Discourses of international actors in the construction of the decentralisation policy: the case of Benin

ABSTRACT

Decentralising education is a much-debated topic among policy researchers and practitioners though not often from a Foucauldian-influenced CDA perspective. This article’s specific focus is education decentralisation in Benin, arguing that the policy is framed by a modernist development understanding and reflects the country’s (neo-) colonial legacy and the influence of the development agencies and consulting firms involved in writing the policy. The policy can be viewed as a bricolage that pays scant attention to the rich social and cultural capital of Benin’s. The article concludes by advocating systems of education governance to overcome the historically produced, uneven and asymmetrical power relations between the global North and South.

KEYWORDS:

• Policy
• education
• decentralisation
• governance
• discourse
• critical discourse analysis
• Foucault

1. Introduction

The decentralisation of education has been a central element of government reforms in West Africa since the 1990s (CODESIRA, 2008) and a prominent topic debated by education policy-makers, researchers and practitioners (Bulgrin, 2020; Caldeira, Foucault, & Rota-Graziosi, 2015; du Plessis, 2020; Essuman & Akyeampong, 2011; Kauzya, 2007; Kuhon, 2020; Nanako, 2016; Rao & Georgas, 2015; Rasmussen, 2013; Sasaoka & Nishimura, 2010; Sayed, 2010, 2016; Tadros, 2013; Zia-Us-Sabur, 2016). Education decentralisation has been a taken for granted policy and is not subjected to sufficient critical scrutiny, particularly from a Foucauldian critical discourse approach. This journal article addresses this gap by discursively examining the education decentralisation policy in Benin by subjecting to scrutiny its framing within a particular modernist development approach. It then throws into sharp relief how the policy of education decentralisation, as a global governance policy reform, is mediated and shaped in the context of Benin, is thus a bricolage (a borrowing and copying fragments of ideas from elsewhere) reflecting Benin’s positioning as a neo-colonial state (Ball, 1998).

This article begins by contextualising education governance globally and in Benin, linking this discussion to modernity and coloniality, and showing how these relate to a discussion on social policy (Section 1). Section 2 outlines the study’s context, and the conceptual and methodological framework that informs the analysis and key findings presented in Section 3. The final section concludes the paper by tentatively mapping a framework for education governance that transcends the existing development discourses. The following section begins with a discussion of decentralisation globally and locally.

2. Background

Decentralisation shares with participatory forms of democracy the view that power should be distributed, and citizens are entitled to participate in the governance of their locality (Lauglo, 1995). Moreover, decentralisation is part of a new set of global governance reforms calling for participatory governance (UNESCO, 2015). Governance can be understood as the operationalisation of ‘the responsibilities of national and subnational governments’ and ‘decision-making from the national finance or education ministry down to the classroom and community’ (UNESCO, 2009, p. 6). Decentralisation resonates with and is framed by global governance reforms which respond to the need for increased economic development and the calls for political accountability and public participation, involving complex and contradictory dynamics.

Since the 1990s, decentralisation has become a requirement in many West African states (CODESRIA, 2008), often as a result of the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) and the influence of International Organisations (IOs), more broadly. Currently, decentralisation remains not only a core tool of IOs for promoting democracy, good governance and economic development, as exemplified in the policy brief of the World Bank (World Bank Group, 2013), but its advocates decentralisation as a requirement for achieving the United Nation’s (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) (Cheema & Rondinelli, 2007).

This article draws on Cheema and Rondinelli's (2007) understanding of decentralisation as encompassing:

not only the transfer of power, authority, and responsibility within government but also the sharing of authority and resources for shaping public policy within society. (p. 6)

This conceptualisation highlights the need for government entities, the private sector, and civil society associations to negotiate power-sharing in various contexts. Using Cheema and Rondinelli's (2007) understanding of decentralisation, we distinguish between de-concentration (shifting the workload from central ministry headquarters to government staff located in offices outside the national capital), delegation (specific functions are given to bodies under the indirect control of central government ministries), devolution (strengthening or the creation of local governments) and privatisation (transfer of ownership and responsibilities from the government to the private sector) (Rondinelli, 1980). Devolution and de-concentration are the central administrative reforms in Benin, but there are overlaps with political decentralisation, which transfers authority to elected bodies. Collectively, all the forms defined above express the desire to move away from the centre to lower levels of administration, with different degrees of autonomy.

