New constitutionalism across the North-South divide—neoliberalization through development cooperation agreements

Abstract

The Wall Street Consensus (WSC) marks the global North’s recent attempt to make development in the global South investable. Yet, how are these neoliberal reforms for an investor-friendly environment promoted? This article argues that new constitutionalist mechanisms are used in development cooperation agreements between the global North and the global South to carve in neoliberal reforms in general, and financialization in particular. We apply Gill’s concept of New Constitutionalism (NC) to trace the mechanisms that attempt to lock in these reforms. We chart out how NC underpins Gabor’s WSC and account for idiosyncratic features of postcolonial statehood. We, thus, operationalize and expand Gill’s NC concept. We apply this framework to the MCC Ghana Power Compact, a development cooperation treaty between the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) and the Government of Ghana. Deploying qualitative content analysis, we spot about 60% of the NC mechanisms. Beyond rendering visible the NC mechanisms in international agreements, this article contributes an analytical tool to research the (power) dynamics in development cooperation between the global North and South. While it demonstrates Gill’s relevance in understanding these processes, it also points towards avenues of research regarding the locking in of WSC reforms.

Keywords:

• Development cooperation
• new constitutionalism
• neoliberalism
• Wall Street Consensus
• postcolonial statehood
• Millennium Challenge Corporation
• Ghana

Acknowledgments

A preliminary version of the paper was presented at the 45th British International Studies Association (BISA) Conference, on June 5^th, 2021. The authors would like to thank the participants for their comments without implicating them. Also, we would like to thank Anil Shah and Lena Rethel for their constructive thoughts and ideas.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Interviews

Interview with a MIDA representative on 30 October 2019.

Interview with a development bank representative on 31 October 2019.

Interview with 350.org lead activist on 2 November 2019.

Interview with trade union representative on 4 November 2019.

Interview with another trade union representative on 4–5 November 2019.

Interview with a representative of the Ghana Standards Authority, 2 November 2019.

Notes

1 By 2019, 49 developing countries had received development financing through the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) of which 26 are situated in Africa (Resende-Santos, 2020).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nina Glatzer

Nina Glatzer is a Research Associate at the Chair of Global Climate Governance at the University of Hamburg. During her Master’s degree in Political Science at the University of Göttingen, she conducted research on South-South cooperation and the development models of BRICS countries. Her current research focuses on the financialization trend within international cooperation and its impact on sustainable development; Global governance structures in international cooperation contracts, especially in the field of renewable energy projects; and South-South cooperation and its relationship to ownership and accountability.

Manuel Neumann

Manuel Neumann is a Research Fellow of the research group ‘GLOCALPOWER’ anchored in the Department of Political Science. He did his PhD at Kassel University and was a visiting scholar at Wits University in Johannesburg in 2018 and 2019. Beforehand, he worked in the development context in Geneva and Kathmandu and studied at SOAS, Delhi University, and Tübingen University. His research revolves around green financial innovation and the political economy of energy transitions in the global South.

Franziska Müller

Franziska Müller is Assistant Professor for Globalization and Climate Governance and leads the research group ‘GLOCALPOWER: Funds, tools, and networks for an African energy transition’ at the University of Hamburg. Her main research interests are global climate and energy governance as well as theories of international relations. Her current research focuses on international politics in the Anthropocene, green financialization, and transformations of postcolonial statehood.