This paper argues that the World Bank promotes good governance agenda mostly to its aid recipient member states as a conditionality of aid. The bank’s good governance promotion is aid conditionality – and to ensure good governance agenda, it applies mainly to its aid/loan recipient countries, in order to undertake institutional reforms.
While the standard of good governance often measures the value of the western liberal democratic states against the aid/loan recipient developing states.
By Mohamed O. Hagi Mohamoud
Abstract
This paper endeavors to explain the good governance notion of the World Bank Group. It seeks to answer whether the bank fairly and impartially promotes good governance to all its member states, or merely imposes a system of conditionality to its aid recipient countries. It critically examines whether the bank’s practical approach of good governance is to reform the institutions of the developing countries.
On the other hand, the paper critically assesses the methodological approach of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI). The peace also highlights the critics of good governance from the idea of development. Regarding aid and loan effectiveness, it demonstrates the World Bank’s promotion of good governance to its developing countries.
Therefore, the paper suggests that good governance often measures the value of the west against the developing world. It critically evaluates whether good governance itself is a neoliberal model, and a standard to measure the institutions of the developing nations against the west.
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I. INTRODUCTION
The World Bank endorsed the concept of good governance and put on its agenda several decades ago. The term has emerged at the end of the 1980s. It has been on the agenda of development institutions since 1992 (World Bank 1989; Maldonado, 2010). Although, the World Bank’s good governance agenda turned out to be the ‘’core of its development strategy’’, the institution’s doctrine on how power is exercised in the administration and management of the country’s social resources and economic development is multifaceted (Santiso, 2001).
What prompted the World Bank to implement such a debated policy is the concern over the effectiveness of aid from the developing countries (World Bank, 1989). Since the 1990s, the World Bank’s aid strategy has undergone major reassessment. The bank came up with fundamental change, which has shifted its policies and strategies (Santiso, 2001). However, there are always controversies on how the bank promotes good governance agenda, and whether the strategy of good governance agenda applies to all its member states.
To narrow the scope of the question; the paper argues that the World Bank promotes good governance agenda mostly to its aid recipient member states as a conditionality of aid. The bank’s good governance promotion is aid conditionality – and to ensure good governance agenda, it applies mainly to its aid/loan recipient countries, in order to undertake institutional reforms. While the standard of good governance often measures the value of the western liberal democratic states against the aid/loan recipient developing states.
Firstly, the paper seeks to examine the main sets of theoretical frameworks of good governance – mainly from the bank’s perspective. It will critically assess the bank’s notion of good governance. This includes the significant governance reports from the World Bank, its analysis of corruption, bad governance, and other underlying issues of borrowing countries (Lateef, 2016).
On the other hand, it will highlight the critics of good governance from the idea of development. The paper demonstrates the World Bank’s promotion of good governance in relation to aid and loan effectiveness. It also critically assess the methodological approach of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI). Finally, the paper theoretically describes whether the governance nature of the developed countries deserves to follow suit?
II. THEORETICAL EXPLANATION OF GOOD GOVERNANCE
The most problematic part of good governance is that there is no single theoretical definition of the term in which the existing literature has agreed-upon (Aubut, 2004). Nonetheless, the neoliberal definition of good governance is well known – and it is the most popular notion of all – this is because, the intergovernmental and international organizations, including the World Bank, promote good governance agenda throughout most of their development programs. However, the various studies definition of the neoliberal notion of good governance differs significantly.
For example, each organization such as the EOCD, Institute of Governance, Ottawa, Commission on Global Governance, and the World Bank itself has its own definition of good governance (Weiss, 2010). On the other hand, it is worth mentioning the cultural context of other peoples – the developing countries and their own way of understanding good governance. When defining good governance as the western notion of governance is not universally applicable, the whole matter is to be given careful consideration (Aubut, 2004 and Doornbos, 2001).
Nevertheless, the different approaches claim of good governance include; the lessons from the World Bank experience, which stated that “countries that have combined institutional improvements with market-oriented policy reforms and greater engagement with the world economy saw their capita incomes grow in the 1990s at the very rapid pace of 5 percent per year” (Goldin, Rogers, and Sterns, 2002). Whilst, the theoretical definition of the World Bank pointed out “the manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country’s economic and social resources for development” (WB, 1992:1). This ‘’country’s economic and social resources for development’’ supports the neoliberal view of governance whereas the main arguments state that lack of good governance leads to economic development challenges.
