David Booth's blog

He said it in Washington; now he has said it again in London. Who? Former UK premier Tony Blair, speaking at ODI on governance and leadership for development in Africa.

What has he been saying? That the better governance low-income Africa needs is about getting better leadership (here understood as ‘effective capacity to get things done’) – not just a matter of more transparency and greater accountability.

The technocratic (and ideological) ‘best practice’ approach to development intervention is indeed bankrupt. The world badly needs more imaginative and effective ways of engaging with the stubborn realities of governance in poor developing countries. As Brian Levy has argued, ‘working with the grain in a way that takes institutions and politics into account’ is the right approach. And a typology of realistic governance reform approaches is a good place to start.