Examining the State: a Foucauldian perspective on international ‘governance indicators’

Abstract

This paper offers a critical perspective on the growing phenomenon of governance indicators in international politics. I employ a governmentality approach to shed light on the political meanings and outcomes of the increasing tendency of various international actors to rate and rank the governance capacities and performances of states. In particular, I argue that, beyond being an analytic tool or an advisory system for governments, this practice in fact reproduces structures of authority and hierarchy in the international system. Power and knowledge are bound together in many governance indicators, as powerful states either examine themselves, the quality of governance of Third World states, or adopt the examinations carried out by other agents. Consequently, poor and developing states cannot simply ignore these ratings and rankings. The governance indicators establish a discursive field of state legitimacy and normalcy and ‘responsibilises’ states: construct them as ethical actors that are capable of correct and responsible choices and policies. As a result, the responsibility of powerful states and international actors for a host of social, economic and political problems in many Third World countries is obscured. Therefore the paper calls for closer attention to be paid to the elements of power in these governance indicators.

Notes

1 M Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of Prison, New York: Pantheon Books, 1977, p 184.

2 See R Bandura, A Survey of Composite Indices Measuring Country Performance: 2006 Update, a undp/ods Background Paper, United Nations Development Programme, 2006.

3 T Sinclair, The New Masters of Capital: American Bond Rating Agencies and the Politics of Creditworthiness, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005.

4 Bandura, A Survey of Composite Indices, p 9.

5 See C M Bruner & R Abdelal, ‘To judge Leviathan: sovereign credit ratings, national law, and the world economy’, Journal of Public Policy, 25 (2), 2005, pp 191 – 217; Sinclair, The New Masters of Capital; C Mellios & E Paget-Blanc, ‘Which factors determine sovereign credit ratings?’, European Journal of Finance, 12 (4), 2006, pp 361 – 377; C Archer, G Biglaiser & K DeRouen, ‘Sovereign bonds and the “democratic advantage”: does regime type affect credit rating agency ratings in the developing world?’, International Organization, 61 (2), 2007, pp 341 – 365; and G Biglaiser & K DeRouen, ‘Sovereign bond ratings and neoliberalism in Latin America’, International Studies Quarterly, 51 (1), 2007, pp 121 – 138.

6 W Hout, ‘Political regimes and development assistance’, Critical Asian Studies, 36 (4), 2004, pp 591 – 613; S Soederberg, ‘American empire and “excluded states”: the Millennium Challenge Account and the shift to pre-emptive development’, Third World Quarterly, 25 (2), 2004, pp 279 – 302; RI Rotberg, ‘Strengthening governance: ranking countries would help’, Washington Quarterly, 28 (1), 2005, pp 71 – 81; C Arndt & C Oman, Uses and Abuses of Governance Indicators, Paris: oecd Development Center Studies, 2006; A Doig, S McIvor & R Theobald, ‘Numbers, nuances and moving targets: converging the use of corruption indicators or descriptors in assessing state development’, International Review of Administrative Sciences, 72 (2), 2006, pp 239 – 252; D Johnson & T Zajonc, ‘Can foreign aid create an incentive for good governance? Evidence from the Millennium Challenge Corporation’, 2006, at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=896293, accessed 11 October 2007; and VP Nanda, ‘The “good governance” concept revisited’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 603, 2006, pp 269 – 283.

7 See, for example, the debate between Kurtz and Schrank and Kaufmann et al, M Kurtz & A Schrank, ‘Growth and governance: models, measures, and mechanisms’, Journal of Politics, 69 (2), 2007, pp 538 – 554; and D Kaufmann, A Kraay & M Mastruzzi, ‘Growth and governance: a reply’, Journal of Politics, 69 (2), 2007, pp 555 – 562.

8 M Foucault, ‘Governmentality’, in C Gordon & P Miller (eds), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991, pp 87 – 104.

9 On responsibilisation, see G Burchell, ‘Liberal government and techniques of the self’, in A Barry, T Osborne & N Rose (eds), Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism, and Rationalities of Government, Chicago, IL: University Of Chicago Press, 1996, pp 19 – 36. See also O Löwenheim, ‘The responsibility to responsibilise: foreign offices and the issuing of travel warnings’, International Political Sociology, 1 (3), 2007, pp 203 – 221.

