Efficient and resilient governance systems are essential for ensuring basic public services, fostering trade, attracting private investment, and managing aid flows. CGD work on the issue focuses on how rich-country policies and practices strengthen—or inadvertently undermine—developing-country institutions. Examples of such policies include aid, trade, and anticorruption efforts. Efficient and resilient governance systems are essential for ensuring basic public services, fostering trade, attracting private investment, and managing aid flows. CGD work on the issue focuses on how rich-country policies and practices strengthen—or inadvertently undermine—developing-country institutions. Examples of such policies include aid, trade, and anticorruption efforts.
Accountable and transparent governance systems are particularly important—and often lacking—in low-income but resource-rich states. The Center’s work in this area focuses on how government revenues from oil and minerals can be used to improve development outcomes in such countries. CGD vice president and senior fellow Todd Moss leads this work, which includes an innovative proposal, Saving Ghana from Its Oil: The Case for Direct Cash Distribution.
More broadly, the MCA Monitor component of GGD’s Rethinking U.S. Foreign Assistance Program provides policy analysis and research on the operations and effectiveness of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), whose aid compacts are linked to positive governance indicators. The Center aims to contribute to the MCC’s success by drawing lessons from relevant experiences, raising awareness, and making available the findings of related research on aid effectiveness.
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Does foreign military assistance strengthen or further weaken fragile states facing internal conflict? In a new working paper, CGD post-doctoral fellow Oeindrila Dube and co-author Suresh Naidu find that U.S. military assistance to Colombia may increase violence and decrease voter turnout, undermining the perceived value of foreign military assistance.
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CGD vice president and senior fellow Todd Moss and reasearch assistant Lauren Young propose direct cash distribution of Ghana's oil profits to help the country avoid the natural resource curse. One positive effect of the plan would be to strenghten democratic pressure on the government to be good stewards of the resource.
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CGD's MCA Monitor takes a look at which countries pass the control of corruption indicator for fiscal year 2010.
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Director of the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, editor-at-large at U.S. News & World Report, and a senior political analyst for CNN, David Gergen joined CGD president Nancy Birdsall, and CGD senior fellows who authored essays in our recent book, The White House and the World: A Global Development Agenda for the Next U.S. President, for a lively discussion of the prospects for improved U.S. development policy under President Barack Obama.
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With the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC) soon to release the scorecards and performance data that form the basis of the FY09 country selection round, Sheila Herrling and Amy Crone examine how countries fare on the control of corruption indicator, the only “hard hurdle” that countries must pass to qualify for MCC money, in this new MCA Monitor Analysis.
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The White House and the World: A Global Development Agenda for the Next U.S. President shows how modest changes in U.S. policies could greatly improve the lives of poor people in developing countries, thus fostering greater stability, security, and prosperity globally and at home. Center for Global Development experts offer fresh perspectives and practical advice on trade policy, migration, foreign aid, climate change and more. In an introductory essay, CGD President Nancy Birdsall explains why and how the next U.S. president must lead in the creation of a better, safer world.
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Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who will host President Bush on Thursday in the final stop of his five-country Africa tour, has news that may surprise some people: despite the problems in some African countries, things are clearly improving in much of the continent. In a new CGD essay co-authored with senior fellow Steve Radelet, Sirleaf describes how a growing number of African countries are embracing democracy and good governance, strengthening macroeconomic policies, and benefiting from debt relief. These countries are in the midst of an economic and development rebound, with economic growth averaging 5 percent for a decade, poverty rates beginning to fall, and social indicators beginning to improve. The essay concludes with recommendations on how this progress can be sustained and consolidated.
Learn More
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Over the past two decades tens of thousands of children were forcibly recruited or abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. What happens to these former child soldiers when they return to civilian life? This new working paper by CGD post-doctoral fellow Chris Blattman shows that the popular perception of former child soldiers as social misfits and possible threats to society is generally contrary to the facts. His research shows that the experience of forced recruitment generally leads to greater political participation, more than doubling the likelihood that a young person will become a community leader.
