Unlike much of the growing literature on political clientelism, this short paper contains mainly the author's general reflections on the broad issues of governance (or mis-governance including corruption), democracy, and state capacity that clientelism has an impact on. It then analyses how its...

Although formal education is often considered an indicator of political leaders' quality, the evidence on the effectiveness of educated leaders is mixed. Besides, minimum education qualifications are increasingly being used as requirements for contesting elections, making it critical to...

Does self-serving elite behaviour make citizens more politically active? This paper presents the results of a randomized field experiment where voters in Tanzania were given information about elite use of tax havens. Information provided in a neutral form had no effect on voting intentions....

This paper explores the link between trust in government, policy-making, and compliance. It focuses on a specific channel whereby citizens who are convinced that a policy is worthwhile are more motivated to comply with it. This in turn reduces the government's cost of implementing a policy and...

This paper shows how an elite cadre of public sector officials played a key role in the success of administrative reforms in Brazil's state tax administration bureaus in the 1990s. The success of the reforms strengthened public sector bureaucracies and institutions at all government levels,...

An ethnographic approach is applied to Cameroon customs in order to explore the role and the capacity of the bureaucratic elites to reform their institution. Fighting against corruption has led to the extraction and circulation of legal 'collective money' that fuels internal funds. This...

This study aims to provide a neo-institutional explanation of why South Korea increasingly intends to share its developmental experience with the rest of the world. South Korea's knowledge sharing projects are the leading example of expansionary and self-defining efforts of its aid...

The article explores the various co-ordination mechanisms between the state and the business community in Ghana, and the implications for economic growth in the country. We focus on three periods in the economic history of state-business relations: the immediate post-independence period and the...

We provide a theory of political clientelism, which explains sources and determinants of political clientelism, the relationship between clientelism and elite capture, and their respective consequences for allocation of public services, welfare, and empirical measurement of government...

During Sudan's "interim period" from the end of civil war in January 2005 until South Sudan's independence in July 2011, foreign development agencies provided extensive support and billions of dollars in aid - for which institutional development and capacity building of the nascent Government of...