Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to explain and clarify the academic debate on how to prioritize actions for long-term development, wheter good governance is more important than economic development or not, especially in relation to the implementation of the sustainable development goals in Sub-saharan Africa.

Paper long abstract:

There has been a general global consensus on the importance of good governance (rule of law, reduced corruption) for economic development. This is a well-established position in the aid policy community and in the literature on the quality of government, the literature on institutions and state development etc. This consensus has been challenged by the alternative hypothesis that economic development is actually a driver for good governance and not the other way around. This emerging literature is based on empirical cases, mainly from Africa and Asia. The clash of perspectives has large implications for development strategies and foreign aid. My ambition is to begin a testing of these hypotheses by clarifying what they actually claim in terms of causal chains and to discuss elements of empirical testing. I will compare the theories to point out what is similar and where they differ. I will also compare them to more general types of social science explanations, exemplified by the so-called three institutionalist perspectives in comparative and international politics. This topic is of general interest, while my primary interest is to problematize the implementation of the sustainable development goals in Sub-Saharan Africa. The SDGs seem to underestimate fundamental problems of implementation.

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