The legitimacy of political orders is an important reference point in political analysis, but the concept is difficult to operationalise and measure – particularly in those countries where legitimacy is critical (cases of political transformation and high state fragility). This paper develops...

The promotion of decentralisation and local governance has long since been an established part of bilateral and multilateral development cooperation. In the context of fragile statehood, however, this area of development cooperation is frequently faced with the general suspicion of encouraging...

Electronic government, or, in short e-government, can contribute significantly to strengthening the efficiency, productivity, and transparency of government institutions. However, the potentials of the new information and communication technologies (ICT) are not always so easy to translate into...

Some countries fail to ensure that their citizens and businesses make an appropriate contribution to the financing of public tasks. In such cases one can think of a number of reasons for reducing development cooperation or even stopping it altogether. But not all countries with a low tax ratio...

While development cooperation (DC) is determined to make more and more use of policy advice to reach its goals, it does not always have a clear conception of what policy advice is actually able and meant to accomplish in the development context. Experts often lack the conceptual knowledge needed...

How to combine the implementation of the new aid agenda with the challenges of advancing subsidiarityoriented decentralisation in many developing countries? This question has been neglected for some years, as most of the discussion on ownership, the use of partnercountry systems, donor...

Financing for development requires developing countries to step up their domestic revenue mobilisation. Such key international players as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), G20 and International Monetary Fund (IMF) are calling on the developing countries to...

Reports on worldwide tax fraud and illicit global financial flows have been appearing more and more frequently in recent times. In spite of the attention which such revelations attract, however, the international community is still far from an effective system of controls. While it is true that...

In 2015 the global community committed itself to an ambitious programme of reform. Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and implementing the resolutions of the Paris climate conference require that great efforts are made – including those of a financial nature. Many states will have to...

Electronic Government oder kurz: E-Government kann dazu beitragen, die Effizienz, Leistungsfähigkeit und Transparenz staatlicher Institutionen signifikant zu stärken. Aber die Potenziale der neuen Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien (IKT) lassen sich nicht ohne weiteres realisieren....