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Course of Study: (POPP3405) Globalisation and Democracy

Title: Disciplining democracy; development discourse and good governance in Africa (Chapter 3 - The Seductiveness of Good Governance)

Name of Author: Rita Abrahamsen

Name of Publisher: Zed Books

The Seductiveness of Good Governance

The strength of development discourse, Gilbert Rist has written, comes from its power to seduce; ‘ to charm, to please, to fascinate, to set dreaming, but also to abuse, to turn away from the truth, to deceive’ (1997: 1). The promise to eradicate poverty is so seductive that although the history of development is littered with failures, the belief in development survives. Past failures merely give rise to new theories, each claiming to have dis­ covered the real solutions to the problems o f development. The good governance agenda is simply the latest in a long series o f such theories, the latest reproduction o f the dream o f development.

This chapter is not concerned with the implementation o f the hotch­ potch o f policy recommendations contained within the good governance agenda, nor does it seek to rectify or to arrive at the ‘correct’ theory of development. Instead the focus is on the discourse itself, the way in which it narrates development as an absence of good governance. It seeks to expose not only the discourse’s conceptualisation o f democracy, but also what the discourse silences and evades, the ways in which its seductive power is used to deceive. This in turn should enable us to show what effects these ideas about development have on larger social processes, what interventions and practices they legitimise, and also what actions and policies they delegitimise and exclude.

Allen State Intervention, Indigenous Democratic Capitalism

As mentioned previously, the concept of good governance was first introduced to development discourse by the World Bank’s 1989 report Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth. This document was a major statement o f the institution’s intellectual leadership of the donor community (Gibbon 1993), and ever since the Bank has taken the lead in the articulation and ideological refinement of the new development doctrine. The 1989 report, together with the Bank’s study Governance and

Development (1992a) still today represent the most rigorous and assertive official pronouncement o f current development thinking, the locus classicus o f the governance literature.1 Accordingly, my analysis o f the governance discourse centres on these two documents, but also draws on articles published by two senior members o f the World Bank staff and the more summary Bank report entitled Governance: The World Bank's Experience (1994b). By and large, bilateral donors have fallen into line with the views expressed in these documents, and although contemporary development discourse cannot be seen as monolithic and unchanging there is nevertheless broad agreement on the fundamental elements o f good governance as constructed by the World Bank.

The World Bank’s construction o f good governance starts from a rejec­ tion o f the development models o f the past. T he ‘postindependence development efforts failed’ , we are told, ‘because the strategy was mis­ conceived’ (World Bank 1989: 3). According to the Bank, there is now ‘a growing consensus’ that these strategies ‘pinned too much hope on rapid state-led industrialization’ and mistakenly encouraged African governments to make ‘a dash for “ modernization” , copying, but not adapting, Western models’ (ibid.: 83, 3). Following independence, ‘Africa’s governments were grafted onto traditional societies and were often alien to the indigenous cultures’ (ibid.: 38). The Bank’s senior policy advisor makes the same point, asserting that ‘state institutions based on Weberian bureaucratic principles ... were not compatible with the beliefs and practices o f African society’ (Landell-Mills 1992: 543). The post-colonial state was, in short, ‘ the perfect example o f an alien system imposed from the top’ and because the underlying cultural premises of Western state institutions were foreign to the continent, these institutions ‘started to crumble the moment the colonial administrators left’ (ibid.: 545, 543). With hindsight, then, Africa’s ‘economic, political and social disaster’ can be blamed on ‘a fundamental flaw in the prevailing development paradigm (ibid.: 543).

The lesson has now been learned, however, and development theory has been amended accordingly. While previous state-led development efforts failed because they ‘did not build on the strengths o f traditional societies’ , the good governance agenda claims to be different (World Bank 1989: 60). Past development strategies made a rigid distinction between the modern and the traditional, discarded the traditional and made it abundantly clear that ‘Modern societies meant “ progress’” (ibid.: 60). The good governance agenda claims to have a greater degree of cultural aware­ ness and appropriateness, as there are ‘close links between governance, cultural relevance and the components o f civil society’ (Landell-Mills 1992:

567). The new development paradigm recognises, in the words of the World Bank, that ‘far from impeding development, many indigenous African values and institutions can support it’ (1989: 60). Good governance does not therefore advocate a ‘dash for modernisation’ but understands instead the need to ‘progressively remodel its institutions to be more in tune with the traditions, beliefs, and structures o f its component societies’ (Landell-Mills 1992: 545). Accordingly ‘each country has to devise in­ stitutions which are consonant with its social values’ (World Bank 1989: 60). Change cannot be imposed from the outside by development agencies, but will be effective only i f it is ‘rooted firmly in the societies concerned’ and World Bank programmes must therefore ‘reflect national characteristics and be consistent with a country’s cultural values’ (World Bank 1992a: 12; 1989: 193).

