IN the days following the recent calamities, and in the run-up to the elections, the terms ?politics? and ?governance? have moved beyond the vocabulary of politicians and the news media and into the lexicon of ordinary Filipinos. For most people, however, ?politics? is understood as the work done by politicians and ?governance? as the functioning of government, exclusively.
It is likely these perceptions that account for much of the blame being placed solely on the shoulders of government for the apparent breakdown of governance mechanisms in the case of recent disasters. The private sector and civil society are being hailed deservedly as heroes, though this perspective reveals the still-prevalent thinking that only government is responsible for governance.
Yet governance transcends the state and includes civil society organizations and the private sector, because all three are involved in most activities, and politics is rightfully the concern of every citizen.
?Governance,? as defined by the United Nations Development Program over a decade ago and long accepted in public administration, is the exercise of political, economic and administrative authority to manage a nation?s affairs. It comprises the complex mechanisms, processes, relationships and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their interests, exercise their rights and obligations and mediate their differences. Clearly, it is not solely the domain of government.
Harry C. Boyte, senior fellow and co-director of University of Minnesota?s Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs and author of ?Everyday Politics: Reconnecting Citizens and Public Life,? advances the view that the global emergence of governance requires a change in the way participants in the process are to be perceived, involving nothing less than a paradigm shift in the meaning of democracy and civic agency. As governance involves collaboration and empowerment more than hierarchy and control, this will mean not only looking at the structures and processes but an emphasis on the people involved as well as the tools. The shift can be seen as a move from seeing citizens as merely voters, volunteers and consumers to problem solvers and co-creators of public goods, and the role of public leaders from providers of services and solutions to partners, educators and organizers of citizen action.
In order to achieve this, Boyte advances the view that governance needs to be ?politicized in a non-partisan manner.? Politics is the process of negotiating diverse interests and views to solve public problems. Politics in this sense is citizen-centered, productive and pluralized.
The change in the nature of politics can actually be traced through history. Lifting from Hubert H. Humphrey?s biography, for example, Boyte illustrates that at a certain point in American history, certain citizens like Humphrey?s father considered it their duty to champion public goods and organize public citizens even as they work in their own trade, such as a pharmacist in his case. Women?s groups, for one, considered and taught politics as ?civic housekeeping.? In the 1940s, the concept of democracy as society still had broad appeal; it was powerfully revived by the American freedom movement of the 1950s and the 1960s, building on the civic heritage of churches, schools and other organizations. However, these civic dimensions of public culture have been eroded, with political campaigns being driven more and more by advertising dynamics, the author writes.
What exists today, Boyte asserts, is a narrowing of the concept of democracy, largely because of theorizing by many scholars and specialists that brought into the lexicon such concepts of ?political system? and a re-definition of the concept of politics as located singularly in the state.
What should be done is to re-center politics among citizens. There have been many examples that examined civic innovations and endeavors that are reconceptualizing politics more and more as ?the interactions among citizens of roughly equal standing by diverse views and interest, in horizontal relationships with each other, not simply in vertical relations with the state, who solve common problems, create public value and negotiate a common life.?
By seeing politics in this light and bringing non-partisan democratic politics back into public affairs, the practice of public affairs can be improved. ?The idea of democracy as a work in progress, with governance as its everyday politics, can rework political discourse generally,? says Boyte. Private citizens and the civil society are partners in governance and not consumers or mere alternatives to government. Everyone is involved and needs to be involved in every opportunity and in every step of the way. In the case of disasters, it should be from planning and management all the way to response and rehabilitation.
Dennis N. Marasigan is a theater and film artist and a doctoral student at the University of the Philippines National College of Public Administration and Governance.
