INTRODUCTION
Establishing good governance in southern democracies, developing countries, has been
demanded by the International Aid Agencies and donor countries as a prerequisite of aid
assistance for a long time (Santiso 2001; 2003). This approach was started in 1989 after the
World Bank first recognized the crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa as a crisis of governance and
good public management as a precondition of the development assistance strategies for
developing countries (Kaufmann, Kraay & Mastruzzi 2003). A study by the World Bank,
revealed that where there is participatory governance, an additional one per cent of Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) in aid translates into a one per cent decline in poverty and a similar
decline in infant mortality (WorldBank 1998). To comply with the demand of the donors,
governments of the developing countries are trying to develop participatory local government
to support overall good governance. A number of research studies have asserted that, although
rural people are participating in development programs, this participation has not, however,
been enough to ensure good governance. In fact, the meaning and mechanism of the notion of
good governance through effective people’s participation that has been imported from the
northern democracies, developed democratic countries, through international aid agencies
remains somewhat unclear and ambiguous to the governments of developing countries.
Nevertheless, both the donors and recipient governments need an instrument to identify the
present quality of governance of an agency at its existing level of participation, thereby
enabling the recipient authority to set a clear target for achieving good governance.