On the face of it, these suggestions are very seductive and almost common-sensical. The expressed desire to build on a society’s own values, rather than imported ones, would today be endorsed by both the political left and right. The recognition o f the ‘alien’ nature o f the modern state and its lack of roots in indigenous society also reflects current debates among Africanists. The World Bank’s order of discourse, however, per­ forms two important functions within the governance discourse. First, it serves to dissociate the good governance agenda and its proponents from the development failures o f the past. Previous development strategies may have been misconceived, but these mistakes have now been rectified as donors have discovered the ‘real’ solution to Africa’s problems. In this way, the development apparatus and the World Bank in particular remain un­ tainted by previous mistakes and retain the moral right to continue the development effort. Second, the representation not only serves to construct an image o f the modern Weberian state as alien to Africa, but delegitimises state-led development.2 The state is constructed as a Western invention, a result o f foreign ideologies and misguided development theory, imposed from above to modernise indigenous societies. Because the state is a foreign imposition, everything the state does is tainted and state intervention, whether the provision of welfare or the ownership of enterprises, is bound to fail as it is out of tune with local values and customs. In this repres­ entation the prevailing developmental or interventionist state becomes the enemy of the people, the reason for Africa’s underdevelopment and misery. The good governance agenda, on the other hand, emerges as the liberator that will allow not only for development, but also for the release o f society’s true, indigenous values. At this point the good governance discourse takes a rather astonishing twist. While the state and state-capitalism are regarded

as imported artefacts, capitalism is represented as an integral part o f Africa’s indigenous culture, perfectly attuned to local, traditional values.

The governance discourse portrays African societies as bursting with suppressed capitalist energy and entrepreneurial spirit. Under the headline Africa ’s market tradition the World Bank reminds us that ‘Entrepreneurship has a long history in Sub-Saharan Africa. In parts o f the continent long­ distance trade on caravan routes dates back to the n th century’ (1989: 136). We are further asked to recall that in Great Zimbabwe mining activities were linked to Arab trading and export centres on the south­ eastern coast, where a liberalised system of exchange operated and where mutual tolerance prevailed (ibid.). In contemporary Africa, by contrast, state-led development has stifled private sector activities. In their misguided ‘dash for modernisation’ , governments ‘greatly underestimated the depth and potential o f African entrepreneurship’ (ibid.: 136). Massive resources were directed to public enterprises, and these policies ‘have driven entrepreneurs into the informal sector’ and ‘crowded local firms out of access to markets and financial resources’ (ibid.: 136-7). But ‘despite considerable hostility from central government, local entrepreneurs have shown remarkable vitality’ , and the Bank argues that in sharp contrast to the failure o f public enterprises ‘almost everywhere the informal sector has been a thriving success’ (ibid.: 59, 38).

Not only has African capitalism triumphed against the odds, but it has done so in a manner that is consistent with Africa’s indigenous culture. According to the World Bank, enterprises in ‘the informal sector are organized around, and supported by, local values and traditions’ (ibid.: 140). Traders and artisans carry out their activities ‘according to long- established customs and rules administered through grassroots institutions’ (ibid.: 136). Thus the good governance discourse speaks o f financing in the informal sector in terms of savings clubs, rotating funds and other informal arrangements where ‘interpersonal loyalties’ are more important than formal guarantees and profit (ibid.: 140-1). There is no mention of moneylenders charging exorbitant interest rates. Instead, informal sector capitalism is given a caring and compassionate face, less concerned with profit because of its reliance on ‘personal relationships’ (ibid.: 140).

In this way the good governance discourse constructs a binary op­ position between alien state intervention, which is associated with past development failures, and indigenous capitalism, which represents the basis for future development successes. While there is no denying the dismal performance o f the African state, a clear consequence o f this binary opposition is that it bestows legitimacy on the contraction o f the state and

its services in accordance with structural adjustment programmes. Because the state is an alien oppressor, the curtailment of state activities becomes a people-friendly, democratic venture, almost to the extent that state contraction or destatisation is presented as synonymous with democratisa- tion. This conflation o f destatisation with democratisation is an essential characteristic of the good governance discourse, and, as we shall see, it reverberates in various guises throughout the entire discourse.

The conflation o f destatisation and democratisation has its roots in the perception of democracy and economic liberalism as the two sides of the same coin. Contemporary development thinking perceives o f democratisa­ tion and economic liberalisation as interrelated and mutually reinforcing processes, an argument that can be synthesised as follows: economic liberalisation is expected to decentralise decision-making away from the state and multiply the centres o f power. This in turn is assumed to lead to the development o f a civil society capable o f limiting the power of the state and providing the basis for liberal democratic politics. Democratic rights, on the other hand, are seen to safeguard property rights, which in turn creates the security and incentives necessary for economic growth. A positive synergy is thus perceived to exist between economic liberalisation and democracy, and the World Bank accordingly argues that ‘political legitimacy’ is a ‘precondition for sustainable development’ and growth, and that economic reform will be ‘wasted i f the political context is not favourable’ (1989: 60, 192). This view has been repeated by numerous other development organisations and bilateral donors. Former British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, for example, maintained that ‘good government goes hand in hand with successful economic development. In the short term an authoritarian or corrupt government may achieve some economic progress. In the longer term, however, such governments prove inefficient, and are unable to deliver social goods as effectively as govern­ ments which are accountable’ (1990: 4-5). The same view also informs the present Labour government’s foreign policy, with Foreign Secretary Robin Cook stating that ‘ the past two decades have repeatedly demonstrated that political freedom and economic development are mutually reinforcing (1998).

