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This is the World Bank's blog on governance and anti-corruption. It aims at providing a space for debate and knowledge sharing on this critical field of development. | Learn more...

March 2009

From m-euphoria to m-governance, thinking about the potential of mobile technology

Submitted by Alfredo on Fri, 2009-03-27 10:55

The hype about mobile technology for development work is going on the rise.  It's not for granted.  More than four billion worldwide mobile subscriptions -with the fastest growth trend in developing countries-, sounds like a great opportunity to reach and interact with broader groups of people, including the poor.  Actually, mobile penetration in Africa has expanded from about 2 to 28 subscribers (per 100 inhabitants) since 2000 (see graph at the bottom). 

This looks like a great scenario, but putting aside the m-euphoria let's explore the role for mobile technology in the field of governance.

Towards Better Governance by the G-20: Learning from the 'Missing' ggg-8 Countries

Submitted by Kaufmann on Fri, 2009-03-27 08:12

Consider a very different “group-of-8” countries: Botswana, Chile, Mauritius, Uruguay, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore and Switzerland.  Do they have any relevance for the G-20?  Hardly, at first.  None of them are invited to the London G-20 Summit next week.  They are not G-20 members, since neither their economic size nor their population are large enough, and they lack the global “systemic significance” of most G-20 members.  None of them belongs to the EU.  This particular "group-of-8" in fact does not really exist as a formal body.

But there is a neglected rationale for the leaders of the G-20 to pay attention to this particular set of uninvited countries.  Like the G-20, they comprise a rather diverse group of developing and developed countries from different regions of the world.  But, unlike most of the G-20, this group of eight countries have exhibited high quality of national governance.

No country is perfect, obviously.  Each one in this group of 8 industrialized and emerging economies has its own challenges. But overall their quality of governance (and recent trends) exceed those of the Group-of-20, and to an extent even those of the powerful, formal, and elite Group-of-8.

This does matter.  Not just because failures of governance (among key nations in  the G-20) played a major role in today's financial crisis.  It also matters because lessons can be drawn for short and longer term initiatives from the good governance experiences from this group of 8 small countries (in short 'ggg-8' ifor this 'good governance group'-- and not in caps, since they are small, and not a formal group...).

On “Aid Effectiveness and Governance: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”

Submitted by Kaufmann on Tue, 2009-03-24 10:57

‘Aid Effectiveness’ gone astray?  Imagine official multilateral and bilateral donor aid agencies holding high level meetings for years to agree on ‘harmonized’ aid strategies for recipient developing countries whose governments are expected to fully 'own' them.

Don't look in this space for formal definitions of donor aid ‘harmonization’.  They are in official reports from aid organizations; there you can also read about efforts to 'harmonize' the timetable and frequency of official visits by donors to recipient countries.

Instead, in this blog space let me spur debate, as I just did in a panel on ‘Aid Effectiveness’.  Let me start by echoing a panel member in advancing an unorthodox interpretation for donor ‘harmonization’:  lowest common denominator agreement among donors regarding their strategy towards a recipient country.  Spineless strategies, devoid of innovation, and skating over the toughest challenges for development.

Capture and the Financial Crisis

Submitted by Kaufmann on Mon, 2009-03-09 17:41

There is no 'theory-independent' way of viewing reality.  We see and analyze world events through our own prism, shaped and tinted by upbringing, experiences, training and professional field of expertise. So it is not surprising that when it comes to the many explanations given for the current financial crisis, they differ greatly.

Violence and crime in Mexico at the crossroads of misgovernance, poverty and inequality

Submitted by Alfredo on Mon, 2009-03-02 06:32

"Hello, son, are you Ok?  We just got a phone call, and someone told us that one of our sons/daughters was kidnapped. We wanted to be sure that you are fine."  You can imagine how scary was the movement that these parents went through after they picked up the phone and received the ugly and unexpected message.  As sad as it sounds, this situation is something that some families in Mexico have experienced.  Sometimes they are lucky to find out that their relatives are fine, and that everything was faked by someone looking for a profit by creating confusion among relatives.  In other unfortunate cases, the message is real and families have to go through very difficult experiences that may last several months and that not always have a good outcome.

It's not new that Mexico is having problems with violence and crime, coming either from drug-cartels or from organized mafias of kidnappers and car thieves, among others.  It's also true that the entire country is not a jungle and lawless area where nobody is safe.

Over the last decade and a half, most of the approaches to solve these issues have looked at the rule of law and law enforcement elements of the equation.  Better legislation that penalizes these criminal activities; well paid, trained, appropriately equipped and not corrupted police corps; military support to fight drug-cartels; better prison's system that functions as social rehabilitation centers and not as universities of crime... and the list goes on.  This is a good direction to follow.  However, I've always told my friends and colleagues that there are other elements in the equation that also matter a lot, namely, poverty reduction and inequality.