What is quality of government? -- Quality of government: what you get -- Corruption: the killing fields -- Creatingpolitical legitimacy: representative democracy versus quality of government -- Curbing corruption: the indirect "big bang" approach -- Quality of government and the welfare state -- The low trust-corruption-inequality trap -- Quality of government and social trust: two experiments-- The tale of two countries: democratic Jamaica versus high quality of government Singapore -- Preventing societies from self-destructing.