What is it about?
Transparency is widely seen as an important tool for deterring corruption, and the need to reduce corruption is pressing in natural resources, where populations often fail to benefit from their countries' wealth. But if transparency works to reveal and reduce corruption, we might expect corrupt governments to resist it. However, many of them do not. Over the past decade or so, many governments in corruption-prone countries have rushed to volunteer for greater scrutiny in natural resources by joining the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). Why? We argue that some governments - or individuals within them - who want to be seen as reformers use EITI to signal their good intentions. Moreover, this pays off, because international actors reward EITI implementation with increased aid and other support.
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Why is it important?
This case offers lessons for how to achieve global governance aims in other sectors and policy areas. Individual domestic reformers can leverage international reputational concerns - and concrete benefits such as aid - to persuade colleagues to accept reforms and meanwhile build momentum for change.
Perspectives
When I first heard about the EITI in the early 2000s, I thought it was a crazy idea - the incentives to join seemed to be completely lacking. Not least because it came on the back of, at that time, largely failed efforts, to get oil and gas companies to publish what they paid to governments. But I hadn't banked on how quickly the norm of transparency would spread, and how much political leaders would seek to benefit from appearing to embrace it.
Dr Elizabeth David-Barrett
University of Sussex
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Norm Diffusion and Reputation: The Rise of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, Governance, August 2015, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1111/gove.12163.
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