Showing papers in "Third World Quarterly in 2005"

What do buzzwords do for development policy? a critical look at ‘participation’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘poverty reduction’

Abstract: In the fast-moving world of development policy, buzzwords play an important part in framing solutions. Today's development orthodoxies are captured in a seductive mix of such words, among which 'participation', 'empowerment' and 'poverty reduction' take a prominent place. This paper takes a critical look at how these three terms have come to be used in international development policy, exploring how different configurations of words frame and justify particular kinds of development interventions. It analyses their use in the context of two contemporary development policy instruments, the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). We show how words that once spoke of politics and power have come to be reconfigured in the service of today's one- size-fits-all development recipes, spun into an apoliticised form that everyone can agree with. As such, we contend, their use in development policy may offer little hope of the world free of poverty that they are used to evoke. The past 10 years have witnessed a remarkable apparent confluence of positions in the international development arena. Barely any development actor could take serious issue with the way the objectives of development are currently framed. This new consensus is captured in a seductive mix of buzzwords. 'Participation' and 'empowerment', words that are 'warmly persuasive' 1 and fulsomely positive, promise an entirely different way of doing business. Harnessed in the service of 'poverty reduction' and decorated with the clamours of 'civil society' and 'the voices of the poor', they speak of an agenda for transformation that combines no-nonsense pragmatism with almost unimpeachable moral authority. It is easy enough to get caught up in the emotive calls for action, to feel that, in the midst of all the uncertainties of the day, international institutions are working together for the good, and that they have now got the story right and are really going to make a difference.

International migration, remittances and development: myths and facts

Abstract: The debate on international South-North labour migration tends to focus on the receiving end of migration. This bias obscures a proper understanding of the developmental causes and consequences of migration at the sending end. The reciprocal migration - development relationship is examined through the discussion of seven migration 'myths'. Because of its profound developmental roots, it is useless to think that migration can be halted or that aid and trade are short-cut 'solutions' to immigration. Migrant remittances contribute significantly to development and living conditions in sending countries. Nevertheless, the recent 'remittance euphoria' is not justified, because unattractive investment environments and restrictive immigration policies which interrupt circular migration patterns prevent the high development potential of migration from being fully realised. Although specific policies can enhance this potential through facilitating remittance transfers and investments, the key lies in encouraging circular migration. Instead of uselessly and harmfully trying to stop inevitable migration, immigration policies allowing for freer circulation can, besides increasing migration control, enhance the vital contribution of migrants to the development of their home countries.

Islamism and Social Movement Theory

Abstract: There is a new, but still limited, realisation that the perspectives developed by the ‘social movement theory’ can be useful to illuminate aspects of Islamist movements. This is a welcome development. Yet it is also pertinent to point to some limitations of the prevailing social movement theories (those grounded in the technologically advanced and politically open societies) to account for the complexities of sociopolitical activism in contemporary Muslim societies, which are often characterised by political control and limited means for communicative action. The article argues for a more fluid and fragmented understanding of social movements, which may better explain the differentiated and changing disposition of such movements as Islamism. In this context, I propose the concept of ‘imagined solidarities’, which might help illustrate modes of solidarity building in such closed political settings as the contemporary Muslim Middle East.

The New Diplomacy of the South: South Africa, Brazil, India and trilateralism

Abstract: In the aftermath of 9/11 surely of great significance is the reassertion of the South – North divide as a defining axis of the international system. In this context the emergence of a coterie of Southern countries actively challenging the position and assumptions of the leading states of the North is an especially significant event. The activism on the part of three middle-income developing countries in particular—South Africa, Brazil and India—has resulted in the creation of a ‘trilateralist’ diplomatic partnership, itself a reflection of broader transformations across the developing world in the wake of globalisation. This article will examine the rise of the co-operative strategy known as ‘trilateralism’ by regional leaders within the South. Specifically it will look at the relationship between emerging regional powers in the context of multilateralism, as well as at the formulation and implementation of trilateralism. As with previous co-operative efforts in the developing world, the prospect...

Participatory development, complicity and desire

Abstract: This article is an attempt at rethinking participatory development (pd) in terms of empire, undertaking a postcolonial and psychoanalytic reading. Postcolonialism helps point out that our discursive constructions of the Third World say more about us than the Third World; while psychoanalysis helps uncover the desires we invest in the Other. Thus, to the question, ‘why do neo-imperial and inegalitarian relationships pervade pd?’, the article answers, ‘because even as pd promotes the Other's empowerment, it hinges crucially on our complicity and desire’; and ‘because disavowing such complicity and desire is a technology of power’. The argument, in other words, is that complicity and desire are written into pd, making it prone to an exclusionary, Western-centric and inegalitarian politics. The article concludes with possibilities for confronting our complicities and desires through pd's radicalisation.