Benin’s past can be divided into three historical periods: pre-colonial rule up to 1890, colonial rule up to 1960, and the post-war era of decolonisation from 1960 onwards (Gifford & Weiskel, 1971). The colonial period, in particular, is important for the understanding of the historical and contemporary similarities between the French and Beninese systems of governance as well as their education systems. Benin was known as Dahomey, a powerful kingdom in West Africa, extending far beyond the boundaries of present day Benin. However, by the middle of the nineteenth century, the Dahomey region had lost influence, whereas France had become stronger as the up and coming colonial power until they took over the area from 1892 to 1960 (Gifford & Weiskel, 1971; Houngnikpo & Decalo, 2013). After political instability, followed by a socialist economy of Marxist-Leninist orientation in the postcolonial era, Benin adopted a democratic government in 1990. The current political system largely follows the Westphalian model of a presidential, representative, democratic republic (Gouvernement de la République du Bénin, 2018).

The National Policy of Devolution and De-concentration (Politique Nationale de Décentralisation et de Déconcentration, PONADEC), which this article investigates, was adopted in 2010 to cover five sectors including pre-and primary education. This significant policy, the product of much deliberation and contestation (cf. Bulgrin, 2020), set the tone for how Benin was to be governed in general, and its education system, in particular. The origins of the 2010 decentralisation policy are in the 1990 constitution and the five decentralisation laws of 1999.¹ This reform is widely considered the turning point for local governance in Benin – the opening-up of grassroots democracy in which the population could participate, to some extent, thereby giving access to basic social services and boosting economic development (Bierschenk & Olivier de Sardan, 2003; MDGLAAT, 2008). Within the decentralisation policy, education remains a shared responsibility between the newly created municipalities and the central government (MDGLAAT, 2008; MDGLAAT, 2010). However, historically, Benin's education system has been de-concentrated, from national to village level, since the 1970s (Bulgrin, 2020).

This article de-constructs the education decentralisation policy formulation process in Benin by identifying the dominant discourses surrounding the production of this policy (Ball, 1993, 2015), and the content of the policy itself (Taylor, 1997). The examination of the policy pays particular attention to its discursive constitutions (Bazzul, 2014; Foucault, 1990; Jäger, 2006), that is, ‘ … the structures and rules that constitute a discourse rather than the texts and utterances produced within it’ (Ball, 2015, p. 311), as developed in more detail in the subsequent section.

2. Education decentralisation in post-colonial settings: reinventing modernity and coloniality?

This study critically examines decentralisation as a global governance reform and argues that it reflects the discourses of modernity and coloniality. The colonial project was one of modernisation and it continues in neo-colonial forms through development aid. The assumption underlying modernisation is the need to transform traditional societies – meaning countries in the Global South – into modern ones, as the former in contrast to the latter, are considered primitive, simple, or traditional (Mbembe, 2019) within the dominant values of the West. We contextualise modern within international development where neoliberal models of economic growth are seen as the modernisation – through marketisation and privatisation, to which such societies should aspire (Scott & Marshall, 2015).

Mbembe (2019) points out that modernity as a phenomenon has been mainly addressed by Western theorists, from Max Weber to Michel Foucault, linking modernity, rationalism, and Westernism as being constitutive rather than merely contingent. He continues –

[t]he dispute thus bears not on the Westernness of modernity but on what the Enlightenment bequeathed ‘us’ and on the possibilities of accomplishing in reality the promises of universality contained in the ideals of the Aufklärung. (p. 15)

For example, López (1992) examined the education decentralisation reforms in Mexico which aimed to modernise the state. He claims that education decentralisation processes in the ‘redemption and efficiency orbit’ of the State converge on two authoritarianisms, namely education modernisation and traditional authoritarianism. Due to its external support for the education system and its internal force of recomposition, its dominant and increasingly hegemonic core is found in the technocratic modernising alliance backed by neo-corporate political authoritarianism.

