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Review Aug 2026

Power structures, elite networks, and informal governance in governance systems

This study aims to critically examine how power structures and personal linkages influence governance systems, with a particular focus on elite dominance and informal networks in shaping institutional performance, accountability and transparency. It moves beyond formal institutional explanations by integrating informal governance dynamics into an integrative analytical framework that explains how governance operates in practice. The study adopts a structured critical literature review using a narrative synthesis approach. Data were collected from peer-reviewed sources indexed in Scopus, covering publications from 2020 to 2025. A systematic screening process guided the application of inclusion and exclusion criteria, followed by thematic coding, comparative analysis and critical interpretation of 35 selected studies focusing on power structures, elite influence, patronage systems, informal networks and governance accountability. The review demonstrates that governance outcomes are produced through the interaction of formal institutions and informal power structures. These interactions operate through four key mechanisms: complementarity, substitution, competition and overlap. While formal institutions emphasize transparency and rule-based governance, informal mechanisms such as elite networks and patronage systems shape how rules are implemented, modified or bypassed. These interaction patterns contribute to variation in governance performance, including accountability deficits, unequal resource distribution and reduced institutional legitimacy across contexts. This study provides a structured integrative synthesis of formal and informal governance literature and develops an analytical typology of interaction mechanisms that explains how relational power structures systematically shape governance outcomes across diverse contexts, thereby offering a refined conceptual contribution to understanding governance complexity.

Raed Atef · 0 citations
Open access Aug 2026

Impact of Governance Quality on Economic Growth

This study investigates the heterogeneous impact of governance quality on economic growth across 155 countries from 1996 to 2024. Utilizing the six Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) and an interaction fixed-effects model, the analysis disaggregates effects across least developed, developing, transitional, and developed economies. Results reveal that institutional impacts are highly development-contingent. While Political Stability consistently supports growth, dimensions such as Government Effectiveness and Rule of Law exhibit contrasting contemporaneous and lagged effects across several development groups, suggesting that rapid formalization and administrative reforms can impose short-term adjustment costs. Furthermore, Control of Corruption and Voice and Accountability show limited or context-specific significance, lending partial support to the “grease the wheels” and institutional sequencing hypotheses. These findings challenge the “one-size-fits-all” approach to institutional reform, suggesting that governance priorities must be calibrated to a country’s specific developmental stage and administrative capacity to effectively foster sustained economic growth. Additionally, the study contributes to the empirical literature by offering policy-relevant insights into how the sequencing and pacing of institutional reforms can mitigate unintended economic disruptions across different development contexts.

T. Phan, Binh Do, M. Vu · 0 citations
Open access 2026

Beyond Agency Theory: A Configurational Theory of Corporate Governance Effectiveness in an Emerging Economy

This study develops and tests a configurational theory of corporate governance effectiveness that moves beyond the limitations of agency theory in explaining governance outcomes in emerging economies. Drawing on a sample of 98 companies listed on the Nigerian Exchange Group, the study employs fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to identify the combinations of board characteristics, ownership structures, audit functions, and institutional pressures that are sufficient for achieving high governance effectiveness. The analysis reveals three distinct configurational pathways---termed institutional substitution, board-centric, and hybrid alignment---each representing a qualitatively different logic of governance effectiveness. These findings provide strong empirical support for the principle of equifinality, demonstrating that multiple, distinct governance arrangements can be equally effective in an emerging economy characterised by institutional voids, concentrated ownership, and weak enforcement. The study integrates agency theory, institutional theory, and configurational theory to offer a nuanced understanding of how governance effectiveness emerges from the alignment of internal mechanisms with external institutional pressures. The results challenge the universalist assumptions underlying many governance codes and suggest that regulatory strategies in emerging economies should move away from prescriptive, one-size-fits-all approaches toward principles-based frameworks that enable firms to develop context-appropriate governance configurations. The findings carry significant implications for policymakers, practitioners, and scholars seeking to understand and improve corporate governance in contexts where formal mechanisms often fail to operate as intended.

