Well-meant is the enemy of the good. Western good governance concepts and the reality in developing countries

Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2015 in the subject Politics - General and Theories of International Politics language: English abstract: This paper is meant as a contribution to the discussion of the effectiveness of development aid. Since the last decade of the 20th century Western industrialized countries have undertaken encompassing efforts to improve government systems in developing countries because bad government is seen as one of the most serious hurdles for prosperity and poverty alleviation. Billions of dollars have been spent in order to fight corruption and nepotism and to foster democracy and the rule of law. But already a brief glance at the history of developing countries in the last 25 years shows that much of this support has mostly not given rise to any substantial ameliorations and in those regions where prosperity was achieved the success cannot be traced back to Western good governance programs. This article demonstrates in particular why one of the most popular development aid instruments in context of good governance programs - decentralization reform - is doomed to fail.