Does Good Governance Result in Greater Racial Equity and Racial Harmony?

Abstract

This thesis aims to discover whether Hawaii’s good governance indicators of voice and accountability (VA), control of corruption (CC), and government effectiveness (GE) from 2020-2023 affect Hawaii citizens’ current racial harmony (RH) and racial equity (RE). A case study approach is taken here, integrating quantitative data and qualitative data. The quantitative data comprises publicly available data from multiple sources that create an index for GG, RE, and RH for all U.S. states. Qualitative data for the state of Hawaii was collected from two online newspaper sources. The qualitative data were compared to Hawaii’s quantitative data (a component of the compiled indices) to make conclusions about the hypotheses posed at the beginning of the research according to the theoretical models explained in the literature review section. Quantitative data for all of the U.S. generally showed an increase in individual GG indicators of VA, CC, and GE correlated with an increase of RE. An increase in composite GG was correlated with a greater increase in RE than seen for individual GG indicators. They also revealed RE is not a mechanism between GG and RH. However, the case of Hawaii consistently shows RH is present when RE is. The initial review of and the deeper dive into patterns in literature both support these findings. The deeper dive into literature revealed a new type of relationship between variables – the presence of GG and its application to either RH or RE causes an increase in the remaining variable. Qualitative data and examples in literature support that GG and its application to RH could result in greater RE, and that GG and its application to RE could result in greater RH. On the other hand, the quantitative data support the first triad relationship and not the second. Governance plays a direct and important role in the equity and harmony citizens of a state experience. As such, there is a need for governments to accept more responsibility for how their governing affects the daily lives of their citizens and to make more genuine, concerted, and collaborative efforts in their community to address the issues of equity and harmony their citizens experience. Similarly, citizens should hold their governments accountable for the immediate and long-term legacies of government action.