10 See M Merlingen, ‘Towards a Foucauldian framework for the study of igos’, Cooperation and Conflict, 38 (4), 2003, pp 361 – 384; and L Zanotti, ‘Governmentalizing the post – cold war international regime: the UN debate on democratization and good governance’, Alternatives, 30 (4), 2005, pp 461 – 487.

11 Sinclair, The New Masters of Capital, p 52.

12 W Espeland & M Stevens, ‘Commensuration as a social process’, Annual Review of Sociology, 24, 1998, p 316.

13 See P Cohen, A Calculating People: The Spread of Numeracy in Early America, London: Routledge, 1999; and G Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2005, ch 4.

14 O Barak, ‘The failure of the Israeli – Palestinian peace process, 1993 – 2000’, Journal of Peace Research, 42 (6), 2005, pp 719 – 736.

15 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p 176ff.

16 M Dean, Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society, London: Sage, 1999, pp 19 – 20, 102 – 103.

17 Burchell, ‘Liberal government and techniques of the self’, p 29.

18 D Garland, Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Social Theory, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993, p 59.

19 M Foucault, ‘Questions of method’, in Burchell et al, The Foucault Effect, pp 73 – 86.

20 World Bank, Disclosing ida Country Performance Ratings, 2004, p 6, at http://siteresources.worldbank.org/IDA/Resources/disclosingIDACPR.pdf, accessed 11 October 2007.

21 T Kane, K Holmes & M Anastasia, Index of Economic Freedom 2007, Washington, DC/New York: Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal, 2007, pp x, xi.

22 See http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=5, accessed 15 October 2007, emphasis added.

23 See J Rosenau, Distant Proximities: Dynamics beyond Globalization, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003, p 363.

24 US State Department, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, 2006, at http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61685.htm, accessed 11 October 2007.

25 J Page & J Evans, ‘Putin crackdown to limit the power of foreign-funded ngos’, The Times, 24 November 2005.

26 See Kane et al, Index of Economic Freedom 2007, p 237.

27 Zanotti, ‘Governmentalizing the post – cold war international regime’, p 480.

28 Arndt & Oman, Uses and Abuses of Governance Indicators, p 13.

29 E Neumayer, The Pattern of Aid Giving: The Impact of Good Governance on Development Assistance, London: Routledge, 2003, pp 81 – 82.

30 T Andersen, H Hansen & T Markussen, ‘US politics and World Bank ida-lending’, Journal of Development Studies, 42 (5), 2006, pp 772 – 794.

31 D Dollar & V Levin, ‘The increasing selectivity of foreign aid, 1984 – 2002’, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, 3299, 2004, p 5.

32 US General Accounting Office, Better Data, Strategy, and Reporting Needed to Enhance US Antitrafficking Efforts Abroad, GAO-06-825, Washington, DC: gao, 2006, p 55.

33 See, for example, Kane et al, Index of Economic Freedom, p 237.

34 See Hout, ‘Political regimes and development assistance’; J Danilovich, ‘Fostering “champions of development”: Millennium Challenge Corporation’, Issues of Democracy, 11 (12), 2006, p 27; and Rotberg, ‘Strengthening governance’, p 74.

35 Ausaid, Australian Aid: Promoting Growth and Stability, Canberra: Ausaid, 2006, p 44, at http://www.ausaid.gov.au/publications/pdf/whitepaper.pdf, accessed 12 October 2007. See also T Carroll & S Hameiri, ‘Good governance and security: the limits of Australia's new aid programme’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 37 (4), 2007, pp 410 – 430; S Hameiri, ‘Failed states or a failed paradigm? State capacity and the limits of institutionalism’, Journal of International Relations and Development, 10 (2), 2007, p 128.

