 | Daniel Kaufmann |
Innovation Continues with Straight Talk on Governance Blog May 23, 2008—Some call Daniel Kaufmann, the director of global governance at the World Bank Institute, an innovator. Others call him an instigator. Kaufman says he takes either as a compliment, since he and the people working with him are “continuously trying to push the frontier forward, asking tough questions without worrying about being politically correct all the time.” Now the co-developer (with DEC colleague Aart Kraay) of the widely known, influential, and not uncontroversial World Governance Indicators (WGI) is taking his instigating innovation to another level as host of the Bank’s newly- launched Governance Matters blog. Kaufmann started his career at the Bank over 25 years ago. Almost immediately, as a research assistant he trotted to the urban slums in Colombia and pioneered a set of household surveys figuring out how the most abjectly poor people managed to eke out a subsistence through their own ‘insurance’ network of relatives and neighbors.
After that he pioneered in Africa methods to assess, with real numbers, the efficiency of foreign exchange, trade and industry, and then with colleagues he researched thousands of Bank-funded development projects throughout the world and found that when they were implemented in places that had better governance, civil liberties and economic policies they tended to be more successful. Once he became the first Chief of mission in Ukraine in the early nineties he learnt about the very negative impact of corruption for development first hand, and at the request of a reformist minister, with colleagues started enterprise surveys to measure corruption, which became precursors to the large multi-country surveys he was involved with thereafter, such as the World Business Environment Surveys (WBES) around the world and the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance Surveys (BEEPS) for transition countries. The Bank’s governance expert says he doesn’t intend to be the only one blogging. “This is not my blog. This is a governance blog hosted at the Bank, for all. See my gray hair? That means I won’t be here forever, so the hosting baton is perhaps with me for now, but at any rate this is a collective endeavor from the start.” Kaufmann’s goal is, “first and foremost, to open a discussion space on sensitive, difficult issues, welcoming the views of both Bank staff and outsiders, who usually don’t have access to this type of open participation and frank discussion.” He also makes the case that a blog, by its nature and language, will help to make us all a bit less hierarchical and stilted, and a bit more humble. The Younger Generation on Board To help keep the blog nimble, Kaufman has brought on board young people who came of age with the Internet—like 30-year-old Edouard Al-Dahdah, an economist at the World Bank Institute.  | Edouard Al-Dahdah and Pierre Guillaume Wielezynski
with Kaufmann |
Says Al-Dahdah: “Continuous back-and-forth links between research and policy are key to improving our understanding of governance. This blog would succeed if it brings lessons from the field from governance practitioners and Bank staff on the front lines, so that it could be fed into the research on governance that’s already going on.” Pierre Guillaume Wielezynski, who works on blogs and social media for the World Bank, said: "Dani (Kaufmann) has the profile of a good blogger: open, conversational, opinionated and, most important of all, passionate. He understands that blogging, and social media in general is a powerful new form of expression. With Shanta (Shantayan Devarajan), the CommGap team (Communication for Governance and Accountability Program), and Dani, I am excited to see the Bank embrace social media." The Governance Blog joins the other recently launched blogs that are helping to break ground on the social media front: CommGap's Public Sphere, East Asia & Pacific on the Rise, and Devarajan's End Poverty in South Asia. "The PublicSphere blog has been going since January," said Sina Odugbemi, program manager in CommGap, who recently joined the Bank from DfID. "We've had thousands of readers so far, most of them from outside the Bank. It's a way for us to engage with a global community on a whole range of issues related to the interactions among public opinion, the public sphere, and governance," Odugbemi said. ”I like the language of blogging” Kaufmann, whose trademark, even in his research, is being a straight shooter, says about his newest medium: “I like the language of blogging—the straightforwardness is very salutary. I like it when you don’t have to write in ‘Bank-ese.’” Governance is getting increasing attention for its role in development and growth. The Worldwide Governance Indicators(WGI) rate countries on six criteria, namely voice and accountability, political stability and absence of violence, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption.
For Kaufmann and his colleagues, good governance is more than the narrow law and order, or traditional public sector management, however important they are. “It is also about freedoms, voice, and accountability between the state and its citizens,” he says. And civil society and the private sector play a key role as well. On his two-month-old non-Bank personal blog, The Kaufmann Governance Post, mixed with personal vignettes, including on music, Kaufmann zaps what he calls the myths of governance, including the developing world is “hopelessly corrupt and industrialized countries are in “Nirvana” and “only rich countries can afford good governance.” Rebutting the first myth, Kaufmann says, “The data suggests that some emerging economies, like Botswana, Chile, and some of the Baltics…enjoy lower levels of corruption than some countries in southern Europe.” Regarding the other myth, he says: “improved governance and rule of law is conducive to higher incomes. That is the basis of the estimated ‘300 percent development dividend’ of good governance.” As he plunges into this new Governance Blog at the Bank, he is full of energy, and realizes that blogging is an instrument for shaping opinions and societal change nowadays, yet he has no grandiose expectations in this case. “I hope working together on this we can have a little bit of influence at the margin. If we get involvement on governance issues from some younger Bank staff and from the outside youth, interacting with ‘gray hair’ experts, that in itself would be a non-trivial accomplishment,” he says. Contributed by Tom Grubisich, EXTCC Photos by Tom Grubisich Related Links Governance Matters
Worldwide Governance Indicators
Kaufmann Governance Post
Governance & Anticorruption Data
Country Diagnostic Surveys
Daniel Kaufmann Bibliography & Presentations
'The Doctor that Cures Corruption' (44 kb pdf) |
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