Warm Welcome to "The Kaufmann Governance Post"

Posted by Michel Lazare

Daniel Kaufmann, a well-known authority on governance and one of the key governance experts at the World Bank, has just launched a personal blog: "The Kaufmann Governance Post.

In his first few posts, he shares his view that governance issues are by and large still misunderstood and indicates his intention to clarify misunderstandings with a series of posts to debunk myths about governance. For instance, the March 3 post is about: Myth #1.  Developing countries, and governments in particular, are all rife with corruption, while corruption is virtually absent in much of the rich industrialized world.  Worth reading.

Beyond the substance, PFM Blog also notes the modesty and human dimension relfected in the presentation pages of The Kaufmann Governance Post. Long life and full success to this new blog.

Here are a few pieces of information on The Kaufmann Governance Post and on Daniel Kaufmann himself:

We reproduce here his March 1 post, which gives a flavor of what Daniel Kaufmann's wants to achieve with the publication of his blog:

"In spite of progress in this field over the past decade, particularly in terms of research, measurement, and some lessons from experience, governance and corruption remain controversial and often misunderstood topics.  There are a number of common misconceptions and popular notions which are now coming under challenge as a result of the  analysis of the evidence.   

At the risk of oversimplifying, and for the sake of generating debate, I will put forward some of these misunderstood or popularized notions as “myths” on governance and corruption, acknowledging that the reality is often more nuanced. The following blog posts will address some of such common “myths”.

The expectation is not that there will full consensus, of course.  A major aim of this blog is in fact to spur debate by bringing points that elicit counterpoints.  In fact, in later postings, not necessarily about “myths’, I will be inserting posts bringing a a variety of different and often opposing perspectives on a particular issue, with contributions by others in the field."

Daniel Kaufmann is in particular one of the "fathers" of the World bank-supported Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) project which reports aggregate and individual governance indicators for 212 countries and territories over the period 1996–2006, for six dimensions of governance:

	Voice and Accountability
	Political Stability and Absence of Violence
	Government Effectiveness
	Regulatory Quality
	Rule of Law
	Control of Corruption

See also his Wikipedia page.

Comments

[Daniel Kaufmann]

Your warm and kind welcome to my governance blog is much appreciated. Your blog is very useful to us, in fact. One area of potential synergy between both blogs relates to PFM databases. In that context, it may be of interest to the PFM and broader governance community to have your recommended list of empirical databases on PFM issues that permit cross-country comparisons, as well as those datasets that monitor and assess in-depth a country over time. For instance, do you provide access to the IMF's 'ROSC' Fiscal Transparency database? To the World Bank's PEFA database? Also in this context check out the relevant Open Budget Index (www.openbudgetindex.org) constructed by the International Budget Initiative NGO. Your assessment of the pros and cons (and what each one is best suited for)in each one of these and other such PFM empirical assessment databases would be very valuable to many, as well as having access to references to review articles evaluating these data initiatives.

[Vinay]

thanks for heads up on kaufmann blog and what you say on it is on the mark, and the emphasis those guys put on data is important. also worth reading is the Economist article on rule of law this week, and the blog entry on it by kaufmann in his blog. neither the article in the Economist nor kaufmann nor you in your interesting pfm blog dare to say it, but does anybody wonder whether all the technical improvements imf and others have pushed over the years for PFM to improve are not enough in many countries because the problem is not technical but political governance and rule of law instead?

[Ronald B. Brinn, Millennium Forum of NGO's]

Dear Mr. Kaufmann:

Since 1988, I have been an NGO Voice for Repatriations and Global Asset
Sharing, based on the UN provision for illicit asset seizures in the UN
Convention Against Organized Crime. Recently, the World Bank and the UNODC
have partnered on the Star initiative, and I hope we will see some concete
outcomes in the repatriation of stolen assets. My understanding is that
ther are over $1 trillion in illicit funds moving around the globe. When will we
see the results of the star programme? Surely, there are ample targets in
both rich and poor nations and regions. I recommended regional pilot projects
at the UN Crime Congress at Bangkok in 2005.

Sincerely,

Ronald B. Brinn
Millennium Forum
of NGO's
Global325@aol.com

[Ronald B. Brinn, Millennium Forum of NGO's]

Dear Mr. Kaufmann:

It was a real pleasure and honor to meet you at your
office during the recent World Bank/IMF Spring Meetings.
The importance of Good Governance (always seemed a redundant expression to me),has never been greater. The world financial
markets are straining under the weight of over 5 trillion
in illicit assets, and it appears that this number will grow
exponentially as mega-economies expand away from licit enterprise to escape taxation and ODA payments. This should not be construed as a fatalist or cynical outlook. With the advent of new tracking technologies, and the advent of global
asset repatriations, we may see the start of a new source of
funding to address the MDG's by 2015.

Best regards,

Ronald B. Brinn
Millennium Forum

[Ashleejames]

Daniel Kaufmann is regarded as a leading expert, researcher, and policy adviser on governance and development.With his team, he has pioneered new approaches to construct indicatorsand analyze country governance as well as survey methodologiesfor good governance and anti-corruption programs around the world, and to provide practical advice to countries. His research on economic development, governance, the unofficial economy, macro-economics, investment, corruption, privatization, and urban and labor economics, has been published in leading journals
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Ashleejames