Governance and Development

The report is revealing. It tried to answer a ques...

2013-05-06T19:11:17.654+01:00

The report is revealing. It tried to answer a question shareholders will idyllically ask: what is the value of the US$85 billion invested in localizing development in the past decade? In answering this question, Ghazala and Vijayendra defined ‘success’ as ‘decipherable and usable failure’ and leaves one to conclude: where do we go from here?

Insightful and thought provoking.

2013-04-10T00:27:16.140+01:00

Insightful and thought provoking.

One of my happiest memories of working as an AGI g...

2013-03-09T14:06:30.053Z

One of my happiest memories of working as an AGI governance adviser was when my counterparts announced to me that "We are going to a meeting, Lucy, and we are on time and we have a notebook!" (unprecedented) - these things really do enable change, although they are not as glamorous as other development work.

The main keyword here is 'sustain'. I thin...

2013-02-26T22:12:21.017Z

The main keyword here is 'sustain'. I think it's still pretty difficult to sustain a financial plateau because of other factors (usually outside the financial context) that directly affect the means by which sustained financial development can be maintained.

Thanks for posting!

2013-01-16T08:47:26.538Z

Thanks for posting!

Thanks for the clarifications!

2012-12-27T06:42:34.334Z

Thanks for the clarifications!

Jai Hind ! The debate and discussions will certain...

2012-12-26T09:25:58.772Z

Jai Hind ! The debate and discussions will certainly be useful and fruitful for the good governance and development.
-------
Dr Ramesh Kumar ,Ambala

agree with the stance of World Growth which states...

2012-12-24T10:37:16.534Z

agree with the stance of World Growth which states Green misuse of ‘prior consent’ on land use will limit economic growth in developing countries. I believe development projects are necessary in building a better world but resourses in 3rd world countries should be used through proper laws and involvement of the locals, government and ngos

Al fin alguien habla con sentido común. Creo que ...

2012-11-28T17:30:34.109Z

Al fin alguien habla con sentido común. Creo que la propuesta de un Peace Park es excelente y nos permite a los colombianos, salir de este atolladero con dignidad. Felicitaciones

Excelente!, Julia María, el postulado que ofreces ...

2012-11-28T15:46:38.083Z

Excelente!, Julia María, el postulado que ofreces de la negociacion entre los 2 paises pra creara un Peace park, es una idea gelia! porque alli es donde verdaderamente los 2 paises se van a comprometer a trabajar por una solución comprometida con el ambiente. Me gustó mucho, te felicito.

Thanks for your post Julia. It has been a big topi...

2012-11-28T14:37:24.654Z

Thanks for your post Julia. It has been a big topic for Colombians in these days. I think as it was discussed in the ICJ of the United Nations, the topic should also be discussed at the PNUMA Committe of the UN in regards to the enviromental impact of the desition. Specially about the risk of petroleum exploration of Nicaragua in the area.
Erika Pacheco. Bogotá- Colombia.

Josie Stewart replies: Thank you very much for you...

2012-11-26T14:27:34.926Z

Josie Stewart replies: Thank you very much for your comment and questions; I think you raise a particularly interesting point about whether a new political system can be ‘imagined’ into being through reason and debate. I would argue that reason and debate can either trigger a process of change or help to shape one as it is underway; yes the clergy in the UK may have suffered a setback in terms of gender equality, but the issue is being debated, pressure is being applied and at some point things will change as a result.

Of course, the developments in Egypt over the weekend bring the topic of this blog into sharp relief and provide quite a bit more insight into the different rhetorics in Egyptian politics.

Good stuff Josie - you write very well and pose a ...

2012-11-21T22:38:55.754Z

Good stuff Josie - you write very well and pose a good question but its just a little too fantastic to imagine a new order through reason and debate isn't it - afterall it hasn't really worked for women clergy in England now, has it? Maybe you could have included a profile and some quotes from one or two of the political figures to give us a flavour of the different rhetorics?

Hey Mick, I agree with your points above. Since th...

2012-10-31T14:36:52.517Z

Hey Mick, I agree with your points above. Since there is so much disagreement on what constitutes "democracy" perhaps it makes sense to provide valid and reliable measures of variables that may be fundamental to democracy -- things like press freedom, laws that limit executive power, etc. -- and then let individuals pick which indicators they aggregate into an overall measure of democracy. This does not mean that individuals' custom aggregate scores will be valid, but at least it will take care of the problem of not being able to agree on what "democracy" is.

As far as tying "democracy" to economic growth I think we need better and more extensive data to prove this. Rwanda, for example, has done pretty well economically despite having what many see as an autocratic ruler in Kagame.

My firm is working on addressing all of the issues you raised with a new project (www.democracyticker.com). I'd be happy to continue our conversation further as we develop the dashboard.

Mick Moore says: Postro, I would be really happy ...

2012-10-26T16:34:35.129+01:00

Mick Moore says:

Postro,
I would be really happy if I could answer even one of your questions. In reality, I can answer none of them.

I can give a view about where we went wrong with governance indicators. As it happens, it is not just the wisdom of hindsight. I was sceptical at the time they were being developed.

The first mistake was to move too quickly toward a set of indicators for all/most countries when the data were not available. The second was the attempt to aggregate measures of a wide range of things, like accountability, civil liberty, the quality of the public service, the control of corruption, into a single indicator on which countries could be compared – on the assumption that all good things always tend to go together. The third mistake was not to make it much clearer early on that there was no statistical or historical basis for the suggestion or claim that higher scores on the governance indicators were likely to lead to faster rates of economic growth.

