6 - Socially Embedded Good Governance

Summary

This chapter offers a theoretical account of socially embedded good governance. It connects the two major principles discussed in the book so far – accountability as accessibility and transparency in people – to the idea of a public–private divide and debates around good governance and corruption in Africa more broadly. Specifically, the public–private divide is written into principal–agent models of democratic accountability and forms the crux of liberal definitions of corruption. Popular conceptions of socially embedded good governance hold that the connections that make powerful people knowable and accessible in ordinary life should not be severed as they enter the public office. This requires expanding the scope of good governance beyond the formal realm of the state. The chapter repurposes Peter Ekeh’s idea of the ‘two publics’ to suggest that popular demands for transparency in people and accountability as accessibility could be understood as a demand to re-connect the social with the political and thus unite the ‘two publics’. It concludes that not only is “personal politics without clientelism” (Mueller 2018) possible but also the porousness of the state to social relations – for so long seen as the Achilles heel of governance in Nigeria - may in fact be its strength.