36 For example, Kenya's peer review report mentions that ‘Kenya has had, and continues to have, a significant and debilitating problem of corruption … The country has consistently been ranked in the bottom 10% of Transparency International's (ti) Corruption Perceptions Index’. African Peer Review Mechanism, Country Review Report of the Republic of Kenya, Midrand, South Africa: aprm, 2006, p 246. In another case, the oecd, for its part, commends Ghana for demonstrating ‘its commitment to democratic principles by volunteering to be the first country to face scrutiny under the nepad Peer Review Mechanism in May 2004. Nonetheless, substantial governance problems remain. While Transparency International rates Ghana as one of the least corrupt countries in Africa, Ghana's corruption perception rating has slipped back to levels seen … in 2000’. oecd, African Economic Outlook 2005/6, p 292, available at http://www.oecd.org/document/19/0,2340,en_2649_15162846_36563539_1_1_1_1,00.html. In the UK Prime Minister Tony Blair appointed in 2006 an ‘Africa Progress Panel’, which is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Panel monitors the progress of African states in implementing policy reform and G8 realisation of aid promises. Like the 2005 African Governance Report of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the Panel uses Transparency International's index and the World Bank Institute's Governance Indicators to assess governance progress in African governance. See http://www.africaprogresspanel.org/pdf/app_communique.pdf, accessed 10 October 2007.

37 Millennium Challenge Corporation, 2007 Country Scorebook, at http://www.mcc.gov/documents/mcc-2007-scorebook.pdf, accessed 3 May 2007, p 5.

38 Ibid, pp 1, 3. In the case of Indonesia, for example, part of the 2006 mca's $55 million ‘threshold’ grant to this country was actually designed to ‘Expand collection of data for Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index’. See ‘Indonesia Threshold Information’, at http://www.mcc.gov/countries/indonesia/index.php, accessed: 14 October 2007. This clearly stands for an Indonesian recognition of the authority of the examiner.

39 Danilovich, ‘Fostering “champions of development”’, p 27.

40 Centre for Global Development, ‘Assessing Nicaragua's Millennium Challenge Account compact’, at http://www.cgdev.org/doc/event%20docs/NicaraguaMCAccountevttrans.pdf, accessed 10 October 2007, p 6.

41 See http://www.investinturkey.gov.tr/cms/news.show.php?id=362, accessed 16 October 2007.

42 Undersecretariat of Treasury, Turkey and the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, Germany, Towards Improving the Investigation Climate in Turkey, September 2006, at http://www.investinturkey.gov.tr/cms/uploads/files/ingilizce%20rapor.pdf, accessed 16 October 2007, p 69.

43 See ‘Taiwan's democratic achievements win accolades from Freedom House's 2007 Report’, at http://english.www.gov.tw/e-Gov/index.jsp?categid=176&recordid=103000, accessed 16 October 2007. In a ‘Google’ search, I found 2850 Taiwanese governmental webpages (pages where the url includes the term gov.tw) that refer to Freedom House.

44 Bruner & Abdelal, ‘To judge Leviathan’, p 192.

45 D Beers, ‘Credit fac: the future of sovereign credit ratings’, at http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/pdf/media/Credit%20FAQ%20The%20futur%20of%20Seoverign%20credit%20ratings%205-9-06.pdf, accessed 10 October 2007, p 2.

46 A Lehmann, ‘Sovereign credit ratings and private capital flows to low-income countries’, African Development Review, 16 (2), 2004, p 264.

47 Bruner & Abdelal, ‘To judge Leviathan’, pp 198 – 189.

48 Mellios & Paget-Blanc, ‘Which factors determine sovereign credit ratings?’.

49 Archer et al, ‘Sovereign bonds and the “democratic advantage”’, p 359.

50 For the ti's disagreement with some of these uses, see http://www.transparency.org/news_room/faq/corruption_faq, accessed 10 October 2007.

51 See, for example, http://www.efic.gov.au/static/efi/cra.htm, accessed 11 October 2007. See also author's interview with Dr Yaron Zlika, Accountant General, Israeli Ministry of Finance, 25 February 2007.

52 See http://ec.europa.eu/world/enp/partners/index_en.htm, accessed 10 October 2007.

53 oecd, oecd Risk Management Tool for Investors in Weak Governance Zones, November 2005, at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/59/37/35719130.pdf, accessed 15 October 2007, p 82.

54 Cited in H Arendt, ‘What was authority?’, in CJ Friedrich (ed), Authority, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958, p 100.

