A Cautionary Tale: Colonial and post-colonial conceptions of good government and democratisation in Africa

Abstract

The term good government has figured prominently in recent development theories that have sought to link capitalism with democracy. One striking feature of this trend has been a failure to locate the term within a broader comparative literature on British colonial reform from the mid-1930s onwards. The trajectory of the term good government since the early 1990s is one that would have been familiar to the colonial reformers like Lord Hailey: from an emphasis on technical and capitalist efficiency, the term has come to signal a concern with political empowerment and, ultimately, democratisation. The article suggests that the parallel trajectories of this key concept during these two periods raises important questions about the nature of both empire and the current global order within which development theories are put into practice.

Keywords:

• Development theory
• good government
• colonial reform and colonial history

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my colleagues for reading through this and suggesting various changes: Andrew Wyatt and Eric Herring in particular. I would also like to thank Caroline Sparey for her time in compiling World Bank material required for this article. I would also like to thank Rob Jenkins for going through the penultimate draft with a canny combination of ruthlessness and appreciation. Throughout I have used the term government and governance as the same. I am fully aware that others have sought to make a difference between these two terms.