The (im)possibility of development studies

Abstract

Development studies is commonly understood to be committed both to a principle of difference (the Third World is different, hence the need for a separate field of studies) and a principle of similarity (it is the job of development policy to make ‘them’ more like ‘us’). This double commitment has led to important challenges to the intellectual standing of the discipline and/or its object of study, development. This paper begins by reviewing five theorems which pronounce the impossibility of development studies. It then offers a more sympathetic account of the field. While recognizing the urgent need for development studies to be critical and at times oppositional, the paper suggests that an allied commitment to public policy-making can be taken as a sign of maturity. Development, and development studies, should be understood as sets of social practices, or technologies of rule, the organization and effects of which need to be (and in key respects are) contested and subjected to political and scholarly review.     

Epistemic Community or Tower of Babel? Theoretical Diffusion in Public Administration

This article takes a comparative look at the development of the public administration discipline in three countries: Australia, Brazil and Canada. The nature of the international public administration academic community is assessed through content analysis of articles in the Australian Journal of Public Administration (AJPA), Revista de Administração Pública (RAP), and Canadian Public Administration (CPA). The method is based on that used by existing United States (US) research, allowing for comparison with that national context. The focus is on the diffusion of theoretical approaches between these national contexts, assessing whether the international public administration discipline better approximates an epistemic community, in which theoretical approaches move seamlessly between the national contexts; or a ‘Tower of Babel’, in which the different national contexts remain largely isolated.     

Development management: Plain or fancy? Sorting out some muddles

This paper explains why development thinking has been caught up in polemical divisions, and cautions against skipping over a sound, basic approach to development management in favour of more complex approaches which in some cases are premature or inappropriate. While we largely recognize the need for better development management, we have not been clear about how to get it. Instead, symbols have been made out of management models and means confused with ends, techniques with goals. Because, for example, the participation of people in their own growth is valued, it is assumed that Western management models that stress this value can be exported, wholesale, to a far less organized Third World contexta perfect example of confusing techniques with goals. When projects are no longer run on rhetoric, and means confused with ends, the need to choose between management models (such as ‘people-centred’ versus ‘blueprint’ management) ends. Instead, actual field conditions can be focused on. Actual conditions often demand nuts-and-bolts skills first. What is needed (and described here) are straightforward, basic management skills to meet equally straightforward, basic weaknesses in organizational structure. Neither fancy nor fashionable, these basics are the forgotten backbone of development management.     

Trends in development administration: The continuing challenge to the efficay of the post-colonial state in the third world

‘Development administration’ has become established and recognized as a distinct enterprise of academic study and practice. This paper visits some of the major themes that have been examined by. the ‘development administration community’ by focusing on common concerns with (1) building effective administrative capacity as part of the development process that is also. (2) responsive and accountable and (3) equitable. It is argued that these persistent themes—amid the diversity of approaches and ideological susceptibilities-constitute a continuing challenge to the efficacy of the post-colonial state in the management of development activities.     

改革开放以来的中国公共行政学

改革开放以后,中国公共行政学得以恢复与重建,并逐渐确立了其应有的学科地位,从而获得了更大的发展空间,取得了辉煌的成就:高等院校公共行政学科学院化,建立了完整的专业教育体系,专业性学术组织蓬勃发展,创办了一批专业学术期刊,积极开展国际学术交流;研究领域不断拓展,研究范式不断转换,研究方法不断改进,话语体系不断构建等。公共行政学的发展在推动我国行政体制改革、构建服务型政府、转变政府职能、培育公共精神、提升政府治理能力等方面都起到了重要作用,但在没有形成完备的本土化理论体系、研究方法的结构性失衡、公共行政的合法性危机等方面,仍面临较大的挑战。不过,全面深化改革的进一步推进、国家治理体系与治理能力现代化水平的逐步提高、互联网与大数据技术的广泛应用,也为公共行政学的发展创造了巨大的发展机遇。未来中国公共行政学的发展要立足现实,及时回应和满足社会变革的需要,创新公共行政学的研究范式与方法,构建具有中国特色的公共行政学话语体系和本土化的公共行政学理论。     

The role of donors: how to combine sector programme support with devolution? A comment from a practitioner to James Wunsch: ‘decentralization,local governance and “recentralization” in Africa’

