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WORK TITLE: The Quest for Good Governance
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 3/12/1964
WEBSITE:http://www.sar.org.ro/amp/
CITY: Berlin
STATE:
COUNTRY: Germany
NATIONALITY: Romanian
https://www.hertie-school.org/en/research/faculty-and-researchers/profile/person/mungiu-pippidi/ * https://www.hertie-school.org/fileadmin/5_WhoWeAre/1_People_directory/Faculty_downloads/Mungiu-Pippidi/Alina_Mungiu-Pippidi_CV.pdf * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alina_Mungiu-Pippidi
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born March 12, 1964, in Iaşi, Romania.
EDUCATION:Medical University of Iaşi, graduated, 1988; Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi, Ph.D., 1995; Ohio State University Institute of Political Psychology, graduated, 1999.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Political scientist, academic, journalist, and writer. Romanian Academic Society, Romanian Center for Public Policy, chair/academic director, 1999-; Hertie School of Governance, Democracy Studies chair, 2007-. Romanian Journal of Political Science, editor. Lecturer at universities, including Columbia University, 1995, 2001, 2016; Harvard University, 1994, 1998, 1999, 2006, 2016; University of California, Berkeley, 1995; Princeton University, 1998; and Stanford University, 2003, 2004, 2006.
MEMBER:Romanian Academic Society, founder and president. Member of American Political Science Association (APSA), International Political Science Association (IPSA), European Political Science Association (EPSA), member of the editorial board of Journal of Democracy and advisory board of Balkan Trust Fund.
AWARDS:Award for Best Romanian Political Columnist, Timisoara Society, 1992; Best Romanian Play of the Year, Timisoara Society, 1993; Fellow of the World, Academy of Art and Science, 1998; Best Civic Action, Romanian Coalition for a Clean Parliament by Civil Society Awards, 2005. Recipient of the Harvard University Shorenstein Fellowship, an Open Society Institute Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, and the Jean Monnet Fellowship of the European University Institute.
WRITINGS
Author of several plays, including The Evangelists, c. 1990s.
SIDELIGHTS
Alina Mungiu-Pippidi is a Romanian political scientist, academic, journalist, and author of nineteen books. Mungiu-Pippidi has taught at numerous universities, including the European Institute, Oxford, Stanford University, and Harvard University. She teaches democracy studies at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, Germany. She also chairs the European Research Centre for Anti-Corruption and State-Building, which she founded, along with the Romanian Academic Society, which she also founded. Mungiu-Pippidi is the editor at Romanian Journal of Political Science and is on the editorial board of Journal of Democracy.
Mungiu-Pippidi’s academic work focuses on national politics with an emphasis on governance and anticorruption policy. She has taught on topics that include Romanian politics, the transition to a market economy that occurred following the Cold War, and corruption in politics. She has given lectures at institutes including Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, Columbia, and Princeton. Mungiu-Pippidi graduated from the Medical University of Iaşi in 1988 and received her Ph.D. from the University of Iaşi in 1995. She has also studied political science at Harvard University and political psychology at Ohio State University.
The Quest for Good Governance
In Mungiu-Pippidi’s eighteenth published book, The Quest for Good Governance: How Societies Develop Control of Corruption, she examines the underlying causes of governmental corruption and provides a framework of what can be done to prevent or undermine it. Mungiu-Pippidi uses the examples of eight countries that were able, through political actions, to pull themselves out of a corrupted government system.
The simplified thesis of the book suggests that corruption is the rule, not the exception. Power inequity is the main problem, so diplomatic efforts, such as signing anticorruption agreements, do little to address the root cause. Described by Keith E. Henderson in Cayman Financial Review as a “daring and laudable methodological achievement,” the book ties together research, data, and case studies to present Mungiu-Pippidi’s claims and suggestions.
