Europe’s Burden: Promoting Good Governance Across Borders

The EU is many things: a civilization ideal to emulate, an anchor of geopolitical stabilization, a generous donor, and a history lesson on cooperation across nations. A fixer of national governance problems, however, it is not. In this book, Mungiu-Pippidi investigates the efficacy of the European Union’s promotion of good governance through its funding and conditionalities both within the EU proper and in the developing world. The evidence assembled shows that the idea of European power to transform the quality of governance is largely a myth. From Greece to Egypt and from Kosovo to Turkey, EU interventions in favour of good governance and anti-corruption policy have failed so far to trigger the domestic political dynamic needed to ensure sustainable change. Mungiu-Pippidi explores how we can better bridge the gap between the Europe of treaties and the reality of governance in Europe and beyond. This book will interest students and scholars of comparative politics, European politics, and development studies, particularly those examining governance and corruption.

Reviews for this publication

“A blistering and contrarian critique of EU anti-corruption efforts from one of the field’s leading authorities. Based on extensive quantitative data spanning both EU member states and a large number of the union’s external partners, the book’s findings have troubling implications for the future of EU good governance strategies – and deserve to be considered with the utmost seriousness.”

Richard Youngs – Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Europe

Ghana

Ghana is overperforming its human development index and has made some progress on transparency, reduction of administrative burden and e-government. Its judiciary and freedom of the press are on top of the region and its income group. The deep seated particularism in public resource allocation is unlikely to disappear soon, however, as transparency of public procurement is very low and civil society, despite some notable exceptions, remains underdeveloped even compared to countries in the same income group.

The EU Good Governance Approach in Ghana: the growing focus on anti‐corruption measures

Ghana is a strategic country for the European Union’s promotion of peace and good governance in West Africa. However, recent economic challenges have exposed public finance management deficiencies and a crisis of confidence in the ability of the government to deal with increasing deficits; unemployment; and a dramatic energy crisis. Corruption practices are seen as a key factor impeding on the development of the country with recent scandals exposed in the media raising the awareness of the public. With the support of international partners, the government launched its own anti-corruption framework in July 2014, the National Anti-Corruption Action Plan (NACAP), while the EU in Ghana started the Ghana Anti-Corruption, Rule of Law and Accountability (Ghana-ARAP) Programme in January 2016. This report examines how the Ghana-EU Partnership is structured, the state of governance in Ghana, and how the EU has or has not been inducing change in governance practices to fight corruption. The study includes a review of the different aid modalities and recommendations for positive change in Ghana, in terms of both development assistance and anti-corruption strategies.

Political Economy Analysis of Corruption in Ghana

Ghana on one hand, since its return to democratic rule in 1993, has experienced a continuous growth in consolidating its democracy, leading it to be one of the most referred to success stories of democracy in Africa. On the other hand, corruption continues to be a problem in spite of the several proclaimed measures by governments to curb it. This paper hence seeks to explore the question: has Ghana evolved on the control of corruption? If not, why and what can be done?

Political Economy Analysis of Corruption in Ghana

Ghana on one hand, since its return to democratic rule in 1993, has experienced a continuous growth in consolidating its democracy, leading it to be one of the most referred to success stories of democracy in Africa. On the other hand, corruption continues to be a problem in spite of the several proclaimed measures by governments to curb it. This paper hence seeks to explore the question: has Ghana evolved on the control of corruption? If not, why and what can be done?

Control of Corruption: the Road to Effective Improvement. Lessons from Six Progress Cases

In the last two decades, the emergence of an international good governance agenda has fostered the implementation of anti-corruption efforts in several countries. Nevertheless, recent assessments of those efforts reveal that the vast majority of initiatives have not produced concrete positive results. Only a few countries have made considerable progress in reducing corruption, and there is still limited knowledge about what has determined their positive experiences. This paper attempts to contribute to this discussion by engaging in a comparative analysis of six countries that have improved in terms of control of corruption. These countries are: Uruguay, Estonia, Botswana, Taiwan, South Korea and Ghana. The framework for analysis is based on a model of corruption as a function of power discretion, material resources and legal and normative constraints (Mungiu-Pippidi, 2010). Additionally, particular attention is paid to the role of political agents as drivers of change, with a focus on political leaders, civil society, media and enforcement institutions.