Disciplining Democracy
Development Discourse and Good Governance in Africa

An analysis of development discourse, good governance and democratization. The author presents development not as some universally valid set of goals or procedures, but as a historically contingent form of knowledge intimately connected to prevailing power structures.

Not very long ago, many Western scholars argued that authoritarian forms of government were needed for rapid economic development and successive US administrations supported dictatorial regimes in every continent. Now the political mantra is democracy and the World Bank and Western donors require it almost as a condition of assistance. Rita Abrahamsen argues that the West's good governance agenda dates from the demise of the Soviet Union. More importantly, she shows how this agenda comprises only very superficial democratic institutional forms. The primary goal in developing countries remains the enforcement of structural adjustment. African governments, in particular, are in a cleft stick - supposedly responsible to their electorates at home, in fact beholden to external creditors and donors abroad. If their people demand a system of governance that can deliver an end to poverty, the West is likely to brand such demands as illegitimate. Drawing on the good governance discourse, Rita Abrahamsen presents development not as some universally valid set of goals or procedures, but as an historically contingent form of knowledge intimately connected to prevailing power structures.

Part 1 Democratization and development discourse: conventional explanations
fictitious dichotomies
a merely technical adjustment
power/knowledge and the invention of development
conclusion. Part 2 New world order, new development discourse: the changing fate of "democracy" in development
the end of the Cold War
the failure of structural adjustment programmes
power, hegemony and the good governance discourse. Part 3 The seductiveness of good governance: alien state intervention, indigenous democratic capitalism
liberating civil society
empowerment through cost recovery
good governance as modernization theory
conclusion. Part 4 The democratization of poverty: democratic theory and contemporary debates
maintaining status quo
conclusion. Part 5 Whose democracy?: the economic roots of democratic demands
victory for the friends of adjustment
conclusion. Part 6 Economic liberalization and democratic erosion: no more "cruel choices"
two irreconcilable constituencies
"kill me now"
wither democracy
exclusionary democracies
conclusion. Part 7 The success of the good governance discourse.