Graduate School of Development Studies
‘Ownership’ in the aid architecture and the tension in the
approach of governance:
A case study of Bangladesh
A Research Paper presented by:
Mohammad Shaiful Islam
(Bangladesh)
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for obtaining the degree of
MASTERS OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT STUDIES
Specialisation:
Governance and Democracy
(G & D)
Members of the examining committee:
Dr Wil Hout (supervisor)
Dr Karim Knio(reader)
The Hague, The Netherlands
September, 2009
Disclaimer:
This document represents part of the author’s study programme while at the
Institute of Social Studies. The views stated therein are those of the author and
not necessarily those of the Institute.
Research papers are not made available for circulation outside of the Institute.
Inquiries:
Postal address:
Institute of Social Studies
P.O. Box 29776
2502 LT The Hague
The Netherlands
Location:
Kortenaerkade 12
2518 AX The Hague
The Netherlands
Telephone:
+31 70 426 0460
Fax:
+31 70 426 0799
ii
Contents
List of Tables
List of Figures
List of Acronyms
Abstract
v
v
vvi
vviii
Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 Relevance and Justification
1.1. A. Problem statement
1.2 Objectives
1.3 Question
1.4 Hypothesis
1.5 Methodology
1.6 Organization of the paper
8
8
10
11
11
11
11
1Error! Bookmark not defined.
Chapter 2
Analytical and conceptual framework
14
2.1 Analytical framework
14
2.1.1 Introduction
14
2.1.2 Market is a political construction
14
2.1.3 Neoliberal’s attempts to address politics failed to acknowledge
it as a rationale for development and depoliticised governance
15
2.1.3. A In structural adjustment paradigm and Washington
Consensus era
15
2.1.3. B In the policy framework of Post Washington Consensus and
‘Integrated Development Model’ paradigm
17
2.1.4 Agency problem of reforms accencuates the rise of ‘old
interest’
19
2.1.5 The Post Washington Consesnsus intensified ‘tacit domination’
through aid
21
2.2 Conceptual framework
22
2.2.1 Participation
22
2.2.2 Governance
2Error! Bookmark not defined.
2.2.3 Ownership
2Error! Bookmark not defined.
2.2.4 Civil Society
24
2.3 Conclusion
25
Chapter 3
Bangladesh: a brief overview
26
iii
Chapter 4
Threshold contribution of different actors in PRSP policy process
and manifestation of ownership
28
4.1 Policy Content
28
4.1.1 Politics is problem driven in ex ante conditionality
28
4.1.2 Political aspiration kept isolated from policiesError! Bookmark not defined.0
4.1.3 PRSPs resonate ‘one size fits all’ and earlier structural
adjustment policies
Error! Bookmark not defined.1
4.2 Power asymmetry favouring donors and the possibility of local
ownership
Error! Bookmark not defined.2
4.3 Ownership in PRS policy process by civil society representation Error! Bookmark not defined.3
4.3.1 Nature and scope of civil society organizations to represent
poor
Error! Bookmark not defined.3
4.3.2 Participation of CSO in policy process Error! Bookmark not defined.7
4.4 Conclusion
Error! Bookmark not defined.8
Chapter 5
Interest maximising actors manoeuvring political process
5.1 Military regimes: the ethos what tied the nexus
5.2 Continuation and breaking down of Military regimes: entrenchment
of the pervasive interest
5.3 Elite interest captured the good governance narrative
5.4 Conclusion: tuned convergence of elite interest and depoliticized
state mechanism
Chapter 6
Conclusion
References
Appendices
40
40
42
44
45
47
49
59
iv
List of Tables
Table 4.1
Table 4.2
Appendice A
Frequency of variable use in PRSP
A Snapshot of Bangladesh’s Trade Regime
Checklist of Reforms contained in PRSPsP
29
30
59
List of Figures
Appendice B
Foreign Aid as a Percentage of Government Expenditures, Per Capita
Income, Imports and Investment
62
v
List of Acronyms
AL
BNP
CDM
CSO
DAC
GDP
GOB
IDM
IFI
IMF
I-PRSP
LDC
NGO
NIE
NPE
NSAPR
OECD
PRSP
PWC
SAP
SIDA
WC
Bangladesh Awami League
Bangladesh Nationalist Party
Comprehensive Development Model
Civil Society Organization
Development Assistance Committee
Gross Domestic Products
Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh
Integrated Development Model
International Financial Institution
International Monetary Fund
Interim
Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper
Least Developed Countries
Non Government Organization
New Institutional Economics
New Political Economy
National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper
Post Washington Consensus
Structural Adjustment Policies
Swedish International Development Agency
Washington Consensus
vi
Abstract
A claimed paradigm change from Washington Consensus to Post
Washington Consensus era, as a response to the inefficiency and lack of
legitimacy of the structural adjustment period, has initiated a range of socially
inclusive policies with a commitment to ensure local control by policy
ownership. Its rearranged framework of governance has involved a divergent
group of actors in policy process to materialize ownership. The paper argues
that the present governance framework is more technocratic targeting to
management of ‘problem-driven’ politics in most developing countries and,
this technocracy attempts to sugarcoat a long-term contentious aspect of
development. Standing on this argument, the study investigates whether the
techno-managerial form of governance can materialize ‘local ownership’ in the
policy design by reflecting local needs and aspiration. The study examines
through the case of Bangladesh the allocated and manifested role of different
actors in the PRSP policy process against the claim of materializing local
ownership. This study further inspects the emergence of new interest
maximising elite and the convergence of interest of both donor and this group
with a careful observation of its effect on ‘local ownership’ by means of
Bangladesh experience. The paper finds that: firstly, in the space of
technocratic form of governance, the role of different actors has been
mechanised conforming to ‘one-size fits all’ policies and, this squeezed role
makes ‘local ownership’ as empowerment impossible. Secondly, a group of
interest maximising local elite emerges and a convergence of their interest with
technocratic reform is realised. This convergence and their interest set the
embargo to materialize ‘local ownership’.
Keywords
Civil society, governance, ownership and participation
vii
Chapter 1
Introduction
The study will investigate whether the techno-managerial form of
governance can materialize ‘local ownership’ in the policy design by reflecting
local needs and aspiration. It recognises the fact that ‘local ownership’ is a
popular demand in response to sensitivity of sovereignty issue for many newly
independent developing countries and harsh experience of structural
adjustment conditionality for many of them. The study will examine through
the case of Bangladesh the allocated and manifested role of different actors in
the PRSP (Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper) policy process against the claim
of materializing local ownership. This study will further inspect the emergence
of new interest maximising elite and the convergence of interest of both donor
and this group with a careful observation of its effect on ‘local ownership’ by
means of Bangladesh experience.
1.1
Relevance and Justification:
The idea of governance can be traced into regimes of Thatcher and
Reagan who initiated reform to tie the realm of society and the state with the
spirit and rules of market. This grammar of the market has been developed
under the neoliberal discourse which is linked to a successful marriage of
neoclassical economics with Austrian libertarian ideologies. This emergence
was mostly an ideological shift from the interventionist and welfare centric
model of development under ‘embedded liberalism’ (Ruggie, 1982 in Hout &
Robison, 2009:2).
In regard to policy making, as a version of ‘embedded liberalism’,
Keynesian regime is earmarked with technocratic and apolitical nature of stateled development planning while the structural adjustment era of 1980s and
early 1990s emphasises on propelling market mechanism and minimizing state
authority in developing countries in line with policy principles of Washington
Consensus (WC). For the development paradigm under WC, the success of
development lied on institution building and rigorous training (World Bank
1991: 234-5) which has been criticized as ‘anti-politics machine’ (Ferguson &
Lohmann, 1994) putting a need to emphasis political process in development.
This tension about the ascendancy of politics versus ‘depoliticization’
in development goes with and in some extent leads the emergence of thinking
and application of governance with a cyclical shift to the new era of Post
Washington Consensus (PWC). This new era brings forth the state authority as
a regulator to enhance the market mechanism and accentuates the instruments
of governance to shape its regulatory functionaries. Under the ‘Integrated
Development Model’ in PWC regime, one group focuses on the need of
governance and its application with the ‘primacy of politics’ (Chang, 2001;
Leftwich, 1994) for comprehensive development, while the later group sees it,
in line with the previous version of technocratic development, as managerial
8
matter by equating it as ‘the exercise of political power to manage a nation’s
affairs’ (World Bank 1989: 60).
A staged description of the development of governance as idea and
materialization given by Hout and Robison (2009:2) reveals that market
centrism and technocracy always posits the core of in every manifested shift of
it, while a rising concern to deal with the issue of power and conflict is now
developing.
Governance in present development framework is built on the base
created by the structural adjustment policies under WC with an intention to
deal with the social and political inconsistencies in the governance setting after
SAP (Structural Adjustment Policies) era and to embed the success of SAP in
social, economic and political structures. In this phase, ‘attitude to politics’
finds its antithetical base on the idea that politics accompanying with conflicts
and enthroned interest to the collective goods will destroy the discipline of the
market. This assumption inevitably necessitates technical aspects of forms and
functions of governance and ‘the politics of procedure’ replacing ‘the politics
of bargaining’ with a goal to insulate market from conflicts and interests
associated with politics.
Such an insulation of market from political contestation is, according
to Jayasuriya, ‘a politics of anti politics’ and, as Hout and Robison explains, ‘a
highly political and normative agenda for the reordering of social and political
power’ (Jayasuriya, 2001:1; Hout & Robison, 2009:5). This agenda of isulation
in neoliberal orthodoxy is targetted to the objective of its successful
implementation of ‘sound policies’ and providing supportive environment for
it.
The aforementioned ‘politics of procedure’ reflects more political
understanding of governance by neoliberal and associated donor community as
a tool of risk management. The tool box materializes the governance as new
aid conditionality and complementarily fixes it with ‘ownership’ and
‘partnership’ as revised aid modality. (Hout 2007).
Ownership in present aid paradigm sets a normative goal by focusing
on recipient country’s control of policy outcomes after the initial use of the
term by OECD’s (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) in 1995. To
manifest this, donor community channels its support through the ‘framework
of budget support and other accountability measures’. Pointing to such
demonstrated mechanism, vast mainstream literatures suggest that, the
reformer prioritizes ‘domestic politics’ to cultivate strong political support for
its continuity of reform from its anti-political standpoint (Brinkerhoff 1996;
Devarajan, Dollar and Holmgren 2001; Easterly 2001; IMF 2001; Khan and
Sharma 2001; IBRD 2005). That is, such framework of support with its socially
inclusive polices enhances its attempt to ‘buy in’ domestic support for reform.
But though this anti-political approach fails to recognize any space for
people’s struggle, conflict and aspiration and, its contribution to making local
reality, politics can not be constrained by such technocratic impasse. Rather the
desired ‘reform coalitions’ will fail to draw grassroot people to its ownership
scheme of the PRSP policy process because of its apolitical, donor dominating
and mechanised apparatus. Instead ‘owning’ may be attributed to instrumental
9
inheritance of certain political and business ellites who will muddle the reform
objective for its drive to maximum interest. (Robison 2009).
Hence the tension suggests that, in the framework of techno-managerial
governance process, ‘ownership’ in the aid architecture transforms itself as a
component of neoliberal toolbox by reinforcing antithetical view to
spontaneous political process and, the highly political agenda of IFIs to
implement neoliberal reform. This suggestion necessitates empirical studies
which can provide evidence on the demonstration of ‘local ownership’
especially from the viewpoint of governance as political process. The study will
critically examine through a case study if the techno-managerial form of
governance is actually capable of adhering to its principles of ‘local ownership’
or is well-gripped with the objective of neoliberal global integration and the
interest of particular elite group leading to instrumentalise its principle.
1.1. A. Problem statement:
Adoption of ‘local ownership’ for the aid effectiveness to subsequent
policies relates the tension in the approach of governance with the question of
empowering local reality by the process and spirit of ownership. The tension
goes to the suspicion that such ownership may not only creates space for
donor’s control but also provide room for manoeuvre for certain interest
maximizing ‘robber barrons’.
The internal logic of the tension reveals that, on the one hand, the
technocracy in the system of governance controls and fixes the threshold
contribution of its different actors conforming to the global integration
undermining local reality. Examining development projects in Lesotho in the
1990s, Ferguson uncovers that the development project fails to reduce rural
poverty and to advance agrarian capitalism and instead extends technocratic
control. For him, the reason is that it squeezes the space of politics for
different actors by making them ‘subjectless’ and translates ‘political qustions
of land, resources, jobs or wages’ into technical one. (Ferguson 1994 [1990]:19;
Ferguson and Lohmann 1994:174-80). His ‘anti-politics machine’ resembles
the technocratic structure comprised of ‘experts’, outsiders and government
agencies who hijacked ‘power and voice’ from the poor.
On the other hand, the political process which is bypassed by
neoliberal reformers cannot be abolished from the policy apparatus and rather,
is kept as ‘intact’ for the interplay of certain classes. Governance as technomanagerial process does not act in a vacuum of politics and that generates a
tension in its approach from the room for policy preparing to the reality of
policy implementation. The analysis of Robison (2009) shows that different
regimes and interest coalitions hijacks the intact space of politics to extract
more resources and, these populist, dictatorial and predatory regimes merge
into a convergence with the interest of neoliberal reform.
