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.
Findings from the Arab Barometer say little about whether there are likely to be transitions to democracy in the Arab world in the years ahead, but they do offer evidence…
India has long baffled theorists of democracy. Democratic theory holds that poverty, widespread illiteracy, and a deeply hierarchical social structure are inhospitable conditions for the functioning of democracy. Yet except…
