hanced expectations of success, oppor-
tunity, and satisfaction. Where bad gov-
ernance prevails, Jedoch, citizens suf-
fer increasingly severe consequences–
Tod, injury, intensi½ed morbidity, di-
minished personal accomplishments,
lowered expectations of achievement,
hunger, and sometimes starvation.
Numerous studies have asserted
strong linkages between good gover-
nance and economic growth–at least
at the national level. Good governance,
they suggest, provides a platform with-
out which sustained economic growth
is extremely dif½cult. The data from
several studies also show that econom-
ic growth in nation-states contributes
to the possibility of good governance.
There are sound reasons why both con-
clusions should, a priori, be correct. Aber
those conclusions depend on what we
mean by good versus bad governance,
and what governance includes within
its de½nition.
Better governance inhibits conflict,
while poor government is conducive
to intrastate tensions and civil wars. In-
deed, new analyses of nation-state fail-
ure attribute it to governance errors that
diminish a national government’s legiti-
macy, reduce perceptions of its fairness,
encourage out-groups to mobilize, Und
lead ultimately to internal war. It stands
to reason that better governed nation-
states would undergo fewer civil wars.
This proposition–that better gover-
nance, especially in the tension-½lled
developing world, reduces the frequen-
cy and intensity of conflict–reinforces
the prior one: economic growth is more
likely where there is good governance.
War and turmoil and instability obvious-
ly inhibit growth–as in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo, Somalia, und das
Sudan–and special cases such as Co-
lombia and Sri Lanka still demonstrate
that conflict and insecurity can lower
Robert I. Rotberg
on improving
nation-state
governance
Good governance is essential if citizens
of nation-states or subordinate politi-
cal jurisdictions are to maximize their
inalienable rights as subjects, taxpayers,
or mere residents of the polities to which
they owe, or are compelled to pay, alle-
giance. From their greatest need, frei-
dom from attack (security), to mundane
but real needs, such as well-maintained
roads and the availability of potable
Wasser, citizens look to their suzerains–
their modern nation-states, provinces,
municipalities, and so on–for high-
quality performance. Where that high-
quality performance–good governance
–is delivered, citizens can go about their
personal business and pursuits with en-
Robert I. Rotberg, a Fellow of the American
Academy since 2005, is director of the Program
on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution
at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government
and president of the World Peace Foundation.
His publications include “When States Fail:
Causes and Consequences” (1999) and “Bat-
tling Terrorism in the Horn of Africa” (2005).
© 2007 von der American Academy of Arts
& Wissenschaften
152
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growth even without vitiating economic
performance entirely.
For at least the reasons already ad-
vanced, most of us prefer good gover-
nance. It is in our self-interest. Condi-
tions of good governance allow us to
maximize our returns on personal ini-
tiative and entrepreneurship. It is dif-
½cult to conceive of anyone, anywhere,
who does not seek fuller educational
Gelegenheiten, paved rather than pot-
holed roads, more rather than less secu-
rity, und so weiter. The wages of poor gover-
nance, andererseits, are high, pay-
ing off in immiseration, hunger, Und
Tod.
Good governance does not occur by
chance. It must be nourished explicit-
ly and consciously. The intervention
of human agency is therefore critical.
There is no good governance absent
intentional, positive leadership. Con-
versely, where nation-states are badly
led, the delivery of the essentials of
governance falters, neglect becomes
common, and the decay of the nation-
state becomes obvious, especially to its
stakeholders. Idi Amin in Uganda, Siaka
Stevens in Sierra Leone, and Mobutu
Sese Seko in Congo/Zaire are all African
examples of how narcissistic, avaricious,
and incompetent leaders create extreme
situations of lamentable governance,
with deleterious consequences. Presi-
dent Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has
followed a similar trajectory in misgov-
erning his once strong nation-state.
