Governance or good governance can be divided into three aspects. The first is the “institutionalization of government” which include the rule of law, capacity development, transparency and accountability, and decentralization. The second is the “institutionalization of developmental (or economic) governance” represented by public policies that support economic growth and social development. The third is the “institutionalization of democracy” represented by freedom of speech and association, civil society building, human rights, fair election and the strengthening of parliaments. While recognizing all these three aspects, it seems that the World Bank prioritizes the first and the second, while the UNDP prioritizes the first and the third.

In Japan, the understanding of governance is highly dominated by “kyochi” viewed as the coordination mechanism among the local government, civil society organizations and private business sector at the local government level. However, in the international development world and in highly centralized developing countries, governance has been dominated by “tochi.” The author sets “kyochi” within the framework of “co-governance” at the local level government as the sub-category of governance and “tochi” within the framework of government “steering” the economy and society at the national level governance.

The actual implementation of good governance practices must face the vested interests of politicoeconomic elites who are deeply rooted from the local to the national level. A former Filipino congressman noted, “Even though the international donors and NGOs insist on various things, all projects are undertaken within the domination of traditional politicians” who can dominate and manipulate voters using clientelism. Eventually, the good governance agenda symbolizes the “direction to be pursued” and its actual implementation processes are the zigzag course, being promoted sometimes gradually and sometimes abruptly. The key words to proceed to that direction are “effective state” and “developmental state” to be institutionalized in developing countries.

This article considers the state of “pro-democracy” development assistance by examining how agendas for democratization have been interwoven into the United Nations' Post-2015 Development Agenda and into strategies for development assistance to developing countries and what issues are emerging from this.

First, this article extracts the core values of democracy from literature on democracy and democratization, and defines the “pro-democracy” standpoint. While a democracy consists of three elements, this standpoint attaches greater importance to (1) the core democratic political institutions—such as free and fair elections, a pluralistic political party system, and respect for basic human rights—than; (2) the systems making those institutions function, including effective and accountable government and active civil society organizations; and (3) the social and economic base for democracy. Next, this article analyzes the ongoing process of formulating a post-2015 development agenda in the United Nations. Then, the means of assessing democracy and governance, which is one of the most controversial issues in setting the Millennium Development Goals and developing the post-2015 process, are overviewed and categorized along with the above three elements of democracy. Finally, this article examines how the agendas for promoting democracy, especially consolidating core democratic political institutions, are incorporated into the development assistance strategies of the United Nations, European Union, and United States for countries such as Indonesia, Cambodia, the Philippines, Mozambique, and Rwanda.

This article concludes that the promotion of important elements of democracy tends to be interwoven into international development goals even if the word “democratic” is not mentioned. However, the recipient governments and donor actors are reluctant to bring the important elements of democracy into their actual development (assistance) strategies as concrete development (assistance) goals, seeing them as irrelevant to the results of democracy assessments.

There are several post-conflict countries, in which the electoral system among plural parties has been introduced after the ceasefire of internal war but authoritarian nature of the ruling party has been expanding (this can be called as the stagnation of “democratic governance” ), in parallel with the steady improvements of administrative capacity and economic management of the government (this can be called as the enhancement of “developmental (or administrative) governance” ). This article examined 4 post-conflict country cases of Cambodia, Rwanda, Angola and Mozambique.

Those 4 cases show the same trends of the stagnation of “democratic governance” and the enhancement of “developmental governance” and steady economic growth. This phenomenon stimulates us to raise the following questions: (1) Is there no relationship between economic development and “democratic governance”? What are the lessons gained from the experiences of those 4 countries? (2) What are the common factors behind those same trends in 4 countries?

The analyses and comparisons of some governance-related indicators of 4 countries have lead to the following tentative conclusions: (1) There is positive relationship between “administrative governance” (CPIA) and development indicator (HDI). (2) There is no clear relationship between “democratic governance” (such as Polity IV, Democracy Index) and economic development (HDI, growth rate). It seems that the introduction of the basic democratic framework such as electoral system among multiparties has been the basis of economic development after the end of conflict, but further democratization might not be essential factor for it.