For this article, we further distinguish between post-colonial, neo-colonial and coloniality. While we understand post-colonial as the period after colonialism (implying the period in the Beninese case from 1960 onwards), we use neo-colonial and coloniality interchangeably to refer to the ‘structures and processes that emerged from colonial conditions that also shaped current global power and dominance structures’ (Aníbal Quijano, in Varela & Dhawan, 2020, p. 331. Own translation). We assume that liberal democracies, including decentralisation reforms in the Global South promoted by Global North governments, present avenues to control the former.

Research on education decentralisation in post-colonial settings has been primarily concerned with education quality, equity and inclusion, as well as accountability and transfer mechanisms (Bulgrin, 2020; Sayed, 2010). The research does not often address these concerns from a post- or decolonial perspective, which this article seeks to address. One exception is Tang and Bray’s (2000) comparative analysis of Hong Kong’s and Macau’s education systems, which examined their recent colonial trajectories on the centralisation/decentralisation debate. They state that albeit political, economic and cultural forces, their education systems underwent different processes. Overall, the Tang and Bray article demonstrates how colonial history can develop quite differently for the development of education systems.

Further, Rwiza’s (2014) study examines how head teachers in Tanzania have harmonised different roles to achieve autonomy, external accountability and, at the same time, competition. Her study, informed by political discourse analysis and decolonising theories, found that adopting new roles in the education decentralisation process created conflict and imbalances. Rwiza suggests that educational policies should be kept separate from market influences and decolonisation.

This discussion on ongoing patterns of colonialism raises questions of what kind of policies are regarded as desirable, and which policies are generalisable. Although education and health can be considered as part of social welfare, the scope of social policy in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) narrowed down in the post-colonial era from investment in education and healthcare to taking a neoliberal approach which cut social services and created a crisis in citizenship and statehood (Adésínà, 2015). Adésínà argues that social policy concerns were reduced to a set of social protection instruments in the 1990s, which could be considered an impoverished version of development in the guise of poverty alleviation (Adésínà, 2020).

Mkandawire (2008), exploring this further, suggests that research funding for evidence-based policy-making has been externally channelled through International Organisations (IOs), and has reproduced an uneven relationship between donor and recipient countries:

Part of the new, supposedly evidence-based, consensus reflects unilateral declarations by those with the most influence and power of what is ‘universal’ or ‘true’. (p. 398)

Mkandawire (2010) pleads for a social policy agenda that includes concerns for democratisation and human rights. He argues for increased internal accountability to voters instead of external accountability to donors, shifting attention from development agencies’ views to national aspirations and priorities. Similarly, Adésínà’s work demands a broader vision of social policy, conceptualising policy as encompassing democratic and socially inclusive development, as well as equality and social solidarity.

In light of Benin’s colonial legacy and the enduring effects of development aid, we address the analysis of this policy in a post-colonial condition conceptualising the post-colonial condition –

in terms of the constitutive effects of different discourses of development on the way that social reality and post-colonial identities are constructed but also materially, as an aspect of the cultural political economy of globalisation. (Tikly, 2019, p. 223)

The post-colonial condition is understood then, as both material and epistemic, as both structural and agential, as both ideational and as practice. In this way, the policy of education decentralisation in the context of Benin is examined in both its material form and its ideational impulse. Finally, a Foucauldian approach to policy analysis resonates with the views of African scholars’, such as Mkandwire, as elaborated in section two which discusses the context, its approach to critical discourse, and its research methods, and the data this research is based on.

