Global Integrity supports progress toward open and accountable governance in countries and communities around the world. Their approach is informed by three key insights: First, progress toward more open governance is inherently political; second, actors within a given governance context play the primary role in driving governance reform; and third, there is no universal blueprint for governance reform. They promote open governance by conducting research and generating data, by supporting the work of country-level reformers, and by influencing global conversations on open governance.

What They Do

Established in 2005, their mission is to support progress toward open, accountable and effective governance in countries and communities around the world. They believe that societies, rich and poor, address challenges such as poor service delivery, inequality, poverty and corruption more effectively, when citizens are able to exercise their rights to shape the rules that govern their lives.

Governance reform is inherently political and complex. There are few, if any, cookie cutter solutions to governance-related challenges that will work across diverse contexts. As such, efforts to drive progress toward more open, accountable and effective governance must be led by local stakeholders, as they navigate and shape the political dynamics in the particular contexts in which they are working.

They support these processes by helping government and civil society partners to put adaptive learning — a structured, data-driven, problem-focused and iterative approach to learning by doing, which engages with local political realities while drawing on experiences from elsewhere — at the heart of their efforts to design and implement effective governance reforms. In so doing, they help reformers close the gaps between policy commitments and implementation and contribute to better governance and development outcomes.

They use the insights generated from their innovative and exploratory work with local partners to engage with multilateral and bilateral development agencies, and other external actors; encouraging them to operate in ways that support the country-level learning that is key to designing and implementing effective governance reforms. They put this multi-level approach into practice, in different ways, across their work on governance, data and citizen engagement, and through their more specific work on multi-stakeholder governance initiatives, open fiscal governance, and money in politics.