Fighting words: naming terrorists, bandits, rebels and other violent actors

Abstract: This introductory paper identifies some of the core background themes and theories through which the ‘politics of naming’ and other forms of discourse conflict can be examined. The focus is on the nature, power, role and function of names, with a final section examining the ethics of naming and examining terrorism. The central unifying theme is the contested relationship between the actual nature of a movement and the name applied, particularly in terms of the attempt to identify the essence or true nature of a movement and how this relates to other dissenting or surrounding factors. Once assigned, the power of a name is such that the process by which the name was selected generally disappears and a series of normative associations, motives and characteristics are attached to the named subject. Indeed, the long historical relationship between the naming of opponents, empire and colonialism, as well as the manner in which the global media frame armed conflict, only provide further reason to doubt the truth...

Framing post-conflict societies: an analysis of the international pathologisation of Cambodia and the post-Yugoslav states

Abstract: The article examines the pathologisation of post-conflict societies through a comparison of the framing of the Cambodian and post-Yugoslav states. The notion of failed states fixes culpability for war on societies in question, rendering the domestic populations dysfunational while casting international rescue interventions as functional. The article suggests that the discourse of pathologisation can be understood not as a means of explaining state crisis so much as legitimising an indefinite international presence and deferring self-government.

Orientalism and African Development Studies: the ‘reductive repetition’ motif in theories of African underdevelopment

Abstract: Contemporary Africa is generally depicted as a ‘failure’. ‘Progress' has eluded the continent throughout the 20th century, and despite new ways of thinking about the reasons for failure and possibilities for success, allusions to the ‘natural weakness and incapacity’ of Africans and their social realities remain evident in theoretical, policy and political discourse on development in Africa. The practice of ‘reductive repetition’, as identified by Abdallah Laroui and Edward Said, has been imported into African development studies from Orientalist scholarship. Reductive repetition reduces the diversity of African historical experiences and trajectories, sociocultural contexts and political situations into a set of core deficiencies for which externally generated ‘solutions’ must be devised. In the field of development studies, the notion of development is introduced to Africa as a deus ex machina. In this article modern conceptualisations of development are challenged in three steps. First, it traces the h...

Liberation struggle or terrorism? The politics of naming the ltte

Abstract: This article examines the politics of naming in one of the longest-running and most intractable conflicts in the world: that between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (ltte) and the Sri Lankan state While the narratives presented by the ltte and the state in support of their respective positions are complex and range across a number of issues, this paper is primarily concerned with the politics of the ‘terrorist’ label as applied to the ltte In particular, it examines how the characterisation of the conflict as a form of terrorism has affected its evolutionary course While the Sri Lankan state has deployed the language of terrorism to further its strategic aims in both the domestic and international spheres, the label has not necessarily impeded the growth of the ltte's military capability but has, by denying the ltte international legitimacy, undermined the organisation's stated political project—Tamil self-determination The article also outlines the contradictions between prevailing international

Terrorists, bandits, spooks and thieves: Russian demonisation of the Chechens before and since 9/11

Abstract: The Russo-Chechen conflict, arguably the bloodiest confrontation in Europe since World War II, only attracts the attention of the Western media when the Chechens stage terrorist ‘spectaculars’ such...

Know thy enemy: Hizbullah, ‘terrorism’ and the politics of perception

Abstract: The labelling career of the Lebanese armed group and political party Hizbullah is an interesting case with which to investigate the epistemological consequences of the politics of naming. Having found itself since its inception in the mid-1980s on the receiving end of mainly US and Israeli policy makers' and analysts' scorn for being an archetypical terrorist organisation, Hizbullah has been surprisingly successful in achieving its stated aims and in enduring the verbal and military onslaught against it. Although it is not the intention here to reduce explanations for Hizbullah's durability to discursive politics, this article suggests that both the labelling of Hizbullah as terrorist and, conversely, its identification as a ‘lebanonised’ political force that is about to make its conversion into an unarmed political party are misleading and incapable of grasping this organisation's complexities. In fact, both ‘terrorist’ and ‘lebanonised’ labels produce a quality of knowledge inferior to that produced by ...

