P O L I T I C A L S T U D I E S : 2 0 0 9 VO L 5 7 , 1 – 2 7
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2008.00723.x
Imperial Liberties: Democratisation and
Governance in the ‘New’ Imperial Order
Alison J. Ayers
Simon Fraser University
Notions of empire and imperialism have increasingly returned to the lexicon of mainstream theorisation
of the international. Much of this literature identifies a ‘new’ imperialism, distinct from the supposed postand non-imperial global(ising) order of the Westphalian state system. The article contends that such
accounts occlude our understanding of the ‘long’ history of imperialism. It argues that the putatively
post-imperial institutions and discourses of ‘global governance’ are internally related to ‘post-colonial’
imperialism. In particular the regime of ‘democratisation’ and the curtailing of democratic freedom
constitute a principal means through which imperial rule is articulated. Despite a vast literature on
‘democratisation’, there has been a paucity of analysis which interrogates the Great Power-defined agenda
of democratisation. Mainstream accounts presuppose what requires explanation, taking for granted the
non-imperial character of this global project, the hegemony of a specific and impoverished model of
(neo)liberal democracy, highly problematic, de-historicised notions of state, society and self and the
categorical separation of the ‘domestic’ and the ‘international’. The article provides detailed substantive
analysis of the endeavour by the dominant social agents of the democratisation project to constitute a
(neo)liberal procedural notion of democracy in the ‘post-colonial’ world. It identifies the dominant social
agents of this project and explores the theoretical underpinnings of the dominant model being propounded. Informed by this, the article examines the democratisation project according to coveted
transformations in three domains: the minimal, ‘neutral’ state, the constitution of ‘civil society’ and the
promotion of the liberal ‘self ’. The article contends that far from an alternative to imperialism,
‘democratisation’ involves the imposition of a Western (neo)liberal procedural form of democracy on
imperialised peoples. The character of the ‘informal’ imperial order is such that self-determination does
not mean autonomy. Rather it means the ‘freedom’ to embrace the rules, norms and principles of the
emerging (neo)liberal global order.
Notions of empire and imperialism have increasingly returned to the lexicon of
mainstream theorisation of the international. Much of this literature identifies a
‘new’ imperialism, distinct from the supposed post-imperial global(ising) order of
the Westphalian state system. The article contends that such accounts occlude
understanding of the ‘long’ history of imperialism – understood as a system of
unequal global relations of power that has prevailed over the past several hundred
years, through which the subaltern are individually and collectively governed
and through which surplus is extracted and accumulated.1 This ‘power to rule’
(Fieldhouse, 1999, p. 71) is embodied variously in regimes of governance and
authority, military power, finance, property, socialisation, knowledge and so on.
While the narrative of ‘global governance’ is unable to accommodate formal
colonial rule, it fails to address ‘informal’ or non-territorial imperialism. Far from
post-imperial, the institutions and discourses of ‘global governance’ are internally
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related to current forms of (informal) imperialism. In particular the regime of
‘democratisation’ and the curtailing of democratic freedom constitute a principal
means through which imperial rule is articulated. Despite a vast literature on
‘democratisation’, there has been a paucity of analysis which interrogates the
Great Power-defined agenda of democratisation.2 The article seeks to provide
detailed substantive analysis of the endeavour by the dominant social agents of the
democratisation project to constitute a neoliberal procedural notion of democracy in the ‘post-colonial’ world.3 It argues that this project is internal to current
forms of imperialism and, specifically, that ‘democracy’ and ‘governance’ interventions need to be understood in terms of the social relations historically being
brought into being through this imperial project.
Informal Imperialism
The dominant traditions of international relations theory assume and portray
the current practices and discourses of global governance as non-imperial. These
various traditions – not only realist scholarship but a much wider spectrum of
thought encompassing liberal perspectives and more recently social constructivism – conceptualise the world in terms of states and their interrelationships
(Smith, 2000). According to this statist framework, the current Westphalian
‘global(ising)’ order – constituted by legally enshrined formally equal, independent, sovereign states underpinned by norms of democratic citizenship – is
antithetical to imperial rule. As such, colonialism and imperialism are understood
as ‘descriptions of a long-past, even ancient, world order’ (Saurin, 2006, p. 23).
The increasingly unconcealed face of US imperialism (Panitch and Gindin, 2004)
has unsettled these non- or post-imperial historical ontologies, spawning a vast
array of neoliberal and neo-conservative literature on empire and imperialism
(Cox, 2003; Kiely, 2007). This diverse literature encapsulates seemingly differing
political positions: those such as Max Boot and Robert Kaplan who seek to
defend unilateral US imperialism in the face of endemic conflict,‘terrorism’ and
‘failed states’; others such as Michael Ignatieff, Niall Ferguson and Oliver Kamm
who defend US global leadership as a benign and progressive form of imperialism
intent on establishing a multilateral (neo)liberal-democratic global order of ‘free’
and ‘equal’ peoples; as well as those such as Benjamin Barber and David Held
who acknowledge but condemn this form of US empire (see Tully, 2006). Such
differences notwithstanding, each of these accounts characterises the ‘new’ imperialism in a highly circumscribed sense; that is, distinct from modes of global
governance that are presumed to be non-imperial.
The article rejects this dominant narrative, whereby colonialism and imperialism
are understood to have been ‘ejected and substituted by novel and distinctive
forms of rule’. Rather, it endorses the argument that ‘colonialism, being just one
form of imperialism, metamorphosed in such a way as to retain the fundamental
powers of imperialism while shedding the outward forms of colonialism’ (Saurin,
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2006, p. 31, based on Louis and Robinson, 2001). Imperialism has constantly
‘reinvented’ itself as the structure of global capitalism itself changes (Ahmad, 2004;
Wood, 2005). According to the current modalities of informal or non-territorial
imperialism the subaltern are governed indirectly rather than through (formal)
colonial rule. Imperialism ‘without colonies’ has existed in many forms (Ahmad,
2004; Magdoff, 2003), at times as commercial empires preceding military conquest (such as European mercantilism within Africa prior to the 1880s
‘Scramble’), in other instances following decolonisation (such as within South
America following the cessation of Spanish and Portuguese rule) and sometimes
in the form which Lenin (1986) characterised as ‘semi-colonial’ (such as Turkey,
Persia and China). But as Aijaz Ahmad has argued, the imperialism of our time
constitutes ‘the first fully post-colonial imperialism, not only free of colonial rule
but antithetical to it’ (Ahmad, 2004, pp. 44–5).
The preponderance of ‘informal’ rather than ‘formal’ imperialism reflects not
simply current socio-political sensibilities, but rather a ‘structural imperative of
the current composition of global capital itself’ (Ahmad, 2004, p. 45). The
circulation of capital and commodities must be as unconstrained as possible yet
this is realised through the ‘nation-state’ form. The state constitutes the ‘articulating principle’ between globalising capital and national political economies
(Ahmad, 1996). As such, the internationalisation of the rule of capital is enforced
through globally constituted ‘domestic’ regimes, in conditions specific to each
territorialised unit (Ahmad, 2004; Wood, 1999; 2005).