3. Methodology

The article draws on qualitative semi-structured interviews carried out in 2017, with 27 high and middle-ranking officials from three Ministries in Benin: Pre-school and Primary Education, Decentralisation and Local Governance, and Planning and Development, their respective de-concentrated sub-units, as well as the National Association of Mayors in Benin. A documentary review of the 2010 decentralisation policy and other relevant documents was also undertaken.

The data was analysed using a Foucauldian CDA approach (Bazzul, 2014; Fairclough, 1995, 2010, 2013; Foucault, 1990; Jäger, 2006) ‘to develop ways of analysing language which address its involvement in the workings of contemporary capitalist society’ (Fairclough, 1995, p. 1). CDA examines how societal power relations are established and reinforced through language use; it offers an approach to analysing the interplay between text and the broader social processes from a normative and explanatory stance (Blommaert, 2005). We used Fairclough’s (1995, p. 2010) three-dimensional analytical framework, combining text and discourse analysis with the social analysis of sociocultural change. In privileging the second dimension (processing analysis) and the third dimension (social analysis), this article foregrounds the power of discourse and its material implications.

CDA here, is used in the Foucauldian sense in order to understand policy discourse and power issues. A Foucauldian discourse analysis focuses on the policy process as discursive, paying attention to what is said, and how it is said (Jäger, 2006), as well as what is not said. Accordingly, the starting point is the process of policy formulation including agenda setting and the policy text itself. Discursive policy analysis includes engaging in a critique, understood as a fight, resistance and refusal, because ‘the very nature of power embodies resistance’ (Foucault, as cited by Bazzul, 2014, p. 425). Using a Foucauldian approach to CDA helps to de-construct the ‘taken-for-granted, and implicit knowledge and assumptions about the world and ourselves’ – the decentralisation policy in this case (Ball, 2015, p. 311; cf. also Mccormick & Mccormick, 2012; Vavrus & Seghers, 2010).

All the data were processed and analysed through NVIVO software. Nowell, Norris, White, and Moules’s (2017) six phases for analysing qualitative data thematically were followed. In addition, Samuel’s (2016) three levels of analysis – descriptive, evaluative, and theoretical – were inspirational as part of the CDA. The next section presents and discusses the key findings emerging from this study.

4. Results and discussion

This section discusses the role of global actors in the formulation of the Beninese decentralisation policy text. The global influences on policy formulation in Benin is further examined by considering the parallels between Benin’s decentralisation reform and the historical and contemporary governance system of France to illustrate the (neo-)colonial legacy of Benin’s policy.

4.1. The role of international actors in policy formation

As the background section explained, decentralisation has been prominent in many West African states since the 1990s, and Benin is no exception. Although the National Conference of the Active Forces in 1990 played a considerable role in decentralising Benin’s governance system (Bulgrin, 2020), IOs significantly influenced this process, as excerpts from interviews with officials from the Decentralisation Ministry show:

Since the 1990s, decentralisation has been a requirement of the Bretton Wood institutions and the development partners … The international environment makes decentralisation a requirement for [Global South] states and is even a condition for obtaining development aid. (I11, national/ decentralisation, 26 January 2017, italics added).

Because African countries are not autonomous as such, most of the policies are externally implemented. You allude to France-Africa, your Bretton Wood institutions … The same thing happened with the SAPs (Structural Adjustment Programs). (I7, national/ decentralisation, 19 January 2022, italics added)

The first interviewee points to Bretton Wood institutions and SAPs as driving the policy of decentralisation in Benin. The second interviewee refers to decentralisation as a condition for access to development funds, as also noted by Mkandawire (2010). The reach of international actors in the formulation of the decentralisation policy in Benin is evident, particularly in the Beninese-French-German tripartite agreement for developing the devolution laws in the 1990s and the involvement of the French consulting firm, Institutions & Développement (I&D) in the 2000s.