All 4 countries have shown relatively good economic performance and increasing power of the ruling party under the nominal democratic system. We may call this the spread of a model of “developmental states.” Some argue that the spread of the “Beijing Consensus” in contrast to the “Washington Consensus” is a common factor behind the phenomenon. We can find increasing influence of Chinese aid both in Angola and Cambodia, but that is not the case in Rwanda and Mozambique, where strong aid coordination framework exists initiated by western donors. Although further analyses are still necessary to examine the effectiveness of “developmental states” and the possibility of “democratic developmental states” in those countries, both of “developmental governance” and “democratic governance” should be included as important goals to be pursued in the post-2015 development agenda.

In the mainstream agenda of international development such as MDGs and Post2015 agendas, governance agendas have been hot topic in tandem with poverty reduction agendas. There seems to be promoted “Poverty Reduction through Governance” scenario by international development community. However, descriptive statistical test indicates there exist week empirical evidence between the achievements of governance and poverty reduction.

This paper aims at examining the theoretical possibility of poverty reduction through governance: good governance is really effective for developing countries to achieve poverty reduction, if so, why and how?

First, the ideal model of governance which main advocate of MDGs such as World Bank and UNDP assumes were classified trough literature review: Economic Governance by World Bank and Democratic Governance by UNDP. Scrutinizing official documents and materials published by these organizations revealed the commonalities as well as the differences between Economic Governance discourse and Democratic Governance discourse.

Second, the structural factors which make poverty reduction through governance scenario impossible: (1) tradeoff of Inter-temporal choices among people living democratic-development states, (2) incompatibility between democratic institutions and effective states components, (3) dilemma between development as objectives and aid as means.

Recent years have witnessed ever-widespread and increasingly entrenched belief that the rule of law is a sine qua non for social and economic development. The rule of law is considered to contribute to development by providing two things: firstly, legal system for the deterrence of arbitrary behavior of the state, and secondly, legal infrastructure for the entrenchment of private property rights as well as for the enforcement of contractual obligations. Such conventional understanding, formed under considerable influence from neoclassical and neo-institutional economic theories, and derived from Anglo-American historical experience in which the role of the state in facilitating social and economic development was limited, has serious defect: it is based on the notion of minimal state and skepticism for active role of the state, and thus leaves the role of law in facilitating development in so-called “developmental state” undertheorized and empirically unexplored.

Bearing the above-mentioned in mind, this article examines the role of legal system in rapid economic growth period of Japan. It is argued that the industrial laws of Japan played two important roles, both of which worked as a solid foundation of successful economic growth: achieving a favorable balance between state intervention and market competition, and fostering long-term relationship of mutual trust between the government and the business. It should be noted that these achievements were not at the cost of arbitrariness of the state or loss of predictability of business activities. Further investigation of the role of law in developmental states in East Asia is guaranteed.

There are 1.5 billion people living in fragile states characterized by weak state capacity and/or weak state legitimacy. Many of these states experienced civil wars and are at greater risk of war recurrence than those that have not experienced armed conflict. These fragile states are left far behind in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). State-building is considered as a key to overcome such fragility in post-conflict countries and conflict-prone societies. This article explores the effort to support governance in state-building with an example of local governance reforms undertaken in post-conflict Sierra Leone. It attempts to extract principle challenges for state-building in order to achieve MDGs in fragile states. Sierra Leone is a good example case that experienced local governance reforms in the post-conflict context. The article illustrates dual governance perceived in the area of capital city and rural areas in Sierra Leone, which are ruled distinctively during the colonial time. Thus, two areas, i.e. centre and rural areas, are under distinct governance in practice. This dual governance limits the broader effort for state-building by excluding particular social groups, such as youth, women and others, and thus constrains nation-building. It informs that one of the critical challenges in state-building is to grasp the existing local governance and modalities, which are the outcome of socio-political processes in history of the state. Therefore, it is necessary to understand how the current form and mode of governance have been transformed in its history. This understanding enables us to realize the limitation of outsiders' intervention in state-building for governance-related assistance while it convinces the necessity of breaking the existing practice of nepotism and undemocratic control by utilizing outsiders' involvement for state-building/peace-building.