The dissolution of the formal colonial empires and the post-war reconstitution of
the capitalist order under US dominance have witnessed therefore ‘an intensification of the nation-state form’ carved from the old colonial empires (Ahmad,
1995a, p. 12). Nation states constitute the primary means through which the
social relations and institutions of class, property, currency, contract and markets
are produced and reproduced, and through which the international accumulation
of capital is carried out (Panitch and Gindin, 2004, pp. 41–2). Within such a
system, imperialism operates through formally independent ‘internationalised’
states – that is, states which assume responsibility for the production and
reproduction of ‘the necessary internal conditions for sustained international
accumulation’ (Panitch and Gindin, 2004, p. 48, emphases in original). As such,
the ‘empire of capital’ is increasingly reliant upon a territorially based state
system to provide the local conditions for global accumulation ( Wood, 2005).4
Internal to the new modalities of informal imperialism are therefore the constitution, governance and governmentalities of domestic political jurisdictions. In
particular, it has been through the putatively non-imperial languages and practices
of ‘sovereignty’ and ‘democratisation’ that post-colonial imperial governance has
been realised (Anghie, 2004; Gathii, 1999; 2000; Grovogui, 1996). The promotion
of ‘democratisation’ and ‘good governance’ serves the function of legitimating the
extension and deepening of neoliberal capitalist accumulation ‘by seeking to
create the political institutions, the system of government, that would further a
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particular set of economic arrangements’ (Anghie, 2004, p. 263). As such, the
governmentality of ‘democratisation’ – the origins of which can be identified in
the Mandate System of the League of Nations – reproduces ‘the very old project
of civilization and commerce’ (Anghie, 2004, p. 262).
To understand these regimes of gouvernmentalité it is necessary to recognise the
organic relation between liberal democracy qua liberalism and capitalism. Part of
the impulse to constitute African (and other) social relations in its own particular
image may be attributed to liberalism’s universalist pretensions (Young, 1995),
although this contrived universalism is highly problematic (compare Rivera
Cusicanqui, 1990; Dhaliwal, 1996; Mamdani, 1992; Parekh, 1992). Social foundations to justify liberalism as universally valid have proved elusive. Indeed, as
Margaret Canovan (1990) has noted, liberalism has never constituted an account
of the world, but rather ‘a project to be realised’. Liberal thought and practice,
historically when faced with ‘difference’ does indeed, as Alasdair MacIntyre
(1988, p. 336) argues, ‘have its own broad conception of the good ... which it is
engaged in imposing politically, legally, socially and culturally wherever it has the
power to do so’ (in Williams andYoung, 1994). But an understanding of why the
major players in the international system are intent on pursuing the internationalisation of (neo)liberal democracy cannot be restricted to the realm of the
ideational. Ideas have materiality. Liberal democracy qua liberalism maintains a
strong historical association with capitalism. It is in this relation, the article
contends, that we might further understand the Great Power-defined agenda of
‘democratisation’.
Western accounts of democratic thought and practice habitually invoke the
ancient concept of Athenian democracy as their starting point (compare Arblaster,
1994; Harrison, 1993; Held, 1996). However, the modern liberal notion of
democracy arose from a very different historical trajectory, one which originates
not in Athenian democracy but in European feudalism and culminates in liberal
capitalism. As such, the struggle for the ‘rights’ and ‘liberties’ of individuals
characteristic of liberal democracy arose, in large part, from the interests of the
nascent capitalist class in England. It was later that these principles were appropriated and associated with the idea of ‘democracy’. In so doing, the notion of
democracy was substituted by that of liberalism ( Wood, 1995).
It was with the emergence of capitalist social property relations that it became
possible to conflate or reduce democracy to liberalism.With the separation of the
‘economic’ and the ‘political’ intrinsic to capitalist sociality, there emerged a
separate political sphere in which ‘extra-economic’ status had no direct bearing
on economic power. Concomitant with this political realm there now existed an
economic sphere constituted by its own power relations not dependent on
juridical or political privilege. Liberal democracy ‘leaves untouched [this] whole
new sphere of domination and coercion created by capitalism, its relocation of
substantial powers from the state to civil society, to private property and the
compulsions of the market’ ( Wood, 1995, p. 234). Much recent commentary on
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the global nature of capitalism has argued that its economic realm has expanded
beyond the capabilities of liberal-democratic politics, but liberal democracy,
whether in its institutional or ideational form, was never intended to extend its
reach into the ‘economic’ realm. Rather, protecting the invulnerability of the
economic sphere to democratic power has become ‘an essential criterion of
democracy’ ( Wood, 1995, p. 234).
Liberalism has been ‘intimately connected’ therefore with the birth and evolution
of the modern capitalist world. As David Harvey has argued, modern state
formation, coupled with the emergence of bourgeois constitutionality, has been
a crucial feature within the long historical geography of capitalism. Capital
accumulation through expanded reproduction and market exchange prospers
within a framework of certain institutional structures of law, private property and
contract. A strong state with police powers and a monopoly of the means of
violence is required to uphold such an institutional framework and reinforce it
through definite constitutional arrangements. Capital accumulation does not
necessarily require such a framework to function, but without it capitalists must
contend with far greater uncertainty and risk (Harvey, 2003).
Transformation in the three ‘spheres’ (state, civil society and self) was fundamental, as James Tully (1988) has elaborated, to the historical transformation to
capitalist modernity which occurred in Britain between the seventeenth and
nineteenth centuries, i.e. liberalism was integral to the mode of governance
(‘juridical government’) constructed in the transition to capitalist modernity in
North-Western Europe. The article contends that the ‘democratisation project’
seeks to impose or construct (neo)liberal conceptions in the domains of state,
society and self, reproducing the ‘patterns of transformation’ characteristic of
Western politico-economic history ( Williams, 1999). ‘Democratisation’ is to be
understood therefore as constitutive of the endeavour to reconstitute social
relations beyond the heartlands of (neo)liberal capitalism. ‘Democracy’ and ‘governance’ interventions need to be understood in terms of the social relations historically
being brought into being. As such, the informal imperialism of our time, as articulated through the project of ‘democratisation’ and ‘governance’, is integral to the
world-historical constitution of capitalist sociality and the imperatives of capitalist
accumulation.
The Democratisation Project
Thus, far from non- or indeed anti-imperial, the current ‘global mission’ to
‘democratise’ the world is internal to contemporary imperialism. For those who
do constantly think within the horizons of the putatively non-imperial present,
the internationalisation of (neo)liberal democracy is presumed to be incompatible
with imperialism, but this habitual and normative acceptance is highly problematic (Marks, 2000; Tully, 2008). Mainstream accounts of ‘democratisation’ presuppose what requires explanation, taking for granted the non-imperial character
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of this global project, the hegemony of a specific and impoverished model
of (neo)liberal democracy, highly problematic, de-historicised notions of
state, society and self and the categorical separation of the ‘domestic’ and the
‘international’.