Development and the ‘New’ Imperialism: a reinvention of colonial discourse in DFID promotional literature

Abstract: In this ‘new’ era of threat, crisis and (in)security, discussion abounds seeking to understand and contextualise this contemporary historical moment. Wherefore is the dream of liberal democracy? Wh...

Imaging terror: logos, pathos and ethos

Abstract: As verb, code and historical method, terrorism has consistently been understood as an act of symbolically intimidating and, if deemed necessary, violently eradicating a personal, political, social, ethnic, religious, ideological or otherwise radically differentiated foe. Yet, as noun, message and catch-all political signifier, the meaning of terrorism has proven more elusive. After the Cold War terror mutated from a logic of deterrence based on a nuclear balance of terror into a new imbalance of terror based on a mimetic fear and an asymmetrical willingness and capacity to destroy the other without the formalities of war. This imbalance is furthered by the multiple media, which transmit powerful images as well as triggering pathological responses to the terrorist event. Thanks to the immediacy of television, the internet and other networked information technology, we see terrorism everywhere in real time, all the time. In turn, terrorism has taken on an iconic, fetishised and, most significantly, highly o...

Corruption, Reconstruction and Oil Governance in Iraq

Abstract: With the world's second largest oil reserves, Iraq is potentially a very prosperous country. Like many other oil-dependent countries, however, Iraq's recent history points to a pattern of authoritarianism, corruption and violence. The US administration has portrayed its occupation of Iraq as an effort to break with this pattern and ensure democracy, security and a shared prosperity for Iraqis. This article engages with the challenges of oil governance and reconstruction in Iraq, focusing on the role of corruption and the record of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Iraq's political legacy, oil dependence and transition under US occupation suggest that the new Iraqi regime may once again rest on corruption-based patronage; but of a type more accommodating to US interests.

Economic faith, Social project and a misreading of African society: the travails of neoliberalism in Africa

Abstract: This article is interested in the nature of the neoliberal project's expansion in Africa. The starting point for this exploration is a need to reflect on how the concept of neoliberalism is defined, especially the way it signals an economic doctrine which can only be realised as a broader sociopolitical project. The article goes on to show how, inasmuch as neoliberalism has consolidated itself in African states, it has done so by expanding its boundaries from macroeconomic fundamentals into broader concerns of state reconstruction. Most profoundly the full realisation of neoliberal social transition relies on expectations about the way societies behave. Here neoliberal approaches reveal themselves as nothing so much as faith statements, or convictions about the market-like sociability of African communities. The article ends by reflecting on more historical and structuralist approaches to the way markets have evolved within societies, concluding with an entreaty to ‘bring accumulation back in’ as...

Investigating International Anti-corruption

Abstract: On 13 January 2004 Associated Press reported ‘Bush signs proclamation against corruption’. It barred entry into the USA of public officials from Latin America who had been accused of corruption and...

Words as interventions: naming in the Palestine – Israel conflict

Abstract: This paper examines the practice of naming events, actions, places and people in the Palestine – Israel conflict. It explores the way colonialism and the national project deploy transformations in naming to construct places and identities and craft widespread imaginaries about these places. Names form part of cultural systems that structure and nuance the way we imagine and understand the world. They embody ideological significance and moral attributes and can be consciously mobilised for various projects of power. Words and names reference a moral grammar that underwrites and reproduces power. As such, our analytical approaches to lexicons must be embedded in historical, political and cultural frameworks.

Reconstructing Gender: Iraqi women between dictatorship, war, sanctions and occupation

Abstract: This article explores the role of Iraqi women in reconstruction processes by contextualising the current situation with respect to changing gender ideologies and relations over the past three decades. Before discussing the Iraqi case specifically, I provide a brief theoretical background about the significance of gender in reconstruction as well as nation-building processes. A historical background aims to shed light on the changing gender ideologies and relations during the regime of Saddam Hussein. The article focuses particularly on the impacts of the early developmental – modernist discourses of the state and the impacts of war (Iran – Iraq war 1980 – 88, Gulf wars 1991, 2003) as well as on the comprehensive economic sanctions regime (1990 – 2003). The latter involved wider social changes affecting women and gender relations but also society at large because of the impoverishment of the well educated middle-class, wide-scale unemployment, an economic crisis and a shift towards more conservative values...

