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The paper examines Vietnam's foreign policy as it translates into strategies toward subregional cooperation in the Mekong Basin. Using transboundary water cooperation as an example, the article argues that Vietnam's prime motivation in Mekong River cooperation is economic development for performance legitimacy. Environmental issues are raised, but only in relation to powerful upstream countries, while Vietnam itself poses similar challenges to less powerful downstream countries. The need for performance legitimacy thus conveys all relevance to the economically oriented Greater Mekong Subregion, while the Mekong River Commission, a basin organization with a mandate to combine economic development with environmental considerations, is sidelined.

Truly, one of the basics of good governance is accountability. We always long for democracy. But, we have so far been able to establish a democratic system which is completely devoid of accountability. That is why, our democracy is faltering at every step. And, some longstanding socio-political challenges stand very much in the way of desired development of the country. In fact, lack of planning and commitment on the part of successive governments gave birth to the problems. Moreover, greed for money and power on the part of influential sections of our society unabatedly contributed to proliferation of economic, administrative and social problems resulting in immense sufferings of the common man.

The aim of this article is to provide an overview of some of the major theoretical perspectives on governance developed within the field of business and management. We critically review conceptualizations of governance in the mainstream literature, and contrast this with the relevant literature from the governmentality and institutionalist perspectives. This article emphasizes the diversity of conceptions of governance promoted by these different theories, and argues that this rich multiplicity offers genuine scope for gaining a more rounded understanding of the inherent complexities of contemporary governance forms and practices.

AbstractMany organizations are making a substantial investment in their knowledge and learning functions. Unfortunately, often these organizations don't realize an optimal level of return from this investment because their programs are poorly governed. We describe what the governance of knowledge and learning is, and based upon a research study that we performed, suggest which forms of governance work best in practice. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper makes an effort to provide a framework for good governance in India by identifying its essential features and shortcomings in its working. No theory of governance could be intelligible unless it is seen in the context of its time. India's democratic experience of the past six decades has clearly established that good governance must aim at expansion of social opportunities and removal of poverty. Good governance, according to the author, means securing justice, empowerment, employment and efficient delivery of services. The paper deals with these subjects in detail and also analyses administrative and political faultlines. It identifies criminalization of politics and corruption as two major challenges. It also highlights shifts in meaning and content of national values of the freedom movement particularly those of nationalism, democracy, secularism, non-alignment, and mixed economy and its impact on the nitty gritty of administration as well as on the intellectual build up of the organs of the Indian State. The paper lists several areas of concern that need to be addressed energetically and calls for synergy of efforts between government, the market and the civil society. The need is to formulate a national strategy that accords primacy to the Gandhian principle of 'antodaya" without sacrificing growth and by making instruments of State accountable for good governance.

AbstractThis article proposes a new theoretical concept of nonprofit governance using transaction cost economics and the economic theory of contracts. After a short review of economic approaches to corporate governance, I clarify the specific nature of the governance problem in nonprofit organizations. Based on this analysis, I derive criteria for selecting an organization's relevant stakeholders. If stakeholders provide valuable specific resources without the protection of a comprehensive contract that details exactly how the organization is to use these resources, then such stakeholders seek decision and control rights in order to direct the use of the resources they have provided. I argue that the core problem of governance is how to enhance valuable specific contributions of the relevant stakeholders while keeping the costs of bargaining between stakeholders and the costs of collective decision making low. The theory developed is then applied in a discussion of practically relevant governance mechanisms, and the concept of governance is used to contribute to the discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of the nonprofit character of organizations from a governance perspective.

This article describes the institutional collective action (ICA) framework and its application to the study of governance arrangements in metropolitan areas by focusing on the tools of regional governance for solving ICA problems. Regional governance mechanisms are classified by their focus on either collective or network relationships. The role of these within these mechanisms is analyzed and the transaction costs barriers to the emergence of regional governance institutions are identified. The concluding discussion identifies the limitations of self-organizing mechanisms and develops a research agenda to investigate the emergence, evolution, and performance of regional governance institutions.

Over the past sixty years, the concept of development has expanded from economic growth and investment, to poverty reduction, human development, sustainable development, and more recently to institutional development. There has also been a fresh look at industrial policy and the role of the nonfarm economy. These aspects of development are not only important in their own right but are very much interrelated. National development experience shows the importance of investment and infrastructure to growth; the significance of growth, infrastructure, and human development to poverty reduction; the contribution of growth and human development to sustainable development; the effect of nonfarm incomes to growth, poverty reduction, and inequality; and the importance of institutions to growth. Local development experience also reveals the interrelatedness of the different development aspects: the importance of investment, infrastructure, and human capital to growth and poverty reduction; the role of health to human capital; the significance of human capital to poverty and inequality; the value of human development, institutions, and good governance to sustainable development; the importance of human capital to enterprise development; and in turn of enterprise development to investment and therefore growth as well as to poverty reduction; the contribution of nonfarm incomes to growth and poverty reduction; and the importance of governance to poverty reduction and human development.

We model the aid allocation decision where the donor government has announced that good governance is the criterion for receiving aid. Potential recipients must compete for the aid funds. The structure of the competition is important to the donor in terms of achieving good governance, and to the recipients in terms of what they receive. The leaders of potential recipient countries look at aid availability through this contest as part of the competing objectives they face - some good, some not good. The donor country prefers a contest under which the aid will only go to one country while the leaders of the receiving countries prefer that each country obtains the proportion of aid relative to its governance quality. If poverty reduction is an independent goal as well, a poverty trap may be created. With good governance as a criterion, donors may work through both bilateral and multilateral agencies.