This article examines effectiveness of civil society in democratisation and development for Post-2015 development agenda. Firstly, literature review reveals that civil society is expected to play roles of watch-dogs by adding channels for political participation besides political parties and elections. Active civil society is also expected to complement roles of the state by delivering public services and ultimately facilitate development in developing countries.

Secondly, yet, civil society may not play the ‘expected’ roles due to its embeddedness to social and political contexts which are very specific to developing countries. The public sphere of civil society in developing countries may be divided by ethnic, regional and religious cleavages. Meanwhile civil society may be subject to the influence of political competition among civil society organisations (CSOs) for the influence on public policy as well as the control of the government.

Thirdly, this article examines the ‘successful models’ of CSOs in NGOs of Bangladesh and People's Organisation (PO) of Barangay Luz, the Philippines. In Bangladesh, NGOs deliver various public services to the poor, which may complement the roles of the government. In Barangay Luz, as well, PO organised the poor and established sound partnership with the local government of Cebu City for community development. Both cases share that CSOs are fairly successful to improve living conditions of the poor. Nonetheless, both CSOs have weakness in addressing broader structural issues, and CSOs in the Philippines are fragmented and fragile to political factors.

As regards conditions for effectiveness of civil society for Post-2015, property of civil society matters to define its scope of public sphere; both cases imply that their orientation to limited public sphere should be multilayered and expanded. Although economic space of civil society in these two countries is wide enough, its political space should also be enlarged by less government interference in civil society and by more partnership with it, as well as by more bargaining power of CSOs by organising the poor.

The objective of this article is to give a fresh insight into the origin of Japan's aid. More specifically, it attempts to analyze why Japan intended to start aid giving in the early post-war era, in spite of its devastated economy and very low per capita GNP, which was much lower than Malaya. While existing literatures argue that Japan's aid began out of joining the Colombo Plan or war reparations, this article stresses the role of widely shared policy thinking as the engine of the pursuit of aid giving; the policy makers in those days put emphasis on trade and development cooperation with South East Asia. The article attempts to explore the reason why this policy thinking was prevalent among the policy makers in those days, using Avner Greif's theory of comparative and historical institutional analysis. It was found that the widely shared cognition model was closely related to their experiences during the war era. The emphasis on the trade with South East Asia was inherited from the past, as the natural resources of South East Asia was crucial in the war era; a typical case of path dependence is observed. On the other hand, the idea of development cooperation, paying due attention to job creation and raising living standard was new, as the war-time policy objective had been narrowly scoped and concentrated on securing resources. The article confirms that a lot of policy makers had regarded it neither advisable nor sustainable, and they introduced a new approach when they got the drivers' seets; this is the case of Greif's endogenous institutional change. The case of Japan implies that the motive of a new donor is embedded in their own socio-economic system.

Tongan Fundraising that collects remittances from Tongans overseas:

Tongans living overseas send remittances to their families, friends, and organizations such as churches and schools back in Tonga. The primary method of collecting remittances for these organizations has been through fundraisers held in major overseas Tongan communities for over 40 years.

This article focuses on the fundraisings carried out by these home communities, churches, and schools and examines their social and cultural mechanism. It first illuminates the origins of these fundraisers, and then focuses on the recent fundraisers, clarifying the actual amount of funds raised and their usages. It also reports the findings of a survey conducted on Tongans living in Hawaii. The survey analyzed the rate of contribution to the fundraisings. It finally discusses how Tongan fundraisers make it possible to receive remittances from their own people.

In short, these organizations started fundraising in overseas Tongan communities because of the shortage of the Tongan government and church funds. According to interviews with government officers, church leaders and school headmasters in Tonga, the funds raised were mainly used for villages' water management, church management, and running schools. The questionnaires given to Tongans in Hawaii showed that 80 percent contribute to the fundraisings. Tongans overseas appreciate their cultural value of mutual assistance, which fundraisers take advantage of when organizing and carrying out fundraising events.

In conclusion, fundraisings in overseas Tongan communities lead to smaller government budgets and the maintenance of their own churches. It was also clear that most of the Tongans in Hawaii contribute to the fundraisings by their home organizations. These fundraisings are possible because of the traditional value of mutual assistance that Tongans overseas still hold, religious activities they still continue, and their traditional social ties they still keep. The discussion on the future of remittances should therefore include the sustainability of the fundraisings.