About the present shift of developing countries’ policy process to
PRSP, some studies focus on the sheer ignorance of local reality and struggle in
it. Earmarking PRSP as a tool for global integration, the study of Craig and
Porter (2003) on Uganda reveals that the neoliberal attempt for international
10
policy convergence blocks any other alternative drawn from political reality.
Rucket’s (2007) analysis on Nicaragua’s PRSP from new-gramscian perspective
argues that the country ownership is absent in PRSP process which works as a
tool for neoliberal hegemonic expansion and, as a tool to grasp the possibility
of true social struggle searching for alternatives.
This paper is a response to the absence, in existing literatures, of the
centrality of politics in the intersectional point of governance and ownership in
the context of new cyclical shift for more socially inclusive development
framework from WC to PWC.
1.2
Objectives:
This paper is an attempt to contribute to the pool of literatures on the issue of
depoliticization of development by identifying the logic of the relations
between the tension in the approach of governance and the principles of local
ownership. Another objective is to grip the development phenomena of
Bangladesh with necessary insights.
1.3 Question:
In what extent does a techno-managerial form of governance materialize
‘local ownership’ in policy design of Bangladesh?
Sub-question: Subsequent sub-questions are:
How do the different actors in the technocratic governance manifest ‘local
ownership’ in the PRSP preparation process of Bangladesh?
Is there any convergent or divergent relation of the ethos between specific
group of agents and the forerunner of technocratic governance? How does this
relation help to facilitate ‘local ownership’?
1.4 Hypothesis:
To deal with the above research question, I have developed two
hypotheses to explore the case. Firstly, in the space of technocratic form of
governance, the role of different actors has been mechanised conforming to
‘one-size fits all’ policies and, this squeezed role makes ‘local ownership’ as
empowerment impossible. Secondly, a group of interest maximising local elite
emerges and a convergence of their interest with technocratic reform is
realised. This convergence and their interest set the embargo to materialize
‘local ownership’.
1.5 Methodology:
The study will rely on qualitative examination with thick explanation
which allows understanding of interconnected complicacy of politics and
development. Another reason is that ownership as empowerment or control
on policy cannot sensibly be explained by quantitative positivist tool of scales
and indicators.
From qualitative options, the study prefers and mostly depends on
literature review method. One reason is that though collection of primary data
11
relying on interview method may be helpful to cultivate more details and depth
of the issue, both time and fund constraints do not allow opting this. Using
this method this paper attempts with its theoretical insight to examine the
present pool of knowledge. But where necessary, the study minimally uses
discourse analysis cross-country comparison and primary sources of
information.
About the selection of Bangladesh as my case, the foremost drive is
that this is the country of my nationality and my upbringing. And as a civil
servant of the country, I can claim that I am very much part of the process of
ongoing governance dilemma in the reform of my country.
Moreover the country can be a good representation of developing
countries with its donor dependency status, membership of LDC (Least
Developed Countries), rising democracy with the history of 15-year long quasimilitary regime and inclination to neoliberal reform since 1975. With
substantial features of neoliberal reform success the country has been facing
obstacles from underlying political process in its course of reform and still
holds a ‘testing ground’ status for the neoliberal reformers. Like most
developing countries, relevant to the country’s so called aid and donor
dependency, aid effectiveness draws much attention from donor community.
This attention gears the national policy process and its implementation towards
the tool of PRSP replacing its previous policy instrument of five-year plan
since 2003.
My analysis examines the two hypotheses corresponding to two sub
questions in two chapters. Regarding the first sub question, the paper
investigates the policy space of PRSP given to local actors by scrutinizing
rigidness of its content, symmetry of role between donor community and local
actors and, legitimacy of civil society representation of the poor. About the
second sub question, the paper inspects the development of an interest
maximising elite through the capturing of political process. This further sees
their convergence with neoliberal policies and their influence on manifestation
of ownership.
The study will mainly be based on the analysis of various policy
documents published by IFIs (International Financial Institutions) and
Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh (GOB) with careful
consideration of subsequent literatures. T
The first chapter uses PRSP as primary information source, a cross
country comparison, policy documents published by IFIs (International
Finance Institutions) and a broad range of inter-disciplinary academic
literatures, whereas the second chapter is mostly informed by a range of
political economic analysis on Bangladesh with the use of policy documents
published by IFIs.
1.6 Organization of the paper:
The paper consists of six chapters including introduction and conclusion.
The second chapter frames analytical and conceptual approaches. The third
chapter provides a brief review on Bangladesh with complementary
contribution to the rest of the analysis. The fourth examines the threshold
12
contribution of different actors in PRSP policy papers in the context of
manifesting ‘local ownership’. The fifth chapter explores the rising of particular
elites manoeuvring reform process and their roles in materialising ownership
following a conclusive analysis in the sixth chapter of the paper.
13
14
Chapter 2
Analytical and Conceptual framework
In this chapter, I will develop the necessary analytical and conceptual tool
to explore the scope of ownership in policy design in the context of the
approach of governance in development of Bangladesh. The first chapter will
seek to frame the analytical approach of the research following development of
the outline of key conceptual issues in the second chapter.
2.1. Analytical framework:
2.1.1. Introduction:
The tension in the approach of governance in terms of technocratic versus
political and its relation with ownership are inevitable phenomena in the
interplay of political ‘making’ of market. My research will be based on the
stand that market as a political construction confirms the insulation of the
framework of overarching conflicts over power and its approach of
distribution (Hout and Robinson 2009). I will further rest on the perspective
that this insulation is implanted in its rigid principle of ‘market supremacy’
which does not conform to any paradigm shift with any real change in its core.
Rather, it may change the methodology of implementation over time with
cyclical shift responding to its constant failure in creating agents of reform. I want
to argue that, as a consequence, this insulation will rather create ‘neoliberal
clientilism’ which will strengthen the rise of anti-reform coalition with ‘old
interest’. The matrix of this coalition will help to test my hypothesis in
understanding how the technocratic governance is conducive in materializing
‘local ownership’ in Bangladesh.
2.1.2. Market is a political construction:
Neoliberal reform agenda has been driven by the neoclassic theory with
some of its basic assumptions about the constitution of social relations and
economic life.
One is that this is the ‘methodological individualism’ which explains
the social outcomes. In Elinor Ostrom’s word, ‘individuals compare expected
benefits and costs of actions prior to adopting strategies for action’ (Ostrom,
1991:243). That is, individual human being with its rationality and maximizing
preferences works as basic units to shape political, economic and social
relations. This assumption, positing on positivist social science of Hayek (1944)
and Buchanan (1989), argues for absolute reliablity or rationality reduced to
individual instead of government intervention in terms of the efficienct
distribution of resources.
Another important assumption gives the idea of natural emergence of
market to coordinate individual’s actions and preferences ‘with varying degrees
of efficiency’ (Gilpin and Gilpin 2001:51) through the mechanism of marginal
utility.
The ‘naturalist’ ontology of neoliberal perspective on market goes in
line with the above neoclassical assumptions on market building and accept ‘a
static and abstract’ understanding of market with a perception of economic
15
behaviour free from any tie with ‘historical experience, institutional context
and informational or knowledge deficits’ (Jayasuriya 2001:10). Against this
natural emergence of market, my understanding rests on ‘the political making’
(Munck 2005: 68 ) of it.
Liberal ideologues including Hayek (1944) told that a market economy
is built on individual freedom and its rational action instead of government
intervention for the rational efficiency of resource distribution. In that case, for
Polanyi (2001:60), where a market economy inevitably depends on a market
society, social relations are integral part of the market based economy. But to
support the argument that market society is not naturally generated, rather is
made, he argued that ‘the market has been the outcome of a conscious and
often violent intervention on the part of government which imposed the
market organisation on society for non-economic ends’ (Polanyi 2001:258).
Since ‘markets are not just about norms, they are about power’
(Jayasuriya 2001:10), they create winners and losers by reallocating or
dislocating existing alliance of interest in the interplay of a market society.
Moreover, building market and market society involves closing the scope of
political possibilites which is not an autonomous task. Hence, our argument is
that ‘markets are embedded in politically contested constellations of power and
interests’(Jayasuriya 2001:10). For example, from Marx, we see the ‘primitive
accumulation’ stage of capitalist development was involved for creating market
and market society by means of ‘violent affair’ with an outcome of a division
of losers and winners (Munck 2005: 68).
Moreover, in contrast to neoliberal view on apolitical market,
Institutionalist Political Economy developed by Ha-joon Chang puts emphasis
on ‘the institutional nature of the market’ and views that markets are explicitly
a political construction, ‘in the sense that they are defined by a range of formal
and infomral institutions that embody certain rights and obligations, whose
legitimacy (and therefore whose contestability) is ultimately determined in the
realm of politcs’ (Chang, 2001: iii).
2.1.3. Neoliberal’s attempts to address politics failed to acknowledge
it as a rationale for development and depoliticised governance:
In line with this thinking, necessity of addressing politics in the way of
political construction of market and market society can be observed as the
underlying driving force for all claimed ‘paradigmatic shift’ in development
thinking and practices, from ‘the planning-keynesian model’ to a genuine shift
towards ‘structural adjustment paradigm’ which further led to a claimed
distinct shift towards ‘Comprehensive Development Model’ (Hatcher, 2006:23).
2.1.3.A. In structural adjustment paradigm and Washington
Consensus era:
In the early 1980s in the context of a ‘structural crisis’ reflected in world
economy, a greater neoliberal ideological storm combined with neoclassical
economics and austrian liberatarian ideas challenged the state-led Keynesian
model throughout the Europe and US in both domestic economic policies and
international aid practices. Keynesian policies which largely depends on ‘an
16
essentially technocratic and apolitical’ state centric planning (Hout & Robison,
2009: 1) and promotes ‘the interventionism and welfare statism’ (Hout &
Robison, 2009: 2) are understood as a failed model by neoliberal ideologue for
its oversized bureaucracies, corrupt leaders and ‘white-elephant projects’
exacerbatd with ‘lack of price signals’ and costly import substitutions due to
rent-seeking. They also describe these policies ‘as the very causes of the
poverty they were suppose to alleviate’ (Hatcher, 2006:3).
About the reasons for failure of planning model, the core of this
neoliberal understanding which has been identified as the irrational behaviour
of the developing governments and epitomized as ‘rent seeking’ by Anne
Krueger (1974) has underscored the importance to tackle the issue of politics
for solution. This should be noted that in the analysis of rent-seeking theory,
Krueger relates this as the cause of the handicapped trade liberalization and the
associated economic costs of protection in the developing countries instead of
taking any direct political conclusion. This inspired the scholars of New
Political Economy (NPE) such as Robert Bates (1981) and Mancur Olson
(1971, 1982) to develop a neoclassical economic theory of politics and their
efforts resulted in the embracing of the structural adjustment paradigm. Its
theoretical conceptualization, on the one hand, challenges the idea of planning
paradigm that policy makers will prioritize the public interest with maximum
cost-effectiveness. (Hatcher, 2006:3). On the other hand, the NPE, by the
work of Olson (1982), enforces the idea that the interest groups are the sole
sources of socio-economic problems and plays the destructive role to the
public interest (as explained by neoclassical). With the NPE, the idea of ‘rent
seeking’ has been seen as the ‘use of the state to maximise economic gains for
specific self interests’ (Grindle 1991:46) in an apparatus of ‘predatory state’.
This new political economy (NPE), which was actually a neoliberal
attempt to unify politics and economics under the flag of rational choice theory
(Grindle 1991), attributes third world political leaders and bureaucrats as
maximisers of their self-interest. Consequently, its ethos centres on the idea of
‘the pathology of politics’ and a refusal to ‘their legitimate right to govern’ and
this ethos led its proponents to an egoist and cynical understanding that those
groups and leaders are ‘constitutionally unfit for any political role’ (Mosley et.
al 1991:13, 25). Driven by the assumption of neoclassical macro-economics,
this neoclassical economic theory of politics offers such conclusion which is
actually the starting point of neoclassical economics.
Thus, solutions what the NPE offered is the sine qua non of a
minimalist state and a reductionism to the principles of neoclassical theory
with its assumption of ‘methodological individualism’, marginal utility, market
equilibrium and rational choice. The former one is associated with the
antithetical stand to the overwhelming role of the state in development
supported by the idea that state agencies always lack ‘time and place
knowledge’ about the actual needs and preferences of people (Hayek, cited in
Ostrom et. al. 1993:51; Hayak, 1944[1994] cf. Johnson, 2009:6). In addition to
considering the neoclassical vision of free market as an instrument for welfare
maximizing, this paradigm sees that this market is the inevitable condition for
the guarantee of ‘political freedom’ (Friedman 1962, in Hatcher, 2006:3).
