Review 3 final 2 - TAU - National Treasury

TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE UNIT REVIEW | From “Kuvernan” to Cyber-Networks
ity is the right to do so. Authority is therefore based
on an acknowledged duty to obey rather than on any
form of coercion or manipulation.
In similar vein, Jackson and Jackson (1997:8), as quoted
Ibid above, refer to the need for governance because
… the conflict in society which flows from making political
decisions for a country requires mechanisms to
enforce those decisions. We refer to these mechanisms
as government. Government is thus the organization
of people for the resolution of dispute and conflict.
Cheru (2002:35), cited by Venter and Neuland (2005),
states that the term “governance”… which implies
responsible, accountable transparent, legitimate, effective
democratic government – is of recent origin
in political science discourse. More appropriately, it
has become used much more frequently in discussing
how governments are to perform in undertaking
public changes, innovations and processes that should
bring about social, economic and political progress in
Africa.”
Understandings and Dimensions:
from traditional… to networks…
to cyber worlds…
There are also various understandings of the term
“governance”, with perhaps the following six being the
most prominent dimensions: (1) the minimal state, (2)
corporate governance, (3) the new public management;
(4) or ‘good governance’, (5) socio-cybernetic
systems and (6) self-organising and inter-organisational
networks (Rhodes 1996: 652).
Based on the above, and proximate to the ‘governance
spaces’ that are being played out in 2011, starting with
Tunisia and moving to many countries, north of our
borders, this framing article intends to review governance
through the lens of networks and governance
with a specific focus on South Africa’s legal and networked
frameworks for governance.
In our current development context, and with the example
of the “Egypt Moment” and others, society is increasingly
being shaped by networks that cut across
international, national and regional boundaries. Attendant
to this, some might argue that there is the ‘hollowing
out’ of the state and/or new public management
regimes with intergovernmental management,
which bring networks into increasing pervasiveness as
a feature of modern governance forms (Rhodes 1996:
652). Notwithstanding this, context determines the extent
to which such networks, or, perhaps more clearly,
inter-organisational self-organising forms of governance
are located in society and state -and what the
impact of this is on the role of government and service
delivery.
An interesting angle to the new developments/vocabulary
above is that there is a need to rethink where
governance is situated or placed. With the vast proliferation
of information communication technologies
(ICTs), individualization and globalization, nation states
are finding themselves eroded of means of maintaining
power outside the area of mainstream politics. However,
many states still maintain power through various
formal links with significant players in society. State institutions
are now increasingly needing to make use of
the new ‘network logic’; that society is increasingly an
open and unstable structure that expands, readjusts,
shifts and even evaporates and is therefore becoming
more and more fluid (Hajer and Wagenaar 2003: 6).
Governance in this particular instance is a function of
the ‘fluid society’ and therefore processes towards governing
are also shifting. 2011 has been a telling year
in demonstration of the credibility of these assertions.
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Enabling change for development