The Geopolitics of Water in the Middle East: fantasies and realities

Abstract: Most expert and public discourse on Middle Eastern water politics holds that water scarcities are of great, if often under-recognised, geopolitical importance. Pessimists and optimists alike tend to assume that water has, or soon will have, profound geopolitical implications. In this paper I argue to the contrary. Specifically, I contend that water problems should neither be understood in naturalistic nor in liberal-technical terms, but instead as questions of political economy; that water is structurally insignificant within the political economy of the modern Middle East; that in consequence water is generally unimportant as a source of inter-state conflict and co-operation; and that, notwithstanding this, water supplies are a crucial site and cause of local conflicts in many parts of the region. I submit also that given the worsening state of economic development within the Middle East, these local conflict dynamics are likely to further deteriorate.

The power structure of the Islamic Republic of Iran: Transition from populism to clientelism, and militarization of the government

Abstract: Since the1979 revolution, Iran has experienced two non-class power structures—populism and clientelism. Populism, a product of the revolution, helped Ayatollah Khomeini to rule Iran for a decade with absolute power. Clientelism in Iran is linked to Shiism, as well as to a rentier state, and to the revolution, which resulted in many autonomous groups formed in patron – client bonds. Neither clientelism nor Shiism can be analysed using classical class system theory. Instead of horizontal layers of classes, the power structures in both Shi'ism and clientelism are based on vertical columns of rival and autonomous groups. The traditional Shi'a institution of Marja'iyat (source of emulation), has come into conflict with an elected government. The reformist government elected in 1997 failed to deliver on its democratic promises and to end the destructive role of autonomous groups. Therefore, disenchanted with state-sponsored reforms, Iranian society seems to be moving towards pragmatism and utilitariani...

Savagery in democracy's empire

Abstract: The language of savagery is indigenous to US political culture as the trope that legitimises war and empire. This article traces its recurrence and development throughout US history, from America's 18th century revolution to the post-World War II American century and from Cold War to the present open-ended war on terror—a continuing quest for empire under the sign of civilisation and democracy. The three main dimensions of the image of savagery and multiple sets of decivilising vehicles are identified as an initial step towards language critique.

Urbanisation, nativism, and the rule of law in South Africa's ‘forbidden’ cities

Abstract: South Africa's political liberalisation and strengthening regional ties have engendered new patterns of immigration and urbanisation, resulting in South African migrants and non-nationals converging on the streets of previously ‘forbidden’ cities. Conflicts over space, services and livelihoods are emerging as these groups meet and compete. To settle these disputes, South African citizens and politicians regularly rely on nativist discourses that make one's rights to the city contingent on one's national origins. Efforts to exclude foreigners are in turn encouraging and legitimising new forms of bias, administrative discrimination and anti-foreigner policing. Bolstered by official sanction, these are creating urban ‘zones of exception’, areas in which the state authorises its agents to work outside the law. Although popular among South Africans, the extra-legal harassment, detention and deportation of non-nationals has helped entrench new economies of corruption and violence that jeopardise the ri...

The geopolitics of ‘Enclavisation’and the demise of a two-stateSolution to the Israeli – Palestinian conflict

Abstract: This paper argues that Israel's military strategy since the outbreak of the second Intifada, in September 2000, has been one not merely of ‘security’ or ‘counter-terror’ but part of a longer-term strategy of spatial demolition and strangulation. This strategy seems predicated on two aims: unilateral separation from the Palestinian population, and its concomitant territorial dismemberment. Withdrawal from a totally controlled and isolated Gaza, in effect the latter's enclavisation, is part of this strategy. Such an enclave will in effect be functionally and spatially sundered from another chain of Palestinian enclaves in the West Bank. From an Israeli perspective, driven by its own distinctive territorial imperative, such separation will ensure Israeli control of and sovereignty over the best land and water resources, and control of all borders and border areas. It is further argued that the policy of unilateral separation and strangulation, the destruction and planned enclavisation of Gaza, and c...

Islamic Militancy in East Africa

Abstract: This paper examines the relative political significance of domestic and transnational Islamic militancy in three East African countries: Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. It seeks to identify, describe and account for the sources and significance of such militancy, with a focus upon the significance of al-Qaeda and regional affiliates. The paper argues that, encouraged by the post-9/11 international fall out, regional Islamic networks work towards improving the perceived low political and economic status of Muslims in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. At present, however, the political significance of Islamic militancy in the three countries is low.

Hegemony, institutionalism and US foreign policy: theory and practice in comparative historical perspective

Abstract: This paper explores the theoretical and policy implications of contemporary American hegemony. A key argument is that the development ofUS hegemony generally, and the distinctive turn in US foreign policy that has occurred in the wake of 11 September in particular, can best be understood by placing recent events in a comparative and historical framework. The immediate post-World War II order laid the foundations of a highly institutionalised multilateral system that provided key benefits for a number of countries while simultaneously constraining and enhancing US power. An historical reading of US hegemony suggests that its recent unilateralism is undermining the foundations of its power and influence.

