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Farewell Lecture – Governance, Crisis, and the Longer View: Unorthodox Reflections on the New Reality
By Kaufmann | December 5, 2008 3 Comments »
I have been asked to give a farewell address at the World Bank on Anti-Corruption Day. You are welcomed to attend this presentation and discussion.
The rest of this entry which includes the official invitation that went out, with the details of the event and email contact in case you can attend in person. If you live far away, you can participate virtually, through webstreaming, and post or send comments and questions.
The World Bank Institute and the Public Sector Governance Board of the World Bank cordially invite you to a special farewell lecture, entitled:
‘Governance, Crisis, and the Longer View: Unorthodox Reflections on the New Reality’
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008
9.00 a.m. – 10.30 a.m.
The World Bank, Preston Auditorium, 1818 H St., NW, Washington, DC
Main Presentation: Daniel Kaufmann
Hosted and Moderated by: Sanjay Pradhan, Vice President, World Bank Institute
Discussed by:
Randi Ryterman, Acting Director, Public Sector Governance
Joel Hellman, Sector Manager, Governance and Public Sector, South Asia
The World Bank Institute and the Public Sector Governance Board of the World Bank are hosting a farewell lecture by Daniel Kaufmann, outgoing Director of Global Programs at the World Bank Institute and scholar on governance, anti-corruption and development. This special lecture will take place on International Anti-Corruption Day. You are welcomed to take part in this event.
Mr. Kaufmann will share his reflections on governance and corruption, based on years of experience and empirics, and, in view of the current crisis and evolving new world reality, he will also suggest possible directions for the future. After a long and distinguished career at the Bank he is moving on to become a senior scholar at the Brookings Institution where he will research, write, and advise on his fields of expertise.
If you wish to attend this event, email Diane Billups: mailto:dbillups@worldbank.org for advise and details.
If you are unable to attend in person but wish to participate, the event will be webstreamed live and accessible to all at http://worldbank.org/wbi.
Prior and during the event, you can post comments and questions in this blog.
Topics: Aid Effectiveness, Corruption, Measurement Frontiers, Public-Private Linkages, Regulation & Security, Rule of Law, Transparency, Voice and Human Rights, capture, financial crisis | | 3 Comments
January 6th, 2009 at 7:56 am
Thanks for a fantastic lecture, not least the idea of “legal corruption” and the connection you made to the current economic crisis. As an old student of what used to be called “neo-corporatism” in political science, this is to some extent familiar terrain, but the connection to governance and corruption in the financial sector is indeed novel. What most economists don’t realize (and what is totally missing in the curricula in almost all business schools), is the fact that markets are endogenously self-destructive without impartial high quality government. You have to reach at least the PhD level before textbooks used in business schools have index entreis on words like “corruption”, “corporatism” or “clientilism”. And if they do, the blame is put only on government agents, while markets agents are white like new snow.
About the puzzle of the Nordic countries that you mention: At the Quality of Government Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, we are working on this question about the “nordic sonderweg”. Working papers and data can be found at http://www.qog.pol.gu.se (for example WP 2007:3 “Anti-Corruption: A Big Bang Theory”).
January 28th, 2009 at 12:30 am
After reading many of your wonderful thoughts on corruption, I am motivated to write a few lines in your esteemed column.
Jesus is the best Management Guru. He fed 5000 hungry people with five loaves of bread and two fishes in a desert. From this incident, we can learn certain management principles for running our organizations. The customers to whom an organization should cater to are the thousands of shareholders, the thousands of employees and the millions of customers. The World Bank which has been entrusted with the divine task of reduction of poverty in developing nations can be compared to Jesus Christ and the thousands of people fed by Jesus Christ to the millions all over the world who have to be fed and clothed by their national governments through the World Bank assistance.
Jesus did not have any bread or fish with Himself. He was in a desert. He just took the same from a boy who came forward to give the same to Jesus Christ. Today, the world is passing through a global recession. The world is in the desert. The donor nations are likened to the boy who gave what he had in his possession.
First, Jesus was moved with compassion towards the multitudes. Similarly, those who are at the helm of affairs in the World Bank should be moved with compassion in their hearts for the millions around the globe. Before feeding the hungry, Jesus looked up to heaven and thanked God. They should thank God for the funds that they receive from the donor nations. The top management in the World Bank should think that they are on a divine mission to remove poverty and to help the poor nations by way of development.
Second, the donor nations should come forward voluntarily to give their funds to the World Bank without expecting adequate returns on their investments. Though the boy surrendered what he had possessed in his hand, he also received back what he had given to Jesus when the five thousands were fed. The donor nations would not suffer any losses on account of surrendering their funds to the World Bank.
Third, the multitudes that were commanded to sit down on the grass are likened to the millions of ultimate beneficiaries of the World Bank’s assistance. It is the doctrine of multiplication. The seed of loan/grant given to every project needs to be multiplied. It is not the corrupt Judas who stood in the way of the loaves and fishes reaching the multitudes. Even if there is a small number of people who are corrupt either working with the World Bank or with the borrowing agency, this small number cannot succeed in misappropriating the funds meant for the end-users if there is a complete transparency in the process of utilization of the Bank funds.
The World Bank should invent suitable tools to quantify and measure the ultimate benefits that percolate down to the beneficiaries over a period of time. If a road project is funded by the World Bank, there should be stringent and adequate preventive checks by the World Bank staff at every stage to ensure that bitumen and correct sized metals are used to the specified proportions. If the roads constructed are of a good quality, the benefits that would percolate down to many millions would be on a long term basis. But if the roads constructed are of a poor quality, then the benefits would be for a short term only and comparatively a small number of people would benefit from the World Bank assistance. The five loaves and the two fishes got multiplied a few thousand times, leaving behind twelve baskets of leftovers. In other words, the five loaves and the two fishes got multiplied with the result that the five thousands were fed satisfactorily. One million US$ of loan/grant has to get multiplied so that the tangible benefits may be measured in multiples of one million US$.
Fourth, the baskets full of loaves and fishes were delivered to the five thousands in the most transparent manner because Jesus introduced a perfect, corruption preventing system of seating the five thousands on the grass. If the five thousands were not seated on the grass but were asked to collect their food from the twelve disciples, there would have a stampede due to a melee. During such confusion, Judas, the corrupt disciple of Jesus Christ could have diverted some baskets for misappropriation. It is always behind the veil of complex and ambiguous rules, the corrupt works. The monster of corruption raises its ugly head only when there are melee and confusion.
Jesus knew that one of His disciples was corrupt. That did not prevent Him from employing him in the distribution function because there was a total transparency; there was a commitment by all the disciples including Jesus to carry the loaves and the fishes to the end-users.
Who are the millions of end-users or the beneficiaries? They are the village people who use the roads or the people who benefit from the power projects or the people who find employment or the people who are able to buy the goods and services at affordable rates.
Multiplication is not a miracle. It is the exhibit of total transparency in the whole system right from the time of sanction till the time of the tangible benefits percolating down. At every point of operation, there has to be a transparent check by the Bank Staff.
January 28th, 2009 at 11:44 pm
Thanks for publishing this article. There is a minor correction. In the paragraph preceding the last two paragraphs, it is mentioned, “there was a commitment by all the disciples including Jesus…”
It is not Jesus but “Judas”. It should be read as “there was a commitment by all the disciples including Judas …”