Good Governance Model on the Basis of Malik-Ashtar Letter; A Design and Comparison with the World Bank's Good Governance Principles

Good governance is a new theory that tries to create institutions which would help the government carry out its responsibilities in providing the public with better conditions and enhanced prosperity. The main objective of this research is to design a good governance model on the basis of Malik-Ashtar letter, using grounded theory method and comparing the results with the World Bank's good governance principles. The research method adopted here is the descriptiveanalytical one, and in order to extract the good governance principles from Malik-Ashtar letter, we have used the grounded theory approach. The results show that although there are some common elements between Imam Ali’s view on good governance and the world bank’s relevant theory, and both of them consider a same truth about the subject, but, due to the structural time differences, the methods adopted in the two periods are different with each other. Furthermore, Imam Ali (a.s.) has paid attention to some such facts as piety and devotion which the World Bank has not, and besides that, Imam Ali (a.s.), in the Letter, introduces Holy Quran and Prophet Mohammad’s tradition as two firm sources of religion in order for the problems to be solved - sources which the world bank doesn’t exploit, as its governing commands are taken from human reason and in the course of time will be variable and unreliable.