NOW AVAILABLE FROM ZED BOOKS
TITLE: Disciplining Democracy - Development Discourse and
Good Governance in Africa
AUTHOR: Rita Abrahamsen, University of Wales, Aberystwyth
ISBN/PRICE:
1 85649 858 1 hbk GBP45.00/US$65.00
1 85649 859 x pbk GBP14.95/US$22.50
FEATURES: Notes/Bibliography/Index/192 pp
LIBRARY CATEGORIES: Development Studies/Political
Studies/African Studies
TERRITORIAL RESTRICTIONS: None
KEY POINTS
+A powerful analysis of development discourse, good
governance and democratisation
+ Arguments of general relevance to the South, with a particular
focus on Africa
ABOUT THE BOOK
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 a
historically contingent form of knowledge intimately connected
to prevailing power structures.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rita Abrahamsen lectures on international relations at the University
of Wales, Aberystwyth.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Democratisation and Development Discourse
Conventional Explanations
Fictitious Dichotomies
A Merely Technical Adjustment
Power/Knowledge and the Invention of Development
Conclusion
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
3. The Seductiveness of Good Governance
Alien State Intervention, Indigenous Democratic Capitalism
Liberating Civil Society
Empowerment through Cost Recovery
Good Governance as Modernisation Theory
Conclusion
4. The Democratisation of Poverty
Democratic Theory and Contemporary Debates
Maintaining Status Quo
Conclusion
5. Whose Democracy?
The Economic Roots of Democratic
Demands
Victory for the Friends of Adjustment
Conclusion
6. Economic Liberalisation and Democratic Erosion
No More 'Cruel Choices'
Two Irreconcilable Constituencies
'Kill Me Now'
Wither Democracy
Exclusionary Democracies
Conclusion
7. The Success of the Good Governance Discourse
References
Index
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