The World Banks’ notion is to improve the public management system as well as the quality of institutions; therefore, the peoples of the global south countries might have better life chances if they adopt good governance agenda (Aubut, 2004). However, critics of good governance argue that the notion of the World Bank and all its reforms are nothing more than empowering the neoliberal agenda of the west. The idea of less government, the privatization of the public enterprises, and cutting the size of the public sector may undermine the development of good government itself as well as sovereignty.
Nevertheless, this view is not a strong argument because most of the empirical shreds of evidence suggest that poorer countries of the global south suffer because of the absence of good governance (Moore, 2015). Hence, it can be argued that generally, poorer countries of the world are the ones that suffer bad governance according to empirical sources. Strong academic claims suggest that the most important causes of underdevelopment and state failure are poor governance. Thus economic progression needs to initiate reforms both in the government institutions and the bureaucratic apparatus (Ciborra, C. and Navarra, D. 2010).
Poor governance is widely considered the causes of underdevelopment and state failure (Ciborra, C. and Navarra, D. 2010). However, good governance is the opposite – it is the responsiveness of how quickly an organization or public institution reacts in order to make governance right. The principles of good governance include public participation, i.e. a principle that allows citizens in which government decisions affected to have a right, in order to involve in the decision-making process (Minogue et al. 1998). Theoretically, it is a principle that created to reflect transparency, accountability, and economic efficiency for public service delivery.
Furthermore, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) promotes what the organization called the eight attributes of good governance: the rule of law, consensus, responsiveness, efficiency, effectiveness, political participation, and accountability. Most of the international agencies and international financial institutions (IFIs) declare that good governance is to tackle corruption, and improve the efficiency and accountability of the public institutions (UNDP, 2007). Therefore, governments can quickly formulate policies and have them effectively implement (World Bank, 1992). However, critics argue that good governance principles are based on the assumption of reducing the role of government in the state.
Hence, the denationalization of public enterprises is essential because the private sector is more efficient when it comes to corruption and transparency (May 2012). Critics also argue that less government regulatory may undermine the development of the recipient countries; therefore, the bank’s good governance agenda is a neoliberal agenda and enhancing these principles is a new social change phenomenon in which the bank wants to introduce to the poor developing countries of the global south (Khan, 2008; Peter, 2010).
Therefore, good governance standard often measures the governance practice of the liberal democratic states in Europe and America (Ekundayo, 2017). It is therefore not surprising that the World Bank-led agenda of good governance is also promoting the neoliberal countries’ development pattern, as they are economically and ideologically powerful in our contemporary global governance system.
The bulk of international aid comes from the neoliberal countries – the biggest contributors to the Bretton Wood financial institutions. However, from the perspective of the World Bank and other international organizations, theoretically, good governance is aimed to achieve all the ideals as mentioned earlier. For instance, the efficiency in public service delivery, while decentralizing public institutions, denationalizing public Enterprises to encourage a competitive market as well as service reforms (Williams and Young, 1994). Therefore, the bank’s approach for promoting good governance is not for all its member states but its less developed and aid/loan recipient countries.
Moreover, the banks approach to promoting good governance became conditionality when providing aid to developing countries (Santiso, 2001). In other words, the bank, which supposed to provide money and ideas separately failed to do so. As Gilbert and others argued ‘’ The Bank does not just lend money and produce ideas: it packages the ideas and the money together” (Gilbert et al. 1999).
This conditionality refers that the bank promoting good governance only to the developing and aid/loan recipient countries rather than the developed countries. The reason is that the bank’s perspective and ideological development patterns are based on neoliberal agendas. Therefore, the bank’s promotion on good governance agenda is only for the developing countries – but not for the developed countries of the west and other non-recipient countries of the east (Hazenberg, 2015; Asabu, 2017).
III. BANK’S NATION OF DEVELOPMENT AND GOOD GOVERNANCE
The World Bank explored the meaning of governance as well as the content of its concept. The bank defined good governance as the “manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country’s economic and social resources for development”. However, the bank admits that it is doing so, to improve the sustainability of its projects, and maintenance of its programs. Bank’s promotion of good governance is to help finance its aid, loan, and development projects (World Bank, 1994).