In the good governance discourse, democracy emerges as the necessary political framework for successful economic development, and within the discourse democracy and economic liberalism are conceptually linked: bad governance equals state intervention, good governance equals democracy and economic liberalism. Or in the words of two senior World Bank officials, governance means competent and accountable government ‘dedicated to

liberal economic policies’ (Landell-Mills and Serageldin 1991: 307). Because democracy and economic liberalism are conceptually linked in the one concept o f ‘ governance’ , the possibility o f conceiving of potential contra­ dictions between the two is virtually impossible within the parameters o f the discourse. To be in favour o f democracy is simultaneously to be in favour o f free market economics and structural adjustment. The fact that the two may at times conflict, so that for instance economic inequalities generated by capitalist competition may undermine political equality and the functioning of democracy, is rendered inconceivable by the fusion of the concepts. It also follows from the above definition of governance that democracy will lead to good governance only if the electorate chooses governments that adhere to a free market ideology. This is o f course an inherently undemocratic stipulation, in that it attempts to restrict the scope o f political choice. It entails, in short, an a priori determination o f economic model and a relegation o f constituents’ preferences to second-order import­ ance.3 The possibility that large sections of the electorate in poor countries may favour economic and political solutions that conflict with the good governance agenda’s vision is passed over in silence by the discourse.4

Instead the good governance agenda claims to speak on behalf o f the ‘ordinary people’ o f Africa, and states that its primary aim is to ‘empower’ them and enable them to resist the alien and oppressive state (World Bank 1989: 54). In this way an essential unity of purpose is constructed between the development apparatus and the ‘ordinary people’, in that they all oppose the state and seek to reduce it. The good governance agenda’s strategy for supporting the people against the state is to strengthen civil society, a strategy that is also intimately bound up with economic liberalism.

Liberating Civil Society

In the good governance discourse, civil society emerges as the key link between economic liberalisation and democratisation; it is both the locus o f economic growth and vitality and the seedbed of democracy. The weakness o f civil society on the African continent is blamed on the statism o f past development strategies. The dominance o f the state is seen to have prevented the growth o f autonomous organisations, which in turn enabled state officials in many countries to serve ‘their own interests without fear o f being called to account’ (World Bank 1989: 60). Civil society is regarded as a ‘countervailing power’ to the state, a way of curbing authoritarian practices and corruption, hence the concern for strengthening or nurturing civil society. The World Bank states that good governance ‘requires a

systematic effort to build a pluralistic institutional structure’ (ibid.: 61), and intermediary organisations are seen to have an especially important role to play. They ‘can create links both upward and downward in society and voice local concerns more effectively than grassroots institutions. In doing this, they can bring a broader spectrum o f ideas and values to bear on policy making’ (ibid.). Intermediate organisations are also expected to exert pressure on public officials for better performance and greater accountability. In short, it is believed that by ‘deliberately supporting the development of plural institutional structures, external agencies can help create an environment that will tend to constrain the abuse o f political power’ (Landell-Mills and Serageldin 1991: 313).

According to the good governance discourse, the best way to strengthen civil society is to reduce the role o f the state and expand the scope of market forces as suggested by structural adjustment programmes. This is expected to decentralise decision-making away from the state and open up new spaces for grassroots organisations and private initiatives. In this context, attention is drawn to the flourishing o f informal, voluntary organ­ isations such as credit unions, farming associations, women’s groups and professional associations on the continent over the past decade (World Bank 1989: 61; 1992: 25; Landell-Mills 1992). The growth of such voluntary associations is in large part a reflection o f the state’s curtailment o f services in accordance with structural adjustment programmes. As the African state has become unable or unwilling to deliver basic services and infrastructure to its citizens, more and more people have come to rely on private initiatives, frequently centred around traditional, ethnic associations, but also involving new, voluntary self-help groups. The vacuum left by the retreating state has thus been filled by private initiatives, and given the good governance discourse’s representation of the state as an alien oppressor this develop­ ment is regarded as enhancing the prospects of democracy. In the words of Landell-Mills, the ‘proliferation o f associations at all levels’ supports the trend towards ‘more participatory politics, greater public accountability, and hence basic democracy’ (1992: s63).5

While the mushrooming of associational life on the continent in recent years is indisputable, the good governance discourse’s representation of this development as inherently democratic is far from unproblematic. This representation is intimately bound up with the conceptualisation of civil society within the governance discourse. A notoriously vague and am­ biguous concept, civil society is at no point defined in the World Bank discourse.6 In fact, the two main documents under consideration do not use the concept at all, but refer instead to institutional pluralism as well

as intermediate and grassroots organisations. It is only in the 1994 report Governance. The World Bank's Experience that the concept emerges, but here its meaning is taken as too obvious and familiar to require any definition or further discussion. T his treatment of civil society as an unproblematic concept has become commonplace in much contemporary literature on Africa, where civil society is used as an all-encompassing term referring to a wide range o f voluntary cultural, economic, social and political associations, institutions and relations outside the state. This is also the World Bank’s usage and in effect the references to institutions and intermediate and grassroots organisations in the two main documents are simultaneously the Bank’s definition o f civil society. In the governance discourse then, civil society equals associational life.

The agenda’s conceptualisation o f civil society proceeds from a parti­ cular conception of state and society, where the state is associated with power and civil society belongs to the realm of freedom and liberty.7 In this interpretation, power and exploitation become the exclusive property o f the state and the public/formal sector, and any reduction o f the state and its economic and social services can accordingly be represented as an expansion o f democracy and freedom. Such a narrow sovereign conception o f power gives rise to the rather romantic representation o f civil society as implicitly democratic, and the mere existence o f organisations outside the state is assumed to be sufficient to limit the power of the state and enforce a transition to democracy. This representation is reductionist in the extreme. The emergence of various voluntary groups and associations cannot automatically be expected to constitute the basis o f an active, well- informed, articulate civil society, nor can it be taken for granted that political activities with a strategic dimension will be generated by societal organisations and movements. Many associations in civil society do not involve any self-conscious political intention or action, and do not seek to limit the reach of the state or influence its policies. Other groups, in turn, may espouse authoritarian ideologies and pursue undemocratic strategies and goals. Civil society cannot therefore be seen as either inherently demo­ cratic or undemocratic; rather, its character may vary across time and space.

