Governance/Democracy

More from the Series

Blog Post
CGD Podcast: Preparing for Nigeria’s Elections with Amaka Anku
February 22, 2023
When Nigerian voters head to the polls on Saturday to elect the country’s next president, all of Africa—and beyond—will be watching. CGD's Gyude Moore sits down with Amaka Anku, head of the Eurasia Group's Africa practice, to discuss the advantages and challenges of the leading candidates, the role ...
Blog Post
Scaling the Summit of Democracies
February 23, 2021
One of President Biden’s foreign policy campaign commitments was to hold a “Summit of Democracies” in the first year of his presidency. While skeptics have raised valid concerns—not least which countries should appear on the guestlist— a summit could spur useful reforms at home and abroad.
Blog Post
Decolonizing Aid: Rethinking Humanitarianism Episode 7
January 11, 2021
The police killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and several other Black Americans forced many around the world to look introspectively and critically at systemic power imbalances. The aid sector was no exception, with growing calls for it to be decolonised. But movements often falter when i...
Blog Post
8 Principles of Direct Democracy
July 29, 2019
We propose eight principles of direct democracy that shall provide guidance on the basic premises to be considered when direct democratic decision-making institutions are constituted. While institutional setups vary immensely across countries, there may exist a number of fundamental propositions tha...
Blog Post
How Can Countries Escape the Natural Resource Curse? Answer: Democracy
February 07, 2019
How can countries escape the natural resource curse? And to what extent do cohesive and democratic institutions facilitate this process? In a new CGD working paper, we look at Nigeria—often seen as the prime example of a country cursed by its wealth. We show that when political institutio...
WORKING PAPERS
Cohesive Institutions and Political Violence - Working Paper 503
February 07, 2019
Can institutionalized transfers of resource rents be a source of civil conflict? Are cohesive institutions better at managing conflicts over distribution? We exploit exogenous variation in revenue disbursements to local governments and use new data on local democratic institutions in Nigeria to answ...
TESTIMONY
US Policy Responses to Zimbabwe’s Illusory Reforms
December 06, 2018
“Events since the election have only reinforced that pessimism. We have heard lots of rhetoric on democracy, national reconciliation, and economic reform. We can point to a few token gestures of change. But below the surface, very little, if any, meaningful structural change has occurred.&rdqu...