The article seeks to address such lacunae through a critique of the project of
‘democratisation’. It provides detailed empirical evidence from Africa. As such
Africa is central while also curiously marginal to the general thesis. The article
seeks to demonstrate that far from an alternative to imperialism, the ‘democratisation project’ involves the imposition of a Western (neo)liberal procedural form
of democracy on imperialised peoples. As such, ‘democracy promotion’ is concerned, in part, with manufacturing mentalities and consent around the dominant
(neo)liberal notion of democracy, foreclosing attempts to understand or constitute
democracy in any other terms.
It should be noted, however, that this project is executed somewhat inconsistently.
Western powers have been selective in their approach to liberal-democratic
reform when countervailing strategic, economic or ‘ideological’ interests have
prevailed. Thus Western governments have eschewed aid restrictions despite gross
and persistent violations of human rights or ‘good governance’ in Indonesia,
Sri Lanka, Algeria, Egypt, Colombia, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and Niger (Callinicos,
2003; Crawford, 2001; Olsen, 1998). As demonstrated by the situation in Uganda
(detailed below) as well as Niger, in cases of violations of liberal democratic
principles, official Western agencies have routinely prioritised liberalisation over
democratic principles. Likewise, in other instances, Western intervention has
terminated autonomous democratic processes, for example in Chile, Guatemala
and Nicaragua (Slater, 2002).
Selective adherence notwithstanding, the orthodox (neo)liberal model of
democracy claims universality. As Bhikhu Parekh notes in his account of the
cultural particularity of liberal democracy, such claims have ‘aroused deep fears
in the fragile and nervous societies of the rest of the world’ (Parekh, 1992, p.
160). In seeking to constitute African (and other) social relations in its own
particular image, the democratisation project reproduces internal tensions and
antinomies within liberal thought. As such, a profound non-correspondence
exists, in Mahmood Mamdani’s (1992) terms, between ‘received’ (neo)liberal
democratic theory and ‘living’ African realities. Resistance is therefore widespread, with Western (neo)liberal democratic notions being ‘re-assessed in many
places on the continent nowadays, often more censoriously than may be heard
above the clamor of Euro-American triumphalism’ (Comaroff and Comaroff,
1997, p. 141).
As Michel Foucault argued in The Subject and Power, ‘between a relationship of
power and a strategy of struggle there is a reciprocal appeal, a perpetual linking
and a perpetual reversal’. The ensuing instability enables analysis ‘either from
inside the history of struggle or from the standpoint of the power relationships’
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as well as interaction or ‘reference’ between the two (Foucault, 1994, p. 347).
Each approach is necessary but not possible within the scope of the present
article. The article seeks to provide analysis of the articulation of informal
imperialism, inter alia through ‘democracy’ and ‘governance’ interventions, as a
necessary and prefigurative ‘mapping’ exercise (Peterson, 2003) to understanding
social transformation, as well as the social conditions of possibility of alternative
forms of relation and engagement.5 The ‘mapping’ of this project is essential in
illuminating relations of power. The current imperial order is inimical to
democracy but to ‘disrupt and redirect the particular orderings “at work” we
must first be able to see them clearly’ (Peterson, 2003, p. 173, emphasis in original).
As such, analysis of how ‘post-colonial’ imperialism is articulated is a
necessary precondition of thinking in an informed manner about resistance and
transformation.6
The ‘Emerging Global Consensus on Democracy’7
The dominant or orthodox notion of democracy, propounded by Western agencies, international organisations and local elites, qua the dominant social agents
of the ‘democratisation project’, constitutes a (neo)liberal, procedural model of
democracy;8 that is, (neo)liberally constituted democracy, or perhaps more accurately the contraction of democracy to (neo)liberalism (Parekh, 1992; Wood, 1999).
This model is pursued, with some variation, by a range of the dominant social
agents associated with the ‘democratisation project’ in Africa: bilateral agencies –
including those of the United States, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Austria,
Germany and the United Kingdom; international and regional organisations,
including the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), United Nations,
the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, European Union
and the Commonwealth; Pan-African organisations, states and civil society
groups, including the Organisation for African Unity and its successor the African
Union, the African Development Bank and the New Partnership for Africa’s
Development (NEPAD), numerous government bodies, as well as external and
indigenous ‘civil society’ organisations – such as political parties and foundations,
non-governmental development organisations, human rights organisations, policy
institutes and the media.9 These social agents, including the African elite, have an
exceptionally high profile in the ‘democracy movement’ but they do not constitute its social base.
According to the dominant or orthodox model propounded by these social
agents, democracy comprises: the periodic election of political representatives via
credible multiparty elections; constitutionalism, the rule of law and respect for a
particular conception of ‘human rights’; ‘good governance’ characterised by
minimal,‘neutral’, accountable, transparent and participatory government, with an
effective bureaucracy; and a pluralist, ‘independent’ civil society. Political community is understood exclusively in terms of the state. This conception is
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informed by putative liberal values such as accountability, transparency, legitimacy,
participation, tolerance and pluralism.
The Western liberal orthodoxy (including neoliberalism) is not confined
therefore to notions of democratic government (narrowly construed). Liberal
democracy is a system of governance underpinned by liberal conceptions and
assumptions. In particular, modern liberalism’s distinction between the ‘right’ and
the ‘good’ and apparent prioritisation of the former over the latter engenders
related propositions concerning the nature of state, civil society and the self. As
such, modern liberals contend that the state should constitute a ‘neutral’ framework ‘within which competing conceptions of the good can be equally pursued’.
Necessarily related to the notion of a neutral state is the notion of ‘civil society’,
‘characterized as a realm of freedom in which individuals engage in formally
uncoerced transactions’. Underpinning this complex of concepts is a particular
notion of the ‘self’, fundamental to liberal thought, ‘a free choosing individual
who is the best, indeed the only judge, of his interests’ ( Williams andYoung, 1994,
p. 94).
The orthodox model propounded by the ‘democratisation‘ project embodies
therefore a definite liberal conception of self and society, distinctively modern in
character and common to all variants of the liberal tradition in that it is individualist, egalitarian, meliorist and universalist (compare Gray, 1995). Its individualism is manifest in the orthodoxy’s concern to protect individual liberties,
reflected in notions of constitutionalism and the minimal state, the rule of law,
individual human rights and an ‘independent’ civil society – the arena of individual interest and self-realisation par excellence, and in the individualist premise by
which individuals consent to and therefore confer legitimacy on governments.
Rights and liberties are understood predominantly in terms of the individual,
reflecting a distinctly negative conception of liberty. The rights alluded to
constitute so-called ‘civil and political’ rights but include the fundamental ‘economic’ rights of property and contract.
The orthodox notion of democracy is also egalitarian in that it confers on all
individuals equal moral status. Thus (virtually) all adult individuals are entitled to
vote. As such, the orthodoxy conforms to the liberal conception of formal or
legalistic notions of egalitarianism in that citizens are formally equal before the
law despite their deeply unequal condition in terms of power and wealth.