Such observations are o f particular relevance in the African setting, where the blossoming o f informal associations is largely a result o f the inability o f the state to deliver basic services. People have withdrawn from an increasingly oppressive and exploitative state, and turned instead to community networks for their social welfare. In the same way, the black or parallel market has provided an effective way o f avoiding high taxes and

the artificially low prices paid for farm products by state marketing boards. Such exit or coping strategies may well have weakened the state, but the ability to avoid the state should not be conflated with an ability to support democratisation in any constructive and significant way as it does not necessarily imply any political alignment or relation to political parties or activities.8 Instead, these strategies generally signal a deep distrust o f the state and a perception of its institutions as irrelevant to everyday life and struggles. I f anything, such attitudes may have negative implications for democratisation, which requires the associations of civil society to engage with state institutions in order to achieve their aims and improve their conditions of existence.

The heterogeneous and segmented nature o f civil society also cautions against definitions that treat it as inherently democratic. Civil society in Africa (as elsewhere) embodies a diverse set o f traditional, ethnic, pro­ fessional, class, local, regional and national interests. While heterogeneity does not in itself prevent voluntary associations from mobilising for democracy, it increases the likelihood that some may become agents o f ethnic or parochial interests, especially where state boundaries are still in dispute and nation-building an incomplete process. This is arguably the case in most African countries, and the atrocities o f the Liberian civil war in the post-Doe era, the brutality o f Somalia’s warlords, and the killing fields of Rwanda are sufficient reminders o f the potential dangers contained within heterogeneous societies. And while the vacuum created by the retreating state may well allow voluntary organisations to mobilise for democracy, it also raises the spectre o f intensified particularism and frag­ mentation.9 Indeed, one view holds that ‘Africa seems too condemned to harsh nation-building as to rule out many hopes for civil society’ (Hall

1995: 25). While such interpretations may be too pessimistic, it seems equally

clear that the good governance discourse’s representation o f civil society as inherently democratic is too romantic and optimistic. The mere existence (or absence) of civil society, important as it is, is not sufficient to explain the success or failure o f democracy. Civil society and its relationship to democratisation cannot be understood in abstract terms, but requires instead a specific analysis o f the various groups and interests involved in these struggles. The point here, however, is not merely to note that the highly differentiated nature of African societies both in terms o f ethnicity and wealth must be taken into account when considering the democratic potential contained in the emergence o f their civil societies. Rather the important question relates to the effects o f an order of discourse that

ignores such cautionary observations about the heterogeneous and potenti­ ally undemocratic qualities o f civil society. What actions and practices are legitimised by this discourse, and what types o f power does it underwrite? The short answer is that the good governance discourse serves to construct economic liberalism as a force for democracy. The equation is simple: coercive power is perceived to reside exclusively in the state and public institutions, and any reduction in the size or reach of the state is therefore regarded as conducive to democratisation. Structural adjustment curtails state activity and is associated with the growth o f voluntary groups and organisations, and hence adjustment becomes a democratic enterprise for the liberation of civil society.

Empowerment through Cost Recovery

What, then, remains o f the good governance discourse’s claim to em­ power the ‘ordinary people’ o f Africa? one may legitimately ask. The governance discourse has the effect o f valorising everything outside the institutions o f the state and bestowing democratic legitimacy on all organisations and practices in civil society. Civil society emerges as undif­ ferentiated and harmonious, and there are no classes, no races, no genders, ethnic groups or oppressors in the civil society of the good governance discourse. Instead the various groups and associations o f civil society are implicitly expected to further the cause o f ‘the people’ , that is to serve the interests o f all groups equally and democratically, and we are repeatedly reminded o f Africa’s ‘rich traditions o f community and group welfare’ and the ‘widespread practice of sharing among people’ (World Bank 1989: 60, 168).

Reality, unfortunately, is somewhat different. Structures o f power and hierarchies o f wealth and influence permeate all civil societies, and African societies are no exception. The governance discourse, however, builds on an essentially ahistorical notion o f civil society, where tradition is regarded as part o f human nature, unchanging and set apart from power and authority. Organisations are abstracted from the socio-economic structures in which they are embedded, and become instead part o f Africa’s eternal tradition o f sharing. Not only does this representation render inequalities o f power between individuals, classes and groups invisible, but it also conceals the possibility that various traditional associations and practices may be hierarchically organised and form part o f structures that privilege certain individuals and groups and enable them to serve their own particu­ laristic economic and political ends. Accordingly Landell-Mills discusses

the Harambee movement in rural Kenya only in terms o f co-operative effort and mutual benefit for all, neglecting alternative views that the self- help activities o f the movement rely heavily on women’s labour, and that ‘some communities, some groups and some national elites benefit far more than others’ (Thomas 1988: 23).

The good governance discourse not only obscures such relations of power and domination, but its declared intention to build on traditional, indigenous structures in the effort to improve governance implies a continu­ ation o f the forms o f oppression entailed within primordial relationships. This position is o f course not compatible with the new development paradigm’s democratic message, but it is nevertheless the inescapable corollary o f its rather romanticised conceptualisation of tradition and civil society.

