Daniel Kaufmann
Daniel Kaufmann is the Director of Global Programs at the World Bank Institute (WBI) where he oversees the governance and knowledge agenda. Regarded as a leading expert, researcher, and adviser on governance and development, with his colleagues he has pioneered new empirical approaches and survey methodologies resulting in action programs and supports countries on good governance and anti-corruption programs and capacity building. He previously held positions at the World Bank heading Capacity Building for Latin America; managed a team on Finance, Regulation and Governance, and was as a Lead economist in economies in transition in the research department. He was also an author of the World Development Report on the Challenges of Development. In the early nineties he was the first Chief of Mission of the World Bank to Ukraine, and subsequently he was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University. His research on economic development, governance, the unofficial economy, trade and exchange rate, investment, corruption, privatization, and urban and labour economics has been published in leading journals. A Chilean national, he received his MA and Ph.D. in Economics at Harvard University, and a Bachelors degree in Economics and Statistics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Details on his publications and access to the databank are at: http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/governance/kaufmann
Michel Rocard, former Prime Minister of France and a former leader of the Socialist Party, is a member of the European Parliament.
Patricia Espinosa Cantellano is Foreign Minister of Mexico.
Manana Kochladze is a campaigner at CEE Bankwatch Network, an NGO that monitors international financial institutions active in Central and Eastern Europe. She is the winner of the 2004 Goldman...
George Soros is Chairman of Soros Fund Management and of the Open Society Institute. Photo : © AFP PHOTO / ERIC PIERMONT
Fondée en 1993 et présente dans 80 pays, Transparency International est une ONG qui lutte contre la corruption.
Yuliya Tymoshenko was Prime Minister of Ukraine and is now leader of the opposition. © AFP PHOTO /POOL
Benjamin K. Sovacool, a professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, is the author of Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power and co-author of the...
William Bourdon exerce la profession d'avocat. Sa spécialité : la défense des droits de l'homme. Il a créé en 2001 l'association SHERPA qui défend les victimes de crimes commis par des opérateurs...
The chief editor of GoodPlanet Info’s website created Le Courrier International’s green page and took part in the creation of the TV programme Vu du Ciel on the French television channel, France2. ...
Environmental Justice Foundation est une ONG britannique fondée en 2000. Elle milite pour une plus grande justice écologiste car de l'état de l'environnement dépend la vie de millions de personnes....
Laurent Neyret, Law Lecturer at Versailles Saint-Quentin University
Yevgenia Albats is Professor of Political Science at The Higher School of Economics and Editor of The New Times Magazine.
Professeur à l'Université de Gand, où il enseigne les cours de droit des médias, de droit d’auteur et de déontologie journalistique. Il dispense également le cours de droit des médias à l’Université...
Antoine F. Goetschel is a laywer who specializes in animal rights.
Serge Orru est le directeur général du WWF France.Photo : © AFP PHOTO FRANK PERRY
Fred Pearce is journalist specialized in the environment and development. He was born in the United Kingdom and studied geography in the University of Cambridge. His latest book is When the Rivers...
Khadija Sharife is a South African journalist. She is also an activist and a scholar at the Centre for Civil Society (CCS) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and a contributing author...
Figure du militantisme altermondialiste et surtout anticapitaliste depuis la sortie de No Logo en 2000, Naomi Klein est une journaliste engagée. Elle concentre son travail sur les dérives du...
Daniel Goleman est un psychologue américain né en 1946, Diplômé de Harvard en psychologie clinique et développement personnel, il a publié en 2009 aux Etats-Unis Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing...
George Monbiot is a well-known investigation reporter and columnist for the British newspaper “The Guardian” as well as a member of the BBC Wildlife magazine’s advisory board. He is also the author...
Edgar Morin is a sociologist and a philosopher. He is the author of “Pour entrer dans le XXIe” (Entering the XXIst century) (Seuil, 2004)
George Monbiot is a well-known investigation reporter and columnist for the British newspaper “The Guardian” as well as a member of the BBC Wildlife magazine’s advisory board. He is also the author...
