The Constitution of Development: Crafting Capabilities for Self-Governance

About the Author SUJAI SHIVAKUMAR is an official of the U.S. National Academies' Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP). He is co-author with Elinor Ostrom of Aid, Incentives, and Sustainability - An Institutional Analysis of Development Cooperation, a major report for Sida, Sweden's aid agency. Product Description Examining the foundations of development, Shivakumar describes how societies can reconstitute themselves to improve their developmental well-being. He argues that the unitary state focus in theory and practice limits the creative potential of individuals to improve their mutual well-being through crafting capabilities for self-governance. This is a significant contribution to current discussions on institutional foundations of development, providing practical guidance on what it means to constitute a government that facilitates rather than impedes progress. Review "If we really are serious about wiping out poverty in the 21st Century, we must re-think "development" so that it is more responsive to the people who need it most. A good place to start is this impassioned and carefully argued brief that the institutions necessary for economic progress cannot be imposed but must come from the bottom-up from the local networks of trust, cooperation, and consensus that ordinary people have created in the face of the social, legal, and economic discrimination that stymies the developing world." - Hernando de Soto, author, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else