What has come to pass in the United Kingdom with the referendum on membership of the European Union could well be interpreted as poor governance anywhere across the developing world. Consider how we got here. To appease both his backbenchers and potential UK Independence Party (UKIP) voters in the run-up to a highly contested election, David Cameron gave them a referendum on the European Union, so they could finally stop “banging on” about it. Boris Johnson, the former mayor of London, for his part, seemed to be interested mostly in one thing, “the number that says No 10”, as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Amber Rudd put it in a debate in the lead-up to the referendum. He embraced Brexit thinking that Leave would lose, but that his support for the campaign would position him well to become premier in two years' time.
This kind of short-sighted self-interest is, by definition, a leading problem in all those countries where the UK and other international donors are seeking to foster more effective – as well as fairer and more inclusive – institutions: political ambition takes precedence over longer term horizons, in ways that can often compromise the collective public good. This gamble on EU membership, which was unnecessary to start with, could well cost the unity of the UK itself (Scotland has made clear it does not want to leave the EU and would therefore consider a second Independence vote), and cause waves of shock well beyond it.