17
With the paradigm shift towards structural adjustment by the World
Bank, neoliberal orthodoxy has been operationalized in the framework of
Washington Consensus in its heyday of the 1980s and early 1990s with a
narrow view of governance. Neoliberal orthodoxy can be understood,
according to Weiss, as ‘anything the government can do, the private sector can
do better; and that more open markets, free trade and capital flows are
necessarily beneficial’ (Weiss, 2000 cf. Hout & Robison, 2009:2). For
Washington Consensus, governance focuses on the successful execution of
economic liberalization policies with the emphasis on technocratic tools for
better efficiency of government and the proviso of legal frame for market
centric development (Jayasuriya, 2001:2; Hout & Robison, 2009:2).
Referring to the work of Michel Foucault on discourse, power and
governmentality where for Focault governmentality is ‘about the
institutionalisation of knowledge and the way political programmes are alligned
with the neoliberal individual’ (Munck 2005:68), James Ferguson examined the
development project in Lesotho in the 1990s. He showed that ‘the history of
“development” projects in Lesotho is one of “almost unremitting failure to
achieve their objectives” ’ (Ferguson and Lohmann 1994:176). Instead of
reducing rural poverty or advancing agrarian capitalism, it extended
bureaucratic state control into the countryside of Lesotho. Ferguson strongly
argued that this ‘success’ was not consciously achieved by the development
projects. It was rather the outcome ‘of pwerful costellations of control that
were never intended and in some cases never even recognized, but [which] are
all the more effective for being “subjectless” ’ (Ferguson 1994 [1990]:19). For
him, “development” project squeezes ‘political challenges to the system not
only through administrative power, but also by casting political qustions of
land, resources, jobs or wages as technical “problems” responsive to the
technical “development” intervention’ (Ferguson and Lohmann 1994:180). His
‘anti-politics machine’ resembles the technocratic structure comprised of
‘experts’, outsiders and government agencies who hijacked ‘power and voice’
from the poor.
In dealing with the problem of politics in keynesian era, this genuine
paradigmatic shift toward structural adjustment model associated with the
policy framework of WC failed to address politics as a rationale for
development and instead tied the social, economic and political realm with the
‘hypothetic-deductive models of individual decision making’ (Johnson, 2009:5)
on the basis of ‘methodological individualism’ and a reductionist perspective
on the state.
2.1.3.B. In the policy framework of Post Washington Consensus and
‘Integrated Development Model’ paradigm:
Though, in the early 1980s neoliberal belief asserted that the journey
towards the market would necessarily end ‘problems of economic inefficiency,
corruption and arbitrary rule in developing countries’ (Toye 1987:47-70 in
Hout & Robison, 2009:3), belief in self-regulatory cpacity and ‘frictionless’
creation of market has been challenged within the neoliberals (Stiglitz, 1998:1,
Rodrik, 1998 in Ahrens, 2004:12 cf. Hatcher, 2006:5, Camdessus 1998) under a
new post washington consensus. Following a series of failures in other
18
developing and former communist countries provoked by the structural
adjustment policies, this confrontation in neoliberal camp can mostly be
attributed to the East Asian Crisis in contrast to the previous consideration of
East Asian Miracle as the cornerstone of the Washington Consensus.
In this post structural adjustment context, on one hand, the perspective
of rational choice (public choice) political economy, in a certain extent, has
increasingly been established in the neoliberal camp with its view that ‘it was
entirely rational for coalitions to organize collectively for the purposes of
making predatory raids on the state rather than to establish the collective goods
that make markets work’ (Bates 1981; Olson 1982; Buchanon and Tullock
1962 in Hout & Robison, 2009:3). Following this, a retreat of the necessity of
institutional change advocated in a World Bank report on Africa by Elliot Berg
in 1981 has been re-appearing on the Banks later report in 1989 (World Bank
1989:5) to tackle the issue of corruption and clientelism and getting increasing
impotance in its further publication (i.e. World Bank 1991).
On the other hand, a form of ‘economic constitutionalism’ influenced
by the German ordo-liberal school of thought has become prominent to the
neoliberal reformers with the attempt ‘to treat the market as a constitutional
order with its own rules, procedures, and institutions operating to protect the
market order from political inference’ (Jayasuriya 2001:7). ‘Market as a
constitutional order’ requires ‘the effective capture of the state by powerfully
connected vested interests’ (Jayasuriya 2001:7).
The Post Washington Consensus (PWC) emerged within the neoliberal
reformers with the standpoint that ‘what is required is not the retreat of the
state but the effective development of state institutions to protect the market
order’ (Jayasuriya 2001:8). That is, ‘the internal transformation of the state’ will
take place from ‘the political structures associated with bargaining and conflict
between interest’ to the ‘economic constitutionalism’ narrated in ‘political
procedure’ (Jayasuriya 2001:7).
Under the ethos of this new consensus with its basis on the old one, the
World Bank adopted its new ‘Integrated Development Model (IDM)’ (Hatcher
2006:1) including the Comprehensive Development Framework for efficiency
in aid allocation and the Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRS) for pro-poor
growth centric development in countries under reform process in 1999.
The PWC and IDM has been inluenced by the New Institutional
Economics (NIE) which helped the Bank to formulate a broad range of
institutional narrative including ‘socially inclusive concepts such as
participation, partnership, social capital, empowerment, ownership, etc ’
(Hatcher 2006:2). The NIE developed basically by Douglass North emphasises
on the provision of incentive (by the principal-agent framework of rational
choice approach) to the key players of the political structure and on the role of
the state as a catalyst for neoliberal market building by ensuring symmetrical
flow of information and necessary collective action.
As IDM requires a market free from ‘the predatory nature of the state’,
which resonates the NPE, or a market as a ‘constitutional order’, the task of
PWC is reduced to enhancing the ‘politics of procedure’ and eliminating the
scope for ‘politics of bargaining’. ‘Politics of procedure’ operates with a
consensus to extend the neoliberal project in social and political domain and
19
with an acknowledgement that ‘markets are not self-regulating or selflegitimizing’ to ‘regulate the market’ and to ‘legitimise the market’ (Munck
2005: 68).
In such a context of necessity from PWC for the effectiveness of
IDM, governance enters into the center of the development under the face of
‘an institutional effectiveness imperative’ (Hatcher 2006:7) or ‘the politics of
anti-politics’ (Jayasuriya 2001:8). The apparatus of governance instrumentally
encompasses functioning of ‘enlightened technocrats’ (Williamson 1994) with
‘good governance’, politicians in liberal democratic pattern with limited policy
options conforming to neoliberal political agenda (Munck 2005:66) and ‘grassroots’ initiatives with ‘social capital’ (Putnam 1995) to provide the requirement
of IDM.
The duo-combination of PWC and IDM has insulated the centers of
decision from social pressures and conflicts for resources and fill the gaps with
governance targetting to make technocratic and interest seeking individual
agents. In such a way it truly encapsulates a broader horizon for neoclassical
market with endorsing a mere cyclical shift without any ‘paradigm’ shift but
proves it failure to address rationale of politics by depoliticizing governance.
2.1.4. Agency problem of reforms accencuates the rise of ‘old
interest’:
Neoliberalism at present represents itself not only as a set of policies or an
ideology but also as ‘governmentality’ (Larner 2000). This dominant ideology is
now more concernced on the improvement of governance than on ‘how the
market can regulate itself, society and politics’ for its existence (Munck
2005:67). Governance is in most cases considered as ‘a ‘post-political’ steering
of the political process towards less directive, more networked, modalities than
in the past’ (Munck 2005:67).
In the sphere of its governmentality, governance operates to make
reliable agents of reform with its various instruments. One is ‘good
governance’ denoting, according to the World Bank, ‘[t]he ability of the state to
provide institutions that make markets more efficient is sometimes referred to
as good governance’ (World Bank 2002:99). It includes an efficient public
administration, manifestation of rule of law, a broad horizon of corporatism
with guided laws and anti-corruption mechanism, non-interfering procurement
and privatization of public services and supply (Hout and Robison 2009:4).
Reformers believe that it insulates politics from neoliberal reform and tries to
create agents in two ways. First, it seperates ‘technocratic authority’ from
‘distributional coalitions’ and ensures technocrat’s autonomy (Hout and
Robinson 2009:4) and agenciship. Second, ‘[i]t also enables individual to be
drawn directly into the market process through programmes of inclusion,
participation and ownership that bypass competitive politics and established
political organisations’ (Jayasuriya 2005:32-7; Bebbington et al. 2004 cf. Hout
and Robinson 2009:4) and hence, attempts to expand neoliberal base.
Another one is expansion of market citizenship and limited scope of
democracy which are analysed by Punck (2005). ‘[T]he ‘political’ notion of
20
citizenship’ has been reduced to ‘democratic participation’ to the polling booth
with a decreasing turnout in many countries. Consumption replaces the ‘old’
production based ‘identity’ and class division and brings ‘a cultural
restructuring of society’ enabling a fragmentated and fluid identity (Punck
2005:66). ‘The citizen-become-consumer’ has been dissociated from ‘the public
space of politics’ as this is more static and cannot fulfil the need of them.
Politics has been restricted to limited policy options and deprofessionalised.
The outcome is that a market citizenship and individual freedom make people
disentrenced from political participation. On the other hand, politician and
political institution can not go beyond neoliberal policies, discourse and
governmentality.
Moreover, to legitimise neoliberal policies in the discourse of
democracy, a ‘depoliticised’ civil society has been patronized to mobilise
against ‘big government’. Before that during the 1970s of authoritarian regime
in many developing countries of the South and the East ‘it was the domain of
civil society (a terrain between the state and the economy, following Gramsci)
where citizens organised and mobilised for democracy’ ((Munck 2005:66).
Another important instrument is ‘social capital’ developed by Putnam
(1995) emphasising ‘social co-operation and harmony’ for ‘development’.
Harriss (2001) analayses that the World Bank uses the idea of ‘social capital’ to
encaptulate community organisations as pro-reform network. According to
Harriss, this type of ‘social capital’ building allows the Bank to ignore the
power contexts and its distribution (Hout and Robison 2009:2).
We can read the above efforts of neoliberal reformers linking with the
agency problem of reforms. For the reformers, in addition to reliance on the
primary agency of the IFIs, particularly the IMF and ‘neoliberal technocratic
elites’ for ‘the formal introduction of policy reform’, neoliberal reform
programs have the ultimate dependency on ‘the response of powerful domestic interests’
(Robison, 2004:408-9, italic added).
But, for example, about ‘good governance’, Like Hout and Robison we
can raise the question ‘whether problems of poverty and violence, corruption
and repression are the products of weak institutions and bad governance rather
than the results of power disparities and the way resources are organised and
distributed’ (Hout and Robison 2009:6). Similar question can be raised for
restricted type of democratic building and authencity of ‘lack of social capital’
as the cause of underdevelopment.
The answer is as Robison (2004) explains that the market reform failed
to make ‘the self-relient individuals of liberal mythology’ as the agents of
reform. Rather it promotes ‘the rise of quite different private interests, often from
within the unravelling apparatus of state power,to expropriate wealth by the
use of force and extortion, stripping the state of its public assets and using
state power to enforce private monopolies and cartels, or to allocate licenses’
(Robison, 2004:408-9; italic added)
I want to argue that in the design and implementation of technocratic
governance regime, the rise of such ‘different private interest’ or the continuity
of the ‘old interest’ has been avoided or not well-addressed .
21
This class, representing the ultimate agency of reforms, penetrates into
the ‘intact’ process of ‘political relationships’ and ‘social order’ to maximize
their gain from the reform process (Robison, 2009: 16), for instance,
Increasing influence of ‘robber barrons’ in democratic building has turned it
into ‘money politics’. Their power base has been concreted in the WC era of
1980s and consolidated as ‘a new political class that reproduces itself through
‘neoliberal clientilism’’ (Harrison, 2006:109 cf. Robison, 2009:17). They prefer
reform like property rights for legitimising and consolidating their wealth and
property, accumulated in this period of ‘savage capitalism’ (Robison, 2004:407)
and, hence, contribute to the hijacking of market centric development.
2.1.5. The Post Washington Consesnsus intensified ‘tacit
domination’ through aid
Agreeing on the existence of material inequality in consideration of how
foreign aid influences power structure, theories of international relations
provide three prominent perspectives. Aid is, for political realist, ‘reinforcing’
material inequality and, for liberal internationalist, ‘mitigating’ it, whereas with
world system theory, aid emphasizes on ‘worsening’ the underlying inequality. But
with the political economic expansion of anthropological gift theory, Hattori
conceptualizes aid as gift rather than redistribution or economic exchange. For
him, aid mitigates social conflict, explores its role in the existence of material
inequality and social hierarchy between giver and recipient and, does ‘signal and
euphemize’ Bourdieu’s ‘symbolic domination’ in opposition to ‘actively reinforce, mitigate or
worsen’ underlying social inequality and hierarchy (Hattori 2001: 641; italics added).
What foreign aid helps for costly policy implementation is less
important than its more influential dominating role manifested in the
relationship of giver and receiver of the aid as ‘gift’ with recognition of the
absence of any equal capability to expect reciprocal exchange. (Hattori 2001:
641). This strategic position, for Hattori (2001), places donors in the cognitive
throne of ‘tacit domination’.
