These attributes are related to governing the state in a narrow sense. Meanwhile, although lack of democracy and weakness of political rights, as well as political instability and violence, could be considered elements of bad governance in certain political and institutional contexts, these qualifications merely describe the qualities of political regimes, and cannot be attributed as features of bad governance by default. While some studies have demonstrated a conditional impact of democracy and authoritarianism on the quality of governance,28 their impact is often indirect and not always straightforward. The antinomy of features of good and bad governance is summarized in table 2.
Although in substantive terms such a negative definition of bad governance based on antinomies may be far from satisfactory, this approach is a logical consequence of the normative bias inherent in the perceptions of many social and political scientists. This normative bias in analyses of bad governance has also contributed to the extension of its attributes far beyond the aforementioned list, not only with regard to governing the state, but also in various aspects of social policies and state-society relations, such that the term has become a byword for a set of diverse negative tendencies.29 This broad interpretation is highly questionable, because it combines in the same category various phenomena that do not always relate to the quality of state governance and/or may stem from different causes; such an approach is dubious, being a form of “conceptual stretching.”30 At the same time, however, equating bad governance solely with widespread corruption, as some scholars argue, would be a wild oversimplification.31 Although corruption is an unquestionable element of bad governance, it should be regarded as a symptom (rather than a cause), and not the only symptom. Moreover, such an equation may result in an imperfect diagnostic of bad governance as a phenomenon being attributed to many very different yet highly corrupt governments in a similar way. If one were to compare political diagnostics with medical ones, it is as if a doctor equated a banal flu with pneumonia judging solely by patient symptoms like high temperature, fever, and cough, without relying on a lung X-ray or other tests. This is why I rely upon a different definition of the syndrome of bad governance that is based on the four major characteristics of governing the state presented above: lack and/or perversion of the rule of law, unconstrained corruption, poor quality of state regulations, and general ineffectiveness of government (some exceptions to this rule will be discussed in detail in chapter 6).
Table 2. Antinomies of Features of Good and Bad Governance
Pillar of Governance
Good Governance
Bad Governance
Government Effectiveness
Generally effective and efficient government
Government may be effective mostly in certain crucial policy areas and priority projects and programs, conducted under special conditions
Regulation Quality
A decent regulatory framework, maintained by strong institutions and unbiased state bureaucracy
”Over-regulated state,” which combines high density and poor quality of state regulations with their selective implementation
Rule of Law
Adherence to basic principles of the rule of law
Lack of the rule of law and/or perversion of its basic principles
Control of Corruption
Low level of corruption, which is limited by political and institutional constraints
High level of corruption, which penetrates all layers of governance
These characteristics need to be clarified for a better understanding of their role in governing the state: To what extent do they serve as symptoms of certain pathologies or, rather, to what extent may they be considered norms of bad governance? In other words, the mode of study of bad governance should be switched from normative assessment to a positive analysis. This also means that one needs to shift from the above-stated description of symptoms of bad governance as a specific syndrome to a causal explanation of why it emerges and develops and how it can be overcome (and indeed, whether it can at all). From this perspective, one must admit that bad governance is not only the opposite of good governance, but also a distinctive politico-economic order that is based on a set of formal and informal rules, norms, and practices, quite different from the norms of governance. In turn, this politico-economic order, although it may be perceived as one of the many instances of a “limited access order”32 and of the prevalence of “extractive” political and economic institutions,33 demonstrates several political foundations that make it a peculiar subtype of such orders. To put it bluntly, among the many countries belonging to these categories in the past and in the present, there are some countries that are governed intentionally badly because the political leaders of these countries establish and maintain rules, norms, and practices that serve their own self-interests. These political foundations are identified hereafter as a “constitution” of bad governance, or its informal institutional core.34 In other words, they are treated as de-facto “rules-in-use”35 serving as key institutional arrangements of the politico-economic order that sets up the framework and mechanisms for governing the state:
Rent extraction is the main goal and substantive purpose of governing the state at all levels of authority.
The mechanism of governing the state tends toward a hierarchy (the “power vertical”) with only one major center of decision-making, which claims a monopoly on political power (the “single power pyramid”).36
The autonomy of domestic political and economic actors vis-à-vis this center is conditional; it can be reduced and/or abolished at any given moment.
The formal institutions that define the framework of power and governance are arranged as by-products of the distribution of resources within the power verticaclass="underline" they matter as rules of the game only to the degree to which they contribute to rent-seeking (or at least do not prevent it).
The power apparatus within the power vertical is divided into several organized groups and/or informal cliques, which compete with one another for access to rents.
These political foundations are important for understanding the main features of bad governance as the basis of a respective politico-economic order and principal tools for its maintenance in governing the state. Indeed, if the state is governed in order to extract rents, then various forms and manifestations of corruption37 serve not as deviations from the norms of good governance but rather as means to achieve this goal. Similarly, poor quality of state regulations and perversion of the principles of the rule of law (hereafter “unrule of law”)38 not only contribute to extraction of rents but also reduce the risk of breakdown of hierarchical power pyramids, and manage the conditional nature of the political and economic actors’ autonomy. The creation and frequent changing of both “fuzzy”39 and overly rigid formal institutions against a background of purposively selective law enforcement also serve these goals. In other words, I consider bad governance to be a social mechanism that emerges as an effect of the above stated politico-economic order based on a drive for rent extraction by major political and economic actors. The logic of formation of this mechanism may be illustrated in a graphic form (see figure 9).