Civil Society and Improved Governance in Developing Countries

Transcript

FRANCIS FUKUYAMA: I am reasonably confident based both on the theory and the actual practice of development that the governance problem is really at the core, and that if you could solve these governance problems in states that have weak governance or highly-corrupt governments or governments that are simply not interested in developmental objectives, then you would solve a great deal of the development problems such that inputs of resources would then have a much more linear relationship to good development outcomes.

If you just think of something like the Millennium Development Goals that were mentioned in the session this morning, if countries were actually to meet this .7 percent target, developed countries in terms of resources made available for development, it would amount in a certain way to something like a natural resource boom because there would be this big influx of money to solve various public health and other kinds of problems, and if you do not have the right governance mechanisms in order to manage that flow of expenditures and to actually set up the public health systems and to make sure that the resources reach the poor people at which they are targeted, you in a way could end up worse off than previously once that money goes away one thing we know from the history of development is that these fads do not last forever.

So fixing the governance problem is pretty important.