Learn More
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Why do new democracies sometimes fail? This CGD brief by visiting fellow Ethan Kapstein explores the underlying reasons for frequent backsliding in the world's fledgling democracies and offers the international community recommendations for helping them stay on track toward political stability. Kapstein argues that the international community should encourage political arrangements in which government leaders are constrained by effective checks and balances, and economic policies that help to ensure that the benefits of growth are widely shared.
Learn more
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The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is supposed to prevent U.S. corporations from giving bribes while conducting business abroad--bribes that encourage corruption in poor countries and stymie development. But some corporations use gaping loopholes in the law and its international counterpart, the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery, to win contracts and enjoy special advantages without fear of prosecution. Combating Corrupt Payments in Foreign Investment Concessions: Closing the Loopholes, Extending the Tools, a new report by CGD non-resident fellow Theodore Moran, describes the nature of these corrupt relationships and the harm they cause. It also offers suggestions on how to prevent them, including re-drafting the U.S. law and the OECD convention, tightening enforcement, and extending the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative to other sectors and industries.
LEARN MORE
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The White House and the World: A Global Development Agenda for the Next U.S. President shows how modest changes in U.S. policies could greatly improve the lives of poor people in developing countries, thus fostering greater stability, security, and prosperity globally and at home. Center for Global Development experts offer fresh perspectives and practical advice on trade policy, migration, foreign aid, climate change and more. In an introductory essay, CGD President Nancy Birdsall explains why and how the next U.S. president must lead in the creation of a better, safer world.
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Does foreign military assistance strengthen or further weaken fragile states facing internal conflict? In a new working paper, CGD post-doctoral fellow Oeindrila Dube and co-author Suresh Naidu find that U.S. military assistance to Colombia may increase violence and decrease voter turnout, undermining the perceived value of foreign military assistance.
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Does foreign aid help develop public institutions and state capacity in developing countries? In this Working Paper, the authors suggest that despite recent calls for increased aid to poor countries by the international community, there may be an "aid-institutions paradox." While donor intentions may be sincere, the authors conclude that it is possible that aid could undermine long-term institutional development, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.
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Critics allege that the World Bank is deeply flawed. Yet the world needs a strong World Bank to help manage development and the related global challenges of the 21st century. Do the Bank's shortcomings put its future at risk? If so, can the Bank be rescued? Rescuing the World Bank, a new book that includes a CGD working group report and selected essays edited by CGD president Nancy Birdsall, offers timely perspectives on challenges that are crucial to the Bank’s future success. Learn more
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Director of the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, editor-at-large at U.S. News & World Report, and a senior political analyst for CNN, David Gergen joined CGD president Nancy Birdsall, and CGD senior fellows who authored essays in our recent book, The White House and the World: A Global Development Agenda for the Next U.S. President, for a lively discussion of the prospects for improved U.S. development policy under President Barack Obama.
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CGD vice president and senior fellow Todd Moss and reasearch assistant Lauren Young propose direct cash distribution of Ghana's oil profits to help the country avoid the natural resource curse. One positive effect of the plan would be to strenghten democratic pressure on the government to be good stewards of the resource.
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A Report of the Commission for Weak States and US National Security
Terrorists training at bases in Afghanistan and Somalia. Transnational crime networks putting down roots in Myanmar/Burma and Central Asia. Poverty, disease, and humanitarian emergencies overwhelming governments in Haiti and Central Africa. A common thread runs through these disparate crises that form the fundamental foreign policy and security challenges of our time. These crises originate in, spread to, and disproportionately affect developing countries where governments lack the capacity, and sometimes the will, to respond.
These weak and failed states matter to American security, American values, and the prospects for global economic growth upon which the American economy depends.
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Zimbabwe has experienced a precipitous collapse in its economy over the past five years. The government blames its economic problems on external forces and drought. We assess these claims, but find that the economic crisis has cost the government far more in key budget resources than has the donor pullout. We show that low rainfall cannot account for the shock either. This leaves economic misrule as the only plausible cause of Zimbabwe’s economic regression, the decline in welfare, and unnecessary deaths of its children.