Moreover, in affirming the corrigibility and improvability of all social institutions,
the orthodoxy is also meliorist. African societies and cultures are presumed to be
non-democratic. In distinct echoes of the ‘civilising mission’ (Slater, 2006),
Western (neo)liberal democratic values and institutions are to be inculcated
through the ‘democratisation’ project. IMF Deputy Managing Director Alassane
Outtara claims for example that ‘most African countries are only at the start of the
arduous process of developing a tradition of democracy’. Although it will be a
‘lengthy undertaking’, democratic institutions, he argues, ‘will become an
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accepted part of the social fabric in Africa, but we are still at the stage of building
them up’ (Outtarra, 1999, p. 67).
Finally, the orthodoxy is universalist in that it ‘affirms the moral unity of the
human species, according a secondary importance to specific historical associations and cultural forms’ (Gray, 1995, p. xii). The discourse of governance operates
in a ‘cosmopolitan idiom’, which acknowledges a measure of cultural particularity, yet it insists ‘that states accept a common set of governance values, institutions
and practices’ (Hindess, 2005, p. 1396). ‘All sustainable democracies’, it is argued,
‘share certain fundamental characteristics ... these universal elements [will be
emphasised] in implementing programs’ (USAID, 2000, emphasis added). Similarly, there are ‘certain universal standards that cannot be compromised’ (OECD/
DAC, 1995, p. 1, p. 6, emphasis added); the ‘fundamental principles of human
rights, democracy and good governance are universal’ (CIDA, 1996, emphasis
added).
While clearly embodying a definite liberal conception of self and society, the
orthodox model propounded by the ‘democratisation’ project constitutes a particular form, that is, a Weberian-Schumpeterian procedural model of liberal
democracy (Macpherson, 1977, p. 77). In seeking a balance between defending
and limiting the political rights of citizens the model is firmly entrenched in the
classic liberal democratic tradition, but it introduces a highly restrictive model,
whereby democracy is nothing more than ‘a mechanism for choosing and
authorizing governments, not a kind of society nor a set of moral ends’ (Macpherson, 1977, p. 78). Its current guise has been heavily influenced however by the
ascendancy of neoliberalism(s). Understood as a policy, an ideology and a governmentality, neoliberalism(s) fuse distinct political tendencies: those oriented
to the market and laissez-faire, as well as distinctly illiberal policies towards personal and civil liberties (Dean, 1999; Hoover and Plant, 1989; Larner, 2000).
Neoliberalism(s) have affected profound transformations within ‘advanced’
liberal-democratic regimes of government (Rose, 1996) as well as endeavours
to constitute neoliberal polities throughout the post-colonial world.
Policies and programmes of the dominant social agents of the democratisation
project are examined according to coveted transformations in the three
identifiable domains: state, ‘civil society’ and ‘self’ which, as noted above, were
fundamental to the historical transformation to capitalist modernity in NorthWestern Europe. This is not to endorse either historically or methodologically
the characterisation of African social relations in such terms, but to reflect the
language that power employs in its endeavour to construct neoliberal polities
and constitute democracy in neoliberal procedural terms.
The article provides substantive material on the ‘democratisation project’ within
Ghana and Uganda. These historical trajectories are instructive. Both the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) in Ghana and the National Resistance
Movement (NRM) in Uganda assumed power in the 1980s declaring radical
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agendas for social transformation. Both regimes assumed broadly anti-imperialist
stances, espousing considerable hostility to (neo)liberal models of democracy,
development and rights. But within two years of assuming power, faced with
highly deleterious terms of incorporation within the informal imperial order,
both the PNDC and the NRM instigated abrupt volte-face, initiating highly
orthodox International Financial Institutions (IFI)-sponsored (neo)liberal
stabilisation and adjustment programmes, effected through highly authoritarian
political frameworks. The article does not seek to provide an ethnography
of ‘democratisation’ in Ghana and Uganda, nor to examine the histories of
democratisation movements in each country. Rather it seeks to examine Western
and international interventionism through ‘democratisation’ and ‘governance’
programmes, and how these seek to penetrate and transform ‘domestic’ politicoeconomic processes.
The Constitution of the (Neo)liberal State
In seeking to constitute neoliberal polities, international intervention has arrogated, to an extent, the role of the state in the construction of the ‘economy’
– as envisaged in Adam Smith’s more ‘sociological’ observations ( Williams,
1999) and as detailed from a very different political stance in Karl Polanyi’s The
Great Transformation (2001). But as the increased interventionism in the arena of
‘governance’ and ‘democratisation’ has shown, the post-colonial state is perceived by its Western mentors to be largely ‘incapable of effecting the transformation in institutions, social structures, and habits necessary for a flourishing
market economy to emerge’ ( Williams, 1999, p. 90). Thus while much international intervention is necessarily mediated through the state, the capacities of
the state to effect such transformation are also the subject of intense reform. As
such, the construction of the neoliberal state includes interventions in constitutionalism, the rule of law, human rights, competitive electoral processes and
‘good governance’.
Constitutionalism, the Rule of Law and Human Rights
A strengthened rule of law and respect for human rights comprise one of four
strategic support objectives of the democracy and governance programme of the
US Agency for International Development (USAID, 1998; 1999; 2000; 2005a).
Similarly, the World Bank asserts that the rule of law underpins the conception of
‘good governance’ ( World Bank, 1994a). In both Ghana and Uganda, foreign
intervention is attributed unprecedented influence not only in the transition to
formal constitutional rule but also in the formulation of constitutional provisions
and enforcing transitions to multiparty political systems (compare Hauser, 1999;
Opondo, 1997; EU, 1998; BBC News Africa, 2003). Analysing the PNDC’s
volte-face, despite its rejection of liberal pluralist government throughout the
1980s, Kwame Boafo-Arthur (1998, p. 169) concludes that the government’s
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‘dependence on foreign aid made it extremely vulnerable to external pressure to
initiate political reforms’. Similarly, in Uganda, US government funding was
conditional upon the formulation of a new constitution (Kasfir et al., 1996).
Institutions enjoined to uphold neoliberal conceptions of rights have also been
sponsored. The Ghanaian Parliamentary Commission on Human Rights and
Administrative Justice, for example, receives extensive foreign aid from the US,
Danish, German and Netherlands embassies, the EU, the Westminster Foundation
and the Danish Agency for International Development to promulgate neoliberal
conceptions of human rights. And in both Uganda and Ghana wide-ranging
constitutional, legal and judicial reforms as well as law enforcement agencies have
received extensive financial and technical support (DANIDA, 1998; DFID, 1999;
DFID/Eastern Africa, 1998; World Bank, 1995a).
Elections, Parties and Political Processes
Also central to the constitution of a liberal polity is a functioning party-political
system with periodic competitive elections. According to the procedural model,
democracy is reduced to a ‘mechanism for choosing and authorizing governments’ whereby ‘two or more self-chosen sets of politicians (elites), arrayed in
political parties [compete] for the votes which will entitle them to rule until the
next election’ (Macpherson, 1977, p. 78). Since a transfer of formal state power
and the perceived legitimacy of political authority are at stake, electoral intervention constitutes a pivotal component of democracy and governance interventions. Although not a new dimension of Western foreign policy, the new electoral
interventionism is more extensive than hitherto, penetrating and transforming
indigenous political processes rather than being extraneous to them (Robinson,
1996).
