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Moene, Kalle; Søreide, Tina --- "Good governance facades" [2015] ELECD 1091; in Rose-Ackerman, Susan; Lagunes, Paul (eds), "Greed, Corruption, and the Modern State" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015) 46

Book Title: Greed, Corruption, and the Modern State

Editor(s): Rose-Ackerman, Susan; Lagunes, Paul

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781784714697

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: Good governance facades

Author(s): Moene, Kalle; Søreide, Tina

Number of pages: 25

Abstract/Description:

Fashions come and go in the development community. When a policy idea becomes popular, some governments implement a cosmetic variant of the policy. What looks like development, are institutional facades; pretty from the outside, ugly from the inside. A good governance facade can be introduced deliberately to mislead observers and stakeholders to cover political theft. An example from the past is development planning, introduced with good intentions but sometimes exploited as a cover for corruption. In the 1960s donors rewarded developing countries that introduced five-year plans by offering more aid. Recipient governments were therefore tempted to come up with cosmetic plans to satisfy foreign donors rather than the needs of their citizens. With recipient governments appearing to follow the suggestions from development experts, the donors raised few questions about their actual performance. Accordingly, it became possible for recipients to appropriate aid money for personal enrichment without facing reactions from the donor community. Another example is the donor community’s demand for privatization in the 1980s and 1990s. In some cases cosmetic privatization led to unhealthy reductions in the provision of public goods rather than to healthy market orientation. Both the downsizing of government and the sale of underpriced assets to friends and allies, made it possible for the elite in some countries to grab more rents.