5. Different Developments in the Practices of Different Countries

most essential. Therefore, it is necessary to emphasize the bond between values and principles. Good governance is put into practice through the principles of good governance. These principles may differ in character from one country to another, through the different ways in which the principles are included in different means of legislation and judicial interpretation. Principles are usually laid down in policy documents, which are not generally binding, but can have a binding effect when such documents bear a sufficiently formal character. However, policy documents that have no direct legal effect may still be to a certain extent binding through the principles of proper administration. A different situation exists when a Code is meant to be exemplary to other governmental institutions.

We have seen that good governance entails values for public governance, especially related to institutions fulfilling a public task. This concept manifests itself in several principles in different fields of study: legal principles, policy principles, and economic principles. Legal principles are divided into general principles and other principles. General principles refer to fundamental ideas concerning order in society. Yet even when principles are vague, they represent underlying values of the national legal system. As a consequence, these can be looked at when interpreting the law. Some other principles are not really fundamental, but yet invaluable and therefore normative to the legal system.

5. Different Developments in the Practices of Different Countries

For each of the three dimensions—rule of law/democracy/institutional—we made an illustration of two partly overlapping ovals or ellipses for the EU-member state study. Because of the overlap we created three options. In the first option, we have the original and more general concept of the dimension; in the second option is the full specification by principles; and in the third option of overlapping is a mix of general concept and specified principles. The rule of law concept contains properness and human rights, democracy contains transparency and participation, and the institutional concept contains effectiveness and accountability. For example, in relation to the rule of law dimension, in the general development there is a strong focus on legality, and the specific development by the properness and the human rights principles. The intermediate position is a mix of the general and specific development.

The next step was to find out what could be the position of the country: first, second, or third option. For each of the groups of the EU member states we start in alphabetical order. This positioning is based on the information gathered from this research and it is a theoretical position which may be subject to discussion. The idea of presenting the results in this way makes it possible to have a discussion within and between the member states on the developments and the shifts of the principles of good governance.

The theoretical positioning of countries is repeated for each of the five groups of countries, based on a certain level of cultural and social coherence. The discussion in practice will be centred around the following points: the institutions which apply good governance norms in relation to their functions; the developments of the concept by specification of principles of good governance; the form and binding effect of the specified principles (including the integrity principle); and the prevention of malgovernance (including corruption) by promoting good governance.