This paper reviews the Malaysian privatization policy as well as what has happened in Malaysia in the name of privatization. Particular emphasis is placed on the likely distributional consequences of Malaysian privatization.
This article is an introduction to the practice of open government in China, which has attracted wide attention in the international community over the last several years. The first part of the article offers a big picture of the present conditions of the practice, with emphases on open village affairs, open legislation, government informatization and “The Regulations on the Freedom of Information” which was being formulated at the time of writing. The second part analyzes the factors and conditions under which the practice occurred. The third part discusses the various problems facing the practice of open government in China at the time of writing.
This paper provides a brief and admittedly selective history of the struggle for openness in the international institutions, summary descriptions of a few of the more important battles and campaigns in that struggle, an analysis of current transparency policies and institutional structures within the international institutions, an overview of current issues and debates, and a synopsis of lessons learned from the struggle so far.
Social Mobilisation and Transparency: The Indian Experience is a study of the right to information movements in India, especially in terms of the social and political mobilisation involved in the getting of the right and then its exercise. The paper traces the history of the demands for information in the Indian context and attempts to describe and then weave together the various strands of the transparency movements, including movements for environmental information, for information about corruption, about development projects, about rural livelihoods, about elections, about arbitrary governance and about the right to food.
The People’s Republic of China has joined the international movement toward greater government transparency, including making government records and decision-making more accessible to its citizens. While China is very much aware of and indeed has drawn lessons from this international trend, the primary force nudging China to adopt a more open form of governance is domestic dynamics.
The principles that should govern transparency in the security sector are essentially the same as those that operate in any other sector of government. Agencies in the sector should be subject to a justiciable right of access to information. National security claims can be invoked to defend decisions to withhold information, but the bar for withholding information should be high. The possibility that reasons for withholding information might be outweighed by broader public interest considerations should be anticipated. The decision to withhold information should be subject to independent review, and not left in the hands of government officials.
The wisdom and economic effects of privatization in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) are currently the subject of intense re-examination. While today privatization is under debate, in the early 1990s privatization was widely considered one of the keystones of the entire transition process. From the start it was clear, however, that privatization in and of itself would not be sufficient to insure an effective functioning of the newly created market economies.
About the Author Pranab K. Bardhan Professor of Economics University of California, Berkeley
These notes on decentralization lay out some of the basic issues and develop a simple map which puts the experiences and proposals of particular countries into a common conceptual framework.