Office of Democracy & Governance: Governance
 Citizens are rightly concerned with a
government’s responsiveness to their
needs and protection of their rights. In general, governance issues pertain to the ability of government to develop an efficient, effective, and accountable public management process that is open to citizen participation and that strengthens rather than weakens a democratic system of government. Because citizens lose confidence in a government that is unable to deliver basic services, the degree to which a government is able to carry out its functions at any level is often a key determinant of a country’s ability to sustain democratic reform.
USAID is particularly concerned with democratic governance—that is, the political dimensions of the public management process. The process of governing is most legitimate when it is infused with democratic principles such as transparency, pluralism, citizen involvement in decision-making, representation, and accountability.
To focus USAID’s governance programming, the DG Office has concentrated on the following five areas: legislative strengthening, decentralization and democratic local governance, anti-corruption, civil-military relations, and improving policy implementation.
In the past, governance issues were too often tackled in a strictly technical way with attention paid solely to improvements in administration and service delivery in spite of the fact that political issues underlay the poor performance. The result was a lot of failed public administration, decentralization, and civil service reform projects.
Solely technocratic solutions to problems are now highly suspect, and the goal is to reorient such programs in order to maximize the democratic aspect of governance in order to achieve lasting results. So, for example, improving fiscal budget techniques and systems is now matched with a concern for the transparency of the budget process so that people can participate in budget decisions and government is held accountable for its spending.
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