Democracy, Governance, and Economic Performance


Book Description

A theoretical and empirical examination of why political institutions and organizations matter in economic growth.




Is Good Governance Good for Development?


Book Description

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on bloomsburycollections.com. While good governance is a worthy goal, this book argues that it is not a prerequisite for economic growth or development. The book exposes the methodological shortcomings of the commonly-used governance indicators developed within the World Bank. The authors argue that donors should not impose onerous good governance conditions, expecting the developing world to simulate now-developed countries. They contend that most poor countries lack the administrative and financial capacity to achieve these reforms or institutions - so donor conditionality often becomes a recipe for failure. In place of grand government reforms aimed at enhancing market efficiency, the book's position is that the reform agenda should target strategic bottlenecks for development and enhance the state's capacity to deal with these disruptions. Bringing together contributions from leading political scientists, political economists and development practitioners, this is the first book to provide a systematic critical perspective on received notions of good governance.




World Development Report 2017


Book Description

Why are carefully designed, sensible policies too often not adopted or implemented? When they are, why do they often fail to generate development outcomes such as security, growth, and equity? And why do some bad policies endure? World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law addresses these fundamental questions, which are at the heart of development. Policy making and policy implementation do not occur in a vacuum. Rather, they take place in complex political and social settings, in which individuals and groups with unequal power interact within changing rules as they pursue conflicting interests. The process of these interactions is what this Report calls governance, and the space in which these interactions take place, the policy arena. The capacity of actors to commit and their willingness to cooperate and coordinate to achieve socially desirable goals are what matter for effectiveness. However, who bargains, who is excluded, and what barriers block entry to the policy arena determine the selection and implementation of policies and, consequently, their impact on development outcomes. Exclusion, capture, and clientelism are manifestations of power asymmetries that lead to failures to achieve security, growth, and equity. The distribution of power in society is partly determined by history. Yet, there is room for positive change. This Report reveals that governance can mitigate, even overcome, power asymmetries to bring about more effective policy interventions that achieve sustainable improvements in security, growth, and equity. This happens by shifting the incentives of those with power, reshaping their preferences in favor of good outcomes, and taking into account the interests of previously excluded participants. These changes can come about through bargains among elites and greater citizen engagement, as well as by international actors supporting rules that strengthen coalitions for reform.




Local Economic and Employment Development Local Governance and the Drivers of Growth


Book Description

Innovation, skills, entrepreneurship and social cohesion are key drivers of growth, and essential goals of effective economic development strategies. Each has a strong governance component, which requires partnership between government, business and civil society for co-ordinating actions and adapting policies to local conditions. But what are the best governance mechanisms to fuel the drivers of growth? What is the role of central government in maximising their effectiveness? What specific actions must cities carry out to become more competitive and spread prosperity? How can public services be managed in the most effective way to support local competitiveness in the age of globalisation and networking? How can partnerships generate more funding and deliver better results? For this book, the OECD has brought together top world experts to translate policy lessons into concrete recommendations that will help policy makers and practitioners make the best governance decisions to stimulate growth.




Development Centre Studies Governance Culture and Development A Different Perspective on Corporate Governance


Book Description

Drawing notably on the experience of France, this book examines whether good corporate governance generates national growth. It finds that it is a society's entire governance culture -- corporate and public governance together rather than either of them alone -- is what matters.




Good Growth and Governance in Africa


Book Description

This volume reflects the highlights of their deliberations.




Making Politics Work for Development


Book Description

Governments fail to provide the public goods needed for development when its leaders knowingly and deliberately ignore sound technical advice or are unable to follow it, despite the best of intentions, because of political constraints. This report focuses on two forces—citizen engagement and transparency—that hold the key to solving government failures by shaping how political markets function. Citizens are not only queueing at voting booths, but are also taking to the streets and using diverse media to pressure, sanction and select the leaders who wield power within government, including by entering as contenders for leadership. This political engagement can function in highly nuanced ways within the same formal institutional context and across the political spectrum, from autocracies to democracies. Unhealthy political engagement, when leaders are selected and sanctioned on the basis of their provision of private benefits rather than public goods, gives rise to government failures. The solutions to these failures lie in fostering healthy political engagement within any institutional context, and not in circumventing or suppressing it. Transparency, which is citizen access to publicly available information about the actions of those in government, and the consequences of these actions, can play a crucial role by nourishing political engagement.




How Growth Really Happens


Book Description

A groundbreaking study that shows how countries can create innovative, production-based economies for the twenty-first century Achieving economic growth is one of today's key challenges. In this groundbreaking book, Michael Best argues that to understand how successful growth happens we need an economic framework that focuses on production, governance, and skills. This production-centric framework is the culmination of three simultaneous journeys. The first has been Best's visits to hundreds of factories worldwide, starting early as the son of a labor organizer and continuing through his work as an academic and industrial consultant. The second is a survey of two hundred years of economic thought from Babbage to Krugman, with stops along the way for Marx, Marshall, Young, Penrose, Richardson, Schumpeter, Kuznets, Abramovitz, Keynes, and Jacobs. The third is a tour of historical episodes of successful and failed transformations, focusing sharply on three core elements—the production system, business organization, and skill formation—and their interconnections. Best makes the case that government should create the institutional infrastructures needed to support these elements and their interconnections rather than subsidize individual enterprises. The power of Best's alternative framework is illustrated by case studies of transformative experiences previously regarded as economic "miracles": America's World War II industrial buildup, Germany's postwar recovery, Greater Boston's innovation system, Ireland's tech-sector boom, and the rise of the Asian Tigers and China. Accessible and engaging, How Growth Really Happens is required reading for anyone who wants to advance today’s crucial debates about industrial policy, climate change, globalization, technological change, and the future of work.




Working with the Grain


Book Description

The development discourse has long been dominated by best practices prescriptions for reform, but these are not a useful way of responding to the governance ambiguities of the early 21st century. Working with the Grain draws on both innovative scholarship and Brian Levy's quarter century of experience at the World Bank to lay out an alternative-a practical, analytically grounded, "with-the-grain" approach to reducing poverty and addressing weaknesses in governance. Best practice prescriptions confuse the goals of development with the journey of getting from here to there. A strong rule of law, capable and accountable governments, and a flexible, level playing field business environment are indeed desirable end points. But the ability to describe well-governed states does not conjure them into existence. If the only available actions are all or nothing, then efforts at change will almost certainly fall short, leading to disillusion and despair. By contrast, this book takes as its point of departure the realities of a country's economy, polity and society, and directs attention towards the challenges of initiating and sustaining forward development momentum. The book: -- distinguishes among four broad groups of countries, according to whether polities are dominant or competitive, and whether institutions are personalized or impersonal -- identifies alternative options for governance and policy reform-top down options which endeavor to strengthen formal institutions, and options supporting the emergence of "islands of effectiveness" -- explores how to identify entry points for change where there is a good fit between divergent country contexts and alternative options for reform. Sometimes the binding constraint to forward movement can be institutional, making governance reform the priority; at other times, the priority can better be on inclusive growth. Taking the decade-or-so time horizon of practitioners, the aim is to nudge things along-seeking gains that initially may seem quite modest but sometimes can give rise to a cascading sequence of change for the better.




Development Centre Studies Uses and Abuses of Governance Indicators


Book Description

This study helps users find their way through the jungle of governance indicators, and shows how they tend to be widely misused both in international comparisons and in tracking changes in individual countries.