Reply: What’s changed (since 1975)?

Nadeem Malik

Published online: 18 October 2008

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008

From good government to good governance

Since mid-1970s the world has witnessed some important changes around the world:

the demise of right wing regimes in Southern Europe in the mid-1970s; the decline

of military regimes across Latin America from the late 1970s through the late 1980s

and authoritarian rule in parts of East and South Asia starting in the mid-1980s; the

collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe at the end of the 1980s; the break-

up of the Soviet Union in 1991; the decline of one-party regimes in many parts of

sub-Saharan Africa in the first half of the 1990s; and a weak but recognizable

liberalizing trend in some Middle Eastern countries in the 1990s (Carothers 2002).

Causes might be different for the above changes in different regions. However,

what they share in common can be explained as a simultaneous movement in at least

several countries in each region away from dictatorial rule toward so-called liberal

and democratic governance. Such democratic governance was however informed by

neo-liberal ideals reflecting the so called triumph of market forces. In terms of the

model of the state and governance, the change reflects a movement from ‘good

government’ to a ‘good governance’ model. The good government model advocated

a strong centralized state for economic growth, whereas the ‘good governance’

model stressed that the very same state was the main obstacle towards growth.

The reasons for the centralized ‘good government’ model were diverse, however,

they had essentially related to the inter wars and the post-World War II economic

and political situation. The countries involved in the two world wars had to

centralize power and resources and the ones that emerged victorious after the World

War II ‘in close collaboration with large-scale industry and the unions, carried on a

war economy with spectacular results’, and gained more confidence in the

centralized form of governance (de Swaan and Abram, 1999, as cited in Manor,

N. Malik (&)

University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

e-mail: malikn@unimelb.edu.au

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Dialect Anthropol (2008) 32:31–36

DOI 10.1007/s10624-008-9054-9

1999). Internally, the post-war expansion of public services and welfare state

provisions in Western Europe and North America, and externally the security threats

posed by the Cold War period were some other factors for adopting centralized

paradigms of governance.

On the economic front, the success in the West in overcoming the great economic

depression of the 1930s, combined with the remarkable economic growth of the

USSR from the 1930s to the 1960s, enhanced confidence in centralized governance.

The economic boom after the Second World War and successful creation of new

social welfare systems, which were widely popular, further strengthened the belief

in the efficacy of centralized approaches to governance. Such an outlook quite

obviously was adopted by many countries in Asia and Africa, especially in

colonized countries gaining independence after 1945.

Later in the post-Cold War period new trends in economic development led to

prioritizing the direct interests of capital over the state. This was a time when

governments in the developed world came up with decentralized patterns of

governance (called good governance), endorsed by neo-liberals who rejected the

Keynesian concept of state intervention that had been adopted by centralized

governments.

The World Bank after supporting a concept of centralized ‘good government’ for

about four decades and financing military rulers in the Third World during Cold

War also joined the decentralized ‘good governance’ movement. It was claimed that

the economic crises in most Third World countries in Asia and Africa could be

attributed to bad governance. It was therefore considered important to make ‘good

governance’ a precondition for future aid.

Good governance for the World Bank is essentially the management of

development initiatives. According to the Bank, ‘‘Governance is defined as the

manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country’s economic and

social resources for development. Good governance, for the World Bank, is

synonymous with sound development management’’ (World Bank 1992, p. 4). The

notion of ‘sound development management’ for the World Bank resides in the

neoliberal ideal of a lean state and the creation of a liberal public sphere (pluralism,

tolerance and civil society, social capital) within society. The concept of liberal

public sphere is central to the Bank’s concept of development and good governance

facilitates the creation and nourishment of such a public sphere. Commenting on

this, Williams and Young stated: ‘‘We have already suggested that the most

innovative part of World Bank’s recent position is the concern with civil society and

especially with the centralization of civil society to development’’ (Williams and

Young 1994).

Civil society in this context is considered to be an agent for promoting

democracy under the leadership of free market forces that offers much greater

opportunities for economic prosperity compared to centralized planning. The

protagonists of a vibrant civil society argue that more involvement of NGOs in

policy making can potentially improve the practice and the institutions of policy

making.

In the Cold War period centralized ‘good government’ was considered to be the

engine of growth, now it is the same centralized government that is considered to be

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the main obstacle towards economic growth. However, the inner logic and the

motive is the same, i.e. maximizing as much profit as possible. In an ideologically

bipolar world the threat of the Soviet Union compelled the so-called free capitalist

countries to ensure a centralized mode of governance. Now, since the threat of the

Soviet Union has diminished, the insatiable desire of capitalists to maximize profits

is compelling the same states in the developed and the less developed world to

minimize their role, or at least reconsider their role in regulating markets. In other

words, the purpose of the state is now to manage and not to regulate capital.