The conception o f power that underpins the good governance discourse also has the effect o f obscuring the coercive and oppressive relationships associated with capitalism. By locating power exclusively in the state, the marketplace becomes a realm of freedom and liberty. Such a conceptual­ isation of civil society cannot take account of the possibility that economic liberalisation may reinforce existing socio-economic inequalities, as it does not recognise the organisational and institutional structure o f power in social relations in the first place. Similarly, there is no room for a critique of the threat that capitalist market forces may pose to systems of social solidarity and justice, and thus to some structures of civil society itself, nor is it recognised that state action at times may be necessary or desirable to overcome or reduce inequalities in civil society.10 Instead the confinement of power to the state and the portrayal of the market as a place o f liberty reinforce the image o f structural adjustment as conducive to the expansion of democracy, and yet again we see how democratisation becomes almost synonymous with destatisation.

The governance agenda’s overall aim to ‘release the energies o f ordinary people’ and to ‘empower ordinary people to take charge of their own lives, to make communities more responsible for their development, and to make governments listen to their people’ is also intrinsically bound up with economic liberalism (World Bank 1989: 54). The seductive power of development is clearly demonstrated in the intention to empower; it draws on emotive and forceful imagery and appeals to notions o f rights and justice. I f taken literally this call for empowerment has far-reaching political consequences, in that it implies a challenge to local as well as national power structures. I f people were enabled to hold those in power more accountable, they might demand more services and a more just distribution

of income, and thus put into question the whole gamut o f existing socio­ economic arrangements.11 Needless to say, this is not the intention of the development apparatus, and when analysed within the overall context of the economic policies o f the good governance agenda empowerment takes on quite a different meaning.

One o f the central tropes o f the good governance discourse is cost recovery, which the World Bank introduces as one o f a few ‘watchwords for the future’ (ibid.: 7). The Bank advocates the introduction of user charges for secondary (possibly also primary) education and primary health care, whereas full cost recovery is recommended for ‘nonbasic services such as university education and nonessential health services’ (ibid.: 6-7, 86). Water supply and sanitation are other services for which ‘much of the cost could be recovered through user charges’ (ibid.: 7). The World Bank maintains that ‘Whatever the merits o f free social services, the reality in Africa is that it means inadequate provision or no provision at all to many people and particularly to the poorest and most vulnerable’ (ibid.: 86). It is in this context that the emphasis on empowerment, as well as the need to build on ‘ indigenous African values and institutions’ , emerges. The World Bank suggests that ‘Communal culture, the participation o f women in the economy, respect for nature ... can be used in constructive ways’ (ibid.: 60). By placing the management o f basic social services in local hands two purposes can be achieved: programmes become more responsive to users, who then in turn ‘become more willing to contribute to their cost’ (ibid.: 7). There is, according to the World Bank, little or no resistance to user charges in Africa and ‘even very poor people willingly pay for health care if they demonstrably get value for their money’ (ibid.: 6). All in all, cost sharing is a means of ‘empowering the beneficiaries to demand improved services and o f fostering a sense o f individual and community responsibility for their delivery’ (ibid.: 86).

It is this form of consumer sovereignty that the World Bank tries to dress up as empowerment and, by implication, as democracy. The in­ corporation o f words like ‘empowerment’ , ‘self-help’ and ‘participation’ into the Bank’s otherwise monetarist vocabulary serves primarily to justify the curtailment of state responsibility. Adjustment programmes necessarily mean fewer state services, especially to the poor, and as a result o f the economic crisis in the last decade the burden o f caring for the sick, feeding the poor and so on has been increasingly transferred from paid state officials to unpaid local labour (mostly women). There is absolutely nothing demo­ cratic or empowering about this. By contrast, local people, and women in particular, are expected to make up for the shortfall in public services, to

be able to put in more working hours to compensate for the withdrawal o f state provisions. While this may register in national budgets and World Bank statistics as cost saving and a sign of increased efficiency, it entails increased burdens for many local people. Terms like ‘empowerment’ and ‘community responsibility’ , however, serve to give this development an aura o f democratic freedom. Within the good governance discourse, then, empowerment is deprived of its radical, political implications, and becomes instead a highly instrumental term; the objective is to ‘capitalize on the energies and resources of the local people’ , who should pull their weight and thereby make development projects more cost-efficient (World Bank 1989: 58). Only in this context does it make sense for Landell-Mills to describe local, voluntary self-help groups as ‘cost-sharing moves’ (1992: 567). Local initiatives are expected to fill the gaps left by the retreating state, to provide social services like health care, water and sanitation. Self- help, participation and empowerment become an intrinsic part o f the effort to liberalise the economy, efforts that can be tapped into and used to reduce the cost o f public provisions. Community involvement and empowerment are intended to function within the framework of economic liberalism, not to challenge existing power structures or question adjustment programmes through ‘excess’ demands. This kind of participation and empowerment has nothing to do with democracy, but again we see how the good gov­ ernance discourse blurs the distinction between the retreat o f the state and democratisation.12

Good Governance as Modernisation Theory

T he good governance discourse presents its intention to build on local grassroots organisations as evidence o f the cultural sensitivity o f the new development paradigm. As we have seen, a sharp contrast is drawn between the ‘modernisation’ strategies o f the past, which imposed alien systems on traditional societies, and the new strategy, which builds on the indigenous and listens to ‘the people’ . Grave concern is also expressed about the risk of ‘ethnocentric and cultural bias’ , and it is acknowledged that development institutions must be ‘very cautious in proposing specific solutions or ad­ vocating particular arrangements’ and that ‘there should be no question of imposing a particular democratic system on any country’ (Landell-Mills and Serageldin 1991: 3 11) . Unlike the misconceived policies o f yesteryear, then, governance takes account o f cultural differences and recognises that African values and institutions can support development and be used in constructive ways (World Bank 1992a: 8; 1989: 60). The emphasis is on

the need for ‘home-grown solutions’ (Landell-Mills and Serageldin 1991: 3 1 1 ) and it is argued that each country ‘has to devise institutions that are consonant with its social values’ (World Bank 1989: 60).