The dominant agents of the democratisation project have established a veritable
‘elections industry’ comprising voter and civic education campaigns, partybuilding activities, electoral assistance and monitoring. For example, prior to
the 1992 Ghanaian elections, the US International Foundation for Electoral
Systems (IFES) and DANIDA conducted pre-election assessments to identify
the prerequisites for conducting the election. Administrative and logistical
support were provided by Canada, Denmark, France, the EU, Germany, Italy,
New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK, and two principal international observer teams officially monitored the elections (Boafo-Arthur, 1998;
Ninsin, 1998). Following the contentious outcome of the elections, Western
and international organisations concentrated on extensive electoral reforms.
‘Donor’ influence was also evident in determining the political agenda during
election campaigns. As such, the neoliberal economic reform process did not
feature in the various election campaigns in Ghana, with the opposition New
Patriotic party evading the issue of structural adjustment policies for fear of
provoking Western censure (Boafo-Arthur, 1998).
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In Uganda, Western support to electoral processes has been more circumspect,
with agencies seeking to censure the ‘no-party’ system and exact electoral
concessions while not destabilising the neoliberal economic reform process
(Hauser, 1999). Official documents suggest that the US has assumed a longerterm strategic framework to guide its endeavours in enforcing a multiparty
political system, seeking to contribute to ‘the foundations for a viable multiparty system’. Eschewing the traditional political parties as ‘ineffective’, USAID
supports new groups, i.e. ‘proto-party groups’ as civil society organisations, such
as the Ugandans for Peace and Democratic Pluralism (Kasfir et al., 1996, p.
102). Other Western agencies continued direct support to the traditional political parties: the Uganda People’s Congress, for example, received British support
(Barya, 1993a).
‘Good Governance’
Also integral to the constitution of a neoliberal state is the conception of ‘good
governance’, said to comprise a minimal,‘neutral’ and accountable state. Effected
through the World Bank and IMF-sponsored neoliberal structural adjustment
programmes, liberalisation, privatisation and public sector reform have resulted in
the reconstitution of the public and private domains. The government of
Uganda, for example, has undertaken the extensive liberalisation of markets and
prices, including the liberalisation of the foreign exchange market and reforms to
liberalise the external trade system (Ellyne, 1993; Holmgren et al., 1999). In terms
of privatisation, World Bank-sponsored divestiture programmes have sought to
reduce the direct role of the government in the Ugandan economy, with over 85
per cent of public enterprises transferred to the private sector by 1998. Recent
loans have further promoted the role of the private sector through expansion in
commercial and utility services – including water, telecommunication, electricity
and transport sectors (GOU, 1993; Okecho, 1995; World Bank, 1988; 2000).
Evident in the reconstitution of the public and private domains are the greatly
enhanced role and opportunities for the private sector.While Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) have benefited certain fractions of domestic capital,
extensive liberalisation and privatisation have also accelerated the integration of
African economies into the global political economy. The lack of domestic capital
and absence of an efficient capital market, together with the ‘open’ nature of
Uganda’s privatisation policy, have resulted in privatisation being dominated by
transnational corporations, deepening Uganda’s external dependence still further.
Over 70 per cent of the lease agreements to operate tourist and hotel services, for
example, went to foreign companies (Tukahebwa, 1998).
However, the reconstitution of public and private domains has necessarily
entailed extensive intervention in the public sector. Much of the literature on SAPs
highlights the so-called ‘rolling back’ of the state, but as Bjorn Beckman (1993, p.
30) argues, the ‘neo-liberal project conceals its own massive use of state power,
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transnational and local, for the construction of civil society in its own image’.
While SAPs have reduced the direct involvement of the state in the economy – in
accordance with the neoliberal conception of the minimal state – the role and
character of the state nevertheless remains a fundamental locus of Western
intervention. The reconstitution of the public and private domains, as Peter
Burnham (1999) has argued, is undertaken actively by state managers and is
predominantly about reorganising (rather than bypassing) states.
The World Bank, which has dominated public sector reform, characterises public
sector management in terms of public financial management, public enterprise
reform and civil service reform. In addition to the extensive privatisation and
liquidation of enterprises, World Bank public enterprise as well as public
financial/economic management projects have sought to enable the Ugandan
government to define a longer-term policy framework and enhance the management of public entities consistent with ‘the modernization of the economy’
( World Bank, 1992; 1994; 1998; 1999a; 2003a; 2005; 2006a). Civil service reform
has also been effected through Bank-funded projects according to which the
number of ministries was cut and central government civil service staffing levels
reduced by over 50 per cent (Robinson, 1998; World Bank, 1995b).
Finally, the neoliberal state is not only minimal and ‘neutral’ but also accountable.
At the macro level, accountability is said to include the financial and economic
accountability of national governments ( World Bank, 1994), effected largely
through strengthening the role of parliament as a countervailing force to the
strong executive. Thus the ODA/DFID programme provides financial support,
in-country training and study tours for parliamentarians through the Westminster
Foundation for Democracy (Robinson, 1998). Official ‘corruption’ has also
elicited considerable international censure. As Barry Hindess (2005) has
observed, the international ‘anti-corruption’ campaign is embedded within the
neoliberal project – although the extent to which the programme effectively
addresses the problem of ‘corruption’ remains open to question. In Uganda
official ‘corruption’ has featured prominently in Consultative Group meetings,
resulting in extensive anti-corruption measures, such as World Bank-initiated
reforms of revenue management, and institutional support to Uganda’s anticorruption institutions ( World Bank, 1998).
However, it is in terms of micro-level accountability and that of macro–micro
linkage that more innovative interventions have emerged since the 1990s. Microlevel accountability is said to involve enhancing the responsiveness of government
agencies to public pressures – including the creation of demand for accountability
within ‘civil society’. Directly related is the formal decentralisation of government, considered a macro–micro linkage ( World Bank, 1994a). As such, in
Uganda, the United Nations Development Programme and Capital Development
Fund (UNDP/UNCDF), the World Bank, DANIDA, DFID/ODA, the German
official development agency (GTZ), Irish AID, the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) and the Dutch, Austrian and Norwegian governments
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have all intervened in the formal decentralisation process, including the promotion of private sector involvement in infrastructure and basic services at the local
level (Donor Sub-Group on Decentralisation, 1998; UNDP, 1997; World Bank,
1999b; 2002; 2003b; 2004c).
The Creation of ‘Civil Societies’
International/Western agencies have increasingly averred that a ‘neutral’ and
effective state necessitates a corresponding liberal public sphere, or ‘civil society’.
The World Bank’s Senior Policy Adviser in the Africa Region Technical Department argues, for example, that ‘to be workable the governance of African states
needs to be systematically rebuilt from the bottom up’ with the effective empowerment of not only community organisations but also intermediary private
voluntary organisations (Landell-Mills, 1992, quoted in Williams and Young,
1994, p. 88, emphasis added).
