That good governance is at the very heart of economic growth and poverty reduction, and even political legitimacy, is one of the undisputed lessons of development experience from around the world over the last 60 years. 59. In the ultimate analysis, it is the quality of governance that separates success and failure in economic development.
Across countries, application of the same policies in roughly similar contexts has produced dramatically different results. In our own country, we have seen vast differences across states in development outcomes from out of the same mix of development policies. These differences across countries as well as across regions within countries, even as they adopt similar policy packages, arise because of differences in governance.