Liberating Human Capabilities: Governance, Human Development and the Arab World

105 Previous chapters have discussed key aspects of building and using human capabilities. This chapter turns to important ways of liberating human capabilities by enhancing governance, broadly defined. It begins by reviewing the standard definition and characteristics of good governance as elaborated by UNDP and other international organizations and interprets that definition in the Arab context in order to identify needed reforms. In doing so, the chapter looks at questions of political participation, legislative representation and civil-society action as expressions of popular will, and at the state of judicial reform as an aspect of accountability. It next attempts to assess widely perceived deficits in popular freedoms and in the quality of Arab governance institutions by comparing these attributes with those of other regions using measurements based on the HDI and other internationally compiled data sets and indicators. Finally, the chapter proposes some key institutional reforms necessary to strengthen popular voice and freedoms and the accountability of states. As the world emerges from the rapid and, at times turbulent, political developments of the twentieth century, the concept of good or democratic governance is approaching the status of a universal human aspiration and preoccupation. Democratic governance is now part of the United Nations consensus. The United Nations Millennium Declaration states that governments "... will spare no effort to promote democracy and strengthen the rule of law, as well as respect for all internationally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the right to development." Whether a nation succeeds or fails in its efforts to promote human development, or whether it even attempts to do so, is closely related to the character and quality of its governance. DEFINITIONS AND CHARACTERISTICS