Mungiu-Pippidi argues that for anticorruption change to occur and to take hold in a country, fundamental issues must be strategically addressed. She then cites specific actions taken in the eight example countries that seem to have been the reasons for this shift. Her suggestions for eradicating corruption center on encouraging governments to reduce the practice of manipulating public policy as a strategy for increasing profits, prioritize the reform of civil service, and supply more support for multi-stakeholder collective action. Henderson noted, “Mungiu-Pippidi’s country selections, conclusions and policy recommendations would have benefited if her methodology had been more succinctly expressed and the research conclusions more carefully qualified or narrowly focused.” Writing in Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, R.E. Hartwig recommended this “important” book, saying that “specialists will appreciate the comprehensive summary.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June, 2016, R.E. Hartwig, review of The Quest for Good Governance: How Societies Develop Control of Corruption, p. 1540
Reference & Research Book News, November, 2010, review of A Tale of Two Villages: Coerced Modernization in the East European Countryside.
ONLINE
Cayman Financial Review, http://www.caymanfinancialreview.com (August 2, 2016), Keith E. Henderson, review of The Quest for Good Governance.
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Hertie School of Governance | Understand Today. Shape Tomorrow. | www.hertie-school.org/mungiu-pippidi1Curriculum vitaeAlina Mungiu-PippidiUpdated: February 2011Current Positions2007 Hertie School of GovernanceDemocracy Studies Chair 1999 ROMANIAN ACADEMIC SOCIETY (www.sar.org.ro), ROMANIAN CENTER FOR PUBLIC POLICY Chair/Academic Director 2003, 2004, 2005 UNDP RBEC - Europe and Asia Academic Consultant for Early Warning SystemsAcademic Qualifications and Training1999 OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGYGraduate1991-1995 UNIVERSITY OF IASI, ROMANIA, FACULTY OF PSYCHOLOGYPhD in Political Psychology1994-1995 HARVARD UNIVERSITY, DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENTPostdoctoral Fulbright fellow1988-1989 MEDICAL UNIVERSITY OF IASI, ROMANIATeaching assistant and researcher, Clinical Psychology Department1982-1988 MEDICAL UNIVERSITY OF IASI, ROMANIAGraduateTeaching and Academic Research Positions2007, spring - EUROPEAN INSTITUTE, ST ANTONYS COLLEGE, OXFORD UNIVERSITY Senior Associate Fellow 2005-2006 NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY Reagan Fascell Democracy Academic Fellow 2004-2005 STANFORD UNIVERSITY, CENTER FOR DEMOCRACY AND THE RULE OF LAW Visiting Scholar, Research Associate (Project on Comparing Rule of Law in Democratizing Countries) 2004 EUROPEAN CONSORTIUM OF POLITICAL RESEARCH Director Workshop on Comparative Transformations, Uppsala Workshops 2004- EUROREG SIXTH FRAMEWORK PROJECT
Hertie School of Governance | Understand Today. Shape Tomorrow. | www.hertie-school.org/mungiu-pippidi2Research coordinator for EU accession countries 2002-2004 CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY, CENTER FOR POLICY STUDIES Research Coordinator, Bluebird Project, Research Group on State and Nation in South-Eastern Europe 2001-2003 UNDP RomaniaCoordinator, UNDP Early Warning System Romania 2003-2005 FIFTH FRAMEWORK, Research Coordinator of Work Group on Social Capital, Functional Borders and Sustainable Security Fifth Framework Research Project2002-2003 EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE Jean Monnet Fellow 1999- ROMANIAN NATIONAL SCHOOL OF POLITICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE STUDIES (SNSPA, ECPR MEMBER) Associate Professor 1998-1999 HARVARD UNIVERSITY, JOAN SHORENSTEIN JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT Postdoctoral research fellowship on media and politics 1996-1998 UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST, FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE Associate Professor 1994-1995 HARVARD UNIVERSITY, GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT Fulbright ScholarProfessional MembershipsMember of American Political Science Association (APSA)Member of International Political Science Association (IPSA)Member of European Political Science Association (EPSA)Member, Editorial Board of Journal of DemocracyMember, Advisory Board Balkan Trust FundMember, Research Board of NDRI (Network of Democratic Research Institutes, National Endowment for Democracy)Individual LecturesLectures at Columbia University (1995, 2001, 2016), Harvard University, (1994, 1998, 1999, 2006, 2016), Berkeley University (1995), Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson Institute of International Affairs (1998), Georgetown University, Center for European Studies (1998, 1999), Central European University Budapest (1999, 2000, 2002), World Bank (2001, 2006, 2016), Carnegie Endowment
