Tag Archives: China
How Do States Learn?
Everyone in the development field recognizes that learning is essential to development. But what kind of learning matters most?
For most major development actors, the emphasis is squarely on individual learning. Achieving universal primary education, for instance, is the second Millennium Development Goal, coming just after ending poverty and hunger. Organizations such as the World Bank believe that education is “universally recognized as one of the most fundamental building blocks for human development and poverty reduction,” and that, as DFID puts it, it is “fundamental to everything we do.”
Yet, societies and states must also learn if they are to develop the new institutions, new knowledge, and new capacities that are essential to creating wealth, improving governance, and enhancing resilience. And this larger, macro level learning requires very different types of investments from those individuals need—investments that rarely get prioritized in the development field. (more…)
Can Informal Accountability Replace Elections?
Improving the accountability of leaders tops the agenda of just about everyone involved with development. But the preferred solution—elections—often comes up short in countries with divided populations and democratic structures that are not well institutionalized. There is a great need for alternatives.
Such alternatives can take many forms—including improving governance, enhancing the rule of law, promoting transparency, decentralizing government (where leaders might be held more accountable in some cases), ensuring equity in governance and the distribution of resources (which may matter more than better governance), and increasing the leverage of societal groups to monitor the performance of state officials.
One neglected area that deserves much more attention is promoting social cohesion. Indeed, it can be argued that the greatest difference between the successful developmental states and their far less successful developing country peers is the degree of social cohesion.
But how do you promote social cohesion when it is lacking? (more…)
Promoting Human Rights in non Western Countries
A key challenge faced by those engaged in international human rights policy and practice is adopting an effective framework for protecting and promoting human rights around the world in a way that preserves and articulates their universal nature, while at the same time respecting local values and practices.
One way to approach this challenge is to examine values, norms, customs and practices in non-Western cultures which can act as ‘receptors’ for human rights principles and practice. A new Dutch collaborative research project adopts just such an approach (and is thus called the ‘Receptor Approach’). It brings together experts from around the world and from a variety of disciplines – law, anthropology, sociology, political science, international relations and philosophy among others. (more…)
More on Africa, East Asia, Middle East and North Africa, Policies, Poverty, Religion, South Asia
Fukuyama’s New Initiative on Governance
Francis Fukuyama, now over at Stanford, has launched a new project to conceptualize and measure governance, with the aim to create a new set of measurements that can be applied specifically to China and the United States.
As he writes here, “The Governance Project” will seek a:
definition of governance that excludes the degree to which governments are either democratic or subject to a rule of law that constrains the executive. The reason for this is simple: it seems obvious to me that countries can be better or worse governed regardless of whether they are liberal democracies or not. Singapore is not Zimbabwe, despite the fact that neither is democratic. . . . (more…)
More on East Asia, Governance, North America, Politics
