Abstract
Good governance plays a key role in the legitimacy of the government and contributes to bringing the quality of decision making through collective action. There can be governance without government. This is because governance is the process, procedure, and mechanism, which signifies a transformation from a type of relationship where one side governs the other to a set of relationships where mutual interaction takes place in order to make desirable choices for the citizens. The book of Toksöz, Good Governance: Improving Quality of Life has organized into two book parts. The first book is named as the book I which is titled as “Government – Governance” and the second book is named as book II which is titled as “Participatory Tools for Governance”. For the sake of manageability and saving time, I have obliged to review the only book I of Toksöz. This implies that book II is not part of this review. At the opening of this book, Toksöz has highlighted the contents which are comprised in both books; I and II. In this part of the book (Book foreword), the criticisms on the naming of government made by scholars were somehow explained. The book described that the term governance had given due attention due to the forces of globalization (see foreword). Moreover, good governance as a new paradigm which comprises essential principles for better consolidation of democratic management was shortly explained. The introduction part of Toksöz’s book has investigated the basic concept of governance as the intersection of the state, civil society, NGOs and private sectors as well as the essentiality of good governance principles to improve the quality of life through wise use of public resources. Moreover, this part of the book has tried to explain the importance of effective participation of different stakeholders to assure the quality of participatory democracy and foundations for good governance.