Governance

More from the Series

Blog Post

What We’d Like to Happen at the UK Government’s Anti-Corruption Summit

Charles Kenny et al.

May 10, 2016

“For too long there has been a taboo about tackling [corruption] head on. The summit will change that.” That, at least, is the optimistic pronouncement from the leader of Her Majesty’s Government ahead of the UK anti-corruption summit in London this week.

Blog Post

Comment, Please on a Draft Book on Aid, Donors, and Corruption

Charles Kenny

April 25, 2016

Donors frequently suggest corruption is the biggest obstacle to development and aid effectiveness, and that they can accurately measure corruption risk while protecting their projects from it at a reasonable cost. It isn’t and they can’t. Below, a brief synopsis.

POLICY PAPER

Anti-Corruption Strategies in Foreign Aid: From Controls to Results

William Savedoff

March 20, 2016

Corruption is an obstacle to social and economic progress in developing countries yet we still know very little about the effectiveness of anti-corruption efforts and their impact on development impact. This essay looks at 25 years of efforts by foreign aid agencies to combat corruption and proposes...

WORKING PAPER

Taxes: Price of Civilization or Tribute to Leviathan? - Working Paper 412

Lant Pritchett

and

Yamini Aiyar

August 31, 2015

There are two dominant narratives about taxation.  In one, taxes are the “price we pay for a civilized society” (Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.).  In this view taxes are not a necessary evil (as in the pairing of “death and taxes” as inevitable) but a positive good: more...