Jahidul Islam
Why do countries that know exactly what good governance looks like continue to choose bad governance instead? That is the question at the heart of this book - and the answer it gives, drawing on 2,500 years of evidence from Rome to Baghdad to Singapore, is as uncomfortable as it is precise: because the people who hold power have chosen their own enrichment over their country’s development, and have built systems to protect that choice. Written by a Bangladeshi businessman who spent three years reading everything from Plato’s Republic to Lee Kuan Yew’s memoirs, How to Run a Country identifies the five qualities that every successful government in history has practiced and every failing government has abandoned. The pattern is what this book calls the five pillars: honest leadership at the top, law that is real and applied without distinction between the powerful and the powerless, genuine investment in the welfare and development of the ordinary citizen, appointment and promotion of government officials on the basis of merit rather than connection, and the capacity to govern with a time horizon that extends beyond the next election cycle. It is not a work of theory. It is a mirror - held up without diplomatic softening - for every developing nation willing to look into it.