Good governance becomes an important tool to fulfil the desired outcomes. It

becomes instrumental, as the ‘good governance’ paradigm essentializes active

involvement of extra-government institutions and forces, the most important being

civil society and the market. Decentralization in this new arrangement becomes a

facilitating agent, as it endeavors to connect ‘on the ground forces’ to global

capitalism. Contrary to the claims of neo-liberals who advocated a correspondence

between global and local politics to enhance democratic transition in these countries

(what Samuel Huntington 1991, famously described as ‘the third wave of

democratization’), this process connects the local communities (or consumers?)

with global markets and brings them into tighter control from the dominant powers

in the world.

The pace of change has become so rapid and the post-Cold War period uncovered

so many challenges to reshaping the world according to neo-liberal principles that

there seems to be a big hurry on the part of international policy makers to implement

these new decentralized social, political and economic policies. While the evolution

of decentralized good governance in developed countries spanned over centuries, in

less developed countries the ‘process has been more recent, more rapid and more

traumatic’ (Humes 1991, p. 1). Ha-Joon Chang (2002) has argued that this not been

the economic evolution that occurred in the West, but ‘kicking away the ladder’.

These neoliberal strategies of kicking away the ladder can be found in the

narrative of participation, empowerment, civil society and social capital; such

narratives, however, to use Ferguson’s terminology act as depoliticizing machines.

They endeavor to neutralize social and economic power and make all non-economic

behavior (such as trust, cohesion, harmony and cooperation) subservient to the laws

and rationality of capital.

In the first instance, the neo-liberal strategy of employing concepts such as social

capital and civil society and of conflating or mis-specifying the relations between

social processes (e.g. focusing on trust or lack of it) escapes the analysis of where

and how local conflicts arise and thus marginalize the arenas of political

contestation and omit class relations as simply a lack of cohesion, reciprocity and

trust (social capital).

In the second instance, the strategy is even stranger. It strives to tell the wretched

of the earth that the problems of their poverty lie in their inability and incapacity to

forcefully insert themselves in the mainstream free market economic order in an

organized way. The problem lies with the victims of inequality and not the wider

political economy perpetuating that inequality.

The above picture is one side of the story of the transition of ‘good government’

to ‘good governance’. The other side is the actual practices and motives of the states

Reply: What’s changed (since 1975)? 33

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in the less developed world in implementing ‘good governance’ programs. This side

of the picture presents a tension between theory and practice. It is an undeniable fact

that countries of the world, in one way or the other have been integrated into a

global capitalistic order, and it is managed mainly through national governments.

However, the logics of capitalism have still to gain ground and be fully embedded in

the less developed world. Owing to the fact that these societies are still run on the

bases of hybrid economic systems (a mix of tribal, agrarian and capitalist systems)

and rules of the game, and the fact that the spread of capitalism around the world is

no fair game that provides equal opportunities to all, the result is that these countries

present a distorted picture of good governance and decentralization. The principles

of liberal democracy are still waiting to be embedded in these societies and even

examples of best practices of governance and decentralization in these countries do

not offer anything more than procedural democracy.

Conceptually, the most problematic fact is that while the good government model

provided the space for the solution of social and political problems through political

struggle, the good governance model claims to provide an alternative arena of

politics that endeavors to solve social and political problems through technocratic/

instrumental means. The belief in instrumental solutions to social and political

problems promotes the ideology of sovereign individuals and non-political network

or trust amongst them. Such an ideology is struggling to take over collective forms

of organized political action. Previously the blame of underdevelopment was on the

incapability of the state to deliver. Now in the era of good governance, the blame of

underdevelopment is put on the victims of underdevelopment. Empowerment and

capacity building programs reflect such an outlook. The implicit message is that it is

people’s lack of capacity and ignorance that is responsible for their underdevel-

opment and not the unjust national and international political economy.

Anthropology of the state has further strengthened such a neo-liberal outlook. For

some prominent anthropologists of the state, it is the presence of multiple actors in

action that helps create a discursive construction of the state. Any analysis of the

state as a holistic unity reifies the very notion of the state. In short, the state is not a

solid block, but is imagined by the people through their interaction with state

officials. In a nutshell, the state is what individuals within the state and individuals

and groups outside the state imagine it to be through their everyday encounters with

each other.1

There is a general understanding amongst some prominent anthropologists of the

state that the state thus subjectivized is not an outcome of human subjectivity but is

grounded in material reality—the materiality of people’s interaction with the state in

their daily life. For example, Bruce Kapferer in this context states:

Recent approaches to the state have seized on the fact that it is an imagined

reality, a point that is already central in Hegelian perspectives. But the very

reality of the state is in the very character of its imaginary (as a specter in

1 Such an outlook is quite in line with the neo-liberal pluralist ideology of the state. Such ideology does

not acknowledge state as a form of structural power that has an existence of its own but tend to merge

state and society as a multiplicity of institutional sites, interest groups and individuals with individual

interests.

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human consciousness that has, as such, an effect on human action). Such an

imaginary of the state is also a materiality, a force (spirit) in the constitution of

person and in the manifold arrangements of their processes of human

existence (Kapferer 2005, p. viii).

