Beyond “state versus market” — a classic guide to development policy that confronts bribes, tribes, and markets that fail.
Author: Robert Klitgaard
Year: 1991 / reissued 2021
Publisher: Routledge
Topics: Economic Development, Policy Analysis, Poverty, Governance, Corruption
About This Book
Originally published in 1991 and reissued by Routledge in 2021, Adjusting to Reality addresses questions of enduring relevance in a lively and insightful way.
Bribes, tribes, and markets that fail — these are the realities in many developing countries. The usual strategies for reform, whether capitalist or socialist, have failed to address them effectively. What is to be done when economic reforms leave the poor behind, or when new constitutions and elections are undercut by inefficient bureaucracies, overcentralization, and corruption?
Drawing on examples from Bolivia, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Peru, and the Philippines, Klitgaard provides inspiring frameworks for inclusive policy discussion. The book highlights overlooked causes of underdevelopment — imperfect information and weak information processing in individuals and institutions — and suggests creative ways in which the state and citizens can solve their own inevitably unique problems.
Paperback edition available September 2023.
Praise
“Robert Klitgaard possesses a genuine talent for communicating with broad audiences about serious matters of public policy. As with his previous, highly successful Tropical Gangsters, Adjusting to Reality explores themes of great interest to scholars and policymakers in an engaging and accessible way… Klitgaard goes further than have others to offer specific steps that governments can take so that ‘government failure’ does not merely replace ‘market failure’…The skill with which he employs case materials imparts an immediacy and freshness to his work.”
American Political Science Review
“Students of the developing areas, whatever their discipline, ideology, or country, will profit from reading this perceptive and undoctrinaire study.”
Mancur Olson, University of Maryland
“A broad framework for policy analysis that moves us closer to intelligent solutions to the real problems of the real poor in the modern world.”
Richard Zeckhauser, Harvard Kennedy School
Related Work
Related themes: International Development | Governance & Public Management
Related books: Tropical Gangsters | The Culture and Development Manifesto | Controlling Corruption