Balancing Domestic Welfare Needs With External “Conditionalities”: Leadership Engagement with the People and the International Environment

Abstract

Engaging the environment goes beyond mounting haphazard responses to contemporary governorship and economic growth challenges, or even managing the accompanying change and conflict. Interventions in the governorship process and in the economy by themselves mean very little unless they have a tangible and substantial impact on the people and on their living conditions. Indeed, what use is “constitutional reform” if a law-abiding motorist could be routinely pulled aside by the police, coerced into paying an illegal levy, or worse still, treated like a common criminal? What good is economic growth which does not “trickle down” fast enough to rehabilitate a decaying infrastructure, create gainful employment, expand and improve access to health, education, water supply, electricity distribution, and environmental sanitation services?