Description:
In May 2008, the commission on growth
and development (the growth commission) issued its report
entitled 'the growth report'. In it the commission
attempted to distill what had been learned in the past two
decades, from experience and academic and policy research,
about strategies and policies that produced sustained high
growth in developing countries. It became clear in the
course of the work that politics, leadership, and political
economy (the interaction of economic and political forces
and choices) were centrally important ingredients in the
story. Dealing with the politics and the interaction of
political and economic forces is a work in progress in
research, an important one. Given this breadth, one of the
editors' roles is to focus the reader's attention
on what they take to be common issues across these chapters.
These common problems are fourfold: (1) promoting national
unity; (2) building good, solid institutions; (3) choosing
innovative and localized policies; and (4) creating
political consensus for long-run policy implementation. This
report represent an excellent first step toward
understanding the role of leadership in generating economic
growth, and the author hope that they generate ideas and
lead to new research on the problem of leadership in
economic growth.