Drawing lessons from the eFez Project in Morocco, this volume offers practical supporting material to decision makers in developing countries on information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D), specifically e-government implementation. The book documents the eFez Project experience in all of its aspects, presenting the project’s findings and the practical methods developed by the authors (a roadmap, impact assessment framework, design issues, lessons learned and best practices) in their systematic quest to turn eFez’s indigenous experimentations and findings into a formal framework for academics, practitioners and decision makers. The volume also reviews, analyzes and synthesizes the findings of other projects to offer a comparative study of the eFez framework and a number of other e-government frameworks from the growing literature.

This book provides a new institutional economics perspective on alternative models of local governance, offering a comprehensive view of local government organization and finance in the developing world. The experiences of ten developing/transition economies are reviewed to draw lessons of general interest in strengthening responsive, responsible, and accountable local governance. The book is written in simple user friendly language to facilitate a wider readership by policy makers and practitioners in addition to students and scholars of public finance, economics and politics.

Why are carefully designed, sensible policies too often not adopted or implemented? When they are, why do they often fail to generate development outcomes such as security, growth, and equity? And why do some bad policies endure? World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law addresses these fundamental questions, which are at the heart of development. Policy making and policy implementation do not occur in a vacuum. Rather, they take place in complex political and social settings, in which individuals and groups with unequal power interact within changing rules as they pursue conflicting interests. The process of these interactions is what this Report calls governance, and the space in which these interactions take place, the policy arena. The capacity of actors to commit and their willingness to cooperate and coordinate to achieve socially desirable goals are what matter for effectiveness. However, who bargains, who is excluded, and what barriers block entry to the policy arena determine the selection and implementation of policies and, consequently, their impact on development outcomes. Exclusion, capture, and clientelism are manifestations of power asymmetries that lead to failures to achieve security, growth, and equity. The distribution of power in society is partly determined by history. Yet, there is room for positive change. This Report reveals that governance can mitigate, even overcome, power asymmetries to bring about more effective policy interventions that achieve sustainable improvements in security, growth, and equity. This happens by shifting the incentives of those with power, reshaping their preferences in favor of good outcomes, and taking into account the interests of previously excluded participants. These changes can come about through bargains among elites and greater citizen engagement, as well as by international actors supporting rules that strengthen coalitions for reform.

The first conclusive, empirical demonstration of the utility of research on governance.

Much has been written about the economic and political problems of countries that are in the process of changing from centrally planned systems to market systems. Most studies have focused on the economic, legal, political, and sociological pr- lems these economies have had to face during the transition period. However, not much has been written about the dramatic changes that have to be made to the accounting and ? nancial system of a transition economy. This book was written to help ? ll that gap. This book is the sixth in a series to examine accounting and ? nancial system reform in transition and developing economies. The ? rst book (Accounting and Financial System Reform in a Transition Economy: A Case Study of Russia) used Russia as a case study. The second volume in the series (Accounting and Financial System Reform in Eastern Europe and Asia) examined some additional aspects of the reform in Russia and also looked at the accounting and ? nancial system reform efforts that are being made in Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Armenia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. The third volume (Taxation and Public Finance in Tran- tion and Developing Economies) examined taxation and public ? nance in transition and developing economies. The fourth volume (Accounting Reform in Transition and Developing Economies) examines accounting reform in transition and devel- ing economies.

Throughout the world, the Anglo-American model of corporate governance tends to prevail – but no two countries are identical. Governance outcomes in developing and emerging economies often deviate from what theory predicts, due to a wide range of factors. Using insights from New Institutional Economics, Corporate Governance in Developing and Emerging Markets aims to explain the different issues and cultural and legal factors at play, and put forward an alternative governance framework for these economies. Structured in three parts, this text investigates different models of corporate governance; it explores the realities of corporate governance in ten nations, including the ‘BRICS’ (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and ‘MINT’ (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey) countries; and then considers corporate governance reform. This interdisciplinary text will be a valuable tool for students of corporate governance across Business, Economics and Law; and an equally useful resource for anyone working in or carrying out research in this area.

This study helps users find their way through the jungle of governance indicators, and shows how they tend to be widely misused both in international comparisons and in tracking changes in individual countries.