The World Bank under its current president, Paul Wolfowitz, has made headlines for its decision to make corruption and governance issues a core part of decisions on extending loans to client governments. To detractors, this is an American neo-con fantasy, either a noble but foolish effort or an outright political attack on WashingtonÆs opponents. Under this thinking, corruption is relative and hard to quantify, while good governance is a luxury for rich countries.
Not so, argues Daniel Kaufman, director of global governance at the World Bank Institute, a research arm of the organisation based in Washington, DC, who recently covered the subject at a lunch in Hong Kong sponsored by the Asia Society. He...
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