It is now commonly recognized that participatory approaches are indispensable in the field of development assistance. A lot of tools for participatory approaches have been invented during the past several decades, such as RRA, PRA, PLA, etc. We, however, think those tools are insufficient to motivate local people and to take charge of their own problems because the conventional tools put too much emphasis on “logical thinking”. There is no doubt that logical thinking plays a great role in old practices, but sometimes, human relationships get complicated by logical thinking. So it gradually became obvious that careful consideration should be given to human emotion rather than reason.

Therefore in this report, we propose “the community drama” as a new participatory tool, which bases on the function of “story” not logic. The community drama has been held in Akashi-city Japan for fifteen years by the local people. Nobody is a professional actor or director. Ordinary people make the scenario by themselves and act roles on the stage. It is its purpose that distinguishes the community drama from ordinary dramas. The purpose of community drama is not only to entertain audience but also to solve local problems such as crimes, garbage, disintegration of the community, disaster prevention, aging and so on. In fact, a lot of problems have been solved through this community drama, and a variety of public institutions gave them awards.

We carried out a questionnaire survey to measure the effects of the community drama on social capital of participants. The results indicated that the community drama increase social capitals, and that it could be an appropriate tool for participatory development. Then we discussed the principles of the community drama, how it strengthens people's networks, and how it solves the local problems.

Ownership has become an important concept in the context of international development. Officially, use of the term “ownership” began in 1996, with the DAC's New Development Strategy. It was after this publication that “ownership” was confirmed as an important concept in many conferences related to international development.

However, there is a gap between the rhetoric of ownership and practices on the ground. De Renzio et al. (2008) states that “in many aid dependent countries donors still dominated decision-making over which policies are adopted, how aid is spent, and what conditions are attached to its release”.

Why is there such a gap between rhetoric and practice? Previous research only mentions the difficulties for donors in respecting the ownership of recipients in decision-making processes, and for recipients in displaying sufficient ownership. These reasons are not enough to explain why the concept of “ownership” has failed to live up to its potential.

It is the opinion of the author that changes in the meanings of “ownership” are a significant factor contributing to this issue. The definition of “ownership” is unclear, and the term has come to hold a variety of meanings. The term “ownership” is sometimes used for decision-making, and sometimes for the enforcement of decisions. Both processes need to be included in the concept of “ownership,” but the term is often only used to refer to the latter.

This conceptual ambiguity contributes to the disparity between the rhetoric of ownership and actual development practices. This paper attempts to show how the meaning of “ownership” in the context of international development has evolved, and why such gaps in rhetoric and practices arose.

Additionally, specific classifications of “ownership” have been generated and proposed to reflect the decision-making and enforcement processes as distinct and separate procedures. These classifications help clarify the concept of ownership and should help to avoid future gaps between the rhetoric of development concepts and practices.

The agricultural extension service is expected to help dissemination of beneficial technologies to farmers. However, agricultural extension agents have a limited capacity and thus often interact with only a limited number of farmers in their assigned area. This limitation can be alleviated if knowledge of extension agents diffuses from farmers with a direct contact with extension agents (“model farmers”) to other farmers through social learning. This paper examines effectiveness of this dissemination process, using household-level data from rural Ethiopia. In particular, we estimate the direct effect of extension agents on knowledge of model famers for two techniques, row planting and compost, and also the agents' indirect impact on knowledge of other farmers through learning from the model farmers. In addition, we investigate the effect of each of three extension agents in the region separately, assuming that how they choose model farmers affect the size of their indirect effect through social learning. We find that knowledge of row planting, a simple but surprisingly new technique in the region, spreads directly from extension agents to model farmers if the agents select farmers with large absorptive capacity as model farmers. However, the indirect effect of extension agents on knowledge of non-model farmers is either statistically insignificant or small in size, even when agents choose farmers in the center of advisory networks as model farmers. In addition, understanding of composting, a relatively complicated but more established technique in the region, is not related to direct or indirect ties with extension agents.