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.
A crucial requirement of government by consent is the willingness of defeated candidates and parties to concede when the voters' verdict goes against them. Events in Mexico following its July…
While the people of South Asia, especially those with higher levels of education and exposure to the media, prefer democracy to authoritarianism, they are willing to relax some of the…
For countries emerging from communism, the post-1989 imperative to “be like the West” has generated discontent and even a “return of the repressed,” as the region feels old nationalist stirrings…