Developmentality: indirect governance in the World Bank–Uganda partnership

Abstract

The instituted order of development is changing, creating new power mechanisms ordering the relationship between donor and recipient institutions. Donors’ focus on partnership, participation and ownership has radically transformed the orchestration of aid. While the formal order of this new aid architecture aimed to alter inherently asymmetrical donor–recipient relations by installing the recipient side with greater freedom and responsibility, this article – drawing on an analysis of the World Bank’s Poverty Reduction and Strategy Paper (PRSP) model and its partnership with Uganda – demonstrates how lopsided aid relations are being reproduced in profound ways. Analysed in terms of developmentality, the article shows how the donor aspires to make its policies those of the recipient as a means to govern at a distance, where promises of greater inclusion and freedom facilitate new governance mechanisms enabling the donor to retain control by framing the partnership and thus limiting the conditions under which the recipient exercises the freedom it has been granted.

Keywords:

• aid relations
• developmentality
• governmentality
• partnership
• World Bank
• Uganda

Notes

1. What is referred to as the new aid architecture is more comprehensive than this structural change. Mosse asserts that the new aid architecture refers to three broad transformations in international aid. The first is a focus on neoliberal policy reform rather than conventional investments projects. The second is the international commitment to poverty reduction, limited not only to economic growth but also inclusive of environmental and social issues. The third is donors’ transcendence of the traditional economic and financial management to a focus including institutions and general governance issues. Mosse, Cultivating Development. In this article I mainly focus on the structural changes and the power effects emerging, particularly in conjunction with the increased focus on governance issues.

2. Brown, “A Question of Agency.”

3. Cited in Randel et al., The Reality of Aid, 8.

4. Foucault, “Governmentality”; and Dean, Governmentality.

5. Others have used the ‘developmentality’ term. In 2003, when I first made use of the concept, it was limited to behavioural child psychology. Later it has been used with reference to computer technology and programming and more recently, somewhat akin to my own usage, in referring to the development aid sector. The latter usage can be found in the works of Legg, “Post-colonial Developmentalities”; Ilcan and Phillips, “Developmentalities and Calculative Practices”; Deb, Beyond Developmentality; and Mawuko-Yevugah, “Governing through Developmentality.” Of these, Ilcan and Phillips’ work is most relevant to my own in analysing the organisation of development aid. This work, however, limits the concept to the UN Millennium Development Goals, whereas I apply developmentality to the new aid architecture and the formation of partnerships within the development sector in general. Although these references to developmentality emerged after my initial mention of it, they have inspired this current work.

6. Lie, Developmentality.

7. Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception.

8. Dean, Governmentality, 10.

9. Rose and Miller, “Political Power,” 181.

10. Abrahamsen, “The Power of Partnerships.”

11. Li, The Will to Improve; Mosse and Lewis, The Aid Effect; Gould, The New Conditionality; and Cruikshank, The Will to Empower.

12. Watts, quoted in Lewis and Mosse, “Encountering Order,” 3 (emphasis in original).

13. Cruikshank, The Will to Empower, 4.

14. See Lie, “Discursive Development Order.”

15. Lie, “Post-development Theory”; and Lie, “Post-development and the Discourse–Agency Interface.”

16. Bierschenk et al., Local Development Brokers in Africa; and Lewis and Mosse, Development Brokers and Translators.

17. Brigg, “Post-development.”

18. Harrison, “Post-conditionality.”

19. Ibid., 658.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid., 659.

22. Chambers, Rural Development; Nelson and Wright, Power and Participatory Development; and Cooke and Kothari, Participation.

23. Wolfensohn, “A Proposal”; and Mallaby, The World’s Banker.

24. SAPRIN, Structural Adjustment; Pincus and Winters, Reinventing the World Bank; and Einhorn, “Reforming the World Bank.”

25. Wolfensohn, “A Proposal,” 9.

26. Ibid.

27. Gould, The New Conditionality.

28. Burnside and Dollar, Aid, Policies, and Growth.

29. Moore, “Introduction,” 20.

30. Pomerantz, Aid Effectiveness in Africa, 41; and Weiss, “Governance.”

31. Moore, “Introduction,” 7–8.

32. Fieldwork was conducted over two periods, totalling 10 months, in 2005 and 2006. This included, among others, participatory observation within the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), which is responsible for the government’s dialogue with external development donors and actors. See Lie, Developmentality; and Lie, “Challenging Anthropology.”