The Bank and other agencies endorse such notions for entirely conventional
liberal reasons, in that necessarily related to the notion of a limited/minimal
‘neutral’ state is the notion of civil society ( Williams and Young, 1994). Contrary
to the invariable presumption that the individual liberties characteristic of civil
society have existed since time immemorial, ‘liberalism as a doctrine and the
forces that created liberal society carved this space of private rights, interest
and action out of a much more corporate society’ (Hall, 1986, p. 40). Current
arguments are concerned therefore with the ‘creation’ of civil society. According
to such viewpoints, the absence of civil society is ‘fatal for the state itself because
it has not been subjected to the necessary discipline provided by the forces of civil
society’. The road to the creation of a ‘proper’ state goes therefore via the
promotion of a ‘proper’ civil society (Beckman, 1993, p. 21).
This constitutes a notable shift in international intervention from the statism
of the earlier ‘post-colonial’ period which, inspired by works such as Samuel
Huntington’s Political Order in Changing Societies (1968), focused on the importance of strong state capabilities to mould societal agents and establish political
order. The national, which had been the locus of development thought and
practice since the 1950s, was thus ‘remaindered to the fostering of good “governance” ’ (Idahosa and Shenton, 2006, p. 70; see G. Harrison, 2004). By contrast,
the putative ‘ “liberation of civil society” from the suffocating grip of the state, has
become the hegemonic ideological project of our time’ (Beckman, 1993, p. 20).
Much of the discourse and programming of ‘civil society’ focuses on the not-for
profit,‘third’ sector, yet such accounts constitute a very truncated notion of ‘civil
society’. The modern conception of civil society, defined systematically in the
eighteenth century, represents a separate sphere of human relations and activity
differentiated from the state and the private sphere of the household, but more
specifically ‘a network of distinctively economic relations, the sphere of the
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market-place, the arena of production, distribution and exchange’. As such, ‘the
full conceptual differentiation of “civil society” required the emergence of an
autonomous “economy”, separated out from the unity of the “political” and the
“economic” ’ ( Wood, 1990, p. 61).
While Western and international agencies rarely refer to their interventions in
such terms, the promotion of private economic interests – through the reconstitution of the public and private domains – clearly constitutes a significant
component of engineering civil society. The imperative of private sector development underpins the ‘broad agenda’ identified in the World Bank’s World
Development Report 2005, ‘A Better Investment Climate for Everyone’. As such,
direct promotion of ‘civil society’ (broadly construed) has been undertaken
through USAID and World Bank projects intended to foster the development and
enabling environment for competitive private sectors (USAID, 2005b; 2006;
World Bank, 1994b; 1995c; 2004a; 2006c). Sector-specific programmes have also
been financed, such as the ‘Mineral Resources Project in Uganda’, designed in
accordance with the neoliberal mantra, to promote development based on private
investments ( World Bank, 2003c) and the $40 million eGhana loan, which
develops an IT-enabled services sector focused on ‘Business Process Offshoring’
such as call centres, data entry operations, claim processing, etc. ( World Bank,
2006b).
The creation of civil societies has also been effected through direct support to
‘third sector’ civil society organisations (CSOs). All USAID Africa missions with
democracy and governance objectives include a civil society component (USAID,
1999). Similarly the World Bank identifies civil society as a critical component of
its interventions. Better governance, the Bank argues, requires ‘building a pluralistic institutional structure’ and creating intermediaries between the government
and the people ( World Bank, 1989, p. 61).
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in particular are identified as a critical sub-set of intermediary voluntary organisations. As the Bank’s Pierre
Landell-Mills has elaborated, NGOs are a ‘training ground’ for the establishment of an articulate and empowered middle class, considered a necessary
precursor to stable liberal-democratic politics. Western agencies, he argues,
should be involved in empowering these groups in civil society at a national
and local level (Landell-Mills, 1992; Landell-Mills and Serageldin, 1991). Again,
the Bank and other agencies subscribe to such notions for entirely conventional
liberal reasons. Liberalism maintains a strong historical association with the
modern ‘middle class’ in that the salience of the latter ‘has increased as liberal
states have pulverised social norms and practices as part of a process of
“emancipation” and replaced these with various forms of state-engineered
social technique’ (Young, 1995).
The Bank’s promotion of NGOs/CSOs has increased dramatically since the late
1980s with over 70 per cent of all Bank-approved projects providing for CSO
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input ( World Bank, 1993; 2004b). In its subcontracting of NGOs, Bank lending
continues to be channelled to NGOs through governments. The preponderance
of such public funding belies the traditional conception of civil society as a sphere
of interactions ‘free’ of state interference. Rather, it is the relationship between the
government and the NGO community, qua civil society, that informs Bank
thinking. The Bank’s modus operandi seeks to build a relationship between the
national government and the indigenous NGO community. It is in this relationship, according to liberal thought, that participation, accountability, transparency
and legitimacy are fostered.
While it is evident that the Bank has taken a more positive collaborative attitude,
NGOs for their part retain a more ambivalent stance.‘On the surface considerable
hostility [exists] towards the World Bank and the network of Western interests,
agencies and discourses of which it is a part’ but there are considerable common
elements in the respective agendas of the Bank and NGOs:‘The radical noises of
NGOs about Western interests should not obscure their common vision of what
development means, which is rooted in Western notions of the state, “civil
society” and the self’ ( Williams and Young, 1994, p. 98). The Bank has increasingly recognised the need to further penetrate and mould post-colonial societies
– in order to embed neoliberal values and institutions – to an extent hitherto not
seen. NGOs, the ‘Trojan horses’ for neoliberalism ( Wallace, 2004) accord the
means to pursue such transformations, providing ‘a conduit of micro-interference
that complements the macro-level interference at state level’ ( Williams and
Young, 1994, p. 99). As such, Western NGOs have been incorporated into the
neoliberal model of civil society through the privatisation of public interest
(Kamat, 2004).
Foreign interventions in Africa include significant aid to construct civil society
through the funding of individual CSOs such as research and policy institutes,
women’s advocacy organisations and human rights groups, as well as more
comprehensive civil society programmes, with aid being directed towards the
constitution of new social groups committed to the ‘market economy’ (Hall and
Young, 1997). In Ghana such groups, including the Institute of Economic Affairs,
the Centre for Policy Analysis, the Private Enterprise Foundation, the Association
of Ghana Industries and the Africa Leadership Forum, mandated to enhance the
role of the private sector, constitute the core of intermediary CSOs supported by
foreign interventions. Moreover, strengthening civil society is not an isolated
adjunct but an overall goal of aid programmes. USAID, for example, has integrated the concept of civil society into each of its Ghana programme areas:
economic growth, health, education, democracy and governance (Hearn, 1998).
The latter includes the US$6 million IFES ‘Enhancing Civil Society Effectiveness
at the Local Level’ project, considered particularly innovative in that it sought to
strengthen civil society at the ‘grass roots’, increase civic advocacy and improve
the relationship between civil society and local government within the context of
Ghana’s formal decentralisation process (Snook et al., 1999).
