How do investors choose whether to set up shop in, say, Somalia rather than Spain, Colombia rather than Canada? Siemens, the German engineering company, and the Swiss technologies company ABB both recently stopped doing business in Sudan, claiming moral and political reasons, while many multinationals are still operating in the high-risk countries of Afghanistan, Congo and Iraq.

The OECD Anti-Bribery Convention is ten years old in November, yet rarely has it been in the public spotlight quite as much as in recent months, thanks to headline-grabbing investigations of possible bribery of foreign officials by companies from member countries. We asked Mark Pieth, chair of the Working Group on Bribery, to explain.

“Good governance is the basis of all OECD activities, which is hardly surprising given that it is essential for all economic and social progress.” These remarks by Secretary-General Donald J. Johnston set the tone for a ministerial meeting on Strengthening Trust in Government, hosted by the Netherlands in Rotterdam on 28 November.

Even a few short decades ago, power and politics seemed to be played out only at election time, when politicians would consult the people, then return to government or opposition to take care of the affairs of the state. The next election was barely on their minds. Citizens, whether through trust or ignorance, generally would ask no more of them than that.

If there were ever any doubt, current events are making it abundantly clear: good, effective government is crucial to a well-functioning economy and society. Natural disasters such as hurricane Katrina in the US, explosions of social and racial tensions in Europe, terrorism and threats of global pandemics have put government in the spotlight. Such events also underscore the high–and rising–expectations that citizens have of their governments.

Governments have always been keen to achieve results, but calls to improve public sector performance in OECD countries have become particularly loud and insistent over the last couple of decades.

OECD countries have carried out many public management reforms over the last 20 years or so. Yet there is still little comparative data to help governments plan such moves and gauge their progress. To be sure, statistical and budgetary agencies in many OECD countries have made attempts at measuring general government productivity, for instance, but these efforts have tended to be made in isolation, and often employing different methods.

Adriaan Buyserd is Dutch and Lampros Kontogeorgos is Greek. Both are graduate students studying international public administration at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, and both will be taking part in the parallel summit for students that is being staged this month in Rotterdam alongside the OECD ministerial meeting on trust in government.

It started in the 1980s with privatisation, when state-run commercial services like telecoms were transferred to private ownership. Now an extension of this idea is to hire private sector businesses to deliver public services. The services remain public, the government remains responsible for regulation and oversight, but businesses either replace public authorities in carrying out the job or share the work with them. What are the reasons for introducing this notion, how does it operate in practice, and can it achieve its goals?

Even sceptics would agree that corruption, quite apart from being anti-democratic, distorts markets and chokes development. That is why the OECD leads the fight against corruption in international business, notably through its renowned Anti-Bribery Convention.

There are lots of jokes about car salesmen. Many play on the idea of fraudulence and untrustworthiness. If governments place excessive faith in the invisible hand of markets and craft social policies and public service programmes that rely on commercial promise, they run the risk of being seen in the same manner: as policy sales people selling products, and certainly not practising good governance.

Images of voters braving death to cast their ballots in elections across the world remind us that democracy, however imperfect, is not some tedious civic duty, but a victory over oppression. In this light, it might seem slightly ludicrous to worry about such bastions of freedom and stability as, say, the Scandinavian countries.

Does government have a future? For a public organisation such as the OECD the question seems purely rhetorical and the answer obvious. Does anyone seriously believe that the world could function without government? Yet, the proposition is far from being fanciful.