World Development Report 2017: Governance and Law - Launch Seminar

This seminar, held at the Government Banquet Hall in Helsinki was arranged by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland to mark the launch of the World Development Report (WDR) 2017 on Governance and Law. The event begins with a presentation of the report by Mr. Luis Felipe Lopez-Calva from the World Bank.

This is followed by a panel discussion featuring Tarja Halonen, former President of Finland, in her capacity of a member of the High-Level Advisory Panel for the WDR 2017, Rachel Gisselquist, Research Fellow, UNU-WIDER, and Ms. Anu Juvonen, Executive Director, Demo Finland. The event closes with a open discussion and a vote of thanks by Satu Santala, Director General, Department of Development Policy, MFA.

World Development Report 2017: Governance and the Law addresses two fundamental questions at the heart of development. Why are carefully designed, sensible policies too often not adopted or implemented? When they are, why do they often fail to generate development outcomes such as security, growth, and equity? And why do some bad policies endure?. Policy making and policy implementation do not occur in a vacuum. Rather, they take place in complex political and social settings, in which individuals and groups with unequal power interact within changing rules as they pursue conflicting interests. The process of these interactions is what the Report calls governance, and the space in which these interactions take place, the policy arena. The full report can be downloaded here.