In the manifestation of structural adjustment, with aid this strategic
domination was openly concerted by the name of ‘conditionality’ through ‘buy
in’ reform policies. Through cyclical shift, the PWC brings forth WC principles
in its core with the mask of more socially inclusive policies in its surface.
Importantly, by aid the domination in local reality may not be reflected in the
surface of the power in aid relations of PWC regime. What PWC is doing that
it confines ‘buy in’ process of reforms to only poorly defined or culminated
space of bargaining in the recipient’s technocratic apparatus leaving out any
scope of mass protest developed by political process. As a consequence, the
PWC intensifies ‘tacit domination’ in the aid architecture.
Conclusively, Governance and ownership are developed in the interplay of
political ‘making’ of market. Market making involves the ‘politics of antipolitics’ (Jayasuriya 2001) to insulate ‘the context of wider conflicts over power
and the way it is distributed’ (Hout and Robison 2009). In doing so, neoliberal
reform has failed to acknowledge the rationale of politics in development and
rather it accentuates depoliticising of governance and development. With using
aid, a cyclical shift of it from WC to PWC further intensifies the ‘anti-politics’
through heightening ‘tacit domination’, and, as a result, fails to create a base of
22
reform agents. But the insulated political process has not ended in void and
conversely been kept as ‘intact’ which has channelled ‘the rise of quite different
private interests’. From the WC regime, it has contributed to the development
of ‘neoliberal clientilism’ which hijacks the neoliberal reform to maximise their
‘old interest’.
2.2. Conceptual framework:
My research will deal with some key concepts to examine the hypothesis.
A set of important concepts embodies the tension of ongoing debate on their
technocratic and political understanding. In this chapter, I will frame the extent
of their meaning used in the paper and will posit the politics in the core of
their meaning representing the standpoint of the paper. Inevitably, I will avoid
discussion on etymology, theoretical development of the concept and detail of
the debate. The chronology of discussion will follow participation, governance,
ownership and civil society recognising supplementary understanding to each
other.
2.2.1. Participation:
Participation in PRSP is different for its policy centric process from the
earlier participatory exercises targeting to compensation of the effects of
development projects or poverty measurement including poor in the process.
An insight of the relevant literatures on participation indicates its approach
either as instrumental or as empowerment.
On the one hand, the instrumental one fears about ‘economic
populism’ which ignores resource constraint or rational choices of resource
distribution and allocation. Instead of granting any broad scope of
participation, this approach rather highlights the necessity of limited space for
participation with the target of perception building and getting signal from the
involved actors. An instrumental participation may at beat deal with a poor
decision making power (Nelson and Wright 1995) or may denote as a mean
(Goulet 1989) of improving efficiency of policy implementation. On the other
hand, participation as a tool of empowerment implies as an end goal for at
least a substantial control over decision making (Stewart and Wang 2006;
Nelson and Wright 1995; Goulet 1989).
Whatsoever the approach, participation minimally requires a joint
involvement of a certain number of actors throughout the decision making
process. This involvement may refer to any or all stages of a continuum leading
to higher degree of control ‘ranging from (1) information sharing, (2) consultation,
(3) joint decision making, to (4) initiation and control by stakeholders’ (World Bank
1996; McGee 2000; Narayan et al. 2000 cf. Stewart and Wang 2006; italic
added). An empowerment approach of participation, as Stewart and Wang
(2006) points out, shall involve all three stages of this continuum.
Moreover, empowerment as an outcome of the independent effect of
local actors’ involvement in the process shall galvanize the local reality and
exclude any manoeuvring role of other external actors. The conflict and
contestation over accessibility to resources and political aspirations shall be
represented and mediated by the role of local actors. Among them, the
government, as legal and authorised space of such representation, shall posit
23
the centre in the policy design with supportive role playing of true civil society
organization.
2.2.2. Governance:
Governance is much more fluid concept and buzz word. When it relates
to the architecture of development it underpins a tension in its understanding
with technocracy and politics. The technocratic meaning lies on managing
development with the unitary set of neoliberal reform policies. This consists of
harmonized standard procedure for market supremacy in the fixed neoliberal
framework and associated environment in the doctrinarian of ‘good
governance’ components with an objective to global integration ignoring
divergence of the local reality of development. When the question relates to
development, it focuses on better risk management (Craig and Porter 2003)
through ‘politics of procedure’ (Jaysuria 2001) in response to its consideration
of politics as ‘problem driven’. Governance as a concept of technocratic
process works in the apparatus of management and control with the
convergent interest group lifted from the reality created by its standard
procedure for development.
But the question of ‘local ownership’ necessarily relates the vibrant
sphere of politics with the actual empowerment and turns the
conceptualisation of governance into the unrestrained process of ‘politics of
bargaining’ (Jaysuriya 2001). Governance becomes a legal space to collaborate
with the social struggle and conflicts for effective production, distribution and
allocation of resources. In consequence, the task of government and policy
design becomes responsive to people’s voice and continuously contested by
the political process.
2.2.3. Ownership:
The concept of ownership in the area of jurisprudence is old with a
meaning of possession of both physical and absolute things. Later, an
evolution of its common understanding reached to a relations between a person
and a thing. Though since the 1980s, some rare and synonymous use of this
term was confined to certain part of donor community, like the Swedish
International Development Agency (SIDA), this was the OECD’s
Development and Assistance Committee (DAC) who in May 1995 brought the
word ‘ownership’ into their policy document with the title of ‘Development
Partnerships in the New Global Context’ by stating that ‘For development to
succeed, the people of the countries concerned must be the ‘‘owners’’ of their
development policies and programmes.’ (OECD 1995: 2). In the following
year, the OECD’s DAC published its new century’s development manifesto
where it placed ‘local ownership’ as the core theme in its agenda and one of its
five policy principles. (OECD 1996). It defined that ownership makes recipient
countries able to “exercise effective leadership over their development
policies” and “co-ordinate development actions” (OECD 2008).
In policy papers, ownership is considered as a proxy indicator of the
perception of the executors in terms of the convergence of their owning and
interest (Killick, Gunatilaka & Marr 1998: 98). The fundamental logic of
ownership is defined in a number of literatures as the salient need of donor
24
community to secure support from domestic political forces while keeping
intact the holiness of the neoliberal prescriptions (Collier 1997; World Bank
1998; Easterly 2001). Hence, it resembles a psychological attachment: ‘a
perception of possession’ without any material change (Stewart and Wang
2006:291). More popular ‘theatre’ of participation (Lazarus 2008:1207) will
surely cement this psychological template with an objective to global policy
convergence over local reality.
Against the technocratic and narrow understanding, ‘local ownership’
shall confirm empowerment over a frequent interaction of ideational-material
or material-ideational policy setting if the governance is placed on
understanding and materializing of the process where ‘conflicting ideas and
interests are negotiated and contested’ (Lazarus 2008:1212). Ownership in such
setting will encompass the local control on policy, reflect true aspiration of
local reality and bolster the sense of sovereignty keeping the state’s role in the
centre.
2.2.4. Civil society:
The notion of civil society is much debated with conflicting ideas
encompassing much of the academic and policy space. Where the question is
curtailing power of the state and enabling market centric development, for
neoliberal reformers this notion is highly focused on all institutions other than
the state and informally developed collective social movement (Blair 1996;
World Bank 1994, 1996; Hadenius and Uggla 1996; Feldman 2003: 19-20).
Replacing struggle, conflict and contestation in the sphere of the distribution
and allocation mechanism, neoliberal reformers embrace civil society ‘as a
process of seizing access to political participation’ (Feldman 2003:20). For the
reformers, this definition mostly counts welfare centric role of it giving
prominence to NGO and links its social changing role with service providing
capacity to the ‘poor’ (World Bank 1996:2; White 1999: 323).
The World Bank in its numerous reports has justified its bottom-up
approach on the basis of its definition of “civil society” as ‘the wide array of
nongovernmental and not-for-profit organizations that have a presence in
public life, expressing the interests and values of their members or others,
based on ethical, cultural, political, scientific, religious, or philanthropic
considerations’ (World Bank 2003:20). The IFIs led donor agencies perceives
CSOs with their comparative advantage over state and private sector. That is, the
comparative advantage lies on CSO’s perceived capacity to be the voice of the
poor, less bureaucratic and more efficient, innovative in developing and
implementing new ideas and solutions, more technical, fluent to contribute
local knowledge in development and to cultivate ‘social capital’ (World Bank
2003, 2000).
Centring on the comparative advantage of CSOs, donor led IFIs stresses on
‘broad-based participation by civil society’ within the framework of voluntary
mechanism of promoting ‘national ownership’ (IMF/World Bank 2002;
Dawson & Bhatt 2001), and justifiably give credit of excellence to them for
their more accountable and service providing role in the ‘new’ development
paradigm than the state.
25
In the claimed metamorphosis, NGOs and CSOs are placed as ‘proxy
representatives’ for the poor legitimized by the rubric of apolitical usage of
‘participation’ and ‘partnership’ in this ‘third way’. Such inclusion of poor’s
voice nonetheless suggests “spin and deceit”, which Craig and Porter explains
by referring to Levitas (1998), as ‘embodying a basic duplicity in dealing, on the
one hand, with “the poor”-who are to be “included” – and, on the other hand,
with the political economy of poverty and inequality- which is not robustly
addressed’ (Craig and Porter 2003: 54).
In the context of the approaches of poverty reduction, inclusion of the
poor through CSOs’ ‘proxy’ representation can be seen as a tool of risk
management where ‘the risks of exclusion and instability’ is more highly
concerned with the promotion of ‘universal global integration’ than serving the
poor (Craig and Porter 2003: 55).
Against this technocratic and purposive design, an autonomous process
of politics suggests that the civil society is an area of struggle and dispute
settlement by giving the space to divergent voices and, continuously redresses
the state’s authority and accountability in policy design and implementation. It
reacts to hegemonic control (Giner 1995) of external or internal forces and,
shapes the desire arisen from locality.
In the framework of political process, empowerment is the main body of
all these concepts. Participation will cover the full continuum of it, from
knowledge sharing to policy initiative and control. Governance denotes a
policy space for social struggle and mass aspiration. Ownership shall embody
local control on policy with frequent and dual interaction of ideational and
material things. On the other hand, civil society will allow divergent voices of
the community a horizon for struggle and dispute settlement.
2.3. Conclusion:
The analytical approach provides me the insight of how a national policy
space is tied with and dominated by the neoliberal stand of the managerial and
problem centric vision of politics. I will use this to explore how the
technocratic governance manifests the policy space with ‘local ownership’ in
PRSP process of Bangladesh and, how aid with its dominating role intensifies
this manifestation. Further, revealing the logic of interest-convergence between
reformers and certain elites and the evident failure to create reliable agents, the
approach helps me to explain the role of newly emerged elite whether they
facilitate or hinder actual ownership and, to understand the causal connection
of their conformity to the reformers’ technocratic stand with their interest
maximising in Bangladesh. The frame of the concepts, on the other hand, will
contribute to the research in identifying the instrumental use of these
buzzwords to mask the technocratic failure of addressing actual ownership in
Bangladesh.
26
Chapter 3
Bangladesh: a brief overview
This chapter will provide a brief overview on Bangladesh complementary
to the analysis in the paper. The overview covers its struggle for democracy,
patron-client relations in social, political and economic structure, and a review
on its aid and donor dependency.
Bangladesh becomes independent in 1971 after a blood-spattered war with
West Pakistan following a parliamentary form of government. Facing an
upsurge of social, economic and political crisis, this government established
one party rule making the President more powerful over all other institutions.
But a military coup violently removed the then rulers from power in August
1975 following an establishment of control on power of military and quasimilitary regimes till 1990. A parliamentary form of government re-established
in December, 1991 after the overthrow of the last military government of
General Ershad by a popular movement in December, 1990. Thereafter, the
country has been in the track of liberal democratic process. (Khan 1998; Sarker
2008)
The rulers of the country regularly attempts to cultivate their regime
legitimacy by nurturing and feeding patron-client relations rooted in the
country’s social, political and economic structures. The patron-client relations
work by a reciprocal interaction of demand and supply from both patron and
client influenced by a range of ideational factors. Client demands for credit,
land, tenancy, or employment opportunity as cash and kind along with political
protection standing on the bottom of vertical tie. On the other hand, patron
appropriates his giving with a right to extract cheap labour, services, loyalty and
respect from his client. Ideational factors involve a sense of moral right to the
client to get material blessing from well-placed people within family and
society. It translates into ‘pattern of mutual obligations’ and places higherranked patron in the throne of ‘higher moral authority’. The relation favours
development of ‘highly personalized’ authority and charismatic leadership.
