Is Good Governance Good for Development?

Description

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on bloomsburycollections.com. While good governance is a worthy goal, this book argues that it is not a prerequisite for economic growth or development. The book exposes the methodological shortcomings of the commonly-used governance indicators developed within the World Bank. The authors argue that donors should not impose onerous good governance conditions, expecting the developing world to simulate now-developed countries. They contend that most poor countries lack the administrative and financial capacity to achieve these reforms or institutions - so donor conditionality often becomes a recipe for failure. In place of grand government reforms aimed at enhancing market efficiency, the book's position is that the reform agenda should target strategic bottlenecks for development and enhance the state's capacity to deal with these disruptions. Bringing together contributions from leading political scientists, political economists and development practitioners, this is the first book to provide a systematic critical perspective on received notions of good governance.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram was United Nations Assistant-Secretary General for Economic Development. He was awarded the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought in 2007. Anis Chowdhury is Chief of the Macroeconomic and Development Division of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific at the United Nations. He was Senior Economic Affairs Officer in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA), and Professor of Economics at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. Also by Jomo Kwame Sundaram and Anis Chowdhury (eds.) in this series: Poor Poverty: The Impoverishment of Analysis, Measurement and Policies (2011) Contributors: Rita Abrahamsen, Associate Professor, School of International Development and Global Studies, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa, Canada Matthew Andrews, Associate Professor of Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, USA Arthur Goldsmith, Associate Dean of the College of Management, University of Massachusetts, USA Mushtaq Khan, Professor of Economics, SOAS, University of London, UK Marcus Kurtz, Associate Professor of Political Science, Ohio State University, USA Martin Painter is Chair and Professor of Public Administration, City University of Hong Kong Andrew Schrank, Professor of Political Science and Sociology, University of New Mexico, USA Brian van Arkadie, Development economist and consultant