Patron-Client Politics and Its Implications for Good Governance in Bangladesh

Currently, good governance is a major concern of all politicians, administrators, academics, the international donor agencies and even common people. It is now increasingly being realized that without good governance, developing countries have little chance to progress. While its importance cannot be over-emphasized, many developing countries are facing difficulties in implementing the good governance agenda. Therefore, the factors constraining the good governance initiatives have to be carefully identified and analyzed. This paper identifies patron-client politics as a critical factor in the analysis of good governance initiatives in Bangladesh. In this paper, it is argued that patron-client politics is very much entrenched in Bangladesh and it has had a constraining effect on the institutionalization of good governance initiatives.     

Managerial Innovations in the Egyptian Public Health Sector: An Empirical Investigation

The purpose of this article is to analyze the process of restructuring the Egyptian public health sector according to the new mode of governance principles and the concomitant dilemmas in the process. Based on an interpretative methodology, the findings of this research indicate that (a) despite some positive changes, serious doubts remain over the commercialization of basic public services; (b) confusions have emerged regarding the identity of public hospitals; (c) despite the introduction of the business management principles, the centralized hierarchical power of the state over the local governmental hospitals remains intact; (d) the new system has degraded the professional standards of medical practitioners and made them subservient to the whims of the financial management professionals; and (e) there have been some negative effects on equity.     

The New Mode of Public Governance and Public Accountability in Developing Countries: An Analysis with Particular Reference to Bangladesh

Public accountability is a fundamental element of good governance. All countries all over the world strive to ensure the accountability of public officials by adopting different kinds of mechanisms. Following the liberal democratic tradition, most countries in the world have relied on the legislative instruments, executive means, judicial and quasi-judicial processes, official rules, codes of conducts, official hierarchies, public hearings, interest groups, media scrutiny and so forth for ensuring public accountability. However, in recent years, the new mode of public governance has brought new dimensions to the discourse on public accountability. This new mode focuses largely on the market- and society-centered mechanisms. This article is an attempt to assess the effectiveness of these market- and society-centered mechanisms in ensuring public accountability in Bangladesh. The article has the following objectives:

(a) to explore contemporary debates on the market- and society-centered mechanisms of public accountability;

(b) to sketch the state of public accountability in Bangladesh; and

(c) to analyze the effectiveness of the market- and society-centered mechanisms in view of the contemporary socio-economic and political dynamics of Bangladesh.     

Regional economic regimes and the environment: stronger institutional design is weakening environmental policy capacity of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - International environmental governance by global and, especially, regional regimes is gaining attention in both political...     

The Changing Facets of Public Administration in the United Arab Emirates

ABSTRACT

This article is an in-depth profile of the public administration system in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It specifically focuses on the relationship between the state, the market and civil society, the structure of the government and the civil service system and its functional areas. Reform initiatives undertaken in all these areas over the last decade have also been discussed. The findings reveal that the public administration system in the UAE has demonstrated considerable developments in facilitating the market forces, opening space for civil society and modernizing the civil service system.     

An exploratory analysis of governance dynamics,institutional reforms and development: a comparative study of India and Bangladesh

Governance has become a prominent issue over the last three decades or so in the intellectual and practical domains of public administration. Significant debates have proliferated about the significance, domains and types of governance and their implications for democracy and development, particularly in developing countries. Amidst the debates on the relationship between governance and development, political settlements analysis has become quite prominent that focuses on the implications of political settlement for reforming and enforcing institutions leading towards negative/positive economic development. This article aims to examine how the interlocked relationships among the members of the dominant power coalition in the governing system help reform the institutions, distribute privileges, maintain stability and affect economic development with particular reference to India and Bangladesh.     

Non-parametric approach to the study of farm efficiency in agriculture

This article examines the extent of resource-use efficiency under different types of tenure and different farm sizes in two types of villages — one having high incidence of irrigation facilities and High Yielding Varieties (HYV) technology in an area usually cropped twice the same plot of land every year and the other having no irrigational facilities except rain-water and non-HYV technology in a mono-cropping area because the estimates on the extent of inefficiencies could help to decide whether to improve or to develop new technology to raise productivity. On the basis of a field survey and applying the method of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) the authors observe that all farms score high efficiency irrespective of the types of tenure and of farm sizes, in both the types of villages. This seems to suggest that the diffusion of new agricultural technology is not so important in improving the efficiency level of the farm.