Olukoya Sakirat Adetutu, Peter Kayode · 0 citations
Jul 2026

Governance 4.0 and the Evolution of Good Governance in India: Digital Transformation, Institutional Reform, and Citizen-Centric Administration

It is argued that while technology has enhanced efficiency and transparency, governance outcomes ultimately depend on institutional capacity, inclusivity, and ethical commitment, and that Governance 4.0 represents not merely a technological shift but a normative redefinition of democratic governance in India.

Sanchita Ray · 0 citations
Review Open access Aug 2026

Evaluating Theories of Governance in Explaining Accountability Failures in Developing Countries: An Adaptive Integrated Governance Accountability Framework

Governance and accountability are fundamental to sustainable development, institutional legitimacy, and effective public administration. Despite extensive governance reforms across developing countries, accountability failures continue to impede service delivery, weaken public trust, and constrain socio-economic development. Existing governance scholarship provides diverse theoretical explanations for these failures, yet individual theories often focus on specific dimensions while overlooking the complexity of governance systems. This paper critically reviews and synthesises major governance theories, including Institutionalism, Principal-Agent Theory, Public Choice Theory, Network Governance, Collaborative Governance, Stewardship Theory, New Public Management, Political Economy Theory, and State Capacity Theory. The analysis demonstrates that accountability failures arise from the interaction of institutional weaknesses, political incentives, administrative capacity constraints, fragmented governance networks, and informal institutions rather than from a single causal factor. To address this theoretical fragmentation, the paper proposes the Adaptive Integrated Governance Accountability Framework (AIGAF), which integrates institutional resilience, incentive-compatible accountability, ethical leadership, collaborative governance, political commitment, and adaptive state capacity into a unified conceptual model. The paper argues that this integrative framework provides a more comprehensive basis for understanding accountability failures and offers practical insights for designing governance reforms that are responsive to the institutional and political realities of developing countries.

Tinamukama Albert Gumisiriza, Esther Gimaddu, Anthony Mpairwe · 0 citations
Jul 2026

Institutionalising corporate governance: contradictions, negotiated compromises and unintended consequences

This study examines how corporate governance (CG) reforms emerge, institutionalise and are enacted across institutional levels. Focussing on three reform cycles in Pakistan (2002, 2012 and 2017), it explains how governance codes are negotiated, hybridised and resisted under family ownership and political patronage, and why formally stronger regulations may nonetheless produce symbolic compliance, selective implementation and strategic exit. Drawing on Dillard et al.’s (2004) multi-level framework, integrating neo-institutional sociology, structuration theory and Weber’s axes of tension, the study analyses 41 interviews with regulators, market actors and executives, complemented by documentary analysis spanning 1995–2020. Data were coded thematically and interpreted longitudinally across socio-political, organisational-field and organisational levels. CG reform is neither linear nor convergent. International financial agencies exerted coercive and normative pressures, but these interacted with entrenched family capitalism to produce negotiated outcomes and partial institutionalisation across all three cycles. Boards, committees and disclosure practices were formally adopted yet routinely decoupled from decision-making. Symbolic compliance, selective adoption and strategic delisting emerged as rational responses to preserve family control; the 2017 Regulations strengthened legal formality without altering underlying power dynamics. The study focuses on listed family-controlled firms, with interview data centred on 2012 and the early post-2017 period. Future research should track enforcement, investor activism and digital reporting across countries and time. Effective CG requires independent regulators, credible enforcement and positive incentives for controlling owners. Without concurrent reforms addressing political power and financing structures, formal regimes risk reinforcing symbolic compliance and selective exit. The paper links reform development to unintended organisational consequences across successive regulatory cycles, revealing tensions between formal rationality in CG codes and substantive rationality embedded in family capitalism. The multi-level framework offers a transferable lens for analysing CG reforms in other emerging economies characterised by concentrated ownership and entrenched power relations.

Z. Ahmad, Zeeshan Mahmood · 1 citation