Governance is at the heart of how well countries meet public needs and manage a wide array of common problems. Why do some countries perform badly in delivering health care, reducing inequality, providing a clean environment, or delivering some other public good to their populations even while they have the resources to do so? Does the capacity of states to provide the basics for societies to thrive depend on democratic accountability that represents different interests, or are systems under technocratic control that impose solutions and disregard, even suppress, many voices better at meeting public needs? Previous research did not systematically examine the relationship between the components that contribute to performance. Our understanding of governance, as depicted as a Governance Triangle, is that public goods provision is a function of state capacity and accountability.
The key to good governance is achieving a balance among the three dimensions on an upward and sustainable trajectory. With this new conceptual approach and data covering 135 countries over 20 years, the Index examines the relationship between accountability, state capacity and public goods provision yielding some surprising results and new insights.
This event will be followed by a drinks reception outside of the venue.
Meet the speakers and chair
Denisa Kostovicova (@DenisaKost) is a leading scholar of post-conflict reconstruction with a particular interest in post-conflict justice processes. She is the author of Kosovo: The Politics of Identity and Space (Routledge, 2005) and Reconciliation by Stealth: How People Talk about War Crimes (Cornell University Press, forthcoming), and co-editor of a number edited volumes, including Transnationalism in the Balkans (Routledge, 2008), Persistent State Weakness in the Global Age (Ashgate 2009), Bottom up Politics: An Agency-Centred Approach to Globalisation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), Civil Society and Transitions in the Western Balkans (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and Rethinking Reconciliation and Transitional Justice After Conflict (Routlege, 2018). Her work, which has also been published in top political science and international relations journals, has informed policy-making at the EU, UN and in the UK. Dr Kostovicova’s research was funded by a number of prestigious grants, including those by the Leverhulme Trust, MacArthur Foundation and Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), among others. She is currently directing a major research programme funded by the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant, “Justice Interactions and Peacebuilding: From Static to Dynamic Discourses Across National, Ethnic, Gender and Age Groups.” She has a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Prior to joining LSE, she held junior research fellowships at the University of Cambridge and the University of Oxford.
Helmut K. Anheier (@Helmut_Anheier) is Professor of Sociology at the Hertie School. He served as President of the Hertie School from 2009 to 2018.
Iain Begg (@IainBeggLSE) is a Professorial Research Fellow at the European Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science. His main research work is on the political economy of European integration and EU economic governance. He has directed and participated in a series of research projects on different facets of EU policy and his current projects include studies on the governance of EU economic and social policy, the economic and fiscal consequences of Brexit, evaluation of EU cohesion policy and reform of the EU budget. Other recent research projects include work on policy co-ordination under EMU and the social impact of globalisation.
Laura Mann is a sociologist whose research focuses on the political economy of development, knowledge and technology. Her regional focus is East Africa (Sudan, Kenya and Rwanda) but she has also worked on collaborative research on ICTs and BPO in Asia and has conducted fieldwork in North America as part of a project on digitisation within global agriculture.
Before joining the LSE as an assistant professor, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford and at the African Studies Centre in Leiden, and received her PhD from the University of Edinburgh. She is on the Editorial Working Group of the Review of African Political Economy. She is a research affiliate of the Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa.
Mary Kaldor (@KaldorM) is Professor Emeritus of Global Governance and Director of the Conflict Research Programme at The London School of Economics and Political Science.
She has pioneered the concepts of new wars and global civil society. Her elaboration of the real-world implementation of human security has directly influenced European and national governments.
She is the author of many books and articles including New and Old Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era (3rd edition, 2012), International Law and New Wars (with Christine Chinkin, 2017) and Global Security Cultures (2018).
Mick Cox is a Founding Director of LSE IDEAS. He was Director of LSE IDEAS between 2008 and 2019. He was appointed to a Chair at the LSE in 2002, having previously held positions in the UK at The Queen's University of Belfast and the Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth. He helped establish the Cold War Studies Centre at the LSE in 2004 and later co-founded LSE IDEAS in 2008 with Arne Westad.
More information about the event
This event is hosted by LSE IDEAS
Event hashtags: #LSEGovernanceIndex
LSE IDEAS (@lseideas) is LSE's foreign policy think tank. Through sustained engagement with policymakers and opinion-formers, IDEAS provides a forum that informs policy debate and connects academic research with the practice of diplomacy and strategy.