In practice, theory is something else. I've already heard variants of this expression in several countries and languages. Very often from people referring to the gap between abstract, generic principles and the implementation of projects and policies.
So, what’s governance anyway? No, don’t ask me for a definition. I can, however, tell you how we frame it. People, Spaces, Deliberation has been around for about four years now, and we hope we have made our modest contribution to the discussion of governance, especially in a development context.
To give an idea about how we frame governance, I took a look at the tags we use most frequently for our posts. Each post in which the tag occurred was counted. And here it is: Governance, on this blog, is about, first and foremost, public opinion and accountability. It’s also about the media as institutions of accountability and media development, about transparency, about fighting corruption, about social media – and about communication.
 |
The volume of public domestic debt issued in developing countries has grown substantially in recent years, but consistent data on the domestic debt of developing countries have not been generally available until now. As part of the Open Data Initiative, the World Bank is launching an online, quarterly, Public Sector Debt database developed in partnership with the IMF, which will allow researchers and policymakers to explore questions about debt management in a comprehensive manner. The database promotes consistency and comparability across countries by standardizing the treatment of public sector debt, valuation methods, and debt instruments, and by identifying, where possible, the debt of central, state, and local governments as well as extra-budgetary agencies and funds.
The Port Reform Toolkit provides policymakers and practitioners with effective decision support in undertaking sustainable and well-considered reforms of public institutions that provide, direct, and regulate port services in developing countries. In particular the purpose of the Toolkit is to provide public officials with support in:
From now on, there will be need to be a more nuanced relationship between public and private sectors to sustain growth, and regional sources of growth will become more diversified. These are two of the conclusions of MIGA's discussion panel on the post crisis outlook held on October 4 in Istanbul.
A panel of international experts, including the Colombian Minister of Finance Mr. Oscar Ivan Zuluage, MIGA's Executive Vice-President Izumi Kobayashi, and Nick Rouse, Managing Director of Frontier Markets Fund Managers, agreed on some aspects of the vision going forward, but had differing views on others.
Taking on a more proactive, energetic role, public authorities worldwide have played a large role in limiting the downside of last year's financial crisis, they agreed. In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the International Financial Institutions Initiative (in which MIGA participated) to support recapitalization of these countries' banks drew mention as one example of this type of successful multilateral intervention.
