Practitioners reflections: making a difference in high corruption and weak governance country environments

Good governance involves capable, accountable, transparent, and responsive states. Unfortunately, in many developing countries, weaknesses in these attributes are a grim reality, which, in turn, gives rise to pervasive corruption. Further still in weak governance situations, donor operations face higher than usual risks that a proportion of the donor funds will be wasted due to fraud and corruption, and that development results will be undermined. This paper asserts that while the risks of 'leakages' and/or governance failure cannot be fully eliminated, they can be minimized by following certain operational tips.

The paper provides the following findings:

• Understanding the local governance context is important in any country for assessing risks and opportunities for governance-related development interventions; in weak governance environments, it is indispensable
  
• In weak governance environments the key accountability institutions in the country cannot be relied upon to ensure good governance and control corruption. Where it is clear that elites practice corruption with impunity, direct attacks on corruption may have little chance to succeed
  
• It is essential that funding mechanisms be independent of the implementing agency and the donors. Donors need to find innovative ways to support and fund independent third party monitoring by actors outside of the executive branch of the government in ways that build local accountability institutions
  
• Reforms to promote good governance generally consist of two elements: actions that governments can take to create a capable, accountable and transparent government and actions that civil society and other non-state actors can take to help citizens hold the government accountable and responsive to their needs.

The paper provides the following conclusions and recommendations:

• Donors are challenged by their stakeholders at home and abroad to show that the funds provided are used effectively and produce positive results. Doing this in countries with poor governance and pervasive corruption is extremely difficult, and development effectiveness and reputational risks are high
  
• Donors should validate the feasibility of proposed programmes through a political economy analysis and use such analysis to enhance feasibility by identifying local reformers and champions, as well as realistically evaluating the impact of possible reform opponents
  
• When the governance systems are so weak that a direct attack on corruption is futile, follow a sequence in which trust and confidence in reformers and governance institutions is built first.