(2001), University of Florence (2003), European University Institute (2002, 2003), Grinnell College Iowa (2003), SWP Berlin (2003), Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Washington (2004, 2005, 2006, 2016), Oxford (2005, 2007), Stanford University (2003, 3004, 2006), New School for Social Research (2005), New York University (2005), Yale University (2006).Other ActivitiesCo-editor of dissent student magazine Opinia studenteasca in Ceausescu’s Romania Correspondent “Le Monde’ daily, 1991-1992 Promoter of the Freedom of Information Act as leader of Romanian coalition for the passage of a Freedom of Information Act (2001), success story in World Bank’s empowerment textbook, see World Bank. Empowerment and Poverty Reduction: A Sourcebook, siteresources.worldbank.org/INTEMPOWERMENT/Resources/486312-1095094954594/draft.pdf Writer and director, BBC documentary ‘A Tale of Two Villages’ based on my book ‘Deux villages’. Broadcast in summer 2003 by BBC World Service. Initiator and leader, Romanian anticorruption coalition, ‘Romanian Coalition for a Clean Parliament’ (2005), see ‘The story of the Romanian Coalition for a Clean Parliament’ in Journal of Democracy 16.2 (2005): 154-155, also reference in World Bank’s Anticorruption in Transition 3, Romanian Coalition for a Clean Parliament as good practice, p 65. moreEditor, Romanian Journal of Political Science, an English language peer reviewed journal indexed by IPSA, GESIS, ISI. Member in the editorial board of Journal of Democracy, Johns Hopkins University Press. Member in the editorial board of "Südosteuropa", a journal of Ludwig- Südost-Institut at Maximilians-Universität München.Awards2005 Best civic action for ROMANIAN COALITION FOR A CLEAN PARLIAMENT by CIVIL SOCIETY AWARDS AND TIMISOARA SOCIETY (2 separate awards)1998 Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science1993 Best Romanian Play of the Year for ‘Evangelists’ a play. (Translated into Hungarian, English, French). Staged in Hungary and Romania1992 AWARD FOR BEST ROMANIAN POLITICAL COLUMNIST by TIMISOARA SOCIETY
Alina Mungiu-Pippidi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (Romanian pronunciation: [aˈlina munˈd͡ʒi.u piˈpidi]; born March 12, 1964) is a Romanian political scientist, academic, journalist and writer. A commentator on national politics, she is one of the civil society activists in post-1989 Romania, and, since 1990, an active contributor to 22. Mungiu-Pippidi was a professor at the National School of Administration and Political Science of Bucharest in Bucharest, where she held courses on nationalism and electoral behavior. She has also lectured on post-Cold War transition to a market economy at several universities and business schools, including Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Oxford and the Stockholm School of Economics. She is the sister of film director Cristian Mungiu. In August 2007 she assumed a professorship in democracy studies at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, Germany. She founded and currently chairs the European Research Centre for Anti-Corruption and State-Building[1] and co-directs the EU FP7 five years research project ANTICORRP.[2]
Contents [hide]
1 Biography
2 Other activities
3 Selected works
3.1 Books
3.2 Essays
3.3 Plays
4 References
5 External links
Biography[edit]
Born in Iaşi, she graduated from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Iaşi. Starting in her student years, she began contributing essays of literary criticism to the magazine Cronica. After 1993, she worked for the Bucharest daily Express (until 1994). She was also the Romanian correspondent for the French newspaper Le Monde (1992–1993), and was employed as a news editor by the Romanian Television Company (1997–1998). In 2000, she authored a political science textbook for optional studies in high schools.