On closer inspection, however, this appears a peculiar brand o f ‘pick and mix’ cultural relativism, which recognises that indigenous African traditions are not uniformly favourable to democracy and economic liberal­ ism. In Governance and Development, the World Bank points out that the spread o f political legal systems modelled on Western traditions may lead to the existence of two sets o f norms and institutions: ‘Western notions of the rule o f law, private property rights, and contracts’ may be superimposed on ‘ideas such as “ consensus” , “ communal property” , and “ reciprocity” ’ (1992b: 8). The question o f whether these ‘different ways o f anchoring social rights and obligations ... hamper the functioning of modern eco­ nomic institutions’ is raised, only to be left unanswered in the document. Landell-Mills, however, is more outspoken on these issues. He asserts that the ‘challenge is to build on the elements [of African tradition] that are compatible with modernisation and development, rejecting those that are not and, where necessary and appropriate, borrowing wittingly from foreign models, western or eastern’ (1992: 545, italics added).13 The turn o f phrase is important: the good governance agenda may advocate institutions that are consonant with indigenous social values, but then proceeds to narrow those values down to compatibility with modernisation.

One aspect o f African tradition that must be discarded is the strong family and ethnic ties, which ‘have no place in central government agencies, where staff must be selected on merit and where public and private monies must not be confused’ (World Bank 1989: 60). In the context o f seeking to establish honest, efficient and accountable administration, such statements make eminent sense, but they simultaneously reveal a deeper contradiction within the good governance discourse. On the one hand, the World Bank praises Africa’s strong family and communal ties in relation to issues of empowerment and cost recovery, while on the other, it attacks these aspects o f African culture and practices as detrimental to good governance. It seems that the World Bank wants to make use of communal bonds when they can serve to reduce the cost o f basic state services, and abandon them as archaic and hostile to the project o f development in other contexts. Rather than cultural sensitivity, such statements signal not only a degree of instrumentalism, but also a simplistic understanding o f cultural practices and traditions as existing independently of social structures and as some­ thing that can simply be abandoned at will. While the persistence of patrimonial practices in Africa may well be an affront to good governance,

one should not disregard the fact that these practices have particular historical and cultural roots and that they may also serve particular political purposes. Abandoning patrimonial practices may accordingly prove far from easy, and may also have wide-ranging consequences for the construction of viable political authority and structures of governance.14 Another custom that must give way to good governance is communal land ownership and land use rights, as the World Bank claims that agricultural modernisation makes land titling necessary (ibid.: 104). This issue is presented as entirely ‘technical’ in nature, and there is no discussion of the political and cultural significance of communal land ownership and networks of patronage. Thus the fact that land titling would most likely exclude some people from access to land and make the survival o f others highly precarious, while enriching a few, is passed over in silence.

The good governance discourse asserts that it seeks to create ‘a modern sector that supports the traditional sector, rather than one that aims to replace it’ (World Bank 1989: 60, italics in original). It is nevertheless difficult to see how the governance paradigm is qualitatively different from the ‘modernisation’ strategies o f the past. Development within the good governance discourse is still perceived to imply ‘a profound change in social culture’ and a ‘ long-term process of changing mentalities’ (Landell- Mills 1992: 564, 565). As we have seen, good governance is conceptually linked to economic liberalism, and the effort to strengthen civil society concentrates primarily on nurturing the bourgeoisie and creating an enab­ ling environment for business. Apart from the token references to the ‘empowerment o f ordinary people’ , which ultimately boils down to an issue o f cost recovery, the civil society of the good governance discourse consists primarily o f modern, professional and contractual organisations. The discourse embodies a liberal conception of civil society as the equi­ valent o f market, or bourgeois society. This is not only a conception that elevates the right to private property over all other rights, but it also draws on notions of the universal liberal subject and the philosophy o f possessive individualism (see Williams and Young 1994). Accordingly, the World Bank can perceive of a ‘common desire o f individual Africans to be independent economic operators’ (1989: 59), and its development mission thus appears as the liberation o f the liberal subject from the oppressive structures o f the state.15

In order to assist Africans in their struggle to become ‘ independent economic operators’ , the good governance discourse pays particular atten­ tion to strengthening the business community. A free economy is perceived as absolutely vital to civil society, and the focus is on creating an ‘enabling

environment’ that can ‘release private energies and encourage initiatives at every level’ (ibid.: 59). ‘Private enterprises’ are regarded as ‘a crucial component o f civil society, acting effectively as its life support’ (Landell- Mills 1992: 563). Accordingly, ‘measures taken to favour private-sector activities, including the widespread attempts to privatise state enterprises, serve to reinforce civil society’ (ibid.: 564). The good governance agenda here employs arguments that are commonplace in many liberal accounts of the rise o f democracy in the West, where the bourgeoisie is regarded as the engine not only o f economic growth, but also o f democratisation.