We should no longer describe gover-
nance differences anecdotally. Tradition-
al culture is important, but that variable
is not useful in distinguishing the causes
of good governance from bad gover-
nance. Governance is rather a bundle of
deliverables that citizens expect, crave,
or demand. These deliverables actually
differ across continents only at the mar-
gin, with altered priorities and prefer-
ence weightings. Public-opinion surveys
in Africa, Asien, Latin America, and Eu-
rope show a compelling uniformity in
favor of governance as a quality com-
posed of a number of quantities (politi-
cal goods) that citizens want from their
governments. Daher, the speci½cation of
what governance is flows from the bot-
tom up, not the top down. Fundamental-
ly, this analysis depends upon a universal
articulation of the requests that citizens
now make, and for decades and centu-
ries have made, of their rulers.
Eight categories of political goods
comprise governance and separate the
good performers from the poor perform-
ers. None is as important as the supply
of security, especially human security.
Individuals alone, almost exclusively in
unique circumstances, can sometimes
arrange their own security. And groups
of individuals can band together to pur-
chase goods or services that provide
more or less substantial measures of se-
curity. Traditionell, and usually, Wie-
immer, individuals and groups cannot ef-
fectively substitute privately procured
measures of security for the full panoply
of publicly provided security.
The security good includes Max We-
ber’s monopoly of violence. If a nation-
state does not hold that monopoly it
cannot provide full security. Likewise,
only a secure state projects power be-
yond the borders of the nation’s capital.
If nonstate actors are violent, security
exists only minimally for citizens. Hoch
levels of crime also demonstrate that a
nation-state, no matter how well-off, Ist
performing poorly in terms of human
security. Citizens always look to their
states for security of person.
Only when reasonable provisions for
security exist within a country–espe-
cially in a fragile, newly reconstructed
nation-state in the developing world–
can governments deliver other desirable
Improving
nation-state
governance
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Dædalus Winter 2007
153
Note by
Robert I.
Rotberg
political goods. After security, rule of
law is primary. Effective, meaningful
modern states provide predictable, rec-
ognizable, systematized methods of ad-
judicating disputes and regulating both
the norms and the prevailing mores of a
host society. The essentials of this politi-
cal good are usually embodied in codes
and procedures that together comprise
an enforceable body of law, security of
property and contract, an independent
and ef½cacious judicial system, and a set
of norms that represent the values con-
tained in the local version of a legal sys-
tem. This is a description not of a West-
ern or non-Western form of law, but of
a systematic method of arbitrating dis-
putes without resort to violence–a po-
litical good universally desired.
A third key political good enables citi-
zens to participate freely, openly, Und
fully in the political process. This good
of political rights encompasses these es-
sential freedoms: the right to compete
for of½ce; respect and support for–and
the existence of–national and regional
political institutions; tolerance of dis-
sent and difference; and fundamental
civil liberties and human rights. Free-
dom of expression and freedom of asso-
ciation are intrinsic to, and embodied
In, this political good. This third politi-
cal good differentiates stable states that
deliver few political rights from states
that offer more of other goods, wie zum Beispiel
economic opportunity.
The fourth essential political good is
economic opportunity, which provides
a platform for the exercise of entrepre-
neurial initiative and the maximization
of an individual’s quest for prosperity
and higher living standards. Delivering
this political good requires supplying
high orders of macroeconomic openness
and ½scal prudence. Included in this po-
litical good is a money and banking sys-
tem, usually presided over by a central
bank and lubricated by a nationally cre-
ated currency, and an institutional con-
text conducive to monetary stability.
Among the other basic political goods
that states typically supply are health
care; schools and educational instruc-
tion; the physical arteries of commerce
(d.h., Straßen, railways, harbors, and air-
Häfen); communications networks; Und
a framework conducive to the empower-
ment of civil society. The ½rst two of
these political goods are obvious; im
developing world, citizens have tradi-
tionally looked to their governments to
supply nearly all medical care and most
forms of educational opportunity and
advancement.