Instead of posing any threat to this relationship, political parties and
associations capture the system of relations for their legitimacy, integrity and
expansion. (Kochanek 1993: 44-9)
Aid money becomes not only crucial for post war development and
construction or for management of natural disaster, but also proves influential
for regime legitimacy and cultivation of patron-client tie. Bangladesh received a
fairly large amount of foreign aid over the years with a range of annual average
from US$1.0 billion to around US$1.5 billion significant part of which accrued
from the source of official development assistance. But the contribution of aid
to the country’s GDP has been decreasing (shown in figure of Appendix B) in
response to the increasing input to the GDP from mostly economically less
feasible sources, such as remittance flow and comparative advantage centric
growth of garments export. This decreasing pattern of aid flow suggests more
about the ‘growth’ of the national economy than the decrease in the volume of
aid flow. (Quibria and Shafi 2007; Sobhan 2003; Green and Curts 2005)
27
Involvement of donor communities in restructuring the economy with aid
and reform has been initiated in Bangladesh since 1975. Soon they found the
country as ‘testing ground’ for experimenting reform tools. Now the reform
has been extended into reorganization of social fabric by the planning
mechanism and components of PRSP.
Lengthy Military and quasi-military regime with its need of legitimacy,
intensified patron-client relations along with aid dependency and donor’s
domination over policies give a possibility of complicacy when the question
comes about issues of governance and ownership.
28
Chapter 4
Threshold contribution of different actors in
PRSP policy process in terms of ‘ownership’
A claimed paradigm change to Post Washington Consensus era, as a
response to the inefficiency and lack of legitimacy of the structural adjustment
period in post-independent Bangladesh, has been operationalized through the
Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) positing the core of its new
Integrated Development Model (IDM) approach. This brings a promise of
bringing the government of Bangladesh back ‘in the driver’s sit’ and, manifests
this in its call for broader partnership between a co-ordinated group of donors
and Bangladesh and in its commitment for ‘local ownership’ in policy
initiatives.
During the rule of a strong parliamentary government in Bangladesh, the
first initiative has been taken in the formulation of an interim PRSP (I-PRSP)
which become finalised in March 2003 with the title of ‘A national strategy for
economic growth, poverty reduction and social development ’ (Government of Bangladesh
(GOB) 2003). A subsequent development to the full version of PRSP has
come with a title of ‘Unlocking the Potential: National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty
Reduction’ in 2005 (GOB 2005). The second NSAPR, titled “Moving Ahead:
National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction II,” has been prepared as a
continuity of the first one in 2008 (GOB 2008).
Centring on the paper’s purpose, in the first chapter I will discuss how the
policy content of the PRSP itself culminates the scope of policy space driven
by local political process. On the other hand, the second will examine how the
power asymmetry favouring donors and their associated controlling
mechanism constraints the threshold contribution of participating local actors
in PRSP policy process. I will conclude the chapter following an analysis of
civil society representation questioning the legitimacy of their capability to
represent poor.
4.1. Policy content:
In this part, my research focus makes me restraint to only examine the
core of the policy content and not all of PRSPs. I will seek its approach to
politics. I will draw conclusion from this sub-chapter whether policy space
provided in the core of PRSP content can necessarily accommodate owning of
any alternative policy options derived from uninterrupted political process.
4.1.1. Politics is problem driven in ex ante conditionality:
Policies in all three consecutive PRSPs of Bangladesh resonates the idea of
the ‘selectivity’ requirement that ‘good’ governance with accountability and
transparency should be placed as the ‘end’ which will be the basis in priority
setting. From World Bank’s influential report in 1998 on Assessing Aid (World
Bank 1998) to a recent one (World Bank 2007) emphasis has been
continuously giving on this ‘selectivity’ criterion of development assistance
29
replacing ‘conditionality’ of structural adjustment era. I-PRSP publication in
2003 followed the World Bank’s report on Bangladesh Taming Leviathan
Reforming Governance in Bangladesh (World Bank 2002b) not only in terms of
sequential publication but also apprehending the latter’s idea of good
governance as end goal. Doing justice to its title, this report deals with the
politics from a ‘problem-driven’ perspective and treats the nature of the
politics as ‘pervasive clientalism’, well organized concert of interest groups and
underworld ‘muscle-power’ with rampant corruption (World Bank 2002b: viviii). A similar tone has been echoed in another important report on
Participatory Poverty Assessment in Bangladesh by NGO Working Group on
the World Bank of Bangladesh (Nabi et. al 1999:14). It recognises that ‘political
institutions and interests’ create obstacles to and provide the sources of
legitimacy problem of donor driven reform in the 1990s.
The following table represents weight of the importance of specific type
of contents given in PRSP in terms of how frequently the relevant words are
used and, simultaneously confirms the assertion of the above selectivity
criterion with antithetical strand to the politics:
Table 4.1
Frequency use of variables in PRSP
Name of
PRSP
Frequency use of variables in PRSP
Governance
Ins
Politics
titution
I-PRSP
51 (most
136
5 (preceded with the
cases associated
word of ‘criminalization’ (2)
with ‘good’)
and ‘polarization’ (3)
NSAPR-I
176
257
4 (associated with
‘problem driven’ use)
NSAPR160
336
11 (in almost every case
II
used with negative word like
‘confrontational’
Source: Own analysis
Liber
alization
9
9
08
The above table shows the symmetry of importance level of the used
variables in every of three PRSPs denoting the higher importance on
governance and institutional building in contrast to lowest importance given
on politics which is used in PRSPs in almost every case with negative
resonance. Comparatively lower stress given on different type of liberalization
represents the deregulated economic base built in structural adjustment era.
This is further suggested from the following table 4.2 and World Bank’s
country assistance strategy 2006-09 (World Bank 2006) which expressed its
pride-feeling for the liberalized economic base already made by the last thirty
years effort of IFIs in Bangladesh.
30
Table: 4.2: A Snapshot of Bangladesh’s Trade Regime
POLICY CRITERIA
Exchange Rate
Exchange Rate determination
Payment Convertibility
Current Account
Capital Account
Import restrictions
Import licensing
Quantitative Restrictions (QRs) on imports
State monopolies
Tariff structure
Top Rate, 2009
Average Protective Rate 2009
Tariff slabs (customs duty)
Para-tariffs
Existence of high level of NTBs
Trade Openness (trade-GDP ratio)
Source: World Bank (2009)
STATUS
Unified
Free Float
Yes
No
No
No
No
25
20.1
3, 7, 12, 25
Supplementary Duties
No
43
4.1.2. Political aspiration kept isolated from policies:
NSAPR II sets its objective to reduce poverty by flourishing private
sectors with concerted support from government by promoting ‘more market
oriented’ institutional arrangements and ‘good’ governance where non-political
efforts will be made available by ensuring ‘effective participation’ of NGOs
and the civil society (GOB 2008: xiv).
Earlier, political forces had a concentrated reliance on the country’s
traditional five-year plan to ensure allocation of state-led venture in any desired
sector (Mahmud, 2009:92). Extensive conditionality of deregulation and
liberalization in structural adjustment era has made it irrelevant in policy matter
and confirmed its death after the last 5th five-year plan of 1997-2002 by
initiating I-PRSP in 2003. Report on Participatory Poverty Assessment in
Bangladesh has stated this with their observation that ‘as part of the condition
of the structural adjustment programme, [the government] has cut public
sector expenditure and eliminated subsidies from almost all sectors of the
economy’(Nabi et. al 1999: 14). Notwithstanding a denouncement of the earlier
structural adjustment era, PRSPs in Bangladesh exclusively suggest establishing
market supremacy in all aspects of ‘pro-poor growth’, for instance, in sensitive
issue of primary health care even in ‘hard-to-reach areas’ (GOB 2008: 296).
What is most striking here is that the political forces are now replaced with
apolitical representation of NGOs and civil society and, any genuine aspiration
coming out from politics cannot enter into the territory of private sector
governed by the market. For example, whereas present policies in PRSP
31
advocate for comparative advantage based (mostly for low labour cost)
promotion of RMG (readymade garments) or SME (small and medium
enterprises), (GOB: 2005: 274) on the basis of ‘supremacy of the market’, any
political aspiration to overcome the stage of present ‘comparative advantage’
cannot lead policy change within the framework of market supremacy in PRSP.
4.1.3. PRSPs resonate ‘one size fits all’ and earlier structural
adjustment policies:
I have used a table (shown in Appendix A) developed by Stewart and
Wang (2006: 310-11) where they examined the contents of macro-economic
and structural reform in PRSPs of 27 countries excluding Bangladesh. I have
used this as a benchmark to test the level of conformity of the same policy
contents in three PRSPs (GOB 2003; 2005 and 2008) of Bangladesh with that
of those countries. The use of this table in my examination of policy content of
Bangladesh PRSPs provides some advantageous inputs. Firstly, it can show the
pattern of policies across the developing countries: its similarity or dissimilarity
and importantly, the original table deals with the I-PRSPs or first version of
PRSPs which may provide a benchmark to check whether there is any change
of contents in course of time in the further version of PRSP (GOB 2005 and
2008) in Bangladesh.
It shows that firstly there is at least no fundamental shift in PRSP from
structural adjustment programmes in terms of market centric policy reform.
Policies to ensure ‘get the prices right’ is distinctively present in reform
contents of PRSP (GOB 2008) with financial and trade liberalization,
privatization, public sector, social sector and different sectoral policies reform.
Secondly, the same set of structural reform has been chosen across all the
countries’ PRSP neglecting highly broad range of economies. In line with the
policies of the countries in Appendix A, PRSPs of Bangladesh formulates
policies for maintaining macroeconomic stability by following rigid monetary
and fiscal policies with the target of lowering inflation and fiscal and current
account deficit in terms of debt payment and public spending, maintaining a
stabilized real exchange rate and reducing interest rate along with highlighting
‘tax and customs reforms’ to increase revenue (GOB 2008: 35-36). The
consistency of policy instruments over the inconsistent economic structures
across the countries questions the claim of local ownership (Stewart and Wang
2006:312) by suggesting the domination of ‘one size fits all’ policies. For
example, as a sign of macroeconomic stability, as Stewart and Wang (2006:
312) informed, the average level of inflation in 2000, in four countries of
Appendix A (Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia) was above 20 percent
per year whereas that in the other countries was approximate 3.5 percent per
year (UNCTAD 2002) including a trend of one digit inflation rate with 6.5
percent in FY05 in Bangladesh (GOB 2008:3). But the policy prescription in
PRSP overlooks the different level of inflation across countries and avoids
addressing the crucial ‘supply side’ and ‘demand side’ causes of inflation.
These policies are arranged with the core content of technocratic
institution building which can be seen as an attempt to embed the policies of
Washington Consensus in a ‘demand driven’ technocratic political institutional
framework to solve the problem underlying the lack of local support in the
32
agency imposed SAP. Inevitably, politics is excluded from the policy space
which has no room for any alternative policy options.
4.2. Power asymmetry favouring donors and the possibility of local
ownership:
We see an inclusive donors’ involvement controls the scope of local
ownership. Donors represent the interest of ‘the global formal and technical
framework’, whereas local ownership embodies the control on local
‘productive and political realities’ (Craig and Porter 2003: 56). The global
integration approach of the claimed paradigmatic shift translates national
development plans into PRSP. The PRSP approach ties donors’ global
integration approach with the local realities of Bangladesh counting it tools to
provide development assistance. For instance, the assistance or concessional
loans from the World Bank and IMF is conditioned with the contents of
PRSP. Under the rubric of realignment and harmonisation other multilateral
and bilateral donors considers the content and implementation of PRSP as
basis for their support.
How the global integration materialises in Bangladesh can be understood
by examining the staged operation for preparing PRSP. In initial stage, the
‘participation’ process includes donors’ engagement, which is advised by the
World Bank’s (2002a: 250, Box 7.6) Source Book for Poverty Reduction Strategies, a
guide book for PRSP preparation. A drafted PRSP through participatory
process is then presented to the Bangladesh Development Forum, a coordinated group of donors for Bangladesh, for its review and necessary
feedback. The process then follows a joint assessment by the World Bank and
IMF to check the contents and accuracy. The Joint Staff Assessment (JAS)
judges the soundness of PRSP and gives input to the Board of Directors of
both the IFIs about the reasoning of their support. The procedure ends by its
presentation to and endorsement of the Board of Directors of the World Bank
and IMF. The success of getting approval in these staged procedures drives the
government to apply for IMF’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Funds
(PRGF), which replaced its earlier Expanded Structural Adjustment Funds
(ESAF), and for the World Bank’s Development Support Credit (DSC) which
is determined by its business plan for the PRSP of specific country named
Country Assistance Strategies (CAS). I have avoided explaining the notion and
relevance of HIPC (highly indebtedness poor countries) as Bangladesh is out
of this category. This has been reported in the literatures that Bangladesh has
followed the above procedures in preparing I-PRSP in 2003 (Dev et al. 2004)
and then in developing a full version in 2005 (Mahmud 2009) and,
subsequently has received the soft loans under a medium term policy
framework.
A drive for harmonisation and co-ordination has convinced other
multilateral and bilateral donors to align their aid and development tasks taking
the PRSP as base alongside their separate goals. This drive has been reflected
in the ADB’s Bangladesh Country Strategy and Program for 2006 – 2010 and the
United Nations Development Assistance Framework in Bangladesh 2006 – 2010,
The staged operation of preparing PRSP and subsequent alignment of
other donors with it clearly demonstrate donors’ involvement with united
33
domination to restructure the local realities in line with global framework. Such
domination certainly requires the techno-managerial governance for better ‘risk
management’ of ‘problem-driven’ politics and associated confrontation and
contestation. The success of preparing PRSP and a manifestation of
conformity to the donors’ line of thinking for global integration certainly
demonstrates such presence in Bangladesh.