Mungiu-Pippidi holds a doctorate in social psychology.[3] She visited Harvard University twice, first as a Fulbright fellow in the Government Department (1994–1995), and then as Shorenstein fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government (1998–1999).
In 1995, she founded Romania's largest think tank, the Romanian Academic Society (SAR), which issued several reports that were at the center of public debates (among others, they were credited with promoting steps that led the Parliament to ultimately adopt legislation regarding freedom of information, flat taxation, and other approaches to Romania's accession to the European Union)[citation needed]. Mungiu-Pippidi is currently the SAR's president. She has also created and led the "Coalition for a Clean Parliament" (Coaliţia pentru un Parlament Curat), which in the wake of the 2004 legislative elections, campaigned for candidates with reported moral problems (such as incompatibility or undergoing the investigation of judicial authorities) to be excluded from party lists (98 candidatures were withdrawn following the coalition's campaign).[citation needed]
Other activities[edit]
European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), Member[4]
Open Society Foundations, Member of the European Advisory Board[5]
Selected works[edit]
Books[edit]
The Quest for Good Governance: How Societies Develop Control of Corruption, Cambridge: Cambrdige University Press, 2015 [6]
A Tale of Two Villages. Coerced Modernization in the East European Countryside, Budapest: CEU Press, 2010 [7]
Ottomans into Europeans: State and Institution Building in South-Eastern Europe (editor), London: Hurst; Boulder: Columbia University Press, 2010 [8]
Nationalism after Communism. Lessons Learned from Nation and State Building, edited with Ivan Krastev New York and Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004 [9]
Essays[edit]
Românii după '89 ("The Romanians after '89")
Doctrine politice. Concepte universale şi realităţi româneşti ("Political doctrines. Universal concepts and Romanian realities"), 1998
Introducere în politologie. Manual opţional pentru liceu. ("An introduction to politology. Optional textbook for high school"), 2000
Romania after 2000. Threats and Challenges, 2002
Plays[edit]
Alina Mungiu-Pippidi has also written a number of plays, the most high-profile of which has been The Evangelists. The play, which was written in the 1990s, only debuted in Romania in 2005, where it sparked a considerable amount of controversy from Christian religious groups, who labeled it as "blasphemy" and "an attack against public morals".[10] The play is based on the life of Jesus from a different point of view than that of the New Testament. Among its controversial scenes is one in which it is suggested that Mary Magdalene has oral sex with Jesus.
Prof. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, PhD
Professor of Democracy Studies
Alina Mungiu-Pippidi is Professor of Democracy Studies at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. Her research centres on anti-corruption policy and good governance. Mungiu-Pippidi chairs the European Research Centre for Anti-Corruption and State-Building (ERCAS) where she manages the FP7 research project ANTICORRP, and the Horizon 2020 project DIGIWHIST. Her governance work is cited and applied by a string of development organisations, by some EU governments and the European Commission. Mungiu-Pippidi has recieved the Harvard University Shorenstein Fellowship, an Open Society Institute Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship and the Jean Monnet Fellowship of the European University Institute. She is President of the Romanian Academic Society (SAR) and founder of the social media watchdog platform Clean Romania! (romaniacurata.ro). She studied political science at Harvard University after completing a PhD in Social Psychology in 1995 at the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iaşi in Romania.
