A new book about global governance highlights the importance of fighting corruption

Another sign that corruption has gone mainstream.

Global governance expert Parag Khanna, Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation, is publishing a new book today: How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance.

The book talks about the multiple challenges facing the world today and how to deal with them. One of those challenges is corruption, and he says it is something we are going to have to change if we want to get things done.

You can read a corruption-related excerpt from Khanna’s book now at The Globalist.

Khanna says that corruption was a barrier to diplomacy, but that putting transparency at the forefront of diplomacy has made diplomacy itself more effective. As you will read in the excerpt, this took a lot of work: a lot of governments and businesses had to be convinced that they could, and should, change the rules of the game (or lack of them).

The book shows that we have come a long way, but also underlines how important it is that all sectors – government, business and civil society from all levels and countries – work together to solve global challenges. A timely reminder that if enough people get together and ask for change, they will be listened to.

So transparency has helped diplomacy. Let’s hope diplomacy returns the favour this year. At TI we have a lot of global diplomacy to do on the anti-corruption front in 2011: we want to see the G20 lead by example with anti-corruption action and rules like the OECD anti-bribery convention enforced.