Latest Resources
Internal Government Assessments of the Quality of Governance in China
Article / Working Paper, Asia and the Pacific, Civil Society, Academic/Think TankAuthoritarian governments produce internal assessments of the quality of governance that allow them to identify and address brewing problems before they threaten regime stability. This paper provides a theory of how the information necessary to produce such assessments is gathered. The empirical focus of the paper is on China, which is used to illustrate how information-gathering channels in...
Governance assessments for local stakeholders: What the World Governance Assessment offers
Article / Working Paper, Civil Society, Local Governance and Decentralization, Academic/Think TankThis report introduces the basic features of the World Governance Assessment (WGA) and highlights main findings of the second round of WGA that was conducted in 10 countries in the global South during 2006. The report also presents an overview of the methodology and the special Study Management System, a capacity-building component that is also an important part of what WGA offers. The...
Working Paper | Mobilisation associative et politique des citoyens maliens : les disparités socioéconomiques et régionales
Article / Working Paper, Civil Society, Academic/Think TankLe degré d’engagement associatif et/ou politique des citoyens constitue le thermomètre du dynamisme démocratique et civique d’un pays. Cet engagement est notamment indispensable dans les jeunes démocraties encore fragiles et pauvres comme celle du Mali. Il s’agit, dans le cadre de cette étude, d’évaluer, à l’aune de la participation politique et associative, l’engagement citoyen au Mali. Pour...
Citizen-led accountability Recommendations and key research findings for the post-2015 agenda
Article / Working Paper, Civil Society, Academic/Think TankPeople living in the greatest poverty and marginalisation want institutions at all levels that they can trust and are accountable, responsive and effective. According to the poorest and most marginalised groups in over 100 countries, a global framework must guarantee development that leaves no one behind; which does not demand impossible choices of the poorest and most vulnerable; which...
Citizen-Centric Governance Indicators: Measuring and Monitoring Governance by Listening to the People
Article / Working Paper, Civil Society, Academic/Think TankThis paper discusses governance indicators purporting to measure various aspects of governance quality. It argues that if governance assessments have to be useful for policy purposes, they must conceptualize governance and provide uniform and consistent criteria for measuring governance across countries and over time. The first section discusses the conceptual issues in measuring governance...
Briefing | Malawi | More than just ‘demand’: Malawi’s public-service community scorecard
Article / Working Paper, Civil Society, Governance and MDG, Public Administration, Civil SocietyCommunity-based monitoring instruments, such as scorecards, are used increasingly to complement and reinforce conventional mechanisms to strengthen accountability and performance in public-service delivery. While they have been backed by the international community, there is limited evidence on how they work in practice and what conditions they need to be effective. This Project Briefing seeks...
The Benefits of a Big Tent: Opening Up Government in Developing Countries
Article / Working Paper, Civil Society, Public Administration, Academic/Think TankBringing open data and open government under a single banner, Yu and Robinson argue, leads to conceptual muddling that ultimately impedes progress for both projects. They express a concern that superficial commitments to open data “can placate the public’s appetite for transparency.” Drawing on our experiences with the Kenya Open Data Initiative and the Open Government Partnership, we argue...
Monitoring and Evaluation when Politics Matters l Background Paper
Article / Working Paper, Civil Society, Civil SocietyEveryone agrees that there is a crucial role for research and evidence in development policy-making. But the apparently simple claim that policy decisions should be based upon clear and rigorous evidence of value and effectiveness masks the inherently political – and normative - nature of how we define what counts as ‘valid evidence’, and what this means for policy decisions. This is the...
Examining the State: a Foucauldian perspective on international ‘governance indicators’
Article / Working Paper, Civil SocietyThis paper offers a critical perspective on the growing phenomenon of governance indicators in international politics. I employ a governmentality approach to shed light on the political meanings and outcomes of the increasing tendency of various international actors to rate and rank the governance capacities and performances of states. In particular, I argue that, beyond being an analytic tool...
Measuring well-being I different approaches, their implications and an illustration | Development Progress
Africa, Article / Working Paper, Asia and the Pacific, Civil Society, Academic/Think TankThis Project Note examines three methods of measuring progress that allow us to compare the performance of different countries. It argues that the methods we employ to measure progress matter, illustrating the diverse results that are generated in a comparison of performance in East Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. The note summarises how the findings inform the measurement component of ODI’s...