Mungiu-Pippidi, Alina. The quest for good governance: how societies develop control of corruption
R.E. Hartwig
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 53.10 (June 2016): p1540.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
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Mungiu-Pippidi, Alina. The quest for good governance: how societies develop control of corruption. Cambridge, 2015. 296p bibl Index ISBN 9781107113923 cloth, $99.99; ISBN 9781107534575 pbk, $34.99; ISBN 9781316435328 ebook, $28.00
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2015-10006 CIP
Former Romanian activist Mungiu-Pippidi teaches and consults at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin and chairs the European Research Centre for Anti-Corruption and State-Building. Her central argument is that corruption is the norm in most countries, not an aberration. "Most anti-corruption initiatives in developing countries fail" (p. 207, citing Heeks and Mathisen's 2012 article). Because power inequality is the main problem, the fact that over 150 countries have signed the UN Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC) does not mean much. Adding an anti-corruption agency may strengthen authoritarian rule. Chile, Uruguay, Estonia, Georgia, Botswana, South Korea, and Taiwan are among the few developing countries that have made the transition to ethical universalism. Table 8.1 provides a "Checklist of good governance progress-tracing indicators for borderline countries." Mungiu-Pippidi writes that creating collective action and providing political support is the only proven effective strategy against corruption. Specialists will appreciate the comprehensive summary and review of the literature. Nonspecialists may wish to begin with the last chapter of this important but technical book and work backward. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.--R. E. Hartwig, Texas A&M University--Kingsville
A tale of two villages; coerced modernization in the East European countryside
Reference & Research Book News. 25.4 (Nov. 2010):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 Ringgold, Inc.
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A tale of two villages; coerced modernization in the East European countryside.
Mungiu-Pippidi, Alina.
Central European U. Press
2010
219 pages
$45.00
Hardcover
HD1492
Mungiu-Pippidi (political science, Hertie School of Governance, Berlin) takes a close look at two villages in Romania and how they have changed amidst the coming and going of communism and their entrance into the European Union. Much alike before communist rule, the villages were the sites of two differing, powerful experiments in social change and modernization. One village fought the advent of communism, and paid dearly for it, while the other was the birthplace of Romania's communist ruler, Nicolae Ceausescu, and was forced into a different role more befitting the birthplace of a communist leader. Despite all of the social engineering and efforts to modernize these and other villages in communist and post-communist Romania, despite even the efforts of the European Union, the villages seem to resist all changes and tactics. Mungiu-Pippidi and a group of political anthropology students from Romania's National School of Political Studies carried out the field work for this book in 2001-2002; filmed interviews were the basis for a 2003 BBC documentary "A Tale of Two Villages." This English-language book is an updated translation of the Romanian version. Distributed by Books International.
([c]2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR)
Alina Mungiu-Pippidi: ‘The Quest for Good Governance: How Societies Develop Control of Corruption’
By Keith E. HendersonAugust 2, 2016
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Corruption is a major factor impeding economic development and growth, good governance and the rule of law. Efforts to illuminate or at least greatly reduce it have not enjoyed limited success. We need a better understanding of what facilitates it and what discourages it. “The Quest for Good Governance” (Cambridge University Press) by Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, uniquely attempts to pull together and link research and experience across disciplines, historical timeframes and geographic boundaries in the search for answers to these questions. It distills current understanding of some of the key lessons we have and have not learned over the last two decades in the global anti-corruption and democratization arena.
Mungiu-Pippidi is a well-known political scientist, journalist and academic who hails from Romania. She has broad-ranging experience in this field, including having taught at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin for many years and having authored or co-led a number of important governance and anti-corruption research studies. She cut her corruption teeth during her revolutionary days following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
In her fascinating walk down the governance and anti-corruption lanes spanning four continents, she attempts to frame complex issues within country context and to quantify through data, research and case studies – perhaps as well as anyone has done so far – some of the underlying reasons for anti-corruption progress in eight selected countries. She notes, according to most surveys and research, that these are among only a dozen or so countries that seem to have had some measureable success over the last several decades.