Literacy levels and school persistence
rates can demonstrate how well or how
poorly a country, compared to its peers,
is meeting or exceeding its people’s
needs in these areas. Allgemeiner,
putting numbers to all these criteria can
tell us whether, within a region or across
Regionen, a country is providing higher
or lower levels of political goods than
its neighbors. Is Ruritania more or less
secure than its neighbors? Does Rurita-
nia have more or less rule of law? Is it
politically free? Are its citizens receiv-
ing more or less instruction and medi-
cal services? Are Ruritania’s economic
attainments fully reflected in its listed
gdp per capita, its gdp growth rates,
its governmental de½cits, or its inflation
Tarife? Is its civil society empowered?
Those are among the key questions; An-
ly by answering them as objectively as
possible are we able to answer the over-
all question: is Ruritania better or more
poorly governed than its neighbors?
Measuring governmental performance
requires measuring outcomes, and not
inputs. We must employ proxies that in-
form us about a government’s delivery
of political goods, and not about its bud-
getary provisions. We want to know pri-
154
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marily not what a government’s good
intentions may have been, but what it
actually accomplished with those appro-
priated funds. If a country is corrupt,
those funds may indeed have been si-
phoned away from service delivery into
individual pockets, so the mere fact that
a nation-state appropriates or expends
more for health or education than its
neighbors do may mean little. Ergebnisse
zählen.
By measuring such outcomes–the
delivery of political goods, country by
country–we can create a report card
on governance, enabling us to establish
a ranking system of nation-states. Do-
ing so will encourage poorly performing
nation-states to reform and to provide
more and better political goods to their
citizens. A ranking system will shame
some states into striving to do better. Es
will also embolden and assist the efforts
of civil society organizations in such
Länder, strengthening the reformist
hands of parliamentary critics of poorly
governed nation-states.
Such a ranking system will bring gov-
ernance, and the importance of good
governance in the affairs of nations, Zu
the front of policy queues. It would, In
other words, bring ‘governance’ out of
the closet. Transparency International
(ti) did just that for ‘corruption’ in the
1990S. The new emphasis in the World
Bank and the Millennium Challenge
Account on governance per se, und weiter
the delivery of political goods and polit-
ical institutions, should have the same
effect for governance.
Most of all, a sophisticated, transpar-
ent ranking system would enable us to
create a report card on governance to
diagnose the conditions of a particular
country. Doing so would strengthen the
activities of ngos. If a nation-state were
ranked below its neighbors, we could
say why. If security or rule of law scores
were weak, and dragging down a coun-
try’s score, we could diagnose those
weaknesses and undertake improve-
ments–to the bene½t of citizens. Wir
could establish benchmarks. Countries,
particularly those in the developing
Welt, would have incentives to improve
their rankings and, daher, their perform-
ance on matters of concern to citizens.
Nation-states would naturally compete
with their peers, leading to competition
for better governance, just as the ti re-
port card on perceptions of corruption
has led to greater awareness of the dan-
gers of corruption and, conceivably, Zu
reduced levels of corruption in many so-
cieties.
This new focus on governance through
the optic of performance, the effective
delivery of political goods, deserves its
own international ngo to perform the
necessary objective scoring and rank-
ing, using re½ned and calibrated criteria.
Without the creation of such an annual
scorecard showing relative strengthen-
ing or weakening of good governance,
the governments of the developing
world will continue to be unsure diag-
nostically about how they can best serve
their citizens. Jawboning by Washing-
Tonne, London, and Brussels will have
less effect, donor conditionalities not-
withstanding, than the publishing of
an annual record of nation-state gover-
nance achievement. Through such a
novel mechanism, there is a reasonable
chance of improving the manner in
which many weak and well-meaning
governments deliver critical political
goods to their citizens.*
* For more detailed discussions of these is-
sues, see Robert I. Rotberg, “Strengthening
Governance,„Washington Quarterly 38 (2004):
71–81; and Robert I. Rotberg and Deborah
L. Westen, The Good Governance Problem (Nocken-
Brücke, Mass: World Peace Foundation, 2004).
Improving
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