29
is much in line with the underlying goals of the neoliberal policies and structural adjustment
conditions employed in the 1980s. Thus, in this sense, governance reform within the public
sector rests on curbing arbitrary state actions and corruption, achieved by subjecting state
institutions to greater meritocratic competition and bureaucratic downsizing, and making the
states more responsive to citizen needs by enhancing participation and decentralization. In the
2000-2001 World Development Report, the overwhelming focus of the good governance agenda
is how to constrain states from impeding upon private property right, engaging in excessive
regulation, poor macroeconomic policy, and a restrictive trade regime.
108
Consequently, the Bank’s official view of the state noticeable lacks a theory of politics
and thus has no forthright examination of power.
109
In practice, this leads the Bank in much of
its research and operations to focus on the technocratic ingredients of state capacity, while
ignoring overtly political or cultural factors.
110
The Bank consequentially “does not dwell on
the more intangible (and analytically difficult) social foundation that determine state legitimacy
and authority, without which the best of designs for improving state capability are bound to
flounder.”
111
Instead, research on governance focuses almost exclusively on demonstrating
(through sophisticated statistical, large-n models) the causal effects of the quality of governance
on development prospects and aid effectiveness.
Bank staff members readily dispute this
apolitical and technocratic approach when speaking off the record. However, they also explicitly
recognize this strategic articulation as necessary for governance to gain within the organization a
prominent position among the Bank’s competing policy paradigms.
112
How much change in development theology and policy has actually resulted? Does the
good governance agenda in the form we see today represent little more than a slight modification
upon the past?
Or are there significant differences in the theoretical and operational
underpinnings of the governance agenda to suggest that the World Bank has made a more critical
turn? To many critics, the Bank’s governance agenda is not a revolution in development theory.
Instead, it resembles little more than a weak adaptation of past neoliberal policies.
Most
critically, as both external and internal critics are quick to point out, the governance agenda has
108
World Bank 2000/2001.
109
Interview with Mari Kuraishi, April 2000, Washington, D.C.
110
An analysis of the operationalization of “good governance” can be found in Weaver 2005.
111
Kapur 1998, 8.
112
This point was reiterated in several interviews with Phillip Keefer, Rick Messick, Mari Kuraishi, Linn
Hammergren, in addition to several other Bank staff members who wish to remain anonymous. April-May 2000,
Washington, D.C..
Convention