According to the World Bank’s explanation, the bank is helping its client countries to build accountable institutions. The bank’s mandate is to promote capable, open, efficient institutions; therefore, good governance will help the bank and its client countries to achieve sustainable growth, in order to end extreme poverty while boosting shared prosperity (World Bank, 2017). It can be argued, however, that capable and efficient institutions support economic growth and reduce absolute poverty.
However, this view is utterly neoliberal, and such an implicit approach may overlook the sovereignty of the developing countries as the bank’s conditionality imposes inapplicable model and/or undermine their aptitude of development. The World Bank’s institutional standardization and measurement have been criticized as reflecting a liberal bias that reinforces global power relations.
Most of the critics point out the neoliberal standardization bias of the bank’s institutional governance and the conceptual brevity and vagueness of good governance concept (Hazenberg, 2015). On the other hand, the World Bank concept of anti-corruption activities, although they seem to be a vital mechanism to help developing countries to fight corruption and improve governance. Conversely, the bank’s governance enhancement activities became less progressive, and the whole apparatus became very slow (World Bank, 2006).
The reason is, according to the World Bank’s definition; the improvement of good governance agenda cannot easily be imposed on the developing countries. Good governance is a ‘complex and a long-term process’. The bank’s evidence shows that the quality of governance is intertwined with other broader measures of development. Therefore, the correlation measures of anti-corruption initiative and development are to be noted and thoroughly considered.
The bank itself stated that ‘’ the quality of governance is strongly correlated with broader measures of development (in levels), suggesting an interdependence, so that anti-corruption initiatives in the developing world will have to be a part of, and dependent on, each country’s broad, complex, and long-term state-building process, supported by a strong commitment by developed countries to tighten their policies as well’’ (World Bank, 2006).
This refers that the bank’s apparatus of good governance agenda does not apply to all countries of the world. However, it can be argued that the bank’s work of promoting good governance in order to abolish corruption and poor governance from its recipient clients is to protect its strategy of providing loan/aid and development funding from abuse. Meanwhile, the World Bank’s apparatus could be argued that liberalism act as a ‘’working ideology’’ for the World Bank (Harrison, 2004; Williams 1996 :).
For example, the bank’s good governance agenda attracted many scholars’ attention (Harrison, 2004). Some scholars’ critique the bank’s idea of good governance as a ‘’grand vision’’ (Williams, 1996: 157). The aid conditionality of the bank, which is to reform the institutions of its recipient clients could be understood as an expression of liberal ideology. For instance, the bank perception of cutting the size of the public sector and empowering the private sector to reduce and fight corruption could be understood as an element of neoliberalism re-invention, and social change mechanism in which the bank engages (Harrison, 2004).
Therefore, the bank promotes good governance to some of its member states – mainly the aid/loan recipient countries of the developing world. While at the same time, the bank’s promotion of good governance standards is based on the values of liberal developed states. The empirical evidence of such a claim sits on the theoretical explanation of good governance from the World Bank’s point of view (World Bank, 1992).
The notion of good governance in relation to development is a modern-day concept of the World Bank – and an innovative concept from the bank’s report on SSA in 1989. The bank understood the economic hardship and social problems in these countries as a ‘’crisis of governance’’ (World Bank, 1989). However, the ideological bases of good governance began during the period of market liberalization and private property – the period of Soviet collapse and the rise of capitalism. The liberal governments of the US and the UK, in particular, assumed that ‘’economic inefficiency, arbitrary rule, and corruption’’ can be solved if the developing countries implement such a mechanism of neoliberal governance (Kwame et al., 2012).
The promotion of good governance and the bank’s corporate policies resides to its developing member states. For instance, the bank’s focus is to reform the institutions of the recipient countries. Therefore, the elements of good governance will improve the social well-being of its least developed member states (Santiso, 2001). If that is the case, the World Bank has its own categorization of its member states, where the least developed states that receive aid and loan packages need to implement certain policies in order to obtain loans and bank’s development assistance including aid.
IV. THE WORLDWIDE GOVERNANCE INDICATORS (WGI)
Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) are based on a long-standing cross-country of governance indicators research program. The World Bank conducts the project since 1996. The project captured over 200 countries’ broad dimensions of governance (Kaufmann et al., 2011). The six main dimensions of WGI includes; Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption.
