The Emerging Right to Good Governance

Abstract

From the perspective of international law, democracy may be regarded as a multifaceted phenomenon. On the one hand, it reflects the collective right of self-governance of a particular political community; on the other hand, it reflects an individual entitlement to participate in the conduct of public affairs of one's country. Democracy is connected to the principle of self-determination, understood as the freedom of a group to decide the system under which it wishes to live, while requiring a formalized set of voting procedures in order to implement this freedom. Democracy is focused on the procedural aspect of organizing elections, while not mandating any particular substantive outcome of those elections. In this essay, I propose that the right to democratic governance should be supplemented with a more robust concept: the substantive notion of good governance.