A New Strategy for Anti-Corruption

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Bo Rothstein
Keyword(s):  
Good Governance ◽  
Alternative Theory ◽  
Economic Approach ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
Principal Agent Theory ◽  
Agent Theory ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
New Strategy

Corruption in its various forms has turned out to be a resilient, sometimes well-organized, and well-entrenched enemy. It is difficult to trace any major results from the “good governance” programs the World Bank and other organizations have launched since the mid-1990s, the bulk of which have almost exclusively been guided by an economic approach called “the principal-agent” theory. It is argued that this theory is particularly ill-suited to the corruption problem. An alternative theory is presented based on the social contract tradition in political philosophy. This implies that corruption should be understood as a problem of collective actions which leads to very different policy recommendations for how countries can get corruption under control. The corruption problem is neither based in the historically inherited culture of a society, nor its legal system. Instead, most of the problem of corruption exists in what in organizations theory is known as “standard operating procedures.”

The Social Responsibility of the Firm

2021 ◽  
pp. 168-188
Author(s):  
Alvaro Nascimento
Keyword(s):  
Legal Framework ◽  
Corporate Management ◽  
Principal Agent Theory ◽  
Agent Theory ◽  
Boundaries Of The Firm ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
World Economic ◽  
Institutional Boundaries ◽  
Legal Grounds

This chapter pursues a normative approach to corporate governance, bridging economic theory on the nature of the firm and corporate management strategy. It intends to show that from a welfare economics perspective there is room for improvement if governments are willing to revisit the legal framework and redesign the institutional boundaries of the firm. In concrete, echoing concerns being put forward by the World Economic Forum and other international organisations, it is proposed that the social accountability of the modern corporation and its institutional boundaries should be revisited on legal grounds. A new role for top management is advanced in the context of principal-agent theory.

scholarly journals International Organizations in Education: New Takes on Old Paradigms

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-161
Author(s):  
Dennis Niemann
Keyword(s):  
International Organizations ◽  
Global Education ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Cultural Value ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Global Discourse ◽  
Education Discourse ◽  
Over Time

AbstractIn Chap. 10.1007/978-3-030-78885-8_5, Dennis Niemann analyzes international organizations (IOs) and their education ideas. Different ideological paradigms dominated the global education discourse at different periods. Fundamentally, they revolve around two poles of an economic utilitarian view on education and on an interpretation that emphasizes the social and cultural value of education. Both leitmotifs were influenced by general developments in world politics, and they were also reflected within IOs. Niemann analyzes how global education IOs, specifically the World Bank, the OECD, UNESCO, and the ILO, influenced the global discourse on education. First, he argues that within the IOs, the antipodal views on education became more complementary over time. Second, he demonstrates the pattern of interaction between the IOs has also changed from competition to cooperation.

Dimensions of Good Governance

2015 ◽  
pp. 176-190
Author(s):  
Chhanda Mandal ◽  
Anita Chattopadhyay Gupta
Keyword(s):  
Good Governance ◽  
Economic Recession ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Income Differentials ◽  
Governance Indicators ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Resilience Factors ◽  
The Relationship

Effectiveness of governance is realised through its responses to any financial crisis. This was put in question as the Great Recession affected the core economies severely. This study empirically investigated the relationship between accountability, corruption, and government effectiveness during the period 2002-2012. Our main purpose was to highlight the sizable gap that exists in the performance literature on cross-country studies especially against the changing economic world scenario. A comparison of the World Bank governance indicators between three countries chosen on the basis of income differentials and hence different adaptive characteristics of each country to the economic recession has been studied. The behavior of the governance indicators in the context of the world has been examined against the background of the shock that the depression had brought and the resilience factors embedded within the indicators in the face of the shocks were studied.

scholarly journals Chopping the world into bits: Africa, the World Bank, and the good governance norm

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 332-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Gallagher
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
World Bank ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
The Other ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The World

This article explores norms as idealizations, in an attempt to grasp their significance as projects for international organizations. We can think about norms as ‘standards of proper behaviour’. In this sense they are somehow natural, things to be taken for granted, noticed only really when they are absent. We can also think about norms as ‘understandings about what is good and appropriate’. In this sense, norms embody a stronger sense of virtue and an ability to enable progress or improvement. Norms become ideal when they are able to conflate what is good with what is appropriate, standard, or proper. It is when the good becomes ‘natural’ that a norm appears immanent and non-contestable, and so acquires an idealized form.45Along with the other articles in this special issue, I will attempt to challenge some of the complacency surrounding the apparent naturalness and universality of norms employed in international relations.

scholarly journals New possibilities of identifying social capital for its use in sustainable rural development

2012 ◽  
Vol 51 (No. 2) ◽  
pp. 57-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Lošťák
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Rural Development ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Social Acceptance ◽  
Sustainable Rural Development ◽  
New Methods ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

In relation to sustainable rural development, the paper starts with the question of its conditions. One of them is social acceptance of various projects or programmes. This issue is joined with the co-ordination of human activities. The mechanism facilitating the co-ordination in contemporary societies is related to social capital. Its concept is outlined through the references to the basic literature about the topic. Using content analysis, based on the quantification of the categories created through the analysis of the literature about the topic, the social capital in selected municipalities is investigated. The main aim of the paper, however, is to show the role of this method in social capital fast identification. Although the approach necessitates further elaboration, it can be considered as the first important step in the practice of development activities. The background of the paper reflects the challenges of the World Bank concerning the elaboration and development of the new methods of measuring social capital.

Developing and Spreading a Social Investment Perspective

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Jenson
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
World Bank ◽  
Policy Instrument ◽  
Capital Investments ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Capital Investments ◽  
Capital Development

In the mid-1990s, the practice of international organizations began to cohere around the social investment perspective, with strategies that were child-centred and advocated human capital investments for economic growth and social development. This chapter examines the World Bank, which endorsed the policy instrument of conditional cash transfers (CCT) to allow very poor families to invest in children’s health and education—a stock-plus-buffer strategy. Then it scans the OECD, which recommended early childhood education to ensure human capital development and the labour-market activation of parents—a stock-plus-flow strategy. Both organizations developed anti-poverty positions with attention to the intergenerational transfer of disadvantage and investments in human capital. This similarity has declined in recent years, as the World Bank incorporated the social investment perspective into its new inclusive growth frame, while the OECD turned its attention to problems of inequality rather than poverty and thereby associated itself less with the social investment perspective.

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