During the last decade, the Latin American and Caribbean region has experienced unprecedented natural resources abundance. This book highlights how transparency can help realize the benefits and reduce negative externalities associated with the extractive industries in the region. A central message is that high-quality and well-managed information is critical to ensure the transparent and effective governance of the sector. The insights from experiences in the region can help policymakers design and implement effective regulatory reforms and adopt international standards that contribute to this goal. This is particularly important at a time when the recent boom experienced by extractives in the region may be coming to an end.

This report is intended to help policy makers, law enforcement officials and stakeholders strengthen prevention efforts at both the public and private levels, through improved understanding and enhanced awareness of corruption risk and mechanisms.

Drawing on original fieldwork in Nigeria, Portia Roelofs argues for an innovative re-conceptualisation of good governance. Contributing to debates around technocracy, populism and the survival of democracy amidst conditions of inequality and mistrust, Roelofs offers a new account of what it means for leaders to be accountable and transparent. Centred on the rise of the 'Lagos Model' in the Yoruba south-west, this book places the voices of roadside traders and small-time market leaders alongside those of local government officials, political godfathers and technocrats. In doing so, it theorises 'socially-embedded' good governance. Roelofs demonstrates the value of fieldwork for political theory and the associated possibilities for decolonising the study of politics. Challenging the long-held assumptions of the World Bank and other international institutions that African political systems are pathologically dysfunctional, Roelofs demonstrates that politics in Nigeria has much to teach us about good governance.

The authors document how four forces--exponential technologies, the DIY innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion--are conspiring to solve our biggest problems. "Abundance" establishes hard targets for change and lays out a strategic roadmap for governments, industry and entrepreneurs, giving us plenty of reason for optimism.

In Sanctions Regimes of Multilateral Development Banks: What Process is Due, Jelena Madir examines the type of due process rights and the level of transparency that should characterise sanctions regimes of multilateral development banks.

This book compares and contrasts the contemporary development experience of neighbouring, geographically similar countries with an analogous history of exploitation but by three different European colonisers. Studying the so-called ‘Three Guianas’ (Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana) offers a unique opportunity to look for similarities and differences in their contemporary patterns of development, particularly as they grapple with new and complex shifts in the regional, hemispheric and global context. Shaped decisively by their respective historical experiences, Guyana, in tandem with the laissez-faire approach of Britain toward its Caribbean colonies, was decolonised relatively early, in 1966, and has maintained a significant degree of distance from London. The hold of The Hague over Suriname, however, endured well after independence in 1975. French Guiana, by contrast, was decolonised much sooner than both of its neighbours, in 1946, but this was through full integration, thus cementing its place within the political economy and administrative structures of France itself. Traditionally isolated from the Caribbean, the wider Latin American continent and from each other, today, a range of similar issues – such as migration, resource extraction, infrastructure development and energy security – are coming to bear on their societies and provoking deep and complex changes.

Revenues from commodities are extremely important for Latin America and the Caribbean, yet there is very little literature on the structure of these industries and on the various ways in which the state obtains commodity revenues. This book aims to understand the trade-off between the degree of taxation overall, the profitability of the relevant industry and the amount of investment and subsequent production in the region, as well as the relevance of institutions in the performance of the sector. This volume focuses on economic efficiency: where Latin America stands in terms of the current tax system for the extractive sector; how policies have changed in this regard; and how policies may be improved. The Economics of Natural Resources in Latin America is timely, since this new era of lower and volatile prices and possible reconfiguration of investment flows poses a challenge to natural resource tax systems in the world. The argument of the book will be made by a collection of papers around the issue of tax efficiency in the region and concludes with chapters on institutions and the role of transparency. This book shows that there are varieties of experiences in resource taxation and management of revenues in Latin America that could be used to shape policy interventions in other regions. This variety is not only related to their diverse impact on welfare, but also on the policy challenges faced by the countries in the region. This volume is well suited for those who study and find interest in development economics, political economy and public finance, as well as policy

Flawed Democracy and Development: A Jamaica Case Study takes a critical look at the discourse on democracy and development in Jamaica and analyzes some of the core features and practices that have historically impeded economic growth, created a political culture of mistrust of government, and motivated political apathy among the electorate, especially the youth. The contributors in this book interrogate how flawed democracy is played out in the historical as well as the political and economic institutional set up of Jamaica. The contributors also address how political participation is impacted by the heightened perception of public corruption, the lack of accountability and transparency in government decision making, and the way election campaigns are conducted by the two main political parties: the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People’s National Party (PNP). The book addresses not just the economic and political issues normally associated with flawed democracy discussions but also includes discussion on social and cultural issues, including identity, language, and the cultural influence of geography. The contributors agree that the challenges faced by Jamaica, a small island developing state, are not irreconcilable but they require an engaged electorate and a overhaul of the political system to move the country away from a flawed democracy tag.

In the post-World War II era, the emergence of 'area studies' marked a signal development in the social sciences. As the social sciences evolved methodologically, however, many dismissed area studies as favoring narrow description over general theory. Still, area studies continues to plays a key, if unacknowledged, role in bringing new data, new theories, and valuable policy-relevant insights to social sciences. In Comparative Area Studies, three leading figures in the field have gathered an international group of scholars in a volume that promises to be a landmark in a resurgent field. The book upholds two basic convictions: that intensive regional research remains indispensable to the social sciences and that this research needs to employ comparative referents from other regions to demonstrate its broader relevance. Comparative Area Studies (CAS) combines the context-specific insights from traditional area studies and the logic of cross- and inter-regional empirical research. This first book devoted to CAS explores methodological rationales and illustrative applications to demonstrate how area-based expertise can be fruitfully integrated with cutting-edge comparative analytical frameworks.