36 opposition. In Vietnam detailed studies exposing the costs of corruption helped develop support to confront the many vested interests opposing reform of the old Company Law. Benchmarking and rankings provide another powerful impetus. The World Bank Group’s recent publication of the Doing Business country rankings (World Bank 2005a), for instance, prompted calls for reform in more than 20 countries. In such countries as India and Mexico, sub-national benchmarking is playing a vital role in fostering reform due to increased competition between states.

4. _Crisis and political change provide opportunities to push through bold reforms_ . A deep fiscal crisis together with a newly elected government generated the support reformers in the Slovak Republic needed to adopt and carry out tax, labor, and other regulatory reforms far more ambitious than the piecemeal efforts of the past. Financial crisis helped thrust more ambitious regulatory reforms onto the agenda in Hungary in the mid-1990s. Other types of crises also helped propel reform: in Mozambique the resettlement crisis made radical overhaul of the land code possible; in Italy and the Republic of Korea major corruption scandals helped launch regulatory reforms; and in the Netherlands two major safety accidents pushed inspections reform onto the agenda. Strong political support for dealing with these crises made it easier to overcome resistance and gain wide acceptance for reform.

5. _Pilots and other pragmatic steps can provide important learning and demonstration effects which help get the reform process going, especially when a reform faces great uncertainty or strong opposition_ . Reform often comes about from a process of policy learning and experimentation. Pilots, in particular, can help create momentum and provide a testing ground for deeper change down the line. Peru and South Africa used pilots to test the technology involved in property registration and valuation, assess the difficulties larger-scale programs would face, and convince politicians that such programs were administratively and politically feasible. China has put pilots at the center of its reform strategy, using special economic zones to test market-oriented policies such as land use rights before extending them nationwide.

6. _Leveraging and empowering supporters through education and dialogue can help mitigate interest group opposition_ . Supporters and potential supporters are often taken for granted, but educating and mobilizing them early on helps create coalitions for change and minimize the incentives and ability of narrow interest groups or politicians to obstruct the reform process. Greater discussion may be needed for reforms that will have wide distributional consequences and are likely to involve multiple stakeholder groups. These strategies appeared to be important in both democratic and non-democratic settings: the shift to market-oriented policies in China and Vietnam involved greater discussion and attention to public opinion than is commonly perceived. Yet consultation may have its limits even in democratic settings, especially when reform is resisted by narrow interest groups. Under pressure to change, policymakers pursuing port reform in Colombia and customs reform in Mexico opted for rapid, top-down change, made possible by rampant corruption and inefficiency, broad public support, and a brief political window of opportunity for reform.