55 ‘World Bank releases largest available governance data source’, at http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:21050333∼pagePK:64257043∼piPK:437376∼theSitePK:4607,00.html, accessed 10 October 2007.

56 B Hindess, ‘Investigating international anti-corruption’, Third World Quarterly, 26 (8), 2005, pp 1389 – 1398.

57 Arndt & Oman, Uses and Abuses of Governance Indicators, p 18.

58 See Rotberg, ‘Strengthening governance’; and Carroll & Hameiri, ‘Good governance and security’.

59 See C Burnside & D Dollar, ‘Aid, policies, and growth’, American Economic Review, 90 (4), 2000, pp 847 – 868; and Kaufmann et al, ‘Growth and governance’.

60 On the nexus between knowledge and power among ngos and hegemonic states, see B Steele & JL Amoureux, ‘ngos and monitoring genocide: the benefits and limits to human rights panopticism’, Millennium, 34 (2), 2006, pp 403 – 432.

61 For a similar argument about neoliberalism in general, see Hameiri, ‘Failed states or a failed paradigm?’, p 131.

62 S Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.

63 See P Bedrhanoğlu, ‘The neoliberal discourse on corruption as a means of consent building: reflections from post – crisis Turkey’, Third World Quarterly, 28 (7), 2007, pp 1239 – 1254.

64 Rotberg, ‘Strengthening governance’, p 74.

65 D Kaufman, A Kraay & M Mastruzzi, Governance Matters V: Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators for 1996 – 2005, Washington, DC: World Bank Institute, 2006, p 18.

66 Centre for Global Development, ‘Measuring governance: possibilities and pitfalls’, at http://www.cgdev.org/doc/events/12.01.06/Measuring%20Governance%20Transcript.pdf, accessed 10 October 2007, p 14.

67 Kaufmann et al, Governance Matters V, p 1.

68 Johnson & Zajonc, ‘Can foreign aid create an incentive for good governance?’, pp 2, 3.

69 Danilovich, ‘Fostering “champions of development”’.

70 On this general trend in neoliberal systems within domestic politics, see D Garland, ‘The limits of the sovereign state: strategies of crime control in contemporary society’, British Journal of Criminology, 36 (4), 1996, pp 445 – 471.

71 Office of the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh in the United States, http://www.nkrusa.org/news/daily_news.php?id=122, accessed 10 October 2007.

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73 K Woodsome. ‘World Bank warns corruption could destroy Cambodian economy’, Voice of America News, 11 February 2005, at http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2005-02/2005-02-11-voa21.cfm?CFID=111976039&CFTOKEN=67341335, accessed 10 October 2007.

74 Colin L Powell, ‘Remarks at sovereign credit rating conference’, Washington, DC, 23 April 2002, at http://www.state.gov/secretary/former/powell/remarks/2002/9634.htm, accessed 10 October 2007.

75 Financial Times, 8 April 2006.

76 Arndt & Oman, Uses and Abuses of Governance Indicators, p 38.

77 ‘Strains of sleaze: corruption’, The Economist, 11 November 2006.

78 For a discussion on multinational corporations' evasion of anti-corruption laws and conventions, see T Moran, ‘How multinational investors evade developed country laws’, Center for Global Development Working Paper, 79, 2006.

79 See http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=22&year=2005&country=6763, accessed 16 October 2007.

80 For allegations of US involvement in torturing suspected terrorists in Jordan, see Y Melman, ‘cia holding Al-Qaida suspects in secret Jordanian lockup’, Haaretz, 13 October 2004. See also Human Rights Watch, The United States' ‘Disappeared’: The cia's Long-Term ‘Ghost Detainees’, New York: Human Rights Watch. On p 6 of this report a US official is cited as saying regarding the interrogation of terror suspects, ‘We don't kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them’. http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/usa/us1004/us1004.pdf, accessed 15 October 2007.

81 US State Department, Trafficking in Persons Report, Washington, DC: 2006, p 76.

82 Ibid, p 179.

83 End Child Prostitution Pornography and Trafficking (ecpat), ‘Child sex tourism in Mexico’, at http://www.ecpat.org.uk/downloads/Mexico05.pdf, accessed 10 October 2007.

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