of furthering democracy building and governance. There used to be fear that such attempts to build democracy "from the bottom-up" might destabilise fragile political experiments, backfire, and unleash forces hostile to democracy. The international political context is gradually changing this situation. There is a greater emphasis on civil society that can be described as a shift from "supply-side" to "demand-side" development strategies. Sustainable changes in democratisation are considered to be more effective when the demand-side approach is strengthened. "Supply-side" strategies focus on increasing the quality of governance or the "quantity of democracy" that are "supplied" by the state. "Demand-side" assistance packages aim to strengthen civil society in relation to the state, and increase its capacity to articulate demands for democracy and governance structures. Support for NGOs usually occupies a privileged position in demand-side assistance strategies.

		the legitimacy of the public realm,
		power distribution between those who govern and those who are governed (state and civil society),
		negotiation processes between groups of stakeholders (procedures and practices; management of interactions and interdependencies producing or not alternative regulatory systems; networking and institutionalising co-ordinating mechanisms), and
		decentralisation of key authorities and functions of government.

	In general, both in the scholar literature and in reports produced by international organisations, governance refers to a complex decision-making system that is wider than government. This bibliography unveils different and often contradictory aspects related to: