ABSTRACT
Sunset clauses, even if well intentioned, get forgotten or permanently postponed. Most institutions work best but achieve least within a silo. They are not incentivized to link with other bodies working on complementary or overlapping mandates. A sunset clause was, at least for the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), probably a condition for corporate support for the process. Companies that were deciding whether or not to support the EITI wanted to be sure that they were not making an open-ended commitment. The EITI International Secretariat was established in 2007 with a three-year sunset clause, with the intention being that it should close after three years. Even when bodies, such as collective governance institutions, are established essentially to bridge a governance gap, they rarely seek to be absorbed into mainstream government processes. The brand, the standard, the reports, the conferences, as well as the institutions, can all prevent the positive drift towards integration into strengthened government systems.