In the mid-90s, the Tripartite Cooperation Agreement between the Beninese, French and German governments, represented by the French Development Agency (Agence Francaise de Développement, AFD) and German Development Agency (Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH, GIZ), constituted a powerful network for developing the devolution laws. The AFD website and secondary literature (Dafflon & Madiès, 2008) suggest that today, they perceive the role of the Benin state as mainly to redistribute resources and prioritise support for local authorities. Although France, historically, has had a centralised system, the French development agency refers to its expertise and experience of decentralisation, below.

[The activities of AFD] are specific to French local authorities. With more than 5,000 active municipalities, France has one of the most dynamic international networks in this area. AFD devotes an increasing part of its activity to the direct financing of local authorities in its countries of operation. In doing so, it places particular reliance on the expertise of local French authorities [which] are important actors for development aid. (AFD, 2021, n.p. Italics added)

This statement illustrates how AFD perceives the local as key to development and sees its own experience as crucial support for the Beninese government.

In contrast, the German GIZ points to a federal form of decentralisation (Dafflon & Madiès, 2008; Lauglo, 1995), referring to its governance system as ‘Bundesländer’ and ‘Landkreise’ (Lampe, 2017):

Political and administrative units at the subnational level – such as the German Länder, districts, cities and municipalities – are closer to the citizens and can include them more directly and comprehensively in decision-making and planning processes. (p. 1)

GIZ’s liberal approach to decentralisation emphasises central and local government participation, whereby government institutions and IOs give citizens a functional, participatory role in policymaking (Edwards & Klees, 2015).²

In the 2000s, the French consulting firm, Institutions et Développement (I&D), played an important role in formulating the decentralisation policy in Benin. The Decentralisation Ministry of the Government of Benin, supported by IOs commissioned I&D to construct and draw up a decentralisation policy, as the quote below suggests:

By whom was this policy written? I was not there, but I think international consultants were there … [Also], the European Union supported the process, but the ToR [Terms of Reference] came from the [Decentralisation] Ministry (I7, national/ decentralisation, 19 01 2022).

Furthermore I&D’s website refers to the French system as a desirable form of government, highlighting the system’s emphasis on decentralisation and devolution. This normative positioning of the French system found its way into the PONADEC policy.

As shown in the first column of Table 1, I&D recommends a National Policy of Devolution and Deconcentration concerned with ‘the development of local services for the population to become the engine of local development, [and] a space for local democracy’ (Institutions & Développement (I&D), n.d. Own translation). It further states that –

[t]he territorial authorities, especially the municipalities, aim to provide the essential services to the population (public service mission) and be the driving force for development in their territory (Institutions & Développement. (I&D), n.d. Own translation)

Table 1. Comparative table of the use of language in the PONADEC and the I&D Consulting, website (author's compilation, own translation).

	I&D Consulting (Institutions & Développement (I&D), n.d.)	PONADEC (PONADEC Document Cadre de Politique, 2008)
Title	The national policy of devolution and de-concentration (Politique nationale de décentralisation et de déconcentration)	The national policy for devolution and de-concentration (Politique nationale de décentralisation et de déconcentration)
Objective	to form competent territorial authorities with the following objectives: ‘the development of local services for the population to become the engine of local development, provide a space for local democracy’.	Make [of the] the territorial authorities spaces for grassroots democracy, good governance and sustainable local development […] (pp. 11, 32, italics added).
Strategic orientations		‘access of the population to local services’ (pp. 7, 28) ‘economic growth’ (pp. 10, 11; 31, 33, 34)

As the second column of Table 1 shows, the PONADEC policy uses similar keywords and values to those of the I&D consultants, suggesting that their ideas have been transferred into the Beninese context. Both the objectives and the vision of the decentralisation policy refer to developing local services for the population, by ‘stimulating grassroots development’ (dynamiser le développement à la base), fostering ‘sustainable local development’ (développement local durable) and providing ‘access to local services for all’ (l'accès de tous aux services de base). In terms of democracy, the policy aims to ‘make the territorial authorities democratic spaces at the local level’ (Faire des Collectivités Territoriales des espaces de démocratie à la base) (Alliance pour Refonder, PONADEC Document Cadre de Politique, 2008, p. 11, 32). These excerpts not only demonstrate how the consultancy firm frames the decentralisation policy but raises the question of the extent to which the consultancy firm largely transposed almost verbatim, its own writing (including text from its website) to the decentralisation policy of Benin, ignoring the specific national context.