How the presence of dominated techno-managerialism is ubiquitous
surrounding PRSP policy design and inversely culminates the process of
contestation in policy space to represent the actual local need and aspiration
will be well illustrated from an example of PRSP policy matrix on power
sector. In the first full PRSP (GOB 2005), PRSP has refrained itself from
proposing any public sector investment to generate additional power capacity
to make itself fully conformed to the donors’ line of thought to promote
privatization. But power failure is such a thing to debar privatization. Later the
realization might induce the Bank as Mahmud (2009) informs that it has
recently agreed to provide a soft loan to the government for establishing power
plant under its control. My point is that a domination of donor apparatus and
its associated technocratic governance did not allow the state actors to realize
the crying need.
4.3. Ownership in PRS policy process by civil society representation:
This part will essentially treat NGOs as active civil society actors counting
its importance in donor-led IFIs’ civil society discourse and for its affiliation
with huge number of rural people. In a review paper of World Bank in 1990 on
Bangladesh, expansion of NGO activities was more focused indicating its
comparative advantage over the government (World Bank 1990). A new
partnership between NGO and the state is claimed to be mutually beneficial
complementarily to each other (World Bank 1996: xv). From the context of
such efforts to build partnership, and by following Hulme and Edwards
(1997:6), development of civil society in Bangladesh can be seen as a
manifestation of expansion of NGO as supplement to the governmental
efforts and service delivery.
The chapter will be divided into two sub-parts. In the first part I will
examine the legitimacy of CSOs to represent poor where the second part will
proceed with a concise examination of their participation in policy process.
4.3.1. Nature and scope of civil society organizations to represent
poor
In Bangladesh, on the one hand, other non-NGO civil society actors are
accused of being mostly grasped by the loyalty of political parties. The major
political parties, which differ more with regard to ‘personalities’ than mere
ideologies or ‘platform’ (Stiles 2002: 110; Kochanek 1993:45), provide ‘an
arena for elite competition via patronage distribution’ (Stiles 2002:110).
Assurance of political loyalty is foremost important for political parties in
Bangladesh and is consistently confirmed by the means of violence and
necessary infiltration of any ‘agency’ to increase the party influence in society.
Partisan division is such extreme that there is hardly any professional body
who could think to advance their career without joining or being affiliated with
any of the main parties (Stiles 2002: Table 4.1: 110).
34
On the other hand, the role of NGOs in the territory of civil society
functionaries is further criticized. They have been accused of ‘monopolizing’ it
(Kamal, A. 1999), destroying genuine grassroots movement and of maintaining
typical professionalism. Even there are some beliefs that NGOs have already
been co-opted by partisan demarcation. (according to opinion of different
people in Bangladesh. Interview collected by Stiles 2002: 111). However,
partisan division of NGO seems mostly contradictory as they are by and large
apolitical, maintain professionalism, have accountability to donors and possess
more financial solvency than the other actors of civil society (Stiles 2002: 111).
Rather they have gained and been placed in a position of comparative
advantage over the state and other actors with their claimed role to represent
the poor and monitor the state agencies. In that case, collaboration with state
agencies is possible instead of partisan role. The right conclusion may be taken
by Stiles (2002) who states that ‘there is a strong tendency for NGOs to simply
divorce themselves from civil society in practice while at the same time taking
on its mantle’ (Stiles 2002: 111). This will be clear by tracing into the extent of
its functional nature.
Contribution to three national crises consecutively reconstruction after
liberation war in 1971, disastrous flood in 1988 and devastating cyclone in
1991 has concreted the high profile of NGO against the confrontation they
faced. Among these crises, support to the development works of
nongovernmental organization immediately after independence can mostly
considered as benevolent and free from self interest as a demonstration of
‘public spirit’ which can be attributed in response to ‘the absence of an
entrenched industrial elite or entrepreneurial class’ and the need of
development of infrastructural capacity (Feldman 2003:17). But this earlier
vision of ideational-material has changed in course of time both functionally
and structurally.
In post independent Bangladesh, when an ideational surge of ‘public spirit’
did not get any scope to be materialised in successive military regimes, NGO
offered a considerable space for people with progressive thinking to implement
their ‘vision’ and to see the positive outcomes which any political parties could
not offer (White 2000: 321). This points to the time when ‘the rise of NGOs is
itself held as an indication of a strengthening of civil society: NGOs stand as
examples of the citizens’ association which will guarantee civil liberties and a
broader distribution of basic rights’ (White 2000: 320).
A turn from this earlier type of ideational-material to the later materialideational has been concreted in the function and structure of NGO by the
instrumental necessity of NGO in the claimed paradigm and a set of rigorous
measures to be accountable to the donors. These transformations lead NGOs
to a change in its size, professionalization, question of accountability and
ultimately to a renovation as a technical and apolitical tool box.
This turn and consequential transformation has been experienced in the
last twenty years after the end of military regime in the late 80s. In this time,
NGO has placed itself as ‘honest brokers’ (White 2000: 320) and ‘buffers’
(Feldman 2003:22) between state and its citizen responding to the demand of
material-ideational shift. That is, its ethos and operations is very far from the
notion of civil society as ‘a relation of contestation and an arena of political
35
struggle where people seek to realise their practical as well as strategic interests
and challenge their exclusion from controlling political structures’ (Feldman
2003: 21-2). As broker, NGO speaks for its ‘target group’ and ‘beneficiary’
which may at best be seen as a mere sampling distribution of the huge number
of poor whom they claimed to represent. As buffer, instead of encouraging
collective struggle and any ‘transformative’ actions, it promotes individual
responsibility by serving only practical interest through training and support to
enhance ‘self reliance’ which cultivates ‘methodological individualism’ among
rural poor.
About their rise, size and professionalization in the later materialideational transformation, these are not the case of institutionalizing any earlier
social or political movement. Rather, these question the continuity of earlier
ideational-material initiative and can be traced into, on the one hand,
‘exchanges between their organizers and members of the international aid
community, whether the Ford Foundation, the LMG, or a broad array of
official donors’ and on the other hand, a formulation of NGO-participants
relation embodying ‘commitment to institutional reproduction and staff
employment security’ which are achieved by the process of ‘collaboration,
accommodation, and, contestation’ (Feldman 2003:19-20).
The sheer size of NGO, from anthropological point of view, present
themselves to the villagers as ‘hybrid of state or market’, a new version of
‘officer class’ or ‘with more disillusionment-simply as a particularly lucrative
type of business’ (White 2000:321). The rise, size and professionalism of NGO
are linked with the initiative role of their first generation innovative organizers
coming from elite, urban and educated families with kin relations in state’s civil
and foreign services and international donor agencies along with the foreign
study and employment record. Their profile can be contrasted to their
counterpart in different ministries with urban middle class (Feldman 2003: 16).
Feldman further reported about next generation employee in NGO sectors
coming from lower-middle and middle class who in most cases could not
ensure their employment in ‘elite civil service’ (Feldman 2003:17) and hence
rely on professional development for their livelihood instead of carrying any
motivation to facilitate any social movement. Large NGO, like BRAC and
Grameen Bank, now have state-of-art training and research institutions
equipped with skilled staffs many of them having PhDs. Such size and
professionalism is enough to make them aloof or ‘disenfranchised’ from their
‘stakeholders’ as they are highly intended to collaborate with state functionaries
and accommodate their institutional interest with donor’s demand and need
from clientele. But, consecutively, they ‘fail to link their efforts to political and
economic transformation’ (Feldman 2003: 21) shrinking necessary space for
political contestation which should be the prominent task of civil society
actors.
In terms of question of accountability, Geof Wood in his big volume
research in 1994 raises his careful concern about the accountability mechanism.
Comparative advantage of NGO calls for bypassing state in service provision
with underlying logic of ‘’state failures’ in delivering essential service to its
citizen and, derails accountability mechanism. For example, if NGO fails or
withdraws its service what is the place to complain for? Ironically, the state is
36
the final resort in that case. The government in Bangladesh, with its status of
rising democracy, has at least some reliable accountability mechanism, such as
election, parliament, a legal framework and court. White notes that, though
NGOs accountability goes to the donors with certain procedure, recently a
strong development of ‘sustainability’ for some NGOs, like BRAC, who are
‘effectively independent of any single donor’, questions and helps to bypass the
donor directed accountability system (White 2000: 321-2). Their sustainable
positions helped them to take position against IMF’s attempt to convince the
government to sign the PSI (Policy Support Instrument) agreement which
would provide the IMF a legal capacity to control country’s economic policy.
Against the consideration of such protest as a protection of people’s right
(Ahmed 2003) by NGO community, we may see this differently beyond their
accountability to and representation of the poor mass. As the proposal of PSI
does not correlate any financial support reciprocal to the transfer of control on
national policy, NGO/CSO community does not perceive this profitable.
Though they claim, like Grameen Bank, that poor are their ‘stakeholders’, the
reality is that there is no effective mechanism to make them meaningful
‘shareholders’.
Moreover, their technical and apolitical toolbox allows them to work with
a cognitive model of ‘modernisation’ drawing an assumption of ‘ignorant
villagers who needed to be taught enlightened ways’ (White 2000:322). Their
approach of works, which follows ‘accommodation’ and ‘collaboration’ only by
providing some ‘practical interests’ to their participants, allow them to avoid
the issues of rights and social justice of the ‘ignorant’ stakeholders.
Moreover, similar to the illustration of Jaysuriya in the context of rising
unemployment following to the Asian Economic Crisis (Jaysuriya 2003:2),
Feldman analyses that self reliance and training program of NGO in
Bangladesh is shifting the responsibility of unemployment from the idea of
social duty of private and state institutions to the responsibilities of
communities and individuals and, transferring unemployment problem from
‘social issue’ to ‘social conduct’. For instance, in Bangladesh, NGO considers
women ‘stakeholders’ as ‘producers’ by keeping intact the structural and
political conditions of inequality underlying the role of women in family and
society. Moreover, it shifted the focus from generating employment to
generating income by offering credit and skills according to the neoliberal
premises. Among NGOs working for women, Saptogram, Naripokho, and Bhaste
Shekha are good examples dealing with the motto of income generation and
skill development in which case underlying logic of gender inequality in the
labour market remains untouched. (Feldman 2003: 10-16).
In conclusion, NGOs, who are considered as prominent forces of entire
civil society in Bangladesh, enter as ‘Trojan horse’ (White 2000) into the terrain
with the popular goal of democratization, conscientalisation, representation,
liberties, and social development. But observation shows that it ‘carries quiet a
different cargo’ (White 2000) with the motif of restructuring social mechanism
compatible with ‘market supremacy’, destroying possible social forces for
effective movement of change, and depoliticizing the role of actors in policy
process. Hence, the mainstream civil society actors cannot claim the legitimacy
to represent ‘poor’.
37
4.3.2. Participation of CSO in policy process:
In addition to questioning the legitimacy of representation by civil society
organizations in policy process, the other end of the story involves a searching
inside the mechanics of ‘participation’ by civil society since an essentialism has
been tagged by the donor (IMF 2002) to the 'participation' of civil society in
the PRSP policy process for the achievement of national ownership. Other
than this essentialism of CSO’s involvement, Mahmud (2009) acknowledges
that a technocratic inclination of the government restricts its motivation to
include the country’s electoral representation in policy process by granting
donors’ view of ‘problem-driven’ politics. Both the donor’s view and
technocratic role of government confine ‘the importance of parliamentary
endorsement’ to mere ‘symbolic value’ (Mahmud 2006:11). Exclusion of the
perceived ‘confrontational politics’ may reinforce the claimed importance of
CSO in PRSP policy design.
Notwithstanding the lack of policy space for electoral representative
through participation, the joint study of Mahmud (2006) with the
Commonwealth Secretariat claims that ‘[t]he ownership of PRSP has been
enhanced by the fact that the government has managed the process of its
preparation entirely on its own, using local expertise and involving a
participatory process’ (Mahmud 2006). My investigation will cover a concise
assessment whether the participation of CSO contributes to change in policy
content and programme coverage. Due to lack of necessary and quality
literatures on this issue, my analysis may be constrained to understanding the
scope and nature of participation in the PRSP policy design of Bangladesh.
Available literatures about the participation of CSO in I-PRSP process
raised questions about the poor number (153) of representatives outside the
government (Chaudhury 2002) with only 21 consultation meeting via BRAC, a
leading NGO of the country and, about the domination of bureaucrats
through inter-ministerial committee (Dev et al. 2004:75) directing to a common
demand of more representation from CSO by the name of poor’s voice (Akash
2002; Hossain 2002). For the lack of this voice, I-PRSP participatory process is
stigmatized as ‘eyewash’ (Akash 2002). If civil society of Bangladesh is
inherently unable to represent poor I do not find it worthy to put the same set
of questions as fault line of participation.