She begins by defining what corruption is, saying that “people grant a far broader meaning to what pollsters call corruption than lawyers do…. The general population when asked to assess corruption offers its assessment of its society’s capacity to enforce public integrity and fairness, rather than reporting on individual experiences of corruption as legally defined in criminal codes.”
Her empirically tested factors influencing the extent of corruption in a country include those creating “opportunities,” such as governmental red tape, lack of transparency, concentration of power, large amounts of discretionary funds, and foreign aid, and those imposing “constraints,” such as an independent judiciary, independent media, active civil society and demanding voters.
Her selected “contemporary achievers” are: Estonia, Taiwan, Slovenia, South Korea, Chile, Botswana, Uruguay and Georgia. While summing-up the gist of her book in a sentence does not do her monumental work justice, her overall cross-country findings and policy recommendations in essence point to the need for developing countries to reduce rent-seeking opportunities in government, to make wholesale reform of the civil service a high priority and to provide more support for broader multi-stakeholder collective action. After reading her book, I think few would argue with these propositions.
However, as it often the case in the development world, the real on-the-ground questions are how to implement these difficult objectives in practice and how to sequence and link them up with other important inter-related reforms – all within specific country context.
These questions could have been more succinctly presented and debated in “Quest,” particularly for those less familiar with research in this emerging field of study. Perhaps it would have been worthwhile just for Mungiu-Pippidi to remind us that world history has taught us there is no magic formula for good governance. That said, she does help make a strong case for making anti-corruption reforms in developing countries more strategically focused on the fundamentals and then helpfully proceeds to identify some that seem to have worked in select countries.
Global lessons learned
As someone who has worked in this area for many years, including in a number of the countries covered in this book, I wish that Mungiu-Pippidi’s information-rich chapters had placed a little more emphasis on what we still don’t know from the limited research and experience we now have in our collective knowledge banks. One important lesson I’ve learned over the last 25 years or so, sometimes the hard way, is that one should be very humble and quick to point out that it is virtually impossible to truly quantify the myriad reasons for success on the governance, rule of law or anti-corruption fronts, given that there are so many elements and combustible and often hidden forces at play in any project of reform and development. It is also very important to always remind oneself that we are still only in the embryonic stages of anti-corruption research.
Another lesson learned is that the countries that have made the most democratic and anti-corruption progress are generally those that have linked anti-corruption reforms to elements of economic and rule of law reform. Mungiu-Pippidi rightly points out that few judicial reform programs promoting judicial independence have been successful or had an impact on corruption, given that the judiciary is often just as corrupt as other key institutions in many developing countries.
There are many other ways to promote a rule of law culture that would have been worth referencing in her book. For example, some countries, like Georgia, have had some anti-corruption success through both presidential leadership and civil society action.
Together they promoted and supported, often with donor support, multiple goals and reforms, including policies and programs designed to promote accountability by strengthening independent media and parliament, supporting reform advocacy groups like the Georgia Young Lawyers Association, by undertaking fundamental reform of the prosecutors office and the traffic police, through regulatory streamlining and by implementing key provisions of the United Nations Convention Against Corruption. I would argue that all of these reforms, in addition to reform of the civil service, resulted in collective action that made all the difference in reforming what some saw as a failed hopelessly corrupt state.
Even though there is a risk that her valuable, thought-provoking research may be misread or misused by some, I broadly agree with Mungiu-Pippidi’s general research findings and policy recommendations and hope that her interdisciplinary approach to research and prioritizing reforms represents the future wave of anti-corruption, rule of law and governance research that is so much needed.
While her ambitious cross-cutting and cross-border methodology advances and helps focus the global debate, I believe even she would admit that the art of defining, measuring and analyzing corruption and governance is at best only half way home and has a long way to go. This includes the new mixed, and some would argue still somewhat limited and untested, methodology she employed to select the eight countries she writes about, which admirably attempts to integrate theory, history, case studies and quantitative evidence.
