EU PROGRES

To understand why good governance should be a priority for Serbia, and what EU PROGRES is doing about it, we first need to briefly examine the content of the notion itself and to try to make it as approachable and tangible as possible.

Ever since entering modern dictionary of development in the mid ‘80s, the syntagma “good governance” was stirring debate both among scholars and practitioners what exactly these two words mean and, more importantly, how to translate the rather abstract concept into every day, real life situations.

There are many “definitions” of good governance. Most of them are heralding the characteristics of a “future” society, of an ideal worthy of striving for in the coming years. All these definitions are actually talking about a process in which a society, as a whole - including a government, increases accountability and acceptance of rule of law, ensures public participation, establishes transparency in public affairs, promotes and secures equality and equity, and raises efficiency and effectiveness.

Nice. But what does actually all this mean to an average citizen or a (local) government official? Let’s try to make it more apprehensible by making an inverse picture of this: bad governance means, for example, failure of (local) government to provide decent and/or efficient public services, such as water supply, sewage and solid waste disposal and management, electricity and IT networks, quality schools or public health facilities, etc.; failure to manage in an accountable, efficient and effective manner public funds, such as local or state budgets; failure to adhere to a rule of law at all social levels and for all players within a society; failure to preclude inherent corruption; failure to protect from discrimination different minority or vulnerable groups within a society; failure to include citizens in decision making processes.

It should be a bit more obvious now what good governance is: it’s a mirror picture of the above said. This should also make it easier to establish bearings for the path Serbia has to take in order to become an ordered state, a society that develops more effectively and more fairly, thus becoming a society with higher quality of life.

What is EU PROGRES doing about initiating introduction of good governance into Serbian society? One of the inherent characteristic of EU PROGRES is its approach to providing support to local self-governments: rather than focusing only to delivering technical assistance or to providing funds necessary for resolving infrastructural problems at local levels, the Programme uses these as entry points for addressing some more pressing and important issues, such as improvements in quality of public sector and services, both locally and nationally. In other words, it initiates introduction of good governance, its concept and principles in everyday work of the said public sector.

This entails that the Programme is making necessary and sufficient efforts in interweaving the concept and the principles in all of its components and planned activities. This also means that this endeavour is not staying superfluous, self-serving exercise, but a set of meaningful, carefully planned and executed activities within- and tightly related to- the Programme activities, designed to initiate a positive change in targeted public sector’s pre-identified “points-fit-for-change”. This includes joint work by the Programme and the participating municipalities on, among other activities, identifying gaps between existing and needed local policies and regulatory framework and defining necessary activities for moving forward.

The Programme is addressing this through specific activities, such as linking small and large infrastructure projects it funds with resolving related governance issues at local level, or offering support to interested municipalities for overall governance reform without linking it with a project, or compiling governance issues arising in vertical communication between local governments and the State Government and its institutions and organizations.

Some countries showing very high up on the governance indicators list began these processes long time, decades ago, if not even earlier. Serbia lost for known reasons much of its “governance capital” it had once, which due to the changed political and social circumstances had to be revisited and re-addressed anyhow. That’s why we are more or less at the beginning of a long process.

They say “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”. Introduction of good governance practices in modern Serbia will be a journey of a thousand miles and the country needs to take first steps on that journey. Serbia has embarked on this long and exciting voyage and EU PROGRES is making sure it contributes appropriately to it along the way.

Dragan Mladenović
EU PROGRES Good Governance Component Manager