The Heart of Empire? Theorising US empire in an era of transnational capitalism

Abstract: Contemporary critical theorising on US Empire tends to diverge in two ways. First, more traditional approaches tend to foreground the national basis of the USA's imperial project and the subsequent ongoing inter-imperial rivalry inherent between rival capitalist states and regions. A second ‘global-capitalist’ approach rejects the notion of US Empire and instead posits the transcendence of a nationally based imperialism in favour of an increasingly transnationally orientated state and global ruling class. I argue that both accounts fail in their singularity to capture the nature and role of the US state within a global political economy. Instead, I argue that the US state has long been both subject to and demonstrative of a dual national and transnational structural logic that seeks to enhance US national interests while reproducing a world order favourable for global capital as a whole. Crucially, the end of the Cold War and the terrorist attacks on 9/11 have exacerbated the tensions between these dual l...

Hindu Bias in India's ‘Secular’ Constitution: probing flaws in the instruments of governance

Abstract: There has been almost a consensus among the political opinion makers in India that the Constitution of India that came into force in 1950 has been a secular constitution. This paper critiques that consensus and demonstrates that the secularism of India's constitution is Hindu-tainted. It takes up some key articles of the Indian constitution and, by analysing the constitutional debates of the 1940s that went into the making of those articles, highlights the Hindu bias features of the Indian nationalist movement and the constitution. While acknowledging some admirable and progressive features of the constitution, the paper argues that its Hindu bias must be read as symptomatic of the depth of institutionalised Hindu communalism in India and the shallowness of the secular foundations of the Indian republic. The existence of institutionalised Hindu communalism means that the power of Hindu communal sectarianism is greater than that which is merely represented by Hindu nationalist organisations. The paper conc...

Participating in Development? Refugee protection, politics and developmental approaches to refugee management in Uganda

Abstract: This article examines an attempt by the government of Uganda and unhcr to implement a developmental ‘Self Reliance Strategy’ in response to the needs of 188 000 long-term Sudanese refugees and their hosts in Uganda, and analyses some of the conceptual, political and practical issues arising from it. It contends that conditions of extreme insecurity in the north of the country, and the fact that refugees in Uganda do not enjoy freedom of movement, undermine from the outset prospects for a successfully integrative and developmental approach to refugee assistance. It argues that the rights and well-being of refugees in Uganda are subordinated to the government's wider political objectives in relation to Uganda's internal conflict, and with respect to its relations with the international donor community. It concludes that, while developmental approaches promise a number of advantages in protracted refugee situations, ways must be found of ensuring that the protection needs, as well as the socioeconomic needs,...

Iraqi Kurdistan: contours of a post-civil war society

Abstract: Iraqi Kurdistan began the road to reconstruction after it became an autonomous region following the 1991 Gulf war. Although many of the difficulties facing post-Saddam Iraq are similar to those facing Iraqi Kurdistan in the early 1990s, the experience of the North cannot be treated mechanically as a model for the country as a whole. The paper traces political and economic developments since 1991 and concludes that many of the factors which led to destabilisation in the North in the 1990s are present today in the rest of Iraq. These include the use of violence to create ethnic and sectarian tensions in pursuit of political ends, dependence on centralised food distribution, and foreign interference. The 1990s also witnessed the emergence of new clientelist networks, which cut across the distinction between state and civil society. The rehabilitation of the oil industry and a geographically fair division of its considerable revenues may hold out the prospect for a peace dividend, but this is not guaranteed u...

Brazil and Lula, 2005: crisis, corruption and change in political perspective

Abstract: The election of Lula (Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva) as president of Brazil in October 2002 broke new ground: for the first time in Latin America a working man was directly elected as president of the Republic. Lula also came to power as leader of the Partido dos Trabalhadores, the Workers' Party, with its close links to ‘new unionism’, ‘liberation theology’ and mass social movements. The possibility of his election caused strong market reaction but, by the start of 2005, Lula and his government had reassured their critics on the right. They had also dismayed many supporters on the left, including members of the pt, by failing to tackle urgent social problems. Even so, on the basis of a strong economic performance and support in the polls, Lula seemed assured of re-election in October 2006. Suddenly, in May 2005, came the first revelations of a corruption scandal, leading to a crisis described as ‘the most extensive in the whole history of the Brazilian republic’. Lula lost some of his closest minist...