Comparative study of good governance on poverty reduction in Rwanda and Burundi

Abstract

The framework of good governance, popular in the 1980s and 1990s, is considered to be one of the effective weapons of development in Africa. However, its performance has been considered uneven and itself has been widely questioned. For example, Rwanda and Burundi, two countries that have suffered from ethnic conflict, are currently experiencing significant differences in their poverty performance. This paper hopes to provide a preliminary explanation for the differences in the performance of poverty reduction in the two countries through the lens of good governance. Through developing the Three-Pillar Test Framework (TPTF), security and land systems are selected to test the institutional building process. This paper also introduces political settlement as an extra element to the TPTF to understand the good governance process better. By analysing the available evidence of these two countries using the method of the most similar case, it is concluded that the differences in poverty reduction between the two countries are mainly due to a gap in their performance in terms of institution building. Finally, this paper argues that the good governance framework still has value as a reference for institution building, but the content needs to be adapted to the development context.