It is true that the mode of participation is mechanical associated with
lacking of many representative settings as if it lacks soul inside it. Against the
above questions, some points can be considered underlying the technocratic
logic of participation in Bangladesh. Firstly, the problem may lie on ‘cognitive
resonance’ associated with participation, though, thereafter in the full version
of PRSP, a wide variety of NGOs and professional from academics to mediamen have been brought into the design process (GED 2005). A ‘pseudo’ or
‘unreal’ participation (Vebra and Nie 1972) has been echoed from the ‘invited’
participants in the discussion of Divisional Commissioner’s office and of
capital city (Kamruzzaman 2009: 68). That is, discussing those things what is
expected to be heard. Secondly, considering cognitive demand of participants for
symbolic status, placement of individual or organization in any level (division
38
or central) of participation of policy apparatus has much possibility to be
counted as more of a case of status-symbol than providing policy inputs by
many of them. Finally, a formal apparatus of partnership provides a space of
view exchange between state actors and CSO and, channels legitimacy for
greater partnership in policy implementation level. Complementary to the
legitimising goal, the ‘participation’ is a rehearsal of an orchestra of ‘donor-like
minded’ bureaucrats (Green and Curts 2005) and non-state actors
(Kamruzzaman 2009) to be played in implementation level as choir.
Similarly, any type of ‘participatory’ discussion beyond ‘symbolic value’ has
not been heard when the 2nd full version of PRSP has been very recently placed
in the parliament (on 15/09/09 according to the Daily Star, a national
Bangladeshi daily) for a short period (on 23/09/09 it has been placed to LCG
meeting according to the Daily Star). Additionally, no any epistemic input from
political parties has been taken or given in any cases from I-PRSP to 2nd
version of full PRSP.
Instead of identifying the problem as the absence of soul inside the
process, the problem has additionally been directed to the control of
bureaucratic hierarchy (Kamruzzaman 2009: 68) and the lack of their skills
(Dev et al. 2004). But the bureaucrats identify the problem inherent in donors’
dictation-power and its use in taking out the government from the driver’s seat
(Green and Curts 2005: 393).
To me, alongside the structural problem of ‘tacit domination’, the problem
is mostly associated with functional restraint as I have analysed earlier. That is,
the problem lies on the culmination of freedom of choice from the policy
content by a set of pre-occupied neoliberal content. According to my earlier
analysis on policy content, it can be concluded that instead of establishing any
control on policy, the process of participation can only facilitate policy transfer
by sharing knowledge from a participation continuum. These problems
inherent in the ‘participation’ do not validate the claim of ‘paradigm’ shift with
a qualitative change putting politics in centre; rather endorse a mere cyclical
shift with ‘risk management’ approach to politics.
4.4. Conclusion:
In this chapter I have excluded the analysis on the scope of exploring
threshold contribution of the state actors in the PRSP policy process mainly
because of the unavailability of relevant literature and of the methodological
constraints, though this discussion might help to further concrete our
understanding on the technocratic governance and its impact on achieving
local ownership as empowerment. Till mid 90s, Bangladeshi top governmental
bureaucracy has been occupied by former CSP (Civil Service of Pakistan) most
of whom with western educational background and has supported neoliberal
reform since its global initiation like ‘Los Chicago Boys’ in Chile. Thereafter,
the presence of ‘donor like minded’ groups reported by Green and Curts
(2003) is assumed to be prominent in technocratic governance. But our present
analysis suggests at least a thoughtful extent of such understanding.
39
It is observed from the discussion that the role of the government has
already been shrunk or culminated in the process of depoliticizing
development. The foremost thing is policy space which is pre-occupied with
neoliberal macroeconomic contents and its social residuals and, will
automatically fail to allocate any room for policy alternatives developed from a
process of continuous contestation of different actors. Moreover, it is
impossible for a technocratic governmental and policy apparatus to recognise
real needs of the poor mass by ignoring ‘tacit domination’ of donors and donor
led IFIs. Finally, CSO works to establish ‘market supremacy’ and to embed
neoliberal policies in the country’s social, political and economic structures.
Associated with its depoliticizing role as ‘buffer’, it shrinks or culminates the
wings of government and relevant state actors to take initiative for searching
and prioritizing alternatives.
In addition to the role of the state as actors, I want to point out the
invalidity of the claim of paradigm shift by Post-Washington Consensus. In
terms of content, the salient features of Washington Consensus remains same.
What are added these are residuals to the core and considered as social masks
of the leading contents. Donors’ domination posits a ‘tacit’ strand. Civil society
organizations are working for social entrenchment of the core contents and
destroying political uncomforting. Hence, this cannot be treated as a paradigm
shift which requires a substantial change in the core. Rather I may denote the
change as cyclical – appeared as the same but with a mask.
40
Chapter 5
Interest maximising actors manoeuvring
political process
My another proposition of the hypothesis is that political process, which is
stigmatized as ‘problem-driven’ and hence, insulated from policy design by a
replacement of techno-managerialism, is used as a manoeuvring tool by certain
actors to extract maximum interest. This extraction helps the emergence of
them as ‘robber-barron’ elites by a convergence with neoliberal policies of the
market supremacy. My proposition further assumes that there is a causal
relation between the confinement of ownership as empowerment to a mere
policy transferring toolbox and the interest maximising process with its
convergence. This relation set the embargo to materialize ‘local ownership’.
Bangladesh case reveals a story of how a ruling elite class has emerged in
the spectrum of failure of structural economic reforms and consolidated the
power base in the space of both private and state by a cycle of regime change
subsequently as a trade-off of the reform failure and as a ‘highly ambiguous
relationship’ (Robinson 2009: 15) with the neoliberal reformers. A well
informed literature by Quadir (2000) analyses the political economy
underneath such emergent of ‘robber-barron’ class. I will attempt with other
supporting literatures to identify the link of the state’s reform initiative with the
ascendency of such class and the consecutive impact on the intersecting point
of technocratic governance and ownership as empowerment, with necessary
critical inputs where needed. I will search the link from the very onset to the
end of structural adjustment era in Bangladesh within the extent of a period
from 1975 to 1996. The reason is that in the absence of a strong elite and
capitalist class immediately after the liberation war of 1971, this period is
remarkable for development and maturity of the ‘robber-barron’ elite and, of
the convergence of their interest with neoliberal reform mantra. Then I will
correlate the link with two bold marked good governance agenda suggesting
that the elite captured reform is installing and enhancing bad governance in
Bangladesh.
In the first part of my discussion I will analyze the underlying spirit of
building a nexus of interest in military regime. In the second, I will show how a
pervasive interest has been entrenched in the social, political and economic
construction through the continuation and change of the regime. Finally, I will
give a short analysis of two good governance matrix to show how pervasive
elite interest captured the good governance narrative ended up with a
conclusion.
5.1. Military regimes: the ethos what tied the nexus:
Targeting to a socialist transformation of the economy, the then Prime
Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1972-75), the ruler powered immediately
after the country’s independence, nationalised all industries and increased state
41
controls over 92 percent manufacturing sector in 1972 from a poor figure of
34 percent in 1969-70 period with a reverse decrease of private sector control
from 66 percent in 1969-70 to a mere 8 percent figure (Sobhan and Ahmed
1980: 132-3). But the project failed in the context of a post-war political
economy of distribution, allocation and management issues.
The successive regime of General Ziaur Rahman (1975-81) abandoned the
socialist model of development and instead was attracted to neoliberal
prophecy of development and its mechanism for agency building considering
the legitimacy crisis of his power. A challenge of post-war reconstruction and
poverty along with the aspiration for economic growth grounded such
stepping stone of legitimacy building.
Starting from the Revised Investment Policy of December 1975 (RIP
1975) for a comprehensive denationalisation program this regime aimed at
creating an expanded horizon for private sector. With the strong promise of
this regime to tackle the macroeconomic growth centric issues, such as budget
deficit, inflation and poor private savings among others, Bangladesh has
entered much earlier into the terrain of neoliberal restructuring than most of its
counterparts. After that, successive regimes have fuelled the global integration
over local realities with a focus on public sector reform, private sector
promotion along with liberalization of trade and exchange rate. But track
records of long two decades reform have proved the neoliberal forecast of
strong macroeconomic indicators fairytale (Quadir 2000) and worsened
political economy of inequality. Though the causes of failure have been
directed towards the ‘unfinished reform’ and subsequently prescribe ‘the high
road of faster policy and institutional reform’ (World Bank 1995: xvii), some
literatures instead point to the ignorance of local realities in development as the
root causes (Sobhan 1993: 925-931; Quadir 2000:198). But, to be more
specific, I argue that the fault line is mostly found in the technocratic nature of
reform agenda which forecloses the entry of politics and in consequence
blocks a pragmatic reflection of local political, economic and social realities in
the reform prescription. By default, a muddle process hijacks the development
potentiality of politics and has hooked almost every scope of reform for
ensuring regime support and elite interest leading to a nexus of ruling and
business elites. In such a nexus of interest, the poor has no accessibility to
claim empowerment through control of policy space.
With the association of rulers, this nexus is comprised of businessentrepreneurs, industrialists who became losers for nationalising policy,
bureaucrats enlightened from US and retired military elites. All found their
political and financial prospects in the reform. The point of landing to a
maturity of this nexus is the long term military and quasi-military regime from
1975 to 1990, a period which almost covers the structural adjustment era of
donor-led IFIs in Bangladesh and, when the ruling elites were always impulsive
to insulate threats coming from political contestation and to concrete their
legitimacy. This nexus found its base on the patron-client based social, political
and economic structure which grounded positioning of an unchallenged ‘highly
42
personalized pattern of authority’ (Kochanek 1993:49). This nexus
manoeuvred the facilities of this structure which is reflected as ‘weak political
institution, and authoritarian and unresponsive bureaucratic culture, and highly
factionalized political parties and associations which are no real threat to the
pattern of dependence on charismatic and patrimonial leadership’ (Kochanek
1993: 49). A commonality of both this nexus and donor-led IFIs is that both
consider the realisation of political contestation as threats to their interest.
5.2 Continuation and breaking down of Military regimes:
entrenchment of the pervasive interest:
What Quadir (2000) shows that rulers of the said military regimes were
politically vulnerable and hence sought for getting the commanding position of
elites who would help them to engineer the mass support. Gen Zia attempted
to build an alternative political alliance antithetical to the then socialist Awami
League (AL), the party of Sheikh Mujib, with the dominant variety of elites
including a majority of civil-military bureaucrats and emerging businessindustrial classes to remain in power for long-term. He subsequently filled his
new parties’ Council of Advisors and ‘civilian’ cabinet with them and, gave
them party nomination for parliamentary election.
Underneath the reform consensus, he ‘deliberately offered legal and illegal,
formal and informal, economic and political concessions’ to this group (Quadir
2000:201). His private sector development program offered incentives for
export led sectors with providing land, utilities and huge concession.
Privatization program includes massive sale of nationalised industries in very
cheap rate and, channels huge financial flows as low interest loan-support with
very flexible payment condition by state-owned financial institutions to the
entrepreneur elites so that they could buy cheap priced industries and set up
new industries (Sobhan and Mahmud 1991: 158; Quadir 2000:199). As Quadir
(2000) notes, this concessions further include divergent overwhelming
practices such as discouraging state-owned loan provider institutions in
devising and executing strict credit policy, ignoring legal steps for huge amount
of tax avoidance and keeping ineffective law-enforcing agencies like Election
Commission in taking actions against those elites. As a result, maximum
borrowers encouraged to become ‘wilful defaulter’ and to invest money in
unproductive sectors and in various quick money-making illegal enterprises.
The rise of this oligarchy translated the logic of the reform into the extraction
of public resources for private interest.
This group had continuously been manoeuvring the weak point of the
rulers and cultivating patrimonialism in the local reality. In return, they helped
Zia to develop a ‘personalised’ charismatic authority in politics and ensured
major victory in the parliamentary election for Zia’s new Bangladesh
Nationalist Party (BNP). They did this by providing huge funds to the newly
elected party and by spending a lavish amount of money for successful patron
ship.
43
Like Gen Zia, the then military ruler Gen Ershad (1982-1990) followed
the same strategy with more sophistication and aggressiveness for a successful
‘civil-military bureaucratic oligarchy’ (Alam 1993 cf. Quadir 2000: 204) which
was further expanded to commercial and political elites. He continued
attracting, creating and using political and business elite by the tool of reform
program. He devised the ‘New Industrial Policy’ (NIP) of 1982 and the
‘Revised Industrial Policy’ of 1986 (RIP 1986) for enhancing liberalization,
deregulation and privatization. During first few years of his regime the
privatization of profit making SOEs increased from 32% in 1981 to 78% in
1985 in number (Sobhan and Ahsan 1984:47). Additionally, he ensured a
satisfactory flow of external fund by securing the confidence of donor led IFIs
with the conformity to donors’ conditionality.
His legitimacy driven tie with political and economic elites fed him huge
political funds for his party survival to channel money to divergent clientele
from rural voters to opposition party leaders (Kochanek 1993: 226-7; Quadir
2000:204) in exchange for participation in fake electoral process in 1986 and
1988. But the sole reliance of Gen Ershad, like Gen Zia, was on commercial
and civil-military elite. This reliance intensified facing a movement of antimilitary regime from middle class and student alliance under the banner of
main opposition parties. This coalition with ‘robber-barrons’ helped him being
in power for almost ten years without any popular support.
