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Abstract
This article critiques the Foucauldian approach to governance indicators. Transparency International’s (TI) Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) underestimated Tunisian corruption levels under President Ben Ali: his regime was highly corrupt but foreign investors were less affected. CPI methodology meant it reflected primarily the needs of foreign investors. The Foucauldian approach specifically excludes analysis of governance indicators’ methodologies. It thus fails to demonstrate the effectiveness of governance indicators as a technology of government, and it fails to show how the production of the CPI is embedded in a wider global political economy.
Funding
Support for this work came from the Levant Foundation via a Jamal Daniel Levant Fellowship at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University.
Acknowledgements
A previous version of this paper were presented at the annual conference of the International Studies Association 2013 and a public lecture at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, in 2014. The author would like to thank the participants of these talks as well as the two anonymous reviewers for their comments.
Notes
1. Loewenheim, “Examining the State.”
2. Pfeifer, “How Tunisia, Morocco, and Jordan.”
3. Bellin, Stalled Democracy, 73–79. Bellin conducted her interviews in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the cronyism of the Ben Ali and Trabelsi clans had not yet reached the heights of later years. However, her book was published in 2002, when their corruption had become a lot clearer. Other academics did mention corruption, for instance Cammett, Globalisation and Business Politics, or even put it at the heart of their analysis, for example Hibou, The Force of Obedience. As explained later in this article, the knowledge of Ben Ali’s and the Trabelsi clan’s corruption makes TI’s underestimation of Tunisian corruption levels even more puzzling.
4. Until 2002 Tunisia was ranked as the least corrupt Arab country by TI. The subsequent inclusion of the Gulf Arab countries pushed it to fifth place behind Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. In later years Jordan and Saudi Arabia would also occasionally outrank Tunisia.
5. Krause Hansen, “The Power of Performance Indices”; and Loewenheim, “Examining the State.”
6. Transparency International, “Nine out of Ten Developing Countries.”
7. Andersson and Heywood, “The Politics of Perception,” 759; and Ballard, “Tunisia outranks US.”
8. La Perriere, quoted in Foucault, “Governmentality,” 94.
9. Foucault, “Governmentality,” 103.
10. Sending and Neuman, “Governance to Governmentality.”
11. Global civil society puts issues (eg human rights, poverty, women’s rights) on the global agenda, helps institute norms and then provides accountability by exposing breaches of these norms. Bohman, “International Regimes”; and Kaldor, “The Idea of Global Civil Society,” 590–591.
12. Fougner, “Neoliberal Governance of States,” 318.
13. Loewenheim, “Examining the State,” 258.
14. Larner and Le Heron, “Global Benchmarking”; Fougner, “Neoliberal Governance of States”; and Loewenheim, “Examining the State,” 259.
15. Fougner, “Neoliberal Governance of States.”
16. Rose and Miller, “Political Power.”
17. Ibid., 178.
18. Ibid., 183.
19. Fougner, “Neoliberal Governance of States,” 314; Larner and Le Heron, “Global Benchmarking,” 219; and Krause Hansen, “The Power of Performance Indices,” 509.
20. Telephone interviews with Margareta Drzeniek-Hanouz, Director, Head of Competitiveness Research and Ciara Browne, Associate Director with the Centre for Global Competitiveness and Performance, World Economic Forum, March 18, 2014; and with Santhosh Srinivasan, Research Coordinator, Transparency International, February 12, 2014. See also Transparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index 2010, 5.
21. Ehteshami and Murphy, “Transformation of the Corporatist State”; and Ayubi, Over-stating the Arab State; Murphy, “Economic Reform”.
22. Cammett, Globalisation and Business Politics, 136.
23. Zemni, “From Socio-economic Protest to Nationalist Revolt,” 136.
24. Murphy, “Economic Reform”; and Bellin, Stalled Democracy.
25. Hibou, The Force of Obedience, 1–13.
26. For instance, the notorious Fonds de Solidarité Nationale (FSN), described below. Hibou, “Domination and Control.”
27. UNCTAD, Investment Country Profiles, 3.
28. Ayeb, “Social and Political Geography.”
29. Hibou, “Domination and Control,” 189.
30. Beau and Tuqoui, Notre ami Ben Ali, 149; and Tsourapas, “The Other Side of a Neoliberal Miracle,” 8.
31. Hibou, “Domination and Control,” 191, 201.
32. Cammett, Globalisation and Business Politics, 117–118; and Tsourapas, “The Other Side of a Neoliberal Miracle,” 8.
33. For instance, EU funds for industrial upgrading. See Cassarino, “Participatory Development”; Godec, “Corruption in Tunisia”; and Godec, “Show me the Money.”
