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Governance, the State and the Politics of Development

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  • Adrian Leftwich

Abstract

Current western aid and development policy aims to promote ‘good governance’ in the third world. Few would deny that competent, open and fair administration is both a worthy aim and a self‐evident requirement of development. However, the current orthodoxy clearly illustrates the technicist fallacy, which is implicit in the following quotation from Pope, that the effective administration or ‘management’ of development is essentially a technical or practical matter. This article argues that development is fundamentally a political matter and that it is illusory to conceive of good governance as independent of the forms of politics and type of state which alone can generate, sustain and protect it. For Forms of Government, let fools contest; Whate'er is best administered, is best. (Pope, 1734: Bk 3, lines 303‐4).

Suggested Citation

  • Adrian Leftwich, 1994. "Governance, the State and the Politics of Development," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 25(2), pages 363-386, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:devchg:v:25:y:1994:i:2:p:363-386
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7660.1994.tb00519.x
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    Cited by:

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    5. Sam Hickey, 2005. "Capturing the political? The role of political analysis in the multi-disciplining of development studies," Economics Series Working Papers GPRG-WPS-006, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    6. Matthew Dornan, 2016. "The Political Economy of Road Management Reform: Papua New Guinea's National Road Fund," Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 3(3), pages 443-457, September.
    7. Ioannis Chorianopoulos, 2002. "Urban Restructuring and Governance: North-South Differences in Europe and the EU URBAN Initiative," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 39(4), pages 705-726, April.
    8. Sam Hickey & Abdul-Gafaru Abdulai & Angelo Izama & Giles Mohan, 2015. "The politics of governing oil effectively: A comparative study of two new oil-rich states in Africa," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-054-15, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    9. Beghin, John C. & Fafchamps, M., 1995. "Constitution, Institutions, and the Political Economy of Farm Policies. What Empirical Content?," Staff General Research Papers Archive 1620, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    10. S N Sangita, 2008. "State, Society and Inclusive Governance: Community Forests in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Orissa," Working Papers 200, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore.
    11. Huff, W. G. & Dewit, G. & Oughton, C., 2001. "Credibility and Reputation Building in the Developmental State: A Model with East Asian Applications," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 711-724, April.
    12. Haqu, Adnan ul, 2012. "Theoretical Perspective of Local Government - Literature Review," MPRA Paper 45868, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 06 Apr 2013.
    13. Alan Thomas, 2000. "Development as practice in a liberal capitalist world," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(6), pages 773-787.
    14. Jonathan R. Strand & Kenneth J. Retzl, 2016. "Did Recent Voice Reforms Improve Good Governance within the World Bank?," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 47(3), pages 415-445, May.
    15. Jairo, Acuna-Alfaro & Nguyen, Cuong & Tran, Anh & Phung, Tung, 2014. "The Urban-Rural Gap in Governance: Evidence from Vietnam," MPRA Paper 64705, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    16. Benjamin Chemouni, 2019. "The rise of the economic technocracy in Rwanda - A case of a bureaucratic pocket of effectiveness or state-building prioritisation?," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-120-19, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    17. Goyal Yugank, 2017. "Informal Institutions in the Regulatory State: The Case of Bureaucracy in India," The Law and Development Review, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 147-177, June.
    18. Hermann Sautter, 2005. "Towards a strategy for pro-poor growth in South-Eastern Europe," Ibero America Institute for Econ. Research (IAI) Discussion Papers 114, Ibero-America Institute for Economic Research.
    19. Alan Thomas, 2003. "NGOs' role in limiting national sovereignty over environmental resources of global significance: the 1990 campaign against the Southern Okavango Integrated Water Development Project," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(2), pages 215-229.
    20. German, L. & Mansoor, Hussein & Alemu, Getachew & Mazengia, Waga & Amede, T. & Stroud, A., 2007. "Participatory integrated watershed management: Evolution of concepts and methods in an ecoregional program of the eastern African highlands," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 189-204, May.
    21. Gupte, Jaideep & Longhurst, Richard, 2019. "How do the state’s organisational capacities at the micro- and macro-levels influence agriculture-nutrition linkages in fragile contexts?," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 74-83.
    22. Manuel Couret Branco, 2006. "The Political Economy of Democratic Governance and Economic Development," Economics Working Papers 12_2006, University of Évora, Department of Economics (Portugal).
    23. Arjan de Haan & Ward Warmerdam, 2012. "The politics of aid revisited: a review of evidence on state capacity and elite commitment," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-007-12, GDI, The University of Manchester.

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