She notes the country selection process was largely guided by the World Bank’s widely-used annual World-Wide Governance Indicators (WGI), which began in 1996, and that the anti-corruption analysis for the eight countries was shaped in large part by the anti-corruption indicators, which represent many but certainly not all key elements of governance. While the WGI is well respected by many and it is a useful tool for trying to gauge progress or failure and program impact, it does have its critics both within and outside the World Bank. Even the authors of the WGI caution that the indicators are based exclusively on perception surveys only and that while they are useful for research and debate purposes, they also underscore the inherent difficulties of measuring or assessing the quality or integrity of governance with data. While most believe the WGI has proven useful for broad cross-country comparative research and awareness raising purposes, many, including myself, believe it is time to develop sub-national indicators and indexes as well. Right now, much of the data used in the WGI is obtained mainly in the capitals of countries, which obviously does not represent potentially significant in-country variations.
There is an emerging consensus that the WGI must be continually refined and expanded as we learn more and as we strive to explore new ways to promote transparency, accountability and competition within the public and private sectors.
For the careful or ever-questioning reader or student, these research gaps or shortcomings should raise important questions as to whether and what other key governance or reform initiatives might have also played an important role in a country’s governance success. I’m sure any number of lawyers, bankers, law enforcement officials and economists, as well as those who are working in other reform fields such as financial and regulatory reform, also see some of the missing analytical gaps in her broad but not quite broad enough interdisciplinary analysis.
While a daring and laudable methodological achievement in itself, Mungiu-Pippidi’s country selections, conclusions and policy recommendations would have benefited if her methodology had been more succinctly expressed and the research conclusions more carefully qualified or narrowly focused. While she does note that she intentionally chose to focus on democratic and not authoritarian success story countries for purposes of the book, she does not clearly distinguish how she intellectually distinguished various elements of governance, such as rule of law, from those directly related to corruption and a wide range of other important elements of good governance.
In the final analysis, as someone who has worked on as many programs related to rule of law as anti-corruption or governance, I found myself questioning whether she has not given short academic and applied research shrift to important governance elements related to rule of law and other governance elements in both her country analysis and policy recommendations
In short, I would suggest that those reading her fact/data-filled book read and keep the title and theme of her prior path-breaking global study in mind, since it is Quest’s birthmother. This report, titled, “Contextual Choices in Fighting Corruption: Lessons Learned” (NORAD 2013), found above all else that big picture country context, public access to information and interdisciplinary analysis matters. It is a study well worth reading and thinking about.
Contextual Choices contains ten useful global lessons learned that were reached by consensus among a team of academics and practitioners representing many disciplines and countries. One rule of law observation made in Contextual Choices rings particularly loudly to my way of thinking and experience, namely:
“… most anti-corruption interventions in most developing countries fail because they are attempted in societies that lack the rule of law.”
Somehow this truism unfortunately gets lost in the details in Mungiu-Pippidi’s analysis and policy conclusions in this latest book. This is an important ever-present footnote to keep in mind when reading Quest, since it is widely acknowledged that all eight selected countries have made progress in promoting a rule of law culture as well as directly attacking institutional corruption. Even in city-states that lean democratic or autocratic, such as Hong Kong and Singapore, it is widely acknowledged that anti-corruption success was in part attributable to high priority efforts to promote a rule of law culture. Not many countries have gone down the rule of law path and those that have, such as Georgia and virtually all of the country studies in “Quest,” lend support to the idea that this fundamental reform is inextricably linked to other governance and anti-corruption reforms.
I think, if pressed, Mungiu-Pippidi would acknowledge that because addressing systemic corruption and problems related to governance, not to mention the rule of law, is dependent on so many known and unknown inter-related factors, that prioritizing and linking-up the issues within holistic country context is what seems to make the most difference. That said, her research findings and policy prescriptions are without question all supported by as credible research as now exists and are worthy of a grand global debate. Everyone would learn something by reading “Quest.”