Power of Emotional Intelligence on Good Governance

Good governance is epitomized by predictable, open and enlightened policymaking, i.e. transparent processes, a bureaucracy imbued with professional ethos, an executive arm of government accountable for its actions, and a strong civil society participating in public affairs and behaving under the rule of law. Governance has to do with the institutional environments in which citizens interact among themselves and with government agencies and officials. The capacity of this institutional environment is important for development because it helps to determine the impact achieved by the economic policies the government adopts. This capacity then, and the governance quality it reflects, is a vital concern for all governments and citizens. Good governance can be undermined by a range of factors, including lack of transparency, integrity, self-respect, self-regulation, self-discipline, among others. Corruption is often both a cause and an effect of weak governance. The study which was an attempt to determine the power of emotional intelligence on good governance adopted the survey research design. Emotional intelligence is the index of competencies such as transparency, integrity, accountability, empathy, collaboration, humility, among other variables necessary for introducing and sustaining good governance. Good governance refers to the government devoid of corruption, dishonesty, cowardice, fraud, blackmail, pursuit of personal interest, contract “loading†, among other dysfunctional behaviours that have defied many prescriptions for a long time. The survey research design was adopted for the study. A sample size of 302 was determined through Yamane’s formula, and the respondents were picked through the simple random sampling technique. Data were analyzed through descriptive statistics and correlation analysis using SPSS version 17. The result showed r = .799*. With this result, it was found that there is significant positive relationship between emotional intelligence and good governance at 0.05 level of significance, meaning that emotional intelligence is a “powerful†predictor of good governance. This is our interest in the study. Ten recommendations were made based on the result of the study.