The World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) fundamental governance concepts have been defined and assessed by scholars (Jomo and Chowdhury, 2012). However, the fundamental definition of the indicators has differently interpreted, or in other words have changed from their own introductory definition (Jomo and Chowdhury, 2012; Kaufmann, cited in Jomo and Chowdhury, 2012). Despite the various definition of WGI the indicators’ most recent definition includes;
- Voice and accountability (VA) – measuring perceptions of the extent to which a country’s citizens are able to participate in selecting their government as well as freedom of expression, freedom of association and media
- Political stability and absence of violence (PS) – measuring perceptions of the likelihood that the government will be destabilized or overthrown by unconstitutional or violent means, including political violence and
- Government effectiveness (GE) – measuring the quality of public services, the quality of the civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures, the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government’s commitment to such
- Regulatory quality (RQ) – measuring perceptions of the ability of the government to formulate and implement sound policies and regulations that permit and promote the private sector
- Rule of law (RL) – measuring perceptions of the extent to which agents have confidence in and abide by the rules of society, and in particular, the quality of contract enforcement, the police, and the courts, as well as the likelihood of crime and
- Control of Corruption (CC) – measuring perceptions of the extent to which public power is exercised for private gain, including both petty and grand forms of corruption, as well as ‘capture’ of the state by elites and private
Even though the World Bank’s concept of governance is widely discussed among academics and policymakers. The definition of governance and its indicators have not yet agreed-upon –no single strong consensus – but rather, the debate generated a wide array of definitions (Kaufmann et al. 2011). Moreover, the conceptual and methodological approach of the World Bank’s governance indicators has also come under severe criticism from scholars and policymakers (Kwame, 2012).
The critique of the World Governance Indicators include; the nature of governance and its methodological concerns of the undefended proposed measures, the lack of presentation of the constructed validity of WGI, and the meaningless of the definition and the poorly described constructs (Thomas, 2007; Bhagwati, 2007; Knack, 2007; Arndt and Oman 2006). Moreover, critics claimed that WGI is too complex, and each indicator is difficult to understand. However, despite the limitations of good governance indicators, the World Bank believes that most of these indicators are reliable and it can be used to reduce levels of government corruption while promoting institutional effectiveness in the developing world (World Bank, 2010).
V. GOOD GOVERNANCE AND DEVELOPMENT
Correlation of governance and development is widely considered in today’s globalized world. As increasingly used in development literature, the two are interlinked and difficult to separate. Most of the international donor agencies, organizations and social scientists consider the expansion of good governance in order to boost the tempo of development (Goldsmith, 2007).
Furthermore, the international financial institutions (Bretton Woods), and other donor states and organizations consider lousy governance as the root causes of evil. Therefore, these institutions, organizations, and countries based their loans and aid to the developing countries under the conditions of good governance (UNESCAP, 2009). Although, the term is widely debated in academia and public policymaking and development organizations – the bank was the driving force of good governance agenda. The bank understands good governance as a condition for development cooperation (Carbone, 2010).
The World Bank’s good governance agenda became a criterion mechanism to allocate aid to the recipient countries. Before receiving aid and/or applying for a loan; recipient states should focus on reforming and building their institutions. Good governance agenda implies both at the state and the civil society level. It can be argued that the aid to the recipient countries recently turned out to be a political conditionality in parallel to economic conditionality (Carbone, 2010). Aid conditionality became a reform strategy in which donors, governments and international financial institutions consider when providing aid to recipient countries. For instance, recipient countries should perform political and administrative reform to government institutions and come up with a proven record of good governance to receive assistance (carbone, 2010).
On the other hand, the imposed conditionality of the international financial institutions has not fully yet been paid international attention. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) corporate policies and lending operations on poverty reduction still rely on a punitive conditionality that enhances governance (Santiso, 2002). Moreover, the World bank’s four areas of governance that are consistent with the bank’s mandate have also relied on the same punitive conditionality of institutional reform and development. Bank’s areas of governance include; the legal framework for development, the area of information and transparency, public sector management and accountability (World Bank, 1992).
Bretton Wood’s promotion of good governance through aid and loan conditionality to the recipient and borrowing countries is not only an economic matter but also a political matter (Santiso, 2002). The IFIs deliver aid and loan by using good governance agenda as a conditionality to reform both the economic and political structure of the developing countries. However, the counter empirical evidence suggests that elements of good governance are crucial for both economic growth and development (Keefer and Knack, 1995).