An Erratum has been published for this article in Public Administration and Development 22(1) 2002, 95. In commenting on ‘Decentralization, Local Governance and ‘Recentralization’ in Africa’ (Wunsch, 2001 ), this article concurs with the general thesis of Wunsch that the actual implementation as distinct from the rhetoric of decentralization in Africa has featured lingering central retention of power and resources and that genuine local control over important services and investments remains elusive. However, there is evidence that this is not invariably the case and that donors may have decisive roles to play in encouraging local assertiveness in the medium term in providing leverage for change through budget support and technical assistance to civic education, training local councillors, monitoring local government elections and encouraging local government associations to put to the test the national commitment to genuine local governance. These roles include helping to ensure the transparency of central transfers and, as in Uganda and Malawi for example, assisting with the development of intermediary fiscal mechanisms in this regard. Learning from such promising experiences will be vital in nurturing the longer term optimism heralded by Wunsch. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Is cross-border cooperation underpinned by an ethical code of values? A theoretical analysis

Is there an ‘ethical code’ of values that underpins cross-border cooperation activities? By focusing on people as ‘agents’, the article argues that citizens and individuals in their integral development have been neglected so far when the development of cross-border spaces is scrutinized. This study aims to provide an alternative theoretical framework through which cross-border activities can be analysed and operationalized. This is done by synergically reading Benedict XVI’s ‘Caritas in Veritate’ and Sen’s ‘Development as Freedom’. It is suggested that the ethical dimension of cross-border cooperation activities needs to be scrutinized on the ground that cross-border spaces are neither ethically neutral, nor inherently inhuman and opposed to society. They are instead part and parcel of human activities and must be structured and governed in an ethical manner. It follows that ethical values are the means of cohesion in cross-border zones. Without including them in the analysis, real cohesion cannot be achieved.     

A comparative analysis of Channels TV and CNN's coverage of World News

This study did an analysis of the Western and Third world coverage of World News using the broadcast stations (CNN and Channels TV) as case study. In other words, the study sought to examine if the Western and Third World nations are still guilty of imbalance, bias and distortion in their treatment of news. The findings showed that both the North and South nations are guilty of bias and imbalance in their coverage of World News and that each nation seeks to promote their interest rather than a true world interest or the interest of their counterpart nations. The study further revealed that the Third World media still depend heavily on Western media sources for its news albeit their standpoint on the News Flow debate. About 50% of the entire World News stories on Channels TV were sourced ‘outside’, while about 40% were unidentified. Only 10% were from the in‐house personnel. It was also observed that about 55 and 67% of World News coverage by Channels TV and CNN, respectively, were focused on ‘bad news’; an age‐long controversy that has bedeviled news coverage globally. In view of the foregoing, it has been recommended that there is need for the acceptance of ‘imbalance’ as a major feature of all media systems as well as a re‐evaluation of the standards and values of news evaluation. The rapid industrialization of Third World economies will also go a long way to stop the one‐way traffic in international communication which is what encourages media dependence. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The U.K. overseas development administration and non-departmental public bodies in the field of educational aid

The educational aid programme sponsored by the U.K. Overseas Development Administration has been conducted using organizations in which substantial changes have been made in the last ten years. This article analyses the changes in the structure of non-departmental agencies and in the relations between the Overseas Development Administration and the agencies, and considers the rationale for these. It draws attention to the contrast between the formal independence of these non-departmental bodies and continuing departmental control, and to the limitations of non-departmental bodies as a means of securing advice and co-operation. The article points to the difficulties in organizational terms of marrying the aim of providing a framework for co-operating with the recipients of aid, and for securing advice, co-operation and support in its administration from bodies outside central government in the U.K., while preserving ministerial responsibility.     

Travelling with vehicular ideas: The case of the third Way

In all the various debates around Anthony Giddens's Third Way sequence, few attempts have been made to characterize its logic and impact as a type of discourse, a certain mode of ideas-work. The first dimension of this paper involves deploying Thomas Osborne's categories to depict the Third Way as a ‘vehicular’ idea, with the intellectual style of Giddens himself correlatively framed as that of a new sort of ‘mediator’. In these terms, the essential inclusiveness and indeterminacy of the Third Way series of texts is illustrated, and the issue of what counts as ideas ‘success’ in the vehicular mode is broached. Second, in line with the inherent mobility of vehicular ideas, I identify the keynote shifts in Third Way thinking over time, including the sociological register that it occupies, its pragmatism and its relationship to New Labour politics. In a third phase, the article takes up questions about the role of the critical intellectual today and the practical, though not theoretical, recovery of ‘ideology-critique’ in appraising ideas like the Third Way. The scope and limits of the very notion of ‘vehicularity’ itself are central to this discussion.     

