Faced with government's ineptitude, people are attracted to strong leaders and bold action. As Pierre Rosanvallon demonstrates, "presidentialism" may reflect the particular concerns of today, but its many precursors show that democracy has always struggled with tension between popular government and concentrated authority.

Following a series of corporate scandals, legislators have company executives in their sights, and are arming themselves with ever-greater regulatory firepower. All agree that good governance is essential - but must not be allowed to stifle business performance. Beyond Governance develops the concept of Enterprise Governance, an emerging framework which unites Performance, Conformance and Corporate Responsibility and shows how addressing all of these areas in a concerted, coordinated fashion will deliver value to the organisation and its stakeholders. In particular, it focuses on the skills, processes and systems that are required to deliver excellence in each of these areas, giving readers a practical insight into the issues and an understanding of best practice in each area. Many firms are rethinking their finance activities in the light of e-commerce, shared service centres, business intelligence technology and cost pressures. Beyond Governance explores the challenge of building a modern, flexible finance function, describing the emerging role of the new CFO and how finance professionals should respond to this new business environment.

A passionate examination of why international anti-corruption fails to deliver results and how we should understand and build good governance.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on bloomsburycollections.com. While good governance is a worthy goal, this book argues that it is not a prerequisite for economic growth or development. The book exposes the methodological shortcomings of the commonly-used governance indicators developed within the World Bank. The authors argue that donors should not impose onerous good governance conditions, expecting the developing world to simulate now-developed countries. They contend that most poor countries lack the administrative and financial capacity to achieve these reforms or institutions - so donor conditionality often becomes a recipe for failure. In place of grand government reforms aimed at enhancing market efficiency, the book's position is that the reform agenda should target strategic bottlenecks for development and enhance the state's capacity to deal with these disruptions. Bringing together contributions from leading political scientists, political economists and development practitioners, this is the first book to provide a systematic critical perspective on received notions of good governance.

Private sector action provides one of the most promising opportunities to reduce the risks of climate change, buying time while governments move slowly or even oppose climate mitigation. Starting with the insight that much of the resistance to climate mitigation is grounded in concern about the role of government, this books draws on law, policy, social science, and climate science to demonstrate how private initiatives are already bypassing government inaction in the US and around the globe. It makes a persuasive case that private governance can reduce global carbon emissions by a billion tons per year over the next decade. Combining an examination of the growth of private climate initiatives over the last decade, a theory of why private actors are motivated to reduce emissions, and a review of viable next steps, this book speaks to scholars, business and advocacy group managers, philanthropists, policymakers, and anyone interested in climate change.

Investigates the efficacy of the European Union's promotion of good governance through its funding and conditionalities both within EU proper and in the developing world.

A notable group of social scientists explore the political economy of good governance and how it relates to performance management, the influence of political parties, education and health issues in developing countries, the economic performance of transition economies, and the effects of climate on poverty.

Why have so few countries managed to leave systematic corruption behind, while in many others modernization is still a mere façade? How do we escape the trap of corruption, to reach a governance system based on ethical universalism? In this unique book, Alina Mungiu-Pippidi and Michael Johnston lead a team of eminent researchers on an illuminating path towards deconstructing the few virtuous circles in contemporary governance. The book combines a solid theoretical framework with quantitative evidence and case studies from around the world. While extracting lessons to be learned from the success cases covered, Transitions to Good Governance avoids being prescriptive and successfully contributes to the understanding of virtuous circles in contemporary good governance.

Recent research demonstrates that the quality of public institutions is crucial for a number of important environmental, social, economic, and political outcomes, and thereby human well-being. The Quality of Government (QoG) approach directs attention to issues such as impartiality in the exercise of public power, professionalism in public service delivery, effective measures against corruption, and meritocracy instead of patronage and nepotism. This Handbook offers a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of this rapidly expanding research field and also identifies viable avenues for future research. The initial chapters focus on theoretical approaches and debates, and the central question of how QoG can be measured. A second set of chapters examines the wealth of empirical research on how QoG relates to democratization, social trust and cohesion, ethnic diversity, happiness and human wellbeing, democratic accountability, economic growth and inequality, political legitimacy, environmental sustainability, gender equality, and the outbreak of civil conflicts. The remaining chapters turn to the perennial issue of which contextual factors and policy approaches—national, local, and international—have proven successful (and not so successful) for increasing QoG. The Quality of Government approach both challenges and complements important strands of inquiry in the social sciences. For research about democratization, QoG adds the importance of taking state capacity into account. For economics, the QoG approach shows that in order to produce economic prosperity, markets need to be embedded in institutions with a certain set of qualities. For development studies, QoG emphasizes that issues relating to corruption are integral to understanding development writ large.

This volume explores the continuous line from informal and unrecorded practices all the way up to illegal and criminal practices, performed and reproduced by both individuals and organisations. The authors classify them as alternative, subversive forms of governance performed by marginal (and often invisible) peripheral actors. The volume studies how the informal and the extra-legal unfold transnationally and, in particular, how and why they have been/are being progressively criminalized and integrated into the construction of global and local dangerhoods; how the above-mentioned phenomena are embedded into a post-liberal security order; and whether they shape new states of exception and generate moral panic whose ultimate function is regulatory, disciplinary and one of crafting practices of political ordering.