Therefore, the reform programs of good governance in which the World Bank promote could be argued as a context of excellent economic performance. Nevertheless, the bank’s good governance agenda is problematic in two ways; firstly, good governance is a kind of structural readjustment. The bank promotes good governance as a conditionality to base its loans and aid to the poor recipient countries – but not all its member states. The good governance agenda serves to legitimize the structural adjustment (Mercer, 2003).
The structural adjustment program (SAP) itself was a World Bank and IMF strategy in which the two institutions responded to the 1970s crisis in African countries. The two Bretton Woods institutions heavily worked together with the two programs. To implement SAP, the international monetary fund (IMF) focused on development and policy agenda to set the macroeconomics, while the World Bank do lending through the mechanisms of structural adjustment (Heidhues and Obera, 2011).
Secondly, as the above explanation stated, the standard of good governance often measures the value of the western liberal states against the borrowing countries. For the reason that the World Bank compelled developing and aid/borrowing recipient countries to reform their national policies. Of course, the bank’s conditionality is a neoliberal notion of governance (Asabu, 2017).
However, the bank’s conditionality is not negative most of the time – some major elements of the World Bank’s good governance agenda are generally believed positive. For example, the outward opening of trade and reforming the provision of social services ((Stiglitz 2002; Toye 1994). Conversely, critics argue that the international financial institutions’ (IFIs) re- structural behavior towards the developing countries extends misery and poverty rather than development (Harrison, 2010).
VI. IMPACT OF GOOD GOVERNANCE
The bank’s notion of good governance agenda and all its indicators are based on the perception that implies public sector effectiveness and efficiency, the rule of law, absence of violence, political stability, reduction of all levels of corruption and the regulatory quality of the state (SIDA, 2003). However, there is little evidence that good governance leads to more rapid social and economic development. Of course, it can be argued that economic performance and governance have strong correlations that allow developing countries to make economic progress, and that is why the bank promotes good governance to the developing countries (Sundaram, 2015).
On the contrary, the theoretical and empirical controversy on the issue of good governance between the neoliberal scholars on the one side against the heterodox institutional economists and statists on the other needs to be considered critically. For example, according to Khan, those who oppose the idea of governance as a critical condition for human development argue that ‘’ States that did best in terms of achieving convergence with advanced countries had the capacity to achieve and sustain high rates of investment and to implement policies that encouraged the acquisition and learning of new technologies rapidly’’ (Khan, 2007). Khan’s argumentation demonstrates what successful states performed and achieved rather than the ‘’successful states’ governance capacity’’, therefore the idea of governance and institutional reform have a critical policy implication in the developing countries (Khan, 2007).
On the other hand, donor countries themselves promote good governance – not to help the aid recipient countries development, but for a political conditionality (Grosh and Orvis, 1996). Another explanation of new- realist thinking of foreign aid argues that donor countries’ conditionality of good governance agenda is based on donor’s security in the international realm. However, it can be argued that less military investment for developing countries is good for poverty reduction and an increase in social services because the state can easily reallocate its military budget to address country development. Nonetheless, most of the recipient countries have zero threat to their donors.
A reliable empirical source indicates that there is a correlation between the promotion of good governance agenda and the spread of western values and ideology (Zanger, 2000). There are also other challenges to the mainstream good governance approach; these challenges include the famous Sachs argumentation of Africa’s development constraints (Khan, 2007). A focus that explains how continent’s development on governance reforms are misguided (Sachs et al. 2004, cited in Khan).
Nevertheless, the argument that suggests the importance of the relationship between development and good governance, as well as the impact of corruption on growth, is also well referenced. The methodological debates of ‘’ measurement and inference’’ and the huge literature that international organizations (IO) frequently cite to argue as Grindle stated ‘’Literature that is frequently cited to argue for the importance of governance interventions as preconditions for development’’] (Grindle, 2007) is also worthy of note.
Moreover, the World Bank conducts and explores multiple studies and reviews across different countries of the world and concludes that ‘’good governance is essential for economic growth and development success’’ (World Bank, 2000: 175). The bank’s ‘’economic growth and development success’’ refers to that its agenda of good governance improves all sectors of well-being including, literacy, infant mortality, health and poverty rates.
The definition of good governance is complex in so many ways – in the context of different people and countries of the world, the term is broad and multifaceted – when it comes to development and democracy. Nevertheless, the most interesting academic definition of good governance is Fukuyama explanation. According to Fukuyama ‘’ government’s ability to make and enforce rules, and to deliver services, regardless of whether that government is democratic or not’’ (Fukuyama, 2013). This notion is distinctive than the bank’s good governance agenda in many ways. Fukuyama’s argumentation invites all governments and states to do governance in their own way – not the bank’s way.