34. Cammett, Globalisation and Business Politics, 120; and Rijkers et al., All in the Family, 6–9, 28.
35. Rijkers et al., All in the Family, 13.
36. Rijkers et al., All in the Family, 19.
37. Beau and Graciet, La Régente, 44–45.
38. Godec, “Corruption in Tunisia.”
39. Companies which complained of regime harassment include Elf Aquitaine, the Tunisian subsidiary to US wind energy company UPC Wind Partners, and McDonalds. Beau and Tuqoui, Notre ami Ben Ali, 156; and Godec, “Corruption in Tunisia.”
40. Godec, “Corruption in Tunisia.” A US government ‘investment climate statement’ came to a similarly benign conclusion as late as 2010. US Embassy Tunis, “Investment Climate Report.”
41. Cammett, Globalisation and Business Politics, 120.
42. Beau and Tuqoui, Notre ami Ben Ali, 153.
43. Cammett, Globalisation and Business Politics.
44. Andersson and Heywood, “The Politics of Perception”; Campbell, “Perception is not Reality”; Galtung, “Measuring the Immeasurable”; Kenny, “Measuring Corruption”; Knack, Measuring Corruption; Ko and Samajdar, “Evaluation of International Corruption Indexes”; and Saisana and Saltelli, Corruption Perceptions Index 2012.
45. Transparency International, “Corruption Perceptions Index 2013.”
46. Transparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index 2010, 5.
47. The author requested the ‘transformed data’ for individual data sources for the period 1995 to 2011 in personal communication (email) with Santhosh Srinivasan, Research Coordinator at Transparency International, on February 3, February 12 and July 18, 2014. Mr Srinivasan responded to all these requests and agreed to a telephone interview about the TI methodology on February 12, 2014 but was unable to provide the data, citing time constraints.
48. World Economic Forum, Global Competitiveness Report, 329.
49. Interview with Margareta Drzeniek-Hanouz and Ciara Browne, March 18, 2014.
50. These data are from 2000 but the picture is unlikely to have changed dramatically by the time the WEF survey was conducted in 2010. World Bank, Republic of Tunisia, 2. In their efforts to understand the overly positive assessment of the survey, WEF researchers approached the question from the opposite end: they argued that the 39% of SME businesses with fewer than 100 employees in the 2010 survey may not have been aware of the cronyism of larger players. Interview with Drzeniek-Hanouz and Browne, March 18, 2014. Yet this is unlikely. Cammett’s interviews in the late 1990s showed that SMEs were painfully aware of top-level cronyism. Cammett, Globalisation and Business Politics, 139.
51. Browne and Geiger, “The Executive Opinion Survey,” 51.
52. Cammett, Globalization and Business Politics, 114, 125 n. 15.
53. Bellin, Stalled Democracy, 69.
54. Interview with Drzeniek-Hanouz and Browne, March 18, 2014.
55. Ibid.
56. Ballard, “Tunisia outranks US.”
57. Transparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index 2010, 2.
58. Galtung, “Measuring the Immeasurable”; and Knack, Measuring Corruption, 10–11.
59. Transparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index 2010.
60. It is impossible to check whether this trend holds for the previous years because Transparency International was unable to provide the earlier data. See note 47.
61. Telephone interview, Santhosh Srinivasan, February 12, 2014. Several studies that assess the usefulness of the CPI concur. Knack, Measuring Corruption, 15; and Saisana and Saltelli, Corruption Perceptions Index, 5.
62. Knack, Measuring Corruption, 21–23.
63. Transparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index 2010.
64. Pope, Sourcebook. Much of the following analysis follows Hindess, “Investigating Anti-corruption.”
65. Pope, TI Sourcebook 2000, 4.
66. Pope, TI Sourcebook 2000, 2.
67. Pope, TI Sourcebook 2000, 5.
68. Khan, “Patron–Client Networks,” 16.
69. Garland, “‘Governmentality’,” 199.
70. Tosa, “Anarchical Governance,” 417.
71. Porter, “Making Serious Measures,” 536, 540.
72. Loewenheim, “Examining the State,” 259.
73. Ko and Samajdar, “Evaluation of International Corruption Indexes,” 509.
74. Transparency International, “Corruption Perceptions Index 2010.”
75. Saisana and Saltelli, Corruption Perceptions Index, 15.