33. Museveni, Sowing the Mustard Seed.

34. Dijkstra and van Donge, “What does the ‘Show Case’ Show?”; Kuteesa et al., Uganda’s Economic Recovery; and Brock et al., Unpacking Policy.

35. These renamed pillars now appear in a language closer to that of the Bank. For instance, ‘directly improving the quality of life of the poor’ is now ‘human development’, while ‘creating an enabling environment for sustainable growth and transformation’ is now simply ‘economic management’. These new pillars all correspond to designated thematic networks within the Bank’s own organisational structure.

36. Moreover, in Uganda (and elsewhere) bi- and multilateral donors meet regularly in various donors’ working groups to discuss and share information pertaining to their specific working group. These thematically focused working groups largely correspond to the PEAP and PRSP sectors (thus the government’s working groups).

37. Burnside and Dollar, “Aid, Policies, and Growth.”

38. Marshall, The World Bank, 67.

39. Wood, World Bank’s Poverty Reduction Support Credit, 1.

40. Bull et al., The World Bank's and the IMF's Use, 4.

41. Taken from paragraph 51 and 60 of the Ethiopian 2008–11 Country Assistance Strategy, where the Bank, after having discontinued budget support since 2006, reflects on what it had lost out on, ie the advantages of the budget support mechanism and prior actions. The document is available at http://go.worldbank.org/ZBCG9IF761.

42. In 2004 a group of ‘likeminded’ donors, or development partners – ie the World Bank together with the African Development Bank, the EU, the IMF and the bilateral agencies of Austria, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the UK – embarked on a consultative process to make a joint strategy in response to the government’s PEAP. The strategy was named the Ugandan Joint Assistance Strategy (UJAS) and expands and builds on the Bank’s CAS structure, thereby integrating the development partners into the Bank’s discursive realm. The UJAS was regarded as a novel and bold attempt at donor-wide harmonisation, aimed at establishing a more congruent and holistic donor approach to reduce the government's transaction costs caused by multiple and dispersed donor policies and procedures. According to the donors, they were requested by the government to harmonise. Government staff, however, hold that the donors asked them to make a request for such harmonisation. It took the development partners two years to agree on a joint strategy, in a process with the donors at loggerheads about which matters to prioritise and the distribution of responsibility.

43. From April 2005 and throughout the year, most agencies withheld or reduced their bilateral aid. The UK first withheld £5 million in direct budget support because of concerns with the political transition and insufficient progress in establishing a multiparty system. Ireland soon followed, cutting €3 million and citing the government’s lack of progress in introducing a multiparty system. In July Norway cut one-third of its budget support – about $4 million – as a result of the government’s negative handling of democracy, human rights and the fight against corruption. In the autumn the Netherlands reduced its aid by €6 million, Sweden cut $8.3 million and, finally, in December the UK cut another £15 million and withheld another £5 million pending the February 2006 elections, on which disbursement was made contingent. This reduced the British budget support by £20 million from the pledged £50 million, because of concerns over ‘the government’s commitment to the independence of the judiciary, freedom of the press and freedom of association following the events surrounding the arrest and trial of the [main opposition] leader of the Forum for Democratic Change, Kizza Besigye; delays in the government’s own road map for the political transition; the continuation of state financing for the ruling party in a new era of multiparty politics; and a significant overrun on public administration expenditure’. DFID, “UK cuts Direct Budget Support to Uganda by £15 million, withholds further £5 Million.” Press release, December 20, 2005. www.dfid.gov.uk/news/files/pressreleases/uganda-reduction.asp.

44. World Bank, Press release no. 2006/239/AFR. http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2006/01/17/uganda-joint-assistance-strategy-and-world-bank-approval-of-us135-million-for-fifth-poverty-reduction-support-operation.

45. Lie, Developmentality.

46. Foucault, Governmentality.

47. Gould, “Timing, Scale and Style,” 65.

48. Kapferer and Bertelsen, Crisis of the State.

49. Doornbos, “State Formation Processes.”

50. Gould, “Poverty, Politics and States of Partnership,” 1.

51. Ibid.