The neoliberal notion of governance in which the World Bank was criticized is excluded here. This definition puts dimensions at the front; firstly, the ability of the state and its governance autonomy, i.e. the capacity in which a state can collect its taxation system by reducing corruption and mismanagement. Secondly, the ability that a state can deliver public services and carry out what the public demands. For instance, the security and making the people and the state safe, improving education, health water, protecting the property and the ability to enforce a contract. Fukuyama excluded democracy and some other western values from the definition of governance, although his mission was to refute the current orthodoxy that correlates good governance and democracy (Fukuyama, 2013).
On the other hand, although the World Bank promotes good governance because it creates development and economic growth, however, some academics distinguish good governance from development as well as other related concepts of the World Bank. The case of development and economic growth and its correlation of good governance is more theory than a demonstrated fact. For example, the accountability of the public and the effective delivery from the state do not lead to development and economic growth, while development and economic growth do not also lead to better governance. According to Quain, there are countries such as Vietnam and China that have the characteristics of poor governance.
Meanwhile, these countries succeeded in higher economic development and poverty reduction (Quain, 2002). Therefore, the bank’s promotion of good governance is the conditionality that promotes the neoliberal agenda to aid and loan recipient countries (Dornan, 2017). The bank cannot persuade policy reform and good governance agenda to its non- recipient/developed member states.
Moreover, the developing world understands this conditionality as a constraint for their economic development. The response of the former President of Senegal shows how African governments were unhappy with the World Bank’s 1989 institutional reform in Sub-Saharan Africa. President Abdou Diouf argued that ‘’Africa requires not just less government but better government’’. On the other hand, the African-Study definition of governance also stated that governance is ‘’the exercise of political power to manage a nation’s affairs’’ (Reif, 2004:63). In the year of 1992, the World Bank further developed good governance definition and included its publications ‘’Governance and Development’’ in parallel terms.
The Bank defined governance as ‘’the manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country’s economic and social resources for development’’ (World Bank, 1992). The bank’s definition of governance and development shows that the promotion of good governance is only for its aid and loan recipient countries, while at the same time ‘’good governance agenda’’ is ideologically a neoliberal view.
VII. CONCLUSION
This essay contextualized the main sets of the theoretical framework of good governance and how these theoretical definitions differ. Primarily, the essay demonstrated the World Bank’s notion of good governance, which argues the quality of the institutions and the improvement of the public management system (Aubut, 2004; Santiso, 2002).
The main arguments with that of the bank’s notion suggest the continued underdevelopment of the recipient countries; is the lack of good governance and the poor public services – and it leads to wasted resources (Moore, 2015; Ciborra, and Navarra, 2010). The paper defines the theoretical definitions of governance against the critics of the bank’s notion of good governance. The critics argue that the notion of the World Bank is neoliberal and aid conditionality (Asabu, 2017; Carbone, 2010).
Moreover, the essay highlighted the methodological approach of the bank’s good governance indicators and how scholars argued against its presentation, constructed validity, complexity, and the lack of clarity (Thomas, 2007; Bhagwati, 2007; Knack, 2007; Arndt and Oman 2006). It also stated the World Bank’s believe of the WGI as a tool to reduce corruption, bad governance, and institutional effectiveness of its recipient countries (World Bank, 2010). However, critics argue that the idea of less governance and institutional reform undermines the development of good government and sovereignty.
The paper explained further how international organizations and donor agencies consider the expansion of good governance in order to boost the tempo of development by referring to the bank’s sponsored reforms (Goldsmith, 2007). It suggested that good governance agenda is a neoliberal model, and the bank applies it as an aid conditionality to its recipient countries. Paper then arrived at the conclusion that the bank’s good governance agenda is a political conditionality in parallel with that of the economic conditionality (Carbone, 2010). It concludes the need for political and economic structure reform of the recipient countries (Santiso, 2002).
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By Mohamed O. Hagi Mohamoud
Ph.D. Candidate,
The Department of History, Politics, and Philosophy, Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom
This paper was first published by the International Journal of Innovative Science and Research Technology, ISSN No:-2456-2165, Volume 5, Issue 5, May – 2020