What should we do now? I would give up on the idea of producing a single indicator on which countries could be compared. I would put more effort into producing better indicators, based on better data, of some important dimensions of government. I am not sure what these would be. We already have quite good measures of democracy at national level. Better measures of different dimensions of theaccountability of government might be a good way to go next.

What do you think?
Regards,
Mick

I am interested in your fifth observation about go...

2012-10-26T13:54:05.156+01:00

I am interested in your fifth observation about governance indicators. How would you address the two points you raised. That is, how do you go about developing governance indicators that are widely accepted for their core validity? Also what would practically useful indicators look like? What information would they provide?

Mick Moore says: Richard, Thanks for the comment....

2012-10-08T10:14:50.075+01:00

Mick Moore says:

Richard,
Thanks for the comment. We need to separate out (at least) two different kinds of referent for the term 'political settlement'. The first is a set of processes around settling conflicts and then making peace enduring. You may be right that we have made progress in recent years in better understanding the conditions under which these good things happen. But I see no evidence that the term 'political settlement' helped us to make that progress. Progress resulted from other, more tangible things, including the wider recognition of the point you mention that has always been obvious to political science and to diplomatic services, but somehow for a long time escaped many many aid agencies: elites matter. Why do we need to use 'political settlement' - a new, non-standard term that most folks in our business do not even recognise - to refer to to processes that can better be expressed in ordinary language? Do you know how frustrated people on the receiving end of aid feel that they are endlessly required to learn and adapt to the latest jargon invented by the donors themselves? This has been going on for decades. It is time to stop. Quietly dropping the term 'political settlements' will enhance, not reduce, our capacity to think and communicate constructively about (enduring) peace agreements.

The focus of my original blog piece – and of the paper by Edward Laws which sparked it off – was on the fact that 'political settlement' is often presented as an analytic concept, but simply cannot be that because we have many contending definitions of the term. Take the real life situation I mentioned: "I was at a meeting recently where one person used the term ‘political settlement’ to refer to an elite peace agreement to end a conflict, and another talked of research to ‘compare (national) political settlements’ in the same way that one might talk of ‘comparing national political systems’." Those two people could not possibly have a useful conversation about 'political settlements' because they mean very different things by the term. The 'science' element in political or social science may be weak at the best of times. A minimum condition for being taken seriously is that we try to use terms consistently.
Regards,
Mick

SLRC's Richard Mallett tells us why political ...

2012-10-05T15:01:47.810+01:00

SLRC's Richard Mallett tells us why political settlements matter http://bit.ly/QXnHWl

I also recommend James C. Scott's "The Ar...

2012-07-31T18:17:15.518+01:00

I also recommend James C. Scott's "The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia." It argues that many people prefer not to be absorbed into states as it means losing their autonomy and culture and being forced to pay taxes, etc.

Your argument depends on a rather narrow definition of what a state must be. A broader definition that took into account the possibility of various forms of public authority, power sharing, sovereignty, etc. would reframe the discussion. The result would still be very foreign to the World Bank and aid establishment, but would offer a more open-ended, bottom-up approach that could still yield state-building of a sort.

The real question is not whether the world needs better states, but what kind of states are more likely to yield a better world.

Andres Mejia Acosta writes: Thanks for your comme...

2012-07-27T15:36:18.691+01:00

Andres Mejia Acosta writes:

Thanks for your comment. I would be interested to know if you have a specific example of cabinet coordination led by the Prime Minister in a small state, and what do you think were the motivations for cooperation. Many thanks

This is really interesting. In small states the P...

2012-07-27T10:15:23.608+01:00

This is really interesting. In small states the Prime Minister is the one who have the vision and the power and as agreed more research is needed to unearth the how cooperation is formed and sustained between sectoral ministeries and also between the minister and senior public servants.

Why is Greece supposed to compete? If they hadn&#...

2012-07-25T19:05:29.087+01:00

Why is Greece supposed to compete?

If they hadn't taken the loans, what is wrong with how their economy was?

Maybe, apart from culturally predatory loans, an economy of agriculture and tourism and leisure and conversation and inability for most of the population to afford the highest-tech gadgets is okay.

Maybe, like Christianity and Islam say, the problem is the culturally predatory loans, a.k.a. interest-compounding usury. Maybe the solution is Islamic banking profits sharing in place of usury ("al-Islam, hoa al-Halla").

Maybe.

This "reform" is going to cost people a lot of money and I don't see why it won't just push people into a "black-market" system of property ownership, possibly enabled by bribing officials at half of what the engineer inspector would have been paid.

Otherwise, stagnation in property exchanges is what this is likely to cause. I'm all for that--let "marginally" (ha ha) more grandchildren inherit Greek property over the EU elite who want to enjoy the Greek rural landscape and climate.

This is interesting, but how do these informal ins...

2012-07-19T03:28:12.515+01:00

This is interesting, but how do these informal institutions work for women? Do they perpetuate gender inequalities or can they work for women's human rights?

Mick Moore says: Isabelle, I agree. Country-by-c...

2012-07-09T17:16:00.095+01:00

Mick Moore says:
Isabelle,
I agree. Country-by-country reporting links to a lot of other things. And more should be done across the board. My main point is that the chances of progress on country-by-country reporting are a bit more positive than it seems from the formal positions of the big players in the field.
Mick Moore

This is indeed an interesting debate which should ...

2012-06-30T07:35:15.418+01:00

This is indeed an interesting debate which should be linked to the discussions around the transparency directive in the EU or the Dodd-Frank in the US. I am not sure CBC reporting in the extractive sector will allow countries to track down the money in tax havens or track down creative transfer pricing practices that allow companies to play with their profits, either across different projects within the same country or across countries.