Making Sense of Governance: Empirical Evidence from 16 Developing Countries. By Goran Hyden, Julius Court, and Kenneth Mease. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004. 262p. $55.00.

This is an unusual and intriguing book. It is both erudite and exploratory (as the authors acknowledge), brilliant in conception, and problematic in execution. It is based on the results of the World Governance Survey (WGS) of “well-informed people” (WIPs), such as high-ranking civil servants, long-standing parliamentarians, businesspeople, academics, and so on. At least 35 WIPs were surveyed in each of the 16 developing countries in the study. No one can doubt the importance of the topic that Goran Hyden, Julius Court, and Kenneth Mease address, particularly given the increasing prominence that it occupies in development theory and practice. The authors define governance as “the rules that regulate the public realm” (p. 16). They rightly seek to give badly needed analytical depth to its study.