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= Bad Governance =

Bad Governance, otherwise known as Poor Governance, is the unfavourable relationship between those who govern and those who are governed as a consequence of decision-making. This unfavourable relationship is created as a consequence of external factors or decisions such as violation of central or acceptable norms, such as those of liberal democracy, and bad economic policy. Bad Governance collectively encompasses governance in government and corporate settings. However, although bad governance addresses governance in a government setting, bad governance and bad government are different concepts. Bad Governance encompasses a variety of situations from corruption, deceit and to passing of unfair policy. From this, it can be noted that different manifestations of Bad Governance can vary in severity and the potential impact in their respective setting.

Bad Governance is centralised around the idea of not only corruption within a system but a lack of transparency and accountability, arbitrary policy making and the cheating of those who are governed.

World Bank defines Bad Governance as a country which "holds the figures of any or all of the indicators less than and close to -2.5". These World Banks governance indicators are :


 * "Voice and Accountability
 * Political Stability and Absence of Violence
 * Government Effectiveness
 * Regulatory Quality
 * Rule of Law
 * Control of Corruption"

Causes
Based on the World Bank's governance indicators, the key causes for Bad Governance are:

Lack of Voice and Weak Accountability
Governing bodies refusing to listen the voice of those they govern and take refusing to take accountability for their actions leads to bad governance. By ignoring the voice of those being governed, their opinions are no longer heard or taking into consideration by the governing body. Democratic governments focus on accountability as a method to ensure the public understands whats happening and provides them a way to proceed when things go wrong. Weak accountability in turn causes a distrust between the two parties and can lead to instability. This distrust and uncertainty creates an unfavourable relationship between the parties.

Political Instability
Bad Governance occurs as a consequence of frequent changes in government or 'political instability'. Instability in political regimes, such as a democracy, has been proven to coincide with poor governance.

Corruption
Bad Governance, is often considered to come hand in hand with corruption. Multiple texts  have in depth explored the correlation between bad governance and corruption.

Impact of Bad Governance
The impacts and consequences of bad governance are widespread and don't only effect the settings in which they occur:

Poor Economic Growth
Ewan (2004), stated that as a consequence of bad governance the per capita growth was heavily impacted. In his research Ewan's showed that this has been most prevalent in African countries since World War II.

Corruption
Corruption not only is a cause of but can also occur as a consequence of bad governance. There was a distinct link suggested by Quah (2009) that higher levels of governance and a better environment to conduct business are impacted by the presence of corruption within an economy. This link suggests that has levels of governance in an economy due to bad governance, the levels of perceived corruption will rise.

Transparency
The World Bank Institute has suggested that through introducing reforms that address transparency, the degree of bad governance and be levitated and good governance can slowly take precedence. These reforms include :


 * Disclosure to the public of all assets and income of candidates running for public office
 * Disclosure to the public of all political contributions to parties along with all documentation related to legislation and voting in parliament.
 * Clear separation of laws relating to areas of governance e.g. business, politics etc.
 * Release publicly any company that has been blacklisted due to bribery
 * Ensure access by the public to all government information
 * Ensure media has a freedom of speech
 * Implementation of International Monetary Fund's (IMF's) reports on standards and codes framework
 * Release of government reports on payment from extraction industries along with open meetings between two entities if country's citizens are involved.
 * Domestic bank's owners and financial reports are opened to the public
 * Competitive procurement (over the internet) by governing entities is available to public
 * Introduction of governance and anti corruption surveys supported by World Bank
 * Budgets and meetings at the city level are transparent

Dealing with Corruption
A strong correlation exists between bad governance and corruption. By curbing corruption within governing bodies bad governance can be reduced. There are three ways to reduce corruption :

Introduction of New Institutions and Laws
Corruption occurs usually due to the weak or a lack of anti-corruption laws and institutions in place. Bad governance by governing entities rely on pre-existing laws or norms which lack anti-corruption methods to get away or explain corrupt to foreign criticism. In these cases by introducing either stronger or new anti-corruption laws or institutions that change or monitor these old laws corruption can be monitored and curbed. Starting these new institutions and laws is an attempt to push the governing bodies in the correct direction by removing the worst features first and not immediately remove corruption from the body. However, governing entities, as research has shown, are most likely to attempt adopting new institution and laws but are forced back by withholding political tools necessary.

Target Vulnerable Services
The World Bank and macro economists tend to view corruption in a governing bodies as a whole and don't take into consideration the differences corruption that the different services within the body are susceptible too. Reforms to these individual services within a body which impose anti-corruption regulates act to curb corruption.

Misunderstandings around Bad Governance
Sources state that Bad Governance is bad economic policy and while this is correct statement it does not consider the other causes of bad governance.

There has been no proven relationship between bad governance and bad leadership. It has been found that there is a wide variety of combinations between different types of leaders and the type of governance that occurs as a result. Good governance is usually unable to occur under bad leadership while bad governance has been seen to occur under good leadership.