The ‘robber-barrons’ reciprocally got generous access to public resources
for their private money making. Like Gen Zia, without any standard
mechanism, Gen Ershad handed over SOEs to this class by much
undermining the state’s interest. By liberalization, the floodgate of import has
been opened for another way of easy money-making. This elite class maximises
their interest from officially shown import by using undervalued exchange rate
and avoiding custom duties and taxes through under-invoicing and bribe to
government officials. Besides this, unofficial import or smuggling which was
around 18% in the 1990s was another way of such easy interest maximising
(World Bank 1996b:7). Money lending and becoming ‘wilful defaulter’ was
another common phenomenon in both military regimes associated with legal
and illegal concession to and compromise with this new interest (Sobhan
1991:10). Amount of loan defaults surged and became doubled from 5.2 billion
taka of 1982 to taka 10.5 billion of 1990 (Sobhan 1991:5) whereas 96.5% of
this defaulted loan was fed to private sector.
What these 15 years long military and quasi-military regimes did is that it
brought a qualitative change in formal representative politics in terms of high
importance of money and higher currency for businessman. While, after the
end of one and half decade long military regime, Khaleda Zia (the widow of
Gen Zia) led BNP came into power in 1991 through a democratic electoral
process, its business and industrial elite-captured electoral nomination and their
dominance in the number of elected legislators shows the increasing trend of
money and elite confined politics and policies. For instance, Quadir (2000)
notes that where there number was 67 in 1973 and 91 in 1979, this sharply rose
to 177 in the parliament of 1991. Among the BNP lawmakers, this group
44
represents 28% in 1979 election, where it reaches at 67% in the parliament of
1991. Irrespective of partisan division, 59% newly elected lawmakers represent
the business and industrialist group revealing around 95% increase over the last
12 years. (Quadir 2000: 207). In addition to aid dependency centric donors’
domination, interest driven coalition of these elites with neoliberal reform
drove BNP in more aggressive neoliberal reform. The influence of the
commercial elite debarred BNP led government to take legal and penal
measures for effective consumer rights, preventing use of public resources for
private gain or penalizing defaulters. As a source of corruption, ‘legal and
illegal concession’ could not be stopped (Quadir 2000).
The space of politics has been formally confined to electoral process
which, I argue, has been done by a rewritten patron-client relation manifested
in ‘vote buying’ or the high spending of money. The scope for contested
scrutiny of state-led policy design from people’s side has been ‘buy in’ in
exchange for money. That is, patron sitting on the ‘top’ has purchased a
pseudo independence from the people at ‘down’. This becomes possible
because placing the political process in the governance has been blocked and,
any protest to the extraction by elites and attempting to marginalise them is
impossible to organize. As a result, this pseudo independence allows them to
continue extracting or to use power apparatus for the security of wealth and/or
continuation of extracting it. Hence, elite capturing of the state in the
framework of depoliticized governance works to make grass root people
disconnected from the process of local ownership which rather is confined to
state or non state pseudo representatives including ‘robber-barrons’ elites on
the surface.
5.3 Elite interest captured the good governance narrative:
One of the important good governance principles narrated in PRSP is
public service reform mainly to deal with its structure, efficiency, dynamism,
accountability and corruption issues. Though from 1980s a number of
commissions, committees or study groups has been set up and reports have
been published with the initiative of national government and donor
community (a brief overview: Sarker 2008: Appendix A: 1438-40), all attempts
have resulted persistent failure in producing effective outcomes.
Though the causes of failure to reform have mostly been indicated as
pervasive clientelist pressures and politicization of the service ( Sobhan 2004), I
want to argue that the failure rather is rooted on depoliticized governance
apparatus and its capturing by elite. Our previous analysis shows that the legal
or illegal ‘demand’ for favour, concession, compromise and facilities to use
public resources for private gain has been merged with the interest of the
‘robber-barrons’ and ruling elite. This ‘demand’ in the form of powerful
command or request has inevitably created a generous ‘supply’ of such quested
services. The interaction and continuity of this ‘demand’ and ‘supply’ on the
one hand, has created the phenomena of bad governance and on the other
hand, has set the embargo on reform initiative. The form of embargo may vary
45
from time to time and, at best, accord to above-said clienteles’ pressures or
politicization.
About the second narrative of decentralization, a good number of
committee has been formed and subsequent report has been published in
1982, 1992, 1997 and 2001 leading to some successive initiatives (Sarker 2008:
1424-28). The failure of all local government initiatives is evidently linked
with the material and political interest maximisation of the rising ‘robberbarrons’. By local government mechanism, the reality of resource extraction by
elite has been successfully replicated from urban centre to rural setting. Newly
grown patron in centre has grasped and exploited this mechanism for building
rural clientele targeting to creating its long term power base.
Gen Zia attempted to expand the clientele tie by initiating Union Parishad
and Gram Sorkar (Village Chairmanship) with formal provision of local
government and channelling them huge development funds in his regime. Gen
Ershad took the same attempt with somewhat different form in the face of
urban and middle class opposition of his regime. These local establishments
turned into a mechanism for patronage distribution and ‘private accumulation
of wealth’ (Blair 1985; Sarker 1992; Rahman 1994; Siddiquee 1997; Sarker
2008) and a successful ‘class alliance between urban and rural elites’ (Rakodi
1988; Slater 1989 cf. Sarker 2008: 1427).
Unlike the rise of ‘savage capitalism’ and the associated establishment of
better ‘governance’ in other developed countries, no any political struggle,
conflict, contestation and aspiration from mass citizenry has led better
institutional building, rule of law or implementation of property rights in
Bangladesh.
5.4 Conclusion: tuned convergence of elite interest and depoliticized
state mechanism:
I have tried here to suggest a link of elite interest with state mechanism,
neoliberal reform, depoliticized governance and local ownership by analysing
the development of such elite nurtured by the state and fed by reform. Though
Hossain (2005:967) advocates that ‘contemporary national elites rely on the
state less for their wealth and position ………..than their predecessors in the
liberation period’, I will strongly suggest that the prominent elite groups will
not leave the state centric power with an objective to hinder any truly
politicized exploration of reform alternatives from mass participation. This is
for the fact that the maintenance and expansion of their wealth largely depend
on the state’s regulatory system, its policy option and its dealing with the
political process. Both reform and their interest have been merged and both
interact in the depoliticized space of the state.
We have seen that the placement of business and industrial elites in the
parliament has been increasing from Gen Zia regime to first BNP led
government in the 1990s. The trend becomes unchanged even in the recent 9th
46
parliamentary election of 2008 where 59% lawmakers reported themselves as
businessman raising a suspect of hiding information about the profession and
following a common perception about this parliament as ‘millionaire club’
(Majumdar 2009). Even Hossain (2004 :967) admits by referring Khan and
Haque (1996) and Sobhan (2001) that ‘[n]ational politics is increasingly
dominated by businessmen, replacing the mainly urban professional middle
class politicians from the independence era’. A convergence of elite interest
and donor community interplays against local reality by remaking and
reshaping it in line with greater global integration which denies any ‘voice’ of
poor for their empowerment considering this as threat.
47
Chapter 6
Conclusion
The paper has visited the socially masked grey area of PWC to explore the
scope of local empowerment in policy design process responding to its
‘ownership’ principles of claimed metamorphosis. The paper has found that a
mere cyclical shift from WC to PWC fails to manifest ownership principle
because of its high dependency on technocratic governance and adversative
stand to politics.
The study has established the set hypotheses of the paper as true. On the
one hand, different actors engaged in policy design reinforce ‘one-size fits all’
policies by culminating the scope of local ownership. On the other hand, the
‘intact’ political process has been muddled to confirm the constant flow of
interest to a certain elite.
The paper has showed that policy content itself is very rigid and cannot be
responsive to any demand for change from ‘problem driven’ terrain of politics.
The local actors’ role is apolitical, non-representative. The claim of CSO to
represent poor does not have legitimacy. The role of the national parliament,
which is actually the most legitimate representation of people, is constrained to
a role of ‘symbolic value’ in policy process. The dominating role of donor
community in the process through the conditionality for loan and aid attached
to PRSP content insulates its process and components from local reality and
real need.
The paper has exposed the other side of failure of technocratic
governance to materialize ‘ownership’. This failure is attached to the rise of
particular group of elite, their interest and the convergence of their interest
with reformers’ stand. In the framework of neoliberal reform, a stable relation
of such interest with the continuity of technocratic governance does not allow
any manifestation of ownership.
The whole scenario comprised of rigid political contents, technocratic or
‘symbolic’ contribution of different actors, interest maximising urban and rural
elite and the convergence of interest between reform proponents and elites
strongly reinforce disconnection of technocratic policy design process from the
local reality, power, conflict and aspirations.
48
Notes
49
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59
Appendices
A.
CHECKLIST OF REFORMS CONTAINED IN PRSPS
Reform
AL
BA
NIA
AZ
ER
BAI
JA
N
BE
NIN
BO
LIV
IA
B
U
R
K
I
N
A
F
A
S
O
CA
MB
OD
IA
Reliance on microeconomic stability for
poverty reduction
X
X
X
X
X
X
Trade Policy (tariff
reduction/export
promotion)
X
X
X
X
X
Monetary Restraint
X
X
X
X
Exchange Rate Policy
X
X
X
X
Fiscal Restraint
X
X
X
X
X
Tax & Customs
Reforms
X
X
X
X
Price Control/Wage
Policies
X
X
CA
ME
RO
UN
CHA
D
E
T
H
I
O
PI
A
GHA
NA
GU
YA
NA
H
O
N
D
U
R
A
S
KY
RG
YZ
ST
AN
MALAWI
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Economic Management
User Fees
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Sectoral Policies
X
X
X
X
Budget Management
X
X
X
X
MTEF
X
X
X
X
Decentralization
X
X
X
X
X
X
Public Administration
Reform
X
X
X
X
X
X X
Anti-curroption
X
X
X
X
X
X X
Financial Institutions
X
X
Financial
Intermediation Policies
X
X
Privatization
X
X
Price Liberalisation
X
X
Legal and Judicial
Reform
X
Land Tenure Laws
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Public Sector Governance and Management
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Financial Sector Reform
X
X
X X
X
X X
X
Private Sector Development
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X X
X
X
X
X
Social Sector Reforms
Education
X
X
X
Health
X
X
X
X
60
X
X
X X
X X
X
X
X
X
Social
Protection/Employmen
t Promotion
X
Rural Livelihoods
X
X
X
Food security
X
X
X
X X
XX
X
X
X
X
X X
X
X
X
Environmental
Protection
X
X
Ethnic Minority
Protection
Gender Equity
X
X
X
Children/Disabled
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Vulnerable Groups
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Macro and Poverty
sections separate?
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Ex ante assessment of
impact?
N
N
N
N
N
N
N N
N N
N
N
N
N
CHECKLIST OF REFORMS CONTAINED IN PRSPS (CONTINUED)
Reform
LI
M
AU
RI
TA
NI
A
M
OZ
A
MB
IQ
UE
NIC
ARA
G
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
UA
N
I
G
E
R
RW
AN
DA
SE
NE
GA
L
SRI
LA
NK
A
TA
JIK
ST
AN
TA
NZ
AN
IA
UG
AN
DA
Y
E
M
E
N
X
X
Z
A
M
B
I
A
A
B
C
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X\
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Economic Management
Reliance on
micro-economic
stability for
poverty reduction
X
Trade Policy
(tariff
reduction/export
promotion)
X
Monetary
Restraint
X
Exchange Rate
Policy
Fiscal Restraint
X
Tax & Customs
Reforms
X
X
Price
Control/Wage
Policies
X
X
X
X
X
X
XX
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
User Fees
Sectoral Policies
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Public Sector Governance and Management
Budget
Management
X
MTEF
X
Decentralization
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
61
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Public
Administration
Reform
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Anti-curroption
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Financial Sector Reform
Financial
Institutions
X
X
Financial
Intermediation
Policies
X
X
X
Privatization
X
X
X
Price
Liberalisation
X
Legal and Judicial
Reform
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Private Sector Development
Land Tenure
Laws
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Social Sector Reforms
Education
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Health
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Social
Protection/Emplo
yment Promotion
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Rural Livelihoods
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Food security
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Environmental
Protection
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Ethnic Minority
Protection
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Gender Equity
X
X
X
Children/Disabled
X
X
X
X
X
Vulnerable
Groups
X
X
X
X
X
Macro and
Poverty sections
separate?
Y
Y
Y
Y
Ex ante
assessment of
impact?
N
N
N
N
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
X
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
Y
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
N
Note: A, B and C denote consecutively I-PRSP (GOB 2003), first full PRSP (GOB 2005) and second full
PRSP (GOB2008) of Bangladesh
Source: Stewart and Wang (2003: 20-21: Table 2 and 2006: 310-311: Table 11.2) and my analysis of
GOB (2003; 2005 and 2008)
62
B. Foreign Aid as a Percentage of Government Expenditures, Per
Capita Income, Imports and Investment
Source: Data from World Development Indicators (2007)
63