A decade ago, I was a fly on the wall during a trade negotiation between the United States and a small country in Southeast Asia. What interested me was not the substance of the negotiation, the deliberations around an issue of minor concern to world affairs but of great concern to this one country, but the disproportionality between the personnel at the negotiating table.

The delegation from the United States that arrived at this nondescript office in Geneva, Switzerland, was considerable in two respects: first, it had an overabundance of lawyers and associates, and second, they came armed with a large number of binders that had all the paperwork for their case, replete with labelled page-holders so that they could dive directly into the points they needed to make in the discussion.

The post Can We Build Robust Public Administration Institutions In The Global South? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.