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This article examines the tensions, trade-offs, and complementarities between so-called good governance and bad governance in international development and draws on U.S. history to comment on current change efforts. Aid donors have ambitious plans to encourage countries to replace corrupt or closed public institutions with more accountable systems. Yet democratic or rational-legal governance does not necessarily represent an improvement over ostensibly improper governance. It is important to bear in mind that certain clientelistic practices have hidden positive functions, such as giving poor people access to resources. Governance institutions are neither bad nor good in themselves; outcomes are what matter.
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Brinkerhoff et al. (2005) studied this question.
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