Michael Johnston is a Professor of Political Science and former head of Social Sciences at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. He has studied political and administrative corruption since 1975,...
L'Institut de recherche pour le développement (Research Institute for development) is a French public organization, which is dependent on the Ministries of Research and Cooperation. Its mission is to...
Daniel Kaufmann is the Director of Global Programs at the World Bank Institute (WBI) where he oversees the governance and knowledge agenda. Regarded as a leading expert, researcher, and adviser on...
Daniel Kaufmann is the Director of Global Programs at the World Bank Institute (WBI) where he oversees the governance and knowledge agenda. Regarded as a leading expert, researcher, and adviser on...
Back to Basics—10 Myths About Governance and Corruption
08/09/2008 5:55 pm
Abstract
Governance—which remains a sensitive and misunderstood topic—is now being given a higher priority in development circles. Some donors and international financial institutions (IFIs) are working with some emerging economies to help reduce corruption, and encourage citizen voice, gender equality, and accountability. […]
But is good governance and controlling corruption really so fundamental for development? The explosion of empirical research over the past decade, coupled with lessons from countries’ own experience, have given us a more solid basis for judging the effect of governance on development, and the effectiveness—or lack thereof—of strategies to improve it. Yet there are still unresolved questions and debates in the development community, not only about the importance of governance, but also about the ability of IFIs to help countries improve on it. Let us therefore go back to basics and address some prevailing "myths" about governance and corruption.
Myth #1: Governance and anticorruption are one and the same? No. We define governance as the traditions and institutions by which authority in a country is exercised for the common good. This includes the process by which those in authority are selected, monitored, and replaced (the political dimension); the government’s capacity to effectively manage its resources and implement sound policies (the economic dimension); and the respect of citizens and the state for the country’s institutions (the institutional respect dimension). By contrast, corruption is defined more narrowly as the "abuse of public office for private gain."
Myth #2: Governance and corruption cannot be measured? It can. It is true that less than a dozen years ago virtually no internationally comparable measures of governance or corruption existed. But in recent years, the World Bank and others, such as TI, have sought to remedy this. […]
While the indicators represent a big step forward, there are measurement challenges. Margins of error are not trivial, and caution in interpreting the results is warranted—one should not precisely rank countries. But these margins of error have declined, and are now substantially lower than for any individual measure of corruption, governance, or the investment climate. As a result, the World Bank’s governance indicators are used worldwide for monitoring performance, for country assessments, and for research.
Myth #3: The importance of governance and anti-corruption is overrated? Not really. Thanks to these and other advances in empirical measurement, a number of researchers have examined the impact of governance on development and it is found that countries can derive a very large "development dividend" from better governance. A country that improves its governance from a relatively low level to an average level could almost triple the income per capita of its population in the long term, and similarly reduce infant mortality and illiteracy. Such a relative improvement (by one standard deviation) would correspond, for instance, to a move up in our ranking for the "control of corruption" dimension in our database, taking Equatorial Guinea to the level of Uganda, Uganda to Lithuania, Lithuania to Portugal, and Portugal to Finland.
Governance also matters for a country’s competitiveness and for income distribution. […] A rough estimate of the extent of annual worldwide transactions that are tainted by corruption puts it close to US $1 trillion. […] Further, when governance is poor, policymaking in other areas is also compromised.
Myth #4: Governance a ‘luxury’ that only rich countries can afford?. Absolutely not. Some claim that the link between governance and incomes does not mean that better governance boosts incomes, but the reverse—higher incomes automatically translate into better governance. Our research does not support this claim. It is misleading to suggest that corruption is due to low incomes, and invent a rationale for justifying or discounting bad governance in poor countries. In fact, the evidence points to the causality being in the direction of better governance leading to higher economic growth. A number of emerging economies, including the Baltic countries, Botswana, Chile, and Slovenia, have shown that it is possible to reach high standards of governance without yet having joined the ranks of wealthy nations.
