Measuring good governance: piloting an instrument for evaluating good governance principles

ABSTRACT

As federal, state, and local governments and agencies respond to calls to make decisions and implement programs according to tenets of ‘good governance’, a need exists to develop methods for systematically evaluating performance. ‘Good governance’ has been characterized as including a wide array of principles, which vary across literatures. Comparatively little scholarship has sought to systematically quantify program achievement in accordance with these principles. We develop and present a scale for measuring program achievement in accordance with eight main principles of good governance: inclusivity, fairness, transparency, accountability, legitimacy, direction, performance, and capability. We present the results of a pilot implementation of the scale within the context of two community-based deer management programs. Our results suggest that these principles of good governance may not sort into distinct dimensions in a real-world context.

KEYWORDS:

• Natural resource governance
• good governance
• community-based resource management

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributors

Emily F. Pomeranz is a social scientist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

Richard C. Stedman is a professor and associate chair in the Department of Natural Resources at Cornell University and serves as the associate director of the Cornell Center for Conservation Social Sciences.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Hatch project 1004275. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) or the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).