Thinking about governance in global and local perspective

Conclusion  This paper has tracked the parallel evolution of two discourses on governance over the past decade, one which has evolved largely in the work of the World Bank and in a global context shared with other international donor agencies, and the other by development scholars external to the international agencies, and in particular at a local level in the context of cities in the developing world. Key points of dissonance and resonance between the two discourses have been examined with a view to understanding the debate on governance, particularly in terms of whether the notion is, and can remain, a potent idea in development thinking. While the two discourses demonstrate dissonance in that they have evolved from very different starting points, and have a tendency to be differentially weighted in terms of analytical concentrations in their state-market-society relationships, the points of resonance which have been identified here, and demonstrated through the issue of improved capacity in local government, tend to suggest that there are potent ways of employing governance to frame development work in the future. The paper has also demonstrated that the highly varied meaning associated with the term governance is understandable from the distinct definitional paths of evolution of the term, globally and locally. While more work is demanded, the at least tentative conclusion here is that the discourse on governance is not so divergent as to render the notion weak. Indeed, in certain important circumstances, the two discourses can be mutually enhancing, and this tends to empower the notion of governance itself. However, this is only possible when the notion is considered less in economistic, neo-liberal terms associated with the Bank’s discourse, and re-cast in a more local context concerned with the political-economy of cities, and which situates local government in a pivotal position in the governing relationship. Governance in this respect can not only help to fill an important gap in development discourse, but as an ideational framework can help to overcome the singularity of approach to current and key development efforts as decentralisation, local government strengthening, public sector reform, democratisation and empowerment of civil society in the governing relationship.