Is Governance Reform a Catalyst for Development?

International development agencies contend developing countries can boost rates of economic growth by introducing “good governance” measures. However, close analysis of specific governance reforms and economic turning points in the United States (when it was a developing country), Argentina, Mauritius, and Jamaica suggests that the agencies underestimate the time and political effort required to change governance, and overestimate the economic impact. Counter to optimistic claims about how much “institutions matter,” these carefully selected cases imply that greater transparency, accountability, and participation are often a result, rather than a direct cause of faster development. Furthermore, they show that closed institutions may be a satisfactory platform for rapid growth, provided those institutions open over time. Policymakers need to understand these processes better before counting on governance reforms to be the springboard out of poverty for most developing countries today.     

The Anglo‐Irish Agreement: 25 Years On

This article examines the surprisingly muted commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Anglo‐Irish Agreement. It was surprising because not only was the Agreement a major innovation in relations between the two states but it was also the defining political issue in Northern Ireland for almost a decade. It is argued that the significance of the Agreement has been diminished because of retrospective narratives which serve the political convenience of the key parties to the Northern Ireland conflict. The article adapts Oakeshott's notion of the ‘dry wall’ to re‐assess and to re‐state the Agreement's place in recent history.