Hence Kapferer argues: ‘‘the state is an artifact of culture and, in its diversities,

engages assumptions and practical logics that expand from this fact’’ (Kapferer

2005, p. viii). In this regard Gupta had already argued that: ‘any struggle against

currently hegemonic configurations of power and domination involves a cultural

struggle’ (ibid 1995, p. 394). Gupta here seems to be reluctant to approve the

activist politics that according to him reifies the concept of the state. He thus states:

‘‘…advocates of applied work and those who favor activist intervention may

sometimes unintentionally share a common project of reifying ‘‘the state’’ and then

locating themselves with respect to that totality (the one inside, the other outside)’’

(ibid 1995, p. 394). He believes in the plurality of struggle in which ‘there is no

position strictly outside or inside the state’ (Gupta 1995, p. 393).

Gupta’s analysis of the state and forms of struggle against current hegemonic

order can be traced in Foucault’s pluralized analysis of power and rationality as they

are emblazoned in various discourses and institutional sites. Foucault calls for a

plurality of autonomous struggles waged throughout the micro-levels of society.

The idea of a collectively organized vanguard political movement for him is untrue

insofar as it entails a mega social transformation sprouting from the state or a social

class, ‘rather than a de-totalized proliferation of local struggles against a relational

power that no one owns’ (Best and Kellner 1991, p. 56). His contempt is that, ‘‘there

is no locus of great Refusal, no soul of revolt, sources of all rebellions or pure law of

the revolutionary. Instead, there is a plurality of resistances, each of them a special

case’’ (Foucault 1980, p. 95–96 as cited in Best and Kellner 1991, p. 56). This is

because the state lacks any unity or individuality. It is ‘no more than a composite

reality and a mythicized abstraction’ (Foucault 1991, p. 103).

The above thesis has become a standard and certainly, there is an emerging

consensus among anthropologists of the state that the state does not, as Foucault

notes,has ‘‘this unity, this individuality, this rigorous functionality’’ (Holy 2006, p.

5), and the state is a ‘‘composite reality and a mythicized abstraction’’ (ibid 2006, p.

5). Such a conception has given birth to some dominant trends in the anthropology

of the state that have denied the concept of the state as a mode of being—as an

‘objective thing’. For example, Hansen and Nustad have argued: ‘Indeed, we should

even question the very assumption that the state form has an ‘essence’ (Nustad et al.

2005, p. 12).

In conclusion, it can be argued that the Foucauldian inspired analysis of the state

further strengthens the neo-liberal concept of ‘good governance’ that puts the whole

responsibility of development or underdevelopment on individuals because it is

individuals who construct the state in their minds through their everyday encounters

with the state officials and laws. Hence, it is up to them how they can alter the

situation that they deem unjust.2

2 Viewing the gender aspect of the state as an imagined reality, leads to an ironical question: if the state is

merely a product constructed through people’s everyday interaction with state officials then in most cases

Reply: What’s changed (since 1975)? 35

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The major change from good government to good governance is that during the

good government era the state/governments were held responsible for not

delivering; now it is individuals’ and their lack of capacity and awareness that is

blamed for their disempowerment as state is viewed as a mythicized abstraction.

The consequences are adverse. The shift from good government to good governance

is leading towards liberal communitarian anarchism, social and political confusion

and de-politicization of people at a massive scale.

References

Best, Steven and Kellner, Douglas. 1991. Postmodern theory: Critical interrogations. Houndmills,

Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan.

Carothers, Thomas. 2002. The End of the Transition Paradigm. Journal of Democracy 13.

Chang, Ha-Joon. 2002. Kicking away the ladder: Development strategy in historical perspective. London:

Anthem.

Foucault, Michel. 1980. The History of Sexuality. New York: Vintage Books.

Foucault, Michel. 1991. Governmentality. The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality with twolectures and an interview with Michel Foucault. G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press 87–104.

Holy, High. 2006. ‘‘In a State of Exception: Development, ‘People’s Participation’ and the non-provision

of services in Laos’’.

Humes, Samuel. 1991. Local governance and national power: A worldwide comparison of tradition andchange in local government, 307. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

Gupta, Akhil. 1995. Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics, and the

Imagined State. American Ethnologist 22: 375–402.

Kapferer, Bruce. 2005. Forward. In State formation: Anthropological perspectives, ed. H. K. J. G. Nustad.

London, Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press.

Manor, James. 1999. The Political Economy of Decentralization. Washington DC: World Bank

Publication.

Nustad, Hansen Krohn and Jnut G. 2005. ‘‘Introduction.’’ In State formation: Anthropological

Perspectives, ed. H. K. J. G. Nustad. London: Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press.

World Bank. 1992. Governance and Development. Washington, DC: World Bank.

Williams, T., and D. Young. 1994. Governance, the World Bank and Liberal Theory. Political StudiesXLII: 84–100.

Footnote 2 continued

it is men who interact with state officials at the village level in areas such as the province of N.W.F.P in

Pakistan. According to a research report conducted by the Common Wealth Found UK on the issue of

governance and civil society in Pakistan, the only knowledge these women have about the world outside

their homes is through their male family members. Would not this imply that the state is what men think it

is, and for women it does not exist at all? Would such an outlook, therefore, leave any room for individual

woman to alter an unjust situation?

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