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Journal ArticleDOI

Good Enough Governance: Poverty Reduction and Reform in Developing Countries

Merilee S. Grindle
- 01 Oct 2004 - 
- Vol. 17, Iss: 4, pp 525-548
TLDR
The good governance agenda is unrealistically long and growing longer over time as discussed by the authors, and there is little guidance about what's essential and what's not, what should come first and what should follow, what can be achieved in the short term and what can only be achieved over the longer term, what is feasible and what is not, and more attention is given to sorting out these questions, "good enough governance" may become a more realistic goal for many countries faced with the goal of reducing poverty.
Abstract
The good governance agenda is unrealistically long and growing longer over time. Among the multitude of governance reforms that “must be done” to encourage development and reduce poverty, there is little guidance about what's essential and what's not, what should come first and what should follow, what can be achieved in the short term and what can only be achieved over the longer term, what is feasible and what is not. If more attention is given to sorting out these questions, “good enough governance” may become a more realistic goal for many countries faced with the goal of reducing poverty. Working toward good enough governance means accepting a more nuanced understanding of the evolution of institutions and government capabilities; being explicit about trade-offs and priorities in a world in which all good things cannot be pursued at once; learning about what's working rather than focusing solely on governance gaps; taking the role of government in poverty alleviation seriously; and grounding action in the contextual realities of each country.

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI

What Is Quality of Government? A Theory of Impartial Government Institutions

TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose a more coherent and specific definition of QoG: the impartiality of institutions that exercise government authority, which they relate to a series of criticisms stemming from the fields of public administration, public choice, multiculturalism, and feminism.
Journal ArticleDOI

What Is Governance

TL;DR: In this article, the authors pointed out the poor state of empirical measures of the quality of states, that is, executive branches and their bureaucracies, and suggested four approaches: (1) procedural measures, such as the Weberian criteria of bureaucratic modernity; (2) capacity measures, which include both resources and degree of professionalization; (3) output measures; and (4) measures of bureaucratic autonomy.
Journal ArticleDOI

Good Enough Governance Revisited

TL;DR: The concept of good enough governance provides a platform for questioning the long menu of institutional changes and capacity-building initiatives currently deemed important (or essential) for development, however, it falls short of being a tool to explore what, specifically, needs to be done in any real world context.
Journal ArticleDOI

Social licence and mining: A critical perspective

TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that a necessary first step in this process is for industry to reconcile its internal risk-orientation with external expectations which requires a less defensive and more constructive approach to stakeholder engagement and collaboration.
References
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Book

Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance

TL;DR: Douglass C. North as discussed by the authors developed an analytical framework for explaining the ways in which institutions and institutional change affect the performance of economies, both at a given time and over time.
Posted Content

Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance

TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the role that institutions, defined as the humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction, play in economic performance and how those institutions change and how a model of dynamic institutions explains the differential performance of economies through time.
MonographDOI

Governing the market: economic theory and the role of government in East Asian industrialization

Robert Hunter Wade
- 01 Jan 1990 - 
TL;DR: Wade's Governing the market quickly established itself as a standard in contemporary political economy as discussed by the authors, and the synergy between markets and public administration and the way allocation decisions were divided between markets, public administration, and corporations was examined.
Journal ArticleDOI

The Logic of the Developmental State@@@Asia's Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization@@@The Political Economy of the New Asian Industrialism@@@MITI and the Japanese Miracle@@@Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialization

TL;DR: Wade as mentioned in this paper reviewed the debate about industrial policy in East and Southeast Asia and chronicles the changing fortunes of these economies over the 1990s, and extended the original argument to explain the boom of the first half of the decade and the crash of the second, stressing the links between corporations, banks, governments, international capital markets and the International Monetary Fund.
Trending Questions (1)
How to fix governance in poor countries?

Working towards "good enough governance" involves prioritizing essential reforms, understanding trade-offs, learning from successes, emphasizing government's role in poverty reduction, and adapting actions to each country's context.