Patrimonial economics and informal bureaucracies: Public administration and social reality in the least developed countries of the 1990s: A review article

Commentators in many poorer countries, examining the political realities of the Third World from within new and interesting micro-economic perspectives, have rediscovered the relevance of dysfunctions in government as pointers to the true nature of state relations and economic development. The result has been the appearance of a literature on two commonly observed phenomena in the least developed countries of Africa, South Asia and Latin America: the enhanced economic role of ‘second’ or ‘informal’ economies, and the declining relevance of formal state structures which results partly from economic incapacity. This paper surveys some of the more significant recent examples of this literary output and relates their findings to the problems of public administration in those countries which experience or are likely to experience these phenomena.     

Refugees: The security dimension

In the 1990s doors have been closing in the Western world against refugee claimants. Although there are multiple causes for declining generosity towards refugees, arguments that refugees pose security problems to host nations have been particularly prominent. An historical analysis reveals that the so‐called ‘golden age’ of postwar refugee settlement from the 1940s to the mid‐1970s was a by‐product of Cold War security and propaganda considerations. The end of the Cold War and the pressures of refugee movements generated by Third World and former Communist bloc conflicts has restructured Western refugee discourse. Refugees now tend to be seen as importers of external political conflicts into the West. At the same time growing European and North American resentment of ‘foreigners’ competing for declining job opportunities and reduced social services have encouraged anti‐immigrant political movements. By tightening barriers and controls over refugees on security grounds, Western governments are able to respond in part to these pressures. The Cold War policing and security alliance in Europe has been retooled to form the basis of a new post‐Cold War cooperation over immigration and refugee security, without the necessity of creating a new framework of supranational institutions.     

Linking decentralization and centralization: A critique of the new development administration

This article examines the orientation of what is here called the ‘New Development Administration’ (NDA), as put forth by Esman (1988). It does so using political elasticity theory. The article is sympathetic to the NDA's emphasis upon decentralization, community development, deregulation, privatization, minimal government, popular participation and flexible forms of foreign aid. However, it argues that these require an administrative framework to be effective, including strong leadership, effective bureaucracies, the cooperation of beneficiaries and the ability to shift from soft to hard forms of power. While the importance of a bureaucratic reorientation is generally recognized, NDA supporters seem unclear about the requisites needed. Without adequate supervision and control, NDA objectives cannot be achieved.     

Exploring the Effective Authority of International Administrations from the League of Nations to the United Nations

This article analyses the concept of international administration by a multilateral organization through the lens of the effective authority of example missions, arguing that the United Nations Interim Administration of Kosovo (UNMIK) and the United Nations Transitional Administration of East Timor (UNTAET) are very specific and distinct attempts at statebuilding. The article’s main argument is that the two most-cited cases in the interwar years – the Saar Territory and the Free City of Danzig, as well as the international administration of West New Guinea by the United Nation (UN) – while presenting interesting parallels with and providing useful insights into the challenges faced by the contemporary international administrations of Kosovo and Timor-Leste, are in fact drastically different endeavours in terms of the effective authority exerted on the ground. The article builds on this special section’s contribution on authority building, analysing the five international administrations through the prism of claimed, recognized, and exercised authority.     

From Combined Arms to Combined Intelligence: Philosophy,Doctrine and Operations

‘Combined arms’ operations have been a central tenet of military planning for nearly a century. They call for the integration of land, air and sea forces to achieve battlefield synergies. This philosophy has equal application to intelligence. The article advances the combined arms concept as a way to foster synergies across the intelligence disciplines – geospatial, signals, measures and signals, human, and most recently open source intelligence. It describes the strengths and weaknesses of each discipline in forming an analytical foundation for such a ‘combined intelligence’ and calls for developing theory to integrate the intelligence disciplines. The authors suggest that combined intelligence would confer several benefits, including more effective collection efforts and stronger countermeasures against adversary denial and deception. The article closes by calling for development of concepts and doctrine to put combined intelligence into practice.     