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The World Bank has also provided increased support to the process of constructing civil societies, including direct support through its lending operations and
grants programmes – Technoserve in Ghana, for example, receives direct support
for rural finance and strengthening community-based rural institutions – as well
as the promotion of an ‘enabling environment’ through policy dialogue and other
non-lending services. In particular, the Bank has recognised the need for ‘consensus building’ in civil society on neoliberal economic policy. As such, ‘consultation’ with ‘civil society’ has increased within policy making, such as the Ghana
National Policy Framework Document (Vision 2020 Second Step: 2001–2005).
The German political party foundations also provide considerable aid to civil
society. In Ghana, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation has historically focused on
the rural, small-scale private sector through credit schemes and women’s self-help
initiatives, particularly the umbrella Association of Small Scale Industries, while
the liberal Friedrich Naumann Foundation focuses on ‘partnerships’ with five of
Ghana’s most prominent, heavily financed, urban-based CSOs. The aim of these
CSOs is ‘not simply to promote an increased role for the private sector in the
economy on a practical level, but to build consensus around the idea of it as well’
(Hearn, 1998, p. 19, emphasis in original). UNDP promotes a similarly strategic
role for civil society, with CSOs identified as target beneficiaries of the ‘Support
for Poverty Eradication’ programme in Uganda. Faithful to the neoliberal mantra,
it maintains that poverty eradication depends on ‘the extent to which economic
empowerment, through private sector development, ultimately comes to prevail’
(UNDP, 1997, p. 1, p. 12).
Aid to civil society organisations (narrowly construed) is adjudged to have made
a significant impact on constructing ‘civil society’ within Ghana and Uganda, with
most politically active national CSOs donor funded. To the extent that few, if any,
prominent national civil society actors are completely independent of foreign aid,
the situation represents a profoundly compromised autonomy (Hearn, 1999).
Rather, a substantial section of local elites, intellectuals and political activists are
entangled within the sphere of ‘imperial capture’.10
The (Neo)liberal Self and ‘Changing Mentalities’
The ‘art’ of governance ‘entails not only relations of power and authority but
issues of self and identity’ (Dean, 1999, p. 18). As the governmentality literature
has emphasised, ‘regimes of practices’ give rise to and depend upon particular
forms of knowledge (Dean, 1999; Joseph, 2006). As such, the relative taken-forgrantedness of liberal mentalities of government is imbibed within the project of
democratisation.
Liberal conceptions of a ‘free’ self or agent constitute the core of liberal philosophy. As such, the more recent focus on individuality embodies the further
‘emancipation’ of the self. The characteristics of the liberal self are claimed to be
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universal – despite the variety of historically and culturally conditioned behaviours – particularly with regard to economic life ( Williams and Young, 1994).
Reflecting the articulation of the ‘self-actualised subject’ within neoliberal rationalities of government (Dean, 1999), such conceptions have been increasingly
applied to the political and social domains. The recent turn to social capital has
furthered this project (Fine, 2001; Harriss, 2002). A narrative on the invocation of
‘community’ (Idahosa and Shenton, 2006), the construction of social capital
reintroduces and legitimises intervention in the ‘social’, but effected through the
appropriation of the social by the assumptions of neoliberal economics. Thus, as
Ben Fine (2001, p. 126) has astutely observed, defining the social in social capital
‘as the benefits derived from the individual’s idealized self’, substitutes the
individual for the social.
Ahistoric claims to universality notwithstanding, the liberal (and more recently
the neoliberal) self are products of particular historical circumstances, ‘constructs’ of Western modernity. Fundamental to the constitution of the modern
(neo)liberal self and its ‘freedom’ is the question of the market. Yet the market
freedom through which individuals can operate privately in civil society ‘rests
upon a much more comprehensive moral regulation of social relations and
identities, through a plethora of agencies for the re-formation of character’ (Sayer,
1991, p. 73). Axiomatic within this re-formation is the notion of the autonomous,
reflexive, calculative and rational self, or Homo Oeconomicus ( Williams, 1999).
While the dominant agents of the democratisation project have relatively inchoate programmes designed explicitly to ‘construct’ the (neo)liberal self, it is evident
that certain programmes engage in the re-formation of the kind of agent or self
necessary for civil society to function. The World Bank in particular has garnered
from its own extensive programmatic experience that economic development
requires profound transformations in ‘institutions and habits, attitudes and mores’.
The ‘changed mentalities’ (Landell-Mills and Serageldin, 1991, p. 318) are to be
devoid of affective or communal ties: a (neo)liberal capitalist model, including its
legal, bureaucratic and market institutions, is premised upon such conceptions, i.e.
the individual who has no ‘public’ ties other than contractual ones ‘freely’ entered
into through the marketplace. Despite the rhetoric of ‘building upon the indigenous’ it is this image which dominates World Bank discourse ( Williams, 1999;
Williams and Young, 1994).
The means through which mentalities are to be re-formed and ‘modern’ patterns
of behaviour inculcated are multifarious. At a ‘macro level’ the most obvious and
pervasive examples of institutional reform intended to secure capitalist ‘economies’ are the IFI-sponsored structural and sectoral adjustment programmes.
Underpinned by the same rationale, these programmes have sought to create
‘autonomous’ economic actors, less reliant on the state and increasingly subject to
the compulsions of the market ( Williams, 1999). The removal of agricultural
input subsidies and parastatal marketing boards for cocoa farming in Ghana and
coffee production in Uganda offer pertinent sectoral examples here.
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In addition to these reforms, Western/international agencies have engaged in
‘micro-level’ institutional reforms designed to establish markets in labour, money
and land. The ODA/DFID portfolio in Uganda, for example, included technical
and financial aid to the highly controversial land reform process, which sought to
enhance the functioning of a land market, particularly in those areas where land
remained predominantly community governed, and to develop a more effective
agrarian tenure system. In granting certificates of occupancy, the millions of
squatters and those with quasi-legal rights to land they occupied were converted
to autonomous ‘farmer-entrepreneurs’ exposed to the logic of the market (Barya,
1992; DFID, 1999; Obbo-Onyango, 1998).
International and Western agencies, or at least some within them, have increasingly recognised, however, that persons are not ‘naturally’ economically rational
and that attributes such as calculation and reflexivity need to be inculcated
through the construction of ‘the particular subjectivity necessary for the market
economy to function’ (Williams, 1999, p. 95; Williams and Young, 1994). This
impulse is reflected in the introduction of ‘commercial practices’, including
calculation and reflexivity, in the World Bank-funded development projects such
as the ‘Community Water and Sanitation Project’ and ‘Literacy and Functional
Skills Project’ in Ghana ( Williams, 1999; World Bank, 1999c), together with more
recent loans to support Rural Enterprise Development and Learning Centres
which impart training in ‘technical and business management’ ( World Bank,
2004c). These projects, and the extensive civic educational campaigns conducted
by the National Commission for Civic Education in Ghana, have focused on
diverse issues such as advocacy of the nuclear family, the provision of micro credit
and income-generating projects. The Bank’s project literature notes quite explicitly that what is required are ‘changes in individual and family behaviour’ through
the introduction of new knowledge and attitudes, and the ‘discouragement of
negative and dangerous social customs’. Moreover, despite their vitriolic criticism
of structural adjustment programmes, NGOs such as Oxfam, Action Aid and
Intermediate Technology have similarly attempted to create the very economic
rationality which constitutes a core justification of SAPs, through micro credit
and small business projects ( Williams, 1999, pp. 93–4).
