Intl Relation and the Study of Development

International Relations and the Study of Development

The disciplines of Development Studies and International Relations rarely, if ever, talk to each other’s concerns in a productive manner. International Relations has tended to view the world’s poorest states through one of two lenses. On the one hand they are seen as ‘data’ that is used to help confirm or refine International Relations theory.

On the other hand, and in its more policy-orientated mode, International Relations has approached these states as the actual or potential source of a whole host of policy problems that threaten the settled well being of western states (AIDS, drugs, refugee flows, smuggling, state collapse).

The actions of ‘development agencies’ similarly receive scant attention within International Relations. What attention is paid to them, again tends to be in terms of whether what they do can be understood through the lens of International Relations theory.

Development Studies too is pretty insular – despite its supposed ‘multidisciplinary’ approach. International Relations as an academic discipline is seen as too distant from the pressing practical problems of development to be of much interest, and the fact that International Relations is generally unconcerned with the fate of the poorest countries simply reinforces the idea that it does not have much to offer thinking about development.
This mutual estrangement is understandable given the all-pervasive academic specialization that characterises the modern university. But it is also intellectually indefensible. The world’s poorest states are as much part of international society as any other, and what happens to these states tells us important things about the dynamics of international society – about how it is governed, what its preoccupations are, and what its rules and norms consist of.iv Looking at these states would help overcome the idea that the world can be divided into a ‘domestic’ and an ‘international’ realm: this makes not the slightest bit of sense when considering the historical trajectory of these states. It would also help overcome the equally empirically implausible view that international politics is best conceived of as an ‘anarchic’ realm; in fact, of course, for the vast majority of states it is a profoundly hierarchical one.
A concern with generating ‘ownership’ of development policies and programmes – by borrowers, ‘stakeholders’ and governments – generates a relatively novel set of policies. There is obviously a history internal to ‘development,’ which helps explain why ‘ownership’ has come to the fore. The most significant parts of this history are the recognition that conditional lending did not work very well to induce policy change, and the recognition
that some kind of effective administrative authority is required if development projects and programmes are to be successful. The emergence of ‘ownership’ is intimately connected to two inter-linked changes in the international political context.

The first is a shift in the way the sovereignty of the world’s poorest states has been understood. The 1990s saw the end of sovereignty as a political value for these states: development agencies and western states no longer thought that the sovereignty of these states was something to be desired, and no longer considered that the practices of ‘development’ should be mediated through sovereignty as a political institution. The second shift, obviously related to the first, is the emergence of an aggressive and expansive global governance agenda led by the powerful western states. This has placed a new emphasis on establishing effective administrative authority in developing countries as an important part of establishing effective networks of global governance.
By the late 1990s, the aid donors’ development agenda for the world’s poorest states had expanded enormously in include a whole range of political, social, and institutional issues, and they continue to pursue very intricate and detailed interventions in many of these areas.xxv
The combination of a vastly expanded development agenda and a rapid rise in the number of development organizations at work in the world’s poorest states stripped the governments of many developing countries of whatever control and authority they did have over the ‘actions and policies of development agencies at work within their borders.

Governments were not powerless, of course. Many of them complied with some of the demands of external donors, but when it came to more politically difficult reforms many governments, particularly in Africa, simply resisted, or subverted donor demands. For example, throughout the 1980s most African governments simply did not engage in privatization of their state owned enterprises, despite being pressured to do so.xxvi Even when privatization was undertaken, governments have often tried to control the process for their own political ends. As Roger Tangri has put it, ‘high-ranking politicians and bureaucrats have been centrally placed to ensure that the pace and scope of privatization as well as certain specific divestiture transactions have been congruent with their political and personal interests’.xxvii Much the same thing happened in other countries too.

It is important to realise, however, that this kind of ‘sly’ power, the power to resist, subvert and evade, is not at all the same thing as having effective control and authority over development policy-making and implementation. Most donors were quite unwilling to give governments this control and authority – perhaps for very good reasons. The trouble was the donors could not be an effective substitute for sovereign authority. The donors were unable to ‘stand in’ for the political and administrative power of the state. This led to a situation where little effective control was being exercised over development policy-making and implementation in many of the world’s poorest countries.

The pursuit of ‘ownership’ is designed to work through enlisting governments, stakeholders and officials as agents in their own development. It emerges in part out of the recognition that ‘imposing’ reform strategies does not work – as evidenced by the experience of structural adjustment. Instead the pursuit of ‘ownership’ uses a variety of techniques designed to generate assent and commitment to particular development and governance objectives. The techniques include various forms of ‘training’, carefully managed processes of ‘consultation’ and the subtle and graduated use of various ‘incentives’. In this way, at least in theory, committed political agents are created.

It should be clear that the pursuit of ‘ownership’ is not the same thing as the granting of ‘sovereignty’. Very little value is placed on the ideas and practices of state sovereignty in the new global governance regime. To be sure a central aim of this regime is the creation and recreation of administrative authority over social, economic and political processes – in short effective governance. But this is to be achieved through mechanisms and techniques, such as ‘ownership’ that are developed and conditioned by the aims and objectives of western states and development agencies.

What this leads to is a view of the state as heavily ‘de-politicised’. The state becomes the administrative vehicle for development and, increasingly, global governance. It ceases to be about collective political freedom. This is of course the great liberal dream – states become simply vehicles for the implementation and administration of liberal projects. The danger here is that, as a matter of sociological fact, some kind of commitment to the idea of the state as a vehicle for collective political freedom is necessary to sustain the development and governance project. As noted earlier the sovereign state became the vehicle for the pursuit of a collective, national, project. The question, I suppose, is this: does sustained commitment to the development project require a certain degree of collective political freedom?


source: David Williams, Ownership, sovereignty, and global governance, dept of intl relation, Oxford Univ. June 2006