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The Dilemmas of Good Governance: A Latin American Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

George Philip
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Extract

DURING THE 1990S, THE INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS (IFIS) have gone beyond supporting free-market economics via the socalled Washington consensus which advocated primarily marketoriented reform, to adopt a broader notion of ‘good governance’ which includes political as well as economic factors. The World Bank's Development Report 1997; The State in a Changing World is a key document in explaining this new thinking. It lays out the desirability of democracy, the rule of law and effective democratic regulation alongside the market-oriented economic policies and fiscal orthodoxy which IFIs have long advocated. There is no doubt that governance matters to development and to that extent the Report is welcome. The Report also makes a number of worthwhile points about administrative good practice and reform. However some scepticism is in order too. This is because the Bank's notion of ‘good governance’ is too idealistic, insufficiently historically specific and over-confident in respect of what we do know and can know about the politics of development.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 34 , Issue 2 , April 1999 , pp. 226 - 242
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1999

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References

1 The components of the ‘Washington consensus’ are listed in Williamson, J. (ed.), Latin American Adjustment: How Much has Happened?, Washington DC, Institute for International Economics, 1990.Google Scholar

2 World Bank, World Development Report 1997, Oxford University Press, 1997.

3 See the special issue of Third World Quarterly, 17:4 (Autumn 1996).

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6 See, for example, Edwards, S., Crisis and Reform in Latin America: From Despair to Hope, pubd for World Bank by Oxford University Press, 1995.Google Scholar

7 Phillips, ‘Globalisation’.

8 See the somewhat polemical but well‐researched account by Caufield, C., Masters of Illusion: the World Bank and the Poverty of Nations, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1996.Google Scholar

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10 For example, Edwards, , Crisis and Reform in Latin America.Google Scholar

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