Risk,power and crime prevention

This paper addresses the development of post-disciplinary ‘actuarial’ or risk-based technologies of power. Arguing against models which focus on icreased efficiency as an evolutionary criterion for emerging technologies of power, it suggests that such technologies' place and form are largely dtermined by the nature and fortunes of political programs with which they are aligned. Thus the rise of neo-conservatism and related programs have extensively modified and curtailed programs based on risk models, and expanded those based on punishment and discipline. The paper examines the nature of situational crime prevention in the light of these ideas, and moves on to consider certain broader theoretical implications.     

ASEAN and human rights: resisting Western pressure or emulating the West?

Abstract

Observers of Southeast Asian affairs commonly assume that the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are reluctant to pursue liberal agendas, and that their main concern is to resist pressure from Western powers to improve their human rights practice. This article, however, argues that such a conventional view is too simplistic. The Southeast Asian countries have voluntarily been pursuing liberal agendas, and their main concern here is to be identified as ‘Western’ countries – advanced countries with legitimate international status. They have ‘mimetically’ been adopting the norm of human rights which is championed by the advanced industrialized democracies, with the intention of securing ASEAN's identity as a legitimate institution in the community of modern states. Ultimately, they have been pursuing liberal agendas, for the same reason as cash-strapped developing countries have luxurious national airlines and newly-independent countries institute national flags. Yet it should be noted that the progress of ASEAN's liberal reform has been modest. A conventional strategy for facilitating this reform would be to put more pressure on the members of ASEAN; however, the usefulness of such a strategy is diminishing. The development of an East Asian community, the core component of which is the ASEAN–China concord, makes it difficult for the Western powers to exercise influence over the Southeast Asian countries. Hence, as an alternative strategy, this article proposes that ASEAN's external partners should ‘globalize’ the issue of its liberal reform, by openly assessing its human rights record in global settings, with the aim of boosting the concern of its members for ASEAN's international standing.     

Regieren unter den Bedingungen des institutionellen Pluralismus: ein deutsch-amerikanischer Vergleich

Within the discipline of comparative politics, Western democracies have been categorized according to the number of veto-players or ‘co-governing actors’ governments face when pursuing their programmes. Often, potential veto-players have been treated as rather static factors with a focus on their maximum veto potential. In this article, devoted to studying the conditions of governing in the United States and Germany, veto-players are explicitly considered as dynamic actors, which allows much more realistic assessments of the conditions of governing in highly power-sharing systems. In fact, under certain conditions some veto-players may ease rather than complicate the task of governing. Moreover, the fundamental difference between parliamentarism and presidentialism is being highligthed as a key variable shaping the functioning of seemingly similar institutional arrangements in liberal democracies.     

The training and development of top executives in developing countries: A tanzanian approach

The training and development of public service employees is now accepted to be a major contributor to organizational performance. In the Third World, however, much of the training effort has been directed at junior, supervisory and middle-level personnel. Top personnel were, for a long time, presumed to be ‘above training’. There is now, however, an awakening to the need for training all categories of personnel. The major constraint in most countries remains the lack of facilities and trainers able to handle senior personnel. Tanzania has recently embarked on a concerted effort to train its top public service personnel through the mobilization of all management/administrative training capabilities in a joint, concerted endeavour, under the aegis of the Ministry of Manpower Development and a body known as the National Standing Training Team on Top Executive Development (NSTT). More than 20 6-week courses have been run and a recent evaluation of the programme suggests that they are popular and have reactivated an interest in training among top executives. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that the training has resulted in improved performance in public organizations although some executives have introduced some innovations in their organizations which they derived from the training programme.     

Problems in the Intelligence-Policy Nexus: Rethinking Korea,Tet, and Afghanistan

Accusations of failure by elements of the US intelligence community (IC) have followed in the wake of nearly every war and terrorist bombing since Japan's successful strike on Pearl Harbor in 1941. This article will illustrate how some problems that exist inside the ‘intelligence-policy nexus’ are beyond the control of the IC. By investigating the dynamics and tensions that exist between producers of intelligence (the IC) and the consumers of those products (policy-makers), we review three different types of alleged failure. First, by revisiting the Chinese intervention in Korea, we show that a rarely listed case in the literature is in fact a classic example of producer-based failure generated from within the IC. However, in our study of the Tet Offensive during the Vietnam War (1968), we show that the alleged intelligence failure by producers should be more accurately described as a ‘failure of intelligence’ by consumers. Third, by revisiting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979), we conclude that there existed neither a producer nor a consumer failure. The Carter Administration made a conscious policy choice to act surprised (when it was not).