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Does aid to Africa undermine the emergence of a robust African middle class? If so, what can be done about it? In this new working paper, CGD president Nancy Birdsall argues that high and unpredictable aid flows could be making life harder for Africa's small and medium-sized businesses by, for example, inflating wages and making governments less reliant on domestic revenue—and hence less accountable to taxpayers. She urges that donors systematically monitor such impacts in aid-dependent countries and suggests ways that aid could help to bolster Africa's crucial but fragile middle-income groups. Learn more
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A Better Globalization: Legitimacy, Governance, and Reform by Kemal Dervis is a reformist manifesto that argues that gradual institutional change can produce beneficial results if it is driven by an ambitious long-term vision and by a determination to continually widen the limits of the possible.
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Owen Barder, Visiting Fellow Owen Barder is an economist and Director of aidinfo at Development Initiatives a programme which aims to make information about aid more accessible. He is based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He is also the presenter of Development Drums, a podcast about development issues.
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Pranab Bardhan, Non-Resident Fellow Pranab Bardhan is a Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley where he has been since 1977. Before joining the Berkeley faculty, Bardhan was a professor at MIT and the Delhi School of Economics. Bardhan was the Chief Editor of the Journal of Development Economic, and the co-chair of the MacArthur Foundation-funded Network on the Effects of Inequality on Economic Performance. From 2008-2009 Bardhan held the distinguished Fulbright Siena Chair at the University of Siena, Italy, and from 2010-2011 Bardhan will be the BP Centennial Professor at London School of Economics.
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Nancy Birdsall, President An internationally recognized expert on the impact of rich-country policies on poor people in developing countries, Nancy Birdsall is the author, co-author, or editor of more than a dozen books and over 100 articles in scholarly journals and monographs, published in English and Spanish. Her most recent book is Cash on Delivery: A New Approach to Foreign Aid.
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Chris Blattman, Non-Resident Fellow Chris Blattman is an assistant professor of political science and Economics at Yale University. In addition to being a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development, Chris is a Research Affiliate with Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), a board member of the Journal of Globalization and Development (JGD), and a member of the International Growth Center (IGC). He also acts as a consultant and adviser to the World Bank, UNICEF, the UN Peacebuilding Fund, Uganda’s Office of the Prime Minister, and Liberia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs.
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Thomas Bollyky, Visiting Fellow Thomas J. Bollyky is a visiting fellow at the Center for Global Development where he investigates the legal and ethical issues that arise during the discovery, development, and delivery of essential medical technologies to the developing world.
Learn more from his YouTube interview
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Kimberly Ann Elliott, Senior Fellow Kimberly Ann Elliott is the author or co-author of numerous books and articles on a variety of trade policy and globalization issues, including uses of economic leverage in international negotiations (both economic sanctions for foreign policy goals and trade threats and sanctions in commercial disputes). Her most recent book is Delivering on Doha: Farm Trade and the Poor, which was co-published by CGD and the Peterson Institute (PIIE) in July 2006.
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Ricardo Hausmann, Non-Resident Fellow Ricardo Hausmann is Professor of the Practice of Economic Development at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Previously, he served as the first Chief Economist of the Inter-American Development Bank (1994-2000), where he created the Research Department.
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Michael Kremer, Non-Resident Fellow Michael Kremer is the Gates Professor of Developing Societies in the department of economics at Harvard University, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development. Kremer’s recent research examines education and health in developing countries, immigration, and globalization.
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Carol J. Lancaster, Non-Resident Fellow Carol Lancaster is Director of the Mortara Center for International Studies at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. Before joining the Georgetown faculty in 1996, Professor Lancaster served three years as Deputy Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
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Ruth Levine, Vice President for Programs and Operations, and Senior Fellow Ruth Levine is an internationally recognized expert on global health and health policy. She is a health economist with more than 15 years of experience designing and assessing the effects of social sector programs in Latin America, Eastern Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. In addition to serving as CGD's vice president for programs and operations, she leads the Center's work on global health policy, including chairing a series of working groups on key policy and finance constraints to the effective use of donor funding for health programs in low-income countries.
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Saving Ghana from Its Oil: The Case for Direct Cash Distribution - Working Paper 186
- Oct 19, 2009
CGD vice president and senior fellow Todd Moss and reasearch assistant Lauren Young propose direct cash distribution of Ghana's oil profits to help the country avoid the natural resource curse. One positive effect of the plan would be to strenghten democratic pressure on the government to be good stewards of the resource.