In the conventional manner o f modernisation theory, the good govern­ ance discourse can be seen to draw on the historical experience o f the West in its construction o f development. As Barrington Moore’s famous dictum ‘No bourgeois, no democracy’ indicates, the emergence o f civil society in the West is closely bound up with the pioneering role o f this class in demanding and maintaining a sphere free from state intervention (Moore 1991: 418). The good governance discourse now expects the African bourgeoisie to perform the same function. This view also holds strong support among contemporary liberal academics, and Diamond in particular has been an eager proponent o f the bourgeoisie as the agent o f democracy (1988a and 1988b). Diamond argues that the intimate link between political power and dominant class formation in Africa has stunted the growth of an autonomous, indigenous bourgeoisie and that this has ‘meant the absence o f that class that pressed for the expansion o f democratic rights and limitation o f state power during the early development o f democracy in the industrialized West’ (1988a: 22). In Africa, the ‘bourgeoisie that has dev­ eloped ... has been bureaucratic or political, non-productive, and even parasitic’ (ibid.). He thus argues that the increasing movement away from statist economic policies and structures represents the ‘most significant boosts to the democratic prospects in Africa’ (ibid.: 27), as it is expected to loosen the connection between state power and class formation.

It cannot, however, be categorically stated that the bourgeoisie in Euro­ pean history was always in opposition to the state, nor can the African bourgeoisie be trusted to act as the democratisers o f their societies. In European history this class has frequently formed vertical links and alliances with the state, especially when it feared challenges from below.16 The bourgeoisie in parts o f nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe sought to overthrow political absolutism in order to safeguard the sphere o f liberty and private property, but it did not seek to inaugurate the rule of the majority. In other words, the bourgeoisie had liberal goals associated with economic freedom, but not political democratic objectives. The bourgeoisie

and democracy cannot therefore be regarded as logically or historically linked. Instead democracy has, as Therborn argues, always and everywhere been established in struggles against the bourgeoisie and can be seen as ‘grafted’ on to liberal capitalism (Therborn 1983: 271; Macpherson 1977). In the same way as the European bourgeoisie resisted democratisation, the emerging business classes in Africa may have much to fear from democracy and universal suffrage. To identify this class as an agent of democracy in the manner o f the good governance discourse is therefore highly con­ tentious. It is one thing to assume that the bourgeoisie is/can be the agent of liberal capitalism, quite another to expect it automatically to promote democracy. The support o f this class for democracy and majority rights cannot be taken for granted, but requires instead concrete empirical investigation.

The good governance discourse also contains another, related assump­ tion that is equally problematic, namely that economic liberalisation will lead to the development of an autonomous bourgeoisie (democratic or otherwise). This expectation entails a view of civil society as separate from the state, but no such clear demarcation line can be drawn between the two. Instead the boundaries of state and society constantly overlap and intersect in complex ways, and this is especially the case in African countries. This feature o f state-society relations is effectively captured in Bayart’s image of ‘ the rhizome state’ , which is linked to society through a multiplicity o f horizontal networks (1993: 218-27). While the World Bank and many liberal writers (like the prolific Larry Diamond) lament the near fusion o f state elites and economic elites, they appear to exaggerate the fragility o f this relationship, expecting it to disintegrate once liberal­ isation begins. However, clientelistic relations between the state and the various groups engaged in production and accumulation have evolved over time and may not be easily superseded by an ideal-type bourgeoisie capable of acting independently o f the state.

First, groups closely associated with the state are most likely to benefit from liberalisation measures, and clientelistic relationships may be con­ tinued and reinforced rather than severed by adjustment programmes. Government officials may use their positions of authority to gain a disproportionate share o f privatised resources and income-earning oppor­ tunities, and recent concerns by donors, including the World Bank, about the politicisation o f economic reforms lend further support to such arguments (see e.g. Africa Confidential 39 (13) 1998).17 Second, sections of the bourgeoisie may actively seek the continued protection o f the state. The reaction of the Chinese business class during the pro-democracy

protests in 1989 may serve as an illustration here. The nascent Chinese entrepreneurial class did not come out in favour o f reform, as they were anxious not to jeopardise the stability o f the bureaucratic support that provided profit and protection. They were particularly opposed to any crackdown on corruption, as this would target precisely the kind of per­ sonal ties with state officials that business depended on. And as many firms were run by relatives o f high-ranking government officials, the students’ call for an end to nepotism fell on deaf ears (Wank 1995). Similarly, the Zambian business community, represented by the Zambia Confederation o f Chambers of Commerce and Industries, argued against the government’s economic liberalisation programme. In the Confedera­ tion’s argument that the programme ’kills domestic industries’ (Zambia Daily M a il, 24 May 1993), an implicit preference for state protectionism and old-fashioned ‘crony capitalism’ can be detected.

In the good governance discourse, however, the bourgeoisie, by virtue o f its place within civil society, is inherently and automatically democratic. It is also assumed to be willing to defend the rights o f the ‘ordinary people’ against the alien and oppressive state. Such a representation is rendered possible only by the extraction o f power and interests from civil society, so that all individuals and groups are perceived as equal and as sharing the same goals and motivations. Not only is this a rather naive representation, but it can also be seen to rely on a particular interpretation o f the emergence o f democracy on the West. In this respect, contemporary development discourse is not significantly different from the modernisation theory it so eagerly disclaims. Like modernisation theory, it theorises about African development on the basis o f the historical experience o f the West, and despite its claim to be ‘ culturally sensitive’ it embodies a vision of the good society that is largely constructed from Western values. Prime among these are democracy and economic liberalism, which according to the good governance agenda are historically linked and constitute the two sides of the same coin. The discourse then proposes to reconstruct or develop African societies according to these values, to re-create Africa in its own image.

