The story of how the Angolan government was induced to begin creating checks and balances, from a starting point of massive corruption, is a case study in building institutions from scratch. A dysfunctional state has been driven by a combination of domestic and external pressure to take some initial steps toward accountability.
About the Author
John McMillan is the Jonathan B. Lovelace Professor of Economics in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. He is author of Reinventing the Bazaar: A Natural History of Markets (2003), has written extensively on economic reform, and is currently studying the subversion of democracy in 1990s Peru.
Can decentralization deepen democracy or is it doomed to weaken the state? If well designed, decentralization can have a positive impact on national unity, conflict mitigation, policy autonomy, service delivery,…
The country's long-ruling party has never faced a serious electoral challenge—due not only to opposition weakness but also to a deliberate strategy of suppression.
Having suffered under both of the twentieth century's most brutal brands of dictatorship—fascism and communism—the CEE peoples have been dreaming of a new and better future, the future of the…