Corporate Governance

Daniel Kaufmann Farewell Lecture

By Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance

Daniel Kaufmann recently gave his farewell address as the outgoing Director of Global Programs at the World Bank Institute. Kaufmann is widely recognized as a leading expert, researcher, and policy adviser on governance and development. Among other activities, Kaufmann was a key figure in the Worldwide Governance Indicators research project, which designed improved measures of public sector governance quality such as corruption, the rule of law, and regulatory quality (the latest version is available here).

At the standing room only event, Kaufmann described his professional journey, the influence of his numerous experiences around the world on his personal development, and his views on the current state of the anti-corruption and governance movement which has defined his career. In Kaufmann?s view, the governance and anti-corruption drive is currently in a silent crisis since concrete reforms have lost steam in recent years. He argued that this silent crisis is directly connected to the more visible financial crisis, which arose in part due to governance and corruption failures. Therefore, he suggested that the current environment provides an opportunity for the international donor community and its key institutions to re-evaluate their business model to enhance governance and improve transparency, and create an open environment in which we can better address the pending challenges of governance, state capture, corruption, human rights, and freedom of expression.

A video of the entire lecture is available here. The PowerPoint slides used in the lecture are available here. In addition, Kaufmann maintains his own blog at www.thekaufmannpost.net, which contains links to his papers and other governance related sites and material, as well as some posts that are related to many of the points he made during his farewell lecture.

Full post as published by The Harvard Law School Corporate Governance Blog on December 16, 2008 (boomark / email).