Conclusion

The power o f development to ‘ seduce’ (Rist 1997) is clearly evident in the good governance discourse. Its language and imagery are forceful and emotive, and its claims to ‘empower’ , ‘democratise’ , to ‘release energies’ and ‘liberate civil society’ are the stuff that dreams are made of. Analysis

of the good governance agenda, however, seems to go around in circles, always leading back to one factor: economic liberalisation. Governance is conceptually linked to economic liberalisation, and civil society is regarded as emerging from the liberalisation o f the economy and reduction o f the state. ‘Empowerment o f the people’ is reduced to cost-sharing, and becomes a tool in the hands o f liberal economists. The bourgeoisie is regarded as both the source o f economic growth and democracy, and cultural sensitivity entails only a commitment to build on the traditions that are compatible with capitalism and modern state structures.

Despite the discourse’s effort to distance itself from past development failures, its endless repetition o f the specificity o f Africa and its respect for indigenous traditions and cultures, the agenda’s recommendations amount to little more than a new gloss on age-old prescriptions. The main effect o f the discourse is to construct structural adjustment as a force for demo­ cracy, and although the discourse does not go all the way towards reducing democracy to economic liberalism it is clear that ‘good governance’ is impossible without liberal economic policies. In this way the discourse legitimises continued structural adjustment, and gives it a more democratic face, while simultaneously delegitimising more interventionist and socialist strategies, which by implication become examples o f ‘poor governance’ .

Notes

1 . Both these documents represent major research efforts by the World Bank. Gov­ ernance and Development (World Bank 1992a) is the product o f twenty-two members of staff, while the 1989 long-term perspective study was partly a response to critiques of structural adjustment programmes and consulted numerous scholars outside the Bank, including Goran Hyden, Claude Ake, Janet MacGaffey and Paul Harrison.

2. A similar point is made by Beckman (1992).

3. This is indicative of a long-standing tension in liberalism, but this is an issue that lies beyond the purview o f this study.

4. This possibility will be explored in more detail in later chapters.

5. This view o f associational life as more or less automatically supporting demo- cratisation also finds widespread support in academic writing; see for example Bratton (1989); Chazan (1982, 1988a, 1988b, 1993) and Diamond (1988a, 1988b).

6. Useful explorations o f the concept o f civil society can be found in Cohen and Arato (1992); Calhoun (1993); Keane (1988); Taylor (1990); Walzer (1991). The concept has only more recently been introduced to the analysis of African politics, notable contributions include Bayart (1986); Chabal (1994, Chapter 5); Fatton (1995); Harbeson, Rothchild and Chazan (1994) and White (1994 and 1995).

7. A similar observation is made by Bangura and Gibbon (1992).

8. Ekeh argues that civil society in Africa is highly apolitical and is ‘ largely indifferent to the affairs of the civil public realm over which the state presides’ (1992: 197). While

this may be a rather heavy-handed generalisation, it nevertheless serves as a useful corrective to the uncritical interpretation of civil society as an automatic check on the powers o f the state.

9. The ambiguity of civil society’s relationship to democratisation has for example been noted by Lucy Davis (1995) in a case study of the popular organisation Mboscuda among the Mbororo in northwest Cameroon. Davis is doubtful whether the organisation will become an effective participant in a national democratic movement, or whether it will instead develop into a vehicle for ethnic chauvinism.

10. Whitehead (1993a) has convincingly argued that the maintenance o f social com­ munal values to curb unbridled individualism was a major concern of the early theorists o f civil society, such as Ferguson, Hume and Smith. Such concerns seem all too easily forgotten in contemporary debates that associate democracy with capitalism and state minimalism.

1 1 . A similar point is made by Beckman (1992).

12. The good governance discourse’s appeal to grassroots and self-help organisations is perhaps analogous to the neo-conservative call for a return to family values, tradition and religion in the West as part of the attempt to revive self-restraint and unburden the state

13. This brief reference to Eastern models appears to be nothing more than a token gesture, as the experience of Japan and the East Asian Tigers is conspicuously absent from discussions of good governance. This is the argument o f Moore’s (1993) article ‘Declining to learn from the East?’ , which maintains that i f Eastern development models had been considered good governance would have appeared very different and accorded a much greater role to selective state intervention.

14. In relation to the decline of patrimonial politics and the maintenance o f political authority and social order, see for example Reno’s book on the emergence o f warlord politics (1998) and Zartman (1995) on state collapse.

15. It is interesting to note here how culture can be used to defend almost any argument. For a long time, many leaders promoting the idea o f an African socialism rooted their ideas in precisely the opposite interpretation o f African culture. The late President Julius Nyerere, for example, argued that ‘whenever we try to help Africans become capitalist shopkeepers, capitalist farmers, industrialists, etc., we find that most o f them fail because they cannot adopt the capitalist practices which are essential to commercial success ... Capitalism demands certain attributes among its practitioners which the majority of our people have never been forced to acquire’ (1968: 18).

16. Marx argued that the French bourgeoisie in the mid-nineteenth century sacrificed the autonomy of civil society to protect their interests from the masses. The ‘French bourgeoisie’ , he wrote, ‘was compelled by its class position to annihilate .. . the vital conditions of all parliamentary power and to render irresistible ... the executive power hostile to it’ (Marx 1963: 63).

17. See also Gibbon (1992); Galli (1990); Hibou (1999) and Zack-Williams (1990).