A recent report by the Bank's Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) entitled Public Sector Reform: What Works and Why? offers interesting insights into the recent work on governance at the Bank. The report notes that about one-sixth of Bank support in lending and advisory services now goes into public sector reform, although it makes the argument that most of this actually goes to reform of financial management.
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In development practice today, when you ask ‘How do you improve governance systems in developing countries in order to improve the lives of the poor?’ the so-called hard skills dominate the discourse. But what are these so-called hard skills? At their most mind-numbing these are number-crunching skills derived from a variety of quantitative social science disciplines. Beyond that these are skills in technical analysis and solution-finding. So, if you want to curb corruption in Country XYZ you find the technical experts on building world class procurement and other systems send in accountants and the like and so on. You design systems, set up an Anti-Corruption Commission. You deploy your notion of ‘best practice’ in the relevant technical field. All this is well and good but will that blow a corrupt public political culture away and with it the broader tolerance of corruption by the population at large? |
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Tom Jacobson, Professor and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the School of Communications and Theater, Temple University. 
Caroline Jaine, 
Taeku Lee, Associate Professor of Political Science and Visiting Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley. 
