Notes • 189
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Book 1.indb 189
Nations or World Bank, and the carefully parsed words of scholars about governance and institutions. Many additional arguments exist for good governance, besides wishing to increase per capita GDP: good governance fosters non-violent conflict resolution, protects the rights of citizens, promotes equality and so forth. I am focusing on GDP growth because the data are more readily available and because higher national incomes are central to many other developmental outcomes. Though provocative for today’s beliefs, the idea of unreformed governance accelerating development would have been in line with conventional wisdom in the 1950s and 1960s. The widely held functionalist view of corruption saw poor governance as a price that at times must be paid for economic development at low to medium levels of national income. Skimming from infrastructural and private industrial investments was believed tolerable and perhaps even desirable, as long as elites did not impede growth and allowed ample benefits to trickle down to the ethnic, regional or family communities that supported the regime. This argument was not inconsistent with the Marxian notion of ‘primitive accumulation’ of capital, as an oppressive but ultimately beneficial step in development. Both Marxian theory and the prevailing modernization school of the Cold War era posited that industrialization and prosperity caused countries to adopt democratic, rational and legalistic modes of rule, rather than the other way around. It was considered pointless and perhaps counterproductive to try to tackle governance problems prematurely.
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