Good Governance and Cheese... (What?)-part 2

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12/03/2014

Good Governance and Cheese... (What?)-part 2

I believe that good governance involves 'governments effectively exercising the authority given to them.' I hold that many of the expressions of good governance go unnoticed, but make the real difference. One such expression happens when governments do things like licensing, regulation, inspection, and such well (notice: I'm not saying when governments do well on the doing business indicators, that measure effectiveness by the number of regulations that exist). Governments have key roles in providing effective regulation, enforcing standards, and more. When governments play this role well, they help countries do well.

A few months ago I shared an example of this not happening. It was a country where a food safety issue over a decade ago led to some food exports being stopped, by key trade partners. Over a decade later, the food products are still not exported to those trade partners. Indeed, one sees a chart of past exports that were growing to a date and then dropped to zero and just stayed there. The government has never responded; by investigating why the problem occured, swarming the problem with inspectors, and solving it...

I contrasted this with a food safety issue that arose in the UK in May: Chinese authorities argued that there were food safety issues in a British dairy and they stopped imports of British cheese as a result. When I posted about this I said I'd come back to the issue and reflect on how long it took for the British authorities to respond and deal with the problem.

Well, the following news articles chronicled the response--which began immediately, was quick and comprehensive, and led to cheese exports from the UK to China resuming about a month afterwards. This is good governance: governments doing what they are authorised to do, effectively and comprehensively. Gritty, real, tangible expressions of this kind of governance are evidenced every day in functional countries, where governments identify problems and resolve the problems. Unfortunately, most governance indicators don't capture this kind of expression of good governance ....

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27280986

http://www.dairyreporter.com/Markets/Chinese-UK-cheese-export-ban-will-be-lifted-soon-Defra

http://www.thegrocer.co.uk/fmcg/fresh/china-lifts-temporary-export-ban-on-british-cheese/358316.article

http://www.dairyreporter.com/Regulation-Safety/China-lifts-temporary-ban-on-British-cheese-exports

Posted at 05:46 PM | Permalink

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12/03/2014