Myth #5: Does it takes generations for governance to improve? Not at all. While it is true that institutions often change only gradually, the evidence shown by the governance indicators points to the fact that in some countries there has been a sharp improvement in the short term. This defies the view that while governance may deteriorate quickly, improvements are always slow and incremental. […]
Myth #6: Can donors agencies "ringfence" and thus fully protect their project funds in highly corrupt countries and sectors? Not really. […] The data suggest that when a systemic approach to governance, civil liberties, rule of law, and control of corruption is absent, the likelihood of an aid-funded project being successful is greatly reduced.
Myth #7: Does fighting corruption by fighting corruption make sense? Not really. A fallacy promoted by some in the field of anticorruption, and at times also by the international community, is that one "fights corruption by fighting corruption”-through yet another anticorruption campaign, the creation of more “commissions” and ethnic agencies and the incessant drafting of new laws, decrees and codes of conducts […] such initiatives appear to have little impact, and are often politically expedient ways of reacting to pressures to do something about corruption, substituting for the need for fundamental and systemic governance reforms.
Myth # 8: Is the corruption culprit the public sector in developing countries? […] Not quite. The reality is much more complex, since powerful private interests often exert undue influence in shaping public policy, institutions, and state legislation. […] It takes two to tangle when it comes to bribery, for instance. And multinationals also bear an important responsibility.
Myth #9: Is there little that countries can do to improve governance. No. […] it is easy to fall into the pessimist camp. That would be a mistake. First, historical and cultural factors are far from deterministic […] Second, there are strategies that offer particular promise […]. Transparency reforms, [such as] […] public disclosure of all parliamentary votes, draft legislation, and parliamentary debates or effective implementation of freedom of information laws, with easy access for all to government information […], can be particularly effective.
Myth #10: Not much the IFIs can do? […] Surely, there are areas that fall outside the mandate of IFIs, such as promotion of fair multiparty elections. But initiatives to encourage transparency, freedom of information and an independent media, participatory anticorruption programs led by the country, and gender equality […]
The challenge of governance and anticorruption confronting the world today strongly argues against the "business-as-usual" modus operandi. A bolder approach is needed, and collective responsibility at the global level is called for […] countries themselves must take the lead in improving governance.
References:
Bellver, Ana, and Daniel Kaufmann, 2005, "Transparenting Transparency: Initial Empirics and Policy Applications," World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, (forthcoming) (Washington)
http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/governance
Commission for Africa Report, 2005, Our Common Interest: Report of the Commission for Africa (London)
http://www.commissionforafrica.org
Kaufmann, Daniel, Aart Kraay, and Massimo Mastruzzi, 2005, "Governance Matters IV: Governance Indicators for 1996–2004," World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3237 (Washington)
http://worldbank.org/wbi/governance/pubs/govmatters4.html
Kaufmann, Daniel, 2003, "Rethinking Governance: Empirical Lessons Challenge Orthodoxy," Global Competitiveness Report 2002–03, World Economic Forum, Geneva
http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/governance/pubs/rethink_gov.html
World Bank Institute, 2002, The Right to Tell: The Role of Mass Media in Economic Development (Washington).
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2005/09/basics.htm
Back to Basics—10 Myths About Governance and Corruption
Daniel KAUFMANN
Finance et Développement, Fonds Monétaire International
Volume 42, N°3
Septembre 2005
http://www.imf.org
Did you enjoy this piece of news ?
Subscribe to our daily newsletter Join us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter
Signaler un abus
-
Nef : cooperative solidarity-based finance -
The International Centre of Comparative Environmental Law -
Wind turbines in Morocco
-
Italians say no to nuclear power
-
Less pesticides in Quebec
-
California covers itself in solar panels
-
Less advertising
-
Scrapyard bonus
-
How do you reduce the number of traffic jams ?