Is Good Governance Good for LDCs? The European Union and its Good Governance Concept

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Politics - Topic: Development Politics, grade: 1,7, University of Potsdam (Wirtschaft- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät), course: Transformation in international development cooperation, language: English, abstract: The concept of good governance has been a long time discussed the concept of development cooperation. Almost every institution on the world level, like the World Bank or European Union, got its own definition, in which way this concept had to be converted into real politics. It is widely believed that only with the implementation of good governance least developed stats are able to overcome poverty. And even the most paying states believed that LDC´s have to convert these concepts into real policy to overcoming poverty. But nobody, not the World Bank or the western governments could really give an answer, if this concept is really helpful in all its instances? In this work, I will try to collect some of the definitions of good governance. Because there are very different attributes, I like to compare them which each other, as good as it gets. The concept of good governance is used in some many different ways that almost every political cooperation between the state, the society and the economy is somewhere touched be this concept. And because of this, it is really difficult to find one satisfactory solution, which maybe defines the concept of good governance sufficient. My main question is: 'What are the main characteristics of this concept and why does it find its place in almost every development cooperation between the western societies and the LDCs? '