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Which Countries Make the FY2009 Corruption Cut? - MCA Monitor
- Oct 2, 2008
With the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC) soon to release the scorecards and performance data that form the basis of the FY09 country selection round, Sheila Herrling and Amy Crone examine how countries fare on the control of corruption indicator, the only “hard hurdle” that countries must pass to qualify for MCC money, in this new MCA Monitor Analysis.
LEARN MORE
-
The White House and the World: A Global Development Agenda for the Next U.S. President
- Aug 22, 2008
The White House and the World: A Global Development Agenda for the Next U.S. President shows how modest changes in U.S. policies could greatly improve the lives of poor people in developing countries, thus fostering greater stability, security, and prosperity globally and at home. Center for Global Development experts offer fresh perspectives and practical advice on trade policy, migration, foreign aid, climate change and more. In an introductory essay, CGD President Nancy Birdsall explains why and how the next U.S. president must lead in the creation of a better, safer world.
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The Good News Out of Africa: Democracy, Stability, and the Renewal of Growth and Development
- Feb 19, 2008
Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who will host President Bush on Thursday in the final stop of his five-country Africa tour, has news that may surprise some people: despite the problems in some African countries, things are clearly improving in much of the continent. In a new CGD essay co-authored with senior fellow Steve Radelet, Sirleaf describes how a growing number of African countries are embracing democracy and good governance, strengthening macroeconomic policies, and benefiting from debt relief. These countries are in the midst of an economic and development rebound, with economic growth averaging 5 percent for a decade, poverty rates beginning to fall, and social indicators beginning to improve. The essay concludes with recommendations on how this progress can be sustained and consolidated.
Learn More
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From Violence to Voting: War and Political Participation in Uganda - Working Paper 138
- Jan 23, 2008
Over the past two decades tens of thousands of children were forcibly recruited or abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda. What happens to these former child soldiers when they return to civilian life? This new working paper by CGD post-doctoral fellow Chris Blattman shows that the popular perception of former child soldiers as social misfits and possible threats to society is generally contrary to the facts. His research shows that the experience of forced recruitment generally leads to greater political participation, more than doubling the likelihood that a young person will become a community leader.
Learn More
-
Young Democracies in the Balance: Lessons for the International Community
- Jan 17, 2008
Why do new democracies sometimes fail? This CGD brief by visiting fellow Ethan Kapstein explores the underlying reasons for frequent backsliding in the world's fledgling democracies and offers the international community recommendations for helping them stay on track toward political stability. Kapstein argues that the international community should encourage political arrangements in which government leaders are constrained by effective checks and balances, and economic policies that help to ensure that the benefits of growth are widely shared.
Learn more
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Cracking Down on Rich-World Bribe Payers
- Jan 17, 2008
The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is supposed to prevent U.S. corporations from giving bribes while conducting business abroad--bribes that encourage corruption in poor countries and stymie development. But some corporations use gaping loopholes in the law and its international counterpart, the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery, to win contracts and enjoy special advantages without fear of prosecution. Combating Corrupt Payments in Foreign Investment Concessions: Closing the Loopholes, Extending the Tools, a new report by CGD non-resident fellow Theodore Moran, describes the nature of these corrupt relationships and the harm they cause. It also offers suggestions on how to prevent them, including re-drafting the U.S. law and the OECD convention, tightening enforcement, and extending the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative to other sectors and industries.
LEARN MORE
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From the Financial Times
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From Knight Ridder News Service
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From the Spokesman-Review (Spokane, WA)
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From Foreign Affairs, Volume 83 No. 4
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From the Financial Times
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From Progressive Politics
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From the Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, NY)
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Iraq is rich in oil but surprisingly poor in human capital. Oil is a mixed blessing at best, a curse at worst. Among countries rich in oil are many that have failed at economic or political development or both: Angola, Nigeria, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia. Human capital, on the other hand, is an unmitigated blessing. It’s been central to the economic transformation of resource-poor countries, including Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and now China, and in the larger sense of what development is fundamentally about, it’s an end in itself. Indeed, you might say that education and health, the most straightforward indicators of human capital at the individual level, are the point of development.
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From the Washington QuarterlySpring 2003
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