Furthermore, the language used in the decentralisation policy in Benin and the mission statements of some IOs is also strikingly similar. For example, the Delegation of the European Union describes on its website the aim of its governance project in Benin as ‘territorial development, sustainable and balanced, based on concerted local governance’ (Délégation de l'Union Européenne au Bénin, 2016), concepts and words repeated in the PONADEC policy statement (Alliance pour Refonder, PONADEC Document Cadre de Politique, 2008, p. 11): ‘sustainable and balanced territorial development based on concerted local governance’. This similarity further demonstrates how the views of the European Delegation influenced the formation of Beninese decentralisation.

The data, as noted above, suggests that development agencies and consulting firms have co-authored and significantly influenced Benin's decentralisation policy. Borrowing from Mkandawire (2008), the analysis above reveals that knowledge production and its transfer into policy formation reproduces the uneven relationship between donor and recipient countries and that this unevenness is also associated with the commodification of development research through the consultancy industry. Moreover, the (co-)actors, as detailed above, always speak within the wider discourses of development, reflecting Bazzul’s (2014) argument that subjects (development agencies, consulting firms, and the government of Benin) always speak within larger discourses. Discourses, as the next section will elaborate, can be found around issues of modernity and coloniality.

4.2. Modernisation in the policy of decentralisation in Benin: coloniality continued?

This section argues that ideas of modernity and coloniality discursively drive the policy of decentralisation, resonating with Tikly’s (2019) argument about the post-colonial condition. The policy explicitly refers to decentralisation as modernisation as in the following excerpt:

Devolution and de-concentration, therefore, will be the driving forces of State modernisation, one of the goals of economic growth and the reduction of poverty … . (Alliance pour Refonder, PONADEC Document Cadre de Politique, 2008, p. 7, 9, 36. Own translation, italics added)

The emphasis on decentralisation as necessary for becoming a modern state is evident in the strategic and operational documents of some IOs. For example, the aim of the European Union’s programme is the institutional modernisation of Benin (European Comission, 2014). The EU, a key actor in formulating the policy of education decentralisation in Benin, equates becoming a modern state with good governance, implying that Benin, up to that point, was pre-modern and a less than good governing state.

The German development agency position similarly notes:

We support platforms for promoting the international exchange of experience and the development of approaches to modernize decentralized political and administrative systems. (Lampe, 2017, p. 2. Italics added)

The policy of decentralisation thus becomes a policy through which international agencies, specifically the European Delegation and GIZ in Benin, seek to modernise the state (in this case, Benin) which is equated with the global good governance agenda (cf. also World Bank Group, 2013).

This modernist concept of good governance expressed in the Beninese decentralisation policy text resonates with Mkandawire's (2008, 2010) concern that social policy in SSA reflects a particular view of development shared by international agencies, which elevates the European-specific and local view of the state and governance arrangements to the universal. In this way, the policy of decentralistaion in Benin continues – albeit in anew form – the colonial condition which Tikly (2019) refers to as coloniality.