Finally, the theme of ‘changing mentalities’ also resonates throughout extensive
programmes that seek to inculcate (neo)liberal conceptions of ‘democracy’ and
‘rights’. Konrad Adenauer Foundation for example has sponsored public seminars
designed to educate the public on human rights, including the tensions between
‘customary practices’ and liberal conceptions of ‘human rights’ (Daannaa, 1997).
Various Western agencies support public education campaigns to increase participation and enhance the legitimacy of the electoral process. IFES, for example,
produced extensive campaign literature, in both English and Ghanaian languages,
that sought to promote and explain elections. Similarly, the Friedrich Ebert
Foundation and Electoral Commission produced a widely screened video-drama
used to tell the message of free and fair elections (Friedrich Ebert Foundation,1996).
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In Uganda, UNDP facilitates extensive civic education campaigns with women’s
organisations identified as priority targets for inculcating values and patterns
of behaviour (UNDP, 1997). Numerous CSOs are also involved in extensive
civic education programmes. The Foundation for Human Rights Initiative,
for example, seeks to promulgate ‘internationally recognised’, i.e. Western
(neo)liberal, conceptions of ‘rights’ in Uganda, through paralegal training, the
dissemination of publications and the enactment of radio and television
drama programmes. It receives sponsorship from a host of Western agencies,
including the National Endowment for Democracy, the Ford Foundation, the
British High Commission, the British Council, the UK National Lottery
Charities Board, the Swedish NGO Foundation for Human Rights and SIDA
(FHRI, 2000).
Conclusion
The dominant social agents of the ‘democratisation’ project are clearly intent on
constituting a (neo)liberal model of state, society and self in the informal imperial
order. The impact and effectiveness of these extensive programmes are beyond
the scope of the present article, in terms of both the impact on the imperialised
as well as on the imperialisers – as critics such as Frantz Fanon (1967; 1990),
Hannah Arendt (1976), Albert Memmi (1990) and Jean-Paul Sartre (2001) have
painstakingly argued. It should be noted, however, that in so far as the social world
is overdetermined and fluid, the historical trajectories which ensue from such
social engineering may not be those intended. As the voluminous postcolonial
literature, including that on ‘hybridity’, has highlighted, the ‘West’ has been
historically less able to remould subjectivities along (neo)liberal lines than might
be acknowledged. These remain crucial areas of inquiry.
Nevertheless, the article has sought to interrogate the much neglected question of
what underpins the Great Power-defined agendas of ‘democratisation’ and ‘governance’, and in so doing, to de-naturalise the internationalisation of (neo)liberal
‘democracy’. The analysis does not provide a blueprint but rather focuses on ‘the
prior and indispensable task of improving our analyses of “what is going on” and
“what it means” ’ (Peterson, 2003, p. 173), cognisant that it is from within the
contradictions internal to this project that anti-imperial and pro-democratic
alternatives will continue to emerge.
Far from an alternative to imperialism, the article has sought to elaborate that
‘democratisation’ involves the imposition of a Western (neo)liberal procedural
form of democracy on imperialised peoples. This is not to endorse the postmodern (or post-developmental) destructive critique, which eschews all forms of
‘Western’ engagement or values. Rather, it is to argue that the current Great
Power-defined agenda of ‘democratisation’ is internal to current forms of imperialism. As such, ‘democracy promotion’ is profoundly ideological in that it
operates to mystify, naturalise and legitimate relations of domination (Cox, 2005;
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Marks, 2000; Slater, 2006). It cannot be ‘by extending these forms of neo-liberal,
or for that matter social-democratic representative democracy further into postcolonial societies that imperialism will be challenged, for they are imposed forms
of democracy and they will be spread by the mechanisms of informal imperialism’
(Tully, 2008). The character of the informal imperial order is such that selfdetermination does not mean autonomy. Rather it means the ‘freedom’ to
embrace the rules, norms and principles of the emerging (neo)liberal global order.
(Accepted: 6 June 2007)
About the Author
Alison J. Ayers, Department of Political Science, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6,
Canada; email: [email protected]
Notes
Thanks are due to Siba N. Grovogui, Branwen Gruffydd Jones, Sandra Halperin, Mustapha Kamal Pasha, Alfredo
Saad-Filho, Julian Saurin, Jan Selby, James Tully and the anonymous reviewers for insightful comments and suggestions
on earlier versions of this work.
1 ‘Imperialism’ is obviously a contested concept. A preliminary formulation is offered here. For an introduction to
these debates see the useful collection of extracts by both critics and supporters of imperialism, in Fieldhouse (1967).
Similarly, no consensus over the meaning of the term subaltern exists. A working definition may be those
individuals, groups or classes that have been systemically subordinated, oppressed or marginalised within social
power relations.
2 Exceptions do of course exist, notably within area studies.Within the Africana literature see, for example, Anghie
(2006); Barya (1993b); Gathii (1999; 2000); Mamdani (1992; 1996); Young (1993; 2000; 2002); Ake (1993; 1996);
Shivji (1989). Much debate within international relations and political theory has been inattentive to such literature
(Eyoh, 1998).
3 For pertinent discussions on the highly vexed genre of postcoloniality, see Ahmad (1995); Saurin (2006); Appiah
(1991).
4 For detailed accounts of the differing modalities of imperialism, see Ahmad (2004); Harvey (2003); Kiely (2007);
Magdoff (2003); Panitch and Gindin (2004); Tully (2006; 2008); Wood (2005).
5 The question of alternatives or ‘what is to be done?’ is obviously crucial. Its omission from this piece is defended
in terms of Peterson’s account of the nature and value of critique (Peterson, 2003, pp. 16–7) and by arguments on
dialectical modes of reasoning/inquiry (Collier, 1981; 1990).
6 Questions of resistance and struggle are examined within the wider research project from which this work
emanates; see Ayers (forthcoming). For key literature on resistance see, for example, Amoore (2005); Bond (2005);
Eschle and Maiguashca (2005); Festenstein (2007); Gill (2003); Gills (2002); Rupert (2003).
7 United Nations (1996, pp. 5–6, p. 17).
8 Detailed analysis of the discourse and policies of key social agents of the democratisation project are provided in
Ayers (forthcoming).
9 The agencies selected and examined are based on Barkan’s (1994) overview of the principal organisations
conducting interventions on ‘democracy’ and ‘democratisation’. Many of these are obviously large, complex
institutions, and to suggest that each organisation has a ‘position’ is to oversimplify somewhat. Within each
organisation there are obviously divergent views. For the purposes of this analysis the ‘official’ position, as
represented in official publications, websites and speeches, is interrogated.
10 The term ‘imperial capture’ is modified from that of ‘donor capture’ as used by Ngunyi to refer to similar processes
in Kenya (cited in Hearn, 1998).
References
Ahmad, A. (1995a) ‘The Politics of Literary Postcoloniality’, Race and Class, 36 (3), 1–20.
© 2008 The Author. Journal compilation © 2008 Political Studies Association
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