Columbia–government and legal system, and corruption
In the previous modules you looked at the cultural and
financial situation of your reference country (Columbia). Now we’ll be looking
at the legal and political environment of your country and how these factors
impact doing business.
As part of your research, keep in mind that several
organizations publish various rankings and indices of political and legal
factors in the major countries in the world. One example of rankings is the
World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators page
(http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/index.aspx#home). This webpage
includes rankings on factors relating the legal and political system such as
rule of law, regulatory quality, and political stability. Rankings are given
from 0 to 100 on each of these aspects.
The World Bank also does some rankings of the ease of doing
business in countries across the world. Their doingbusiness.org has detailed
reports on most countries on different aspects of doing business. While they
look at many different factors, some of these relate to the legal system such
as ease of enforcing contracts or getting a business license. It is worth
looking up your country on this webpage to get an idea of how friendly your
country’s legal system is to doing business. In addition to the Doing Business
report, Transparency International does an annual report on corruption around
the world and their rankings can be found at transparency.org.
But don’t just look at quantitative rankings of your
country, do additional research to get an overall picture of the legal and
political system beyond just a numerical score. Once you are finished doing
your research on this country of your choice, write a two to three page paper
covering the following issues:
1. The type of government and level of political stability
in your country, and whether or not the political system is conducive to doing
business
2. The legal/regulatory system in this country and whether
or not it is conducive to doing business
3. The level of corruption in your country, and the impact
of corruption on doing business in this country