It is important, however, to also recognise that Benin’s decentralisation policy, notably the current administrative organisation of the territorial authorities, cannot only be considered a continuation of the administration begun under colonial rule and the subsequent Marxist-Leninist regime since it also draws on the contemporary experience of political and administrative decentralisation in France. First, the 1993 Territorial Administration reform document, one of the incremental³ documents leading to the decentralisation policy that replaced the sous-préfectures through elected bodies, that is, the municipalities. The policy of education decentralisation in Benin refers to the institutional framework as –

Learning from the experiences of devolution and de-concentration in the world, [and] starting from the territorial specificities of Benin, the legislator conceived a simple institutional framework composed of a single level of devolution with 77 municipalities […] and a single level of de-concentration composed of 12 departments. The territorial boundaries of the municipalities are defined as those of the former sub-prefectures which had been abolished with the advent of municipalities. (Alliance pour Refonder, PONADEC Document Cadre de Politique, 2008, pp. 24–15. Own translation, italics added)

Whilst directly referencing the global contemporary experiences as a source of reference for the policy, the decentralisation policy also refers to the former sub-prefectures. However, the policy remains silent about the origins of such sub-prefectures as they were created in colonial times (Decalo, 1987; Ki-Zerbo & Holenstein, 2003). As such, the ‘territorial specificities of Benin’, as the policy text indicates, has been shaped by its colonial history rather than by its endogenous experiences.

Second, Benin's decentralisation reform displays remarkable similarities to the contemporary French concept of decentralisation. A representative of the National Association of Mayors in Benin claimed that the decentralisation system of Benin had its foundations in the French system, when interviewed by one of the authors:

From there, the draft laws were elaborated. What were the sources of inspiration for the editors? That, frankly, I do not know. However, I noticed that our decentralisation is close to the French system, so I imagine that French laws inspired the ‘fathers of decentralisation’. (I61, municipal/ decentralisation, 06 06 2017)

This view was echoed during the group interview at national level when discussing decentralisation reforms more broadly, as noted below:

[Our] reform is pegged on the French system (I67, national/ education/ decentralisation, 22 06 2017).

Both quotes suggest that the Beninese education decentralisation reform is linked and framed by the French form of decentralisation, suggesting a policy transfer from the former coloniser (France) to the former colony (Benin).

The analysis of this paper suggests that Benin’s education decentralisation reform can be considered a neo-colonial product in the sense that patterns of colonialism continue to endure in the current territorial administration. It further argues that this process is driven through the active agency and involvement of international agencies, throwing into sharp relief the similarities between the territory’s administration under colonial rule and its current administration today.

5. Conclusions and implications

Benin’s decentralisation policy text can be considered to reflect and refract discourses of modernity and coloniality, showing continuity as well as discontinuity with Benin’s colonial and post-colonial legacies and development trajectory. This paper has shown how Benin’s decentralisation policy can be considered as a policy bricolage of input from French and German Development Agencies and I&D consultants. Moreover, Benin’s current decentralisation reform displays similarities with both the contemporary and historical French concept of decentralisation.

The colonial residue within the decentralisation policy, including the replication of territorial structures from colonial times, ignores the local social and cultural capital of Benin, as also argued by Rizvi, Lingard, and Lavia (2006). While endogenous experience and locally generated ideas about how to manage education in specific contexts are central to locally driven policy-making to serve local needs, this paper reveals how the power relations between the global North and South disempower African states (Adésínà, 2020; Mkandawire, 2015). This inequity has been made visible by using Foucauldian CDA to examine the decentralisation policy in Benin and in so doing, ‘de-idealising’ decentralisation as a global prescription for policy development.

Overall, the article has shown how deeply global education reforms reflect colonial legacies and global dynamics, re-inscribing and reinforcing the persistent unequal power-structures between the countries of the Global South and Global North. In this sense, it can be argued, as Escobar (2012) does, that development can be conceived as an interconnected historical process, albeit with shifts and changes over time and space. In this sense, the decentralisation policy in Benin has become a vehicle through which particular forms of the modern are constituted within the national context.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Cf. the (Recueil Des Lois Sur La Décentralisation, 2010) for more details.

2 Edwards and Klees (2015) distinguish between three forms of participation: liberal, neoliberal and progress. For further information, please consult the reference in the reference list.

3 Incremental refers to the common process whereby ‘policies are usually built on or developed out of previous policies' (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010, p. 9). Policy-making always has incremental links to previous (policy) documents, as state structures and policy history are continuous elements.