Governance and economy: a review

D. Brautigam

No 815, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Governments determine how well, or how poorly, markets function. This simple truth explains the current concern with"governance"as the world shifts toward an overwhelming endorsement of markets as the base of economic activity. If governments are assumed to be neutral, and committed to serving the public good, then deviations from optimum economic performance can generally be corrected simply through policy reform, or through improving information systems. To understand economic performance, it is important to factor in the political role of governments. The exercise of power and authority lies at the heart of governance. Governments use their power and authority to establish and maintain the formal and informal framework of institutions that regulate social and economic interaction. This paper attempts to give the current concern with governance an historical dimension, and to locate governance as a technical and intellectual issue within a body of literature that has long addressed these concerns. It examines a limited number of governance dimensions -- accountability (including legitimacy, institutional pluralism and participation), openness and transparency, and predictability (or the rule of law) -- in a selective review of recent social science literature. The paper makes no claim to be exhaustive, but rather to offer an introduction to recent work which is built in part upon the analysis of how politics and economics interact in shaping economic development.

Keywords: National Governance; Governance Indicators; Corruption&Anitcorruption Law; Public Sector Corruption&Anticorruption Measures; Banks&Banking Reform (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1991-12-31
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSC ... d/PDF/multi0page.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:815

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi (ryazigi@worldbank.org).