*Topicality/Definitions Democracy Promotion Includes Military Intervention
Link: Anti-Corruption Efforts Hegemonic
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Link: Anti-Corruption Efforts HegemonicEXTERNALLY DRIVEN ANTI-CORRUPTION CAMPAIGNS ARE HEGEMONIC AND LACK LEGITIMACY WITH DEVELOPING COUNTRIES Mlada Bukovansky, Professor of Government, Smith College, 2002, ‘Corruption is bad: normative dimensions of the anti-corruption movement’, Australian National University Working Paper, 2002/5, p. 21-2 From the perspective of this paper, a further and crucial problem with institutionalist aspects of the anti-corruption regime is the inadequate attention to the fact that this regime attempts to unreflectively internationalize moral codes without inviting broader, inclusive public discourse on the nature and applicability of this normative baggage to diverse societies. This argument parallels the arguments of critics of attempts to apply the lessons of European democratization outside of Europe, and even inside Eastern Europe itself. A corollary of this is that the anti-corruption movement may take on an externally-imposed, hegemonic character which will ultimately undermine its legitimacy in the very areas where changes are most desired by its proponents. The dominance of the economic and instituitonalist rationales and concerns of the business community may limit the degree to which anti-corruption measures gain broader and deeper legitimacy, especially amongst the national and local populations which Transparency International notes are so important in actually bringing about institutional change. Legitimacy is an especially important component of anti-corruption campaigns, because without publicity and public support it is highly unlikely that corrupt practices can be curbed. Thus, if the anti-corruption regime becomes popularly associated with the interests of multinational corporations and wealthy OECD countries, the current symbiotic relationship between the business side and the more idealistic side (evoked by NGOS) of the anticorruption movement might begin to show strains. Voices are already being raised to this effect.
John Gledhill, Anthropology Professor, University of Manchester, 2004, Between Morality and the Law: corruption, anthropology, and comparative society, ed. I. Pardo, p. 155 In this chapter, I seek to deconstruct two basic approaches to corruption in Latin America. One is the view enshrined in the global anti-corruption campaign sponsored by multilateral agencies such as the World Bank, that corruption is a pathology of “underdevelopment” that can and should be tackled by the “international community” assisting local efforts to strengthen “civil society.” The other is that the sources of corruption are embedded in Latin American culture and history and can only be eliminated by embracing the opportunities offered by economic globalization and neoliberal reform to effect root and branch changes in the region’s institutions and social patterns. I do not deny that Latin America’s history has a significant bearing on the way its legal and political institutions function today, but I reject the possibility of understanding Latin America or any other region of the South in a vacuum. More seriously, following writers such as Gupta (1994) and Chabal and Daloz (1999), I argue the opposition in dominant Northern discourses between “the state” and “civil society” (as a potential source of reform) is at best Eurocentric, and in fact theoretically incoherent in a more fundamental way. This conceptual framework has led many analysts either to ignore significant past efforts to reform governance in Latin America, or to misconstrue the reasons for their limited success. At the same time, a focus on the need to reform ‘others’ promotes an uncritical view of both the consequences of Northern interventions and the achievements of Northern democracies themselves.
Rita Abrahamsen, (lecturer on African and Postcolonial Politics at the University of Wales, PhD. In Development) 2000 Disciplining Democracy: Development Discourse and Good Governance in Africa, Pg. 44b – 45a The good governance agenda can thus be regarded as a discursive transformation that, while claiming to liberate the poor, enables the West to continue its undisputed hegemony on the African continent under the changed conditions of the new world order. It reproduces the hierarchies of conventional development discourse, whereby the third world is still to be reformed and delivered from its current underdeveloped stage by the first world. Through such representational practices the rich, industrialized countries retain the moral high ground, the right to administer development and democracy to the South. The implication is of course that these countries themselves are already democratic, and their own domestic political structures as well as the practices of international institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF are shielded from the scrutiny to which African countries are subjected. The first world becomes the symbol of democracy, and the third world is to be made more like the first through the application of the good governance agenda. By placing the good governance discourse in the wider context of the changing global balance of power we can see how it is informed by and serves to sustain and reproduce specific forms of power and policies. Its is, in other words, not simply a humanitarian effort concerned to promote development, growth and democracy, but rather a development discourse intrinsically linked to larger discursive practices through which global power and domination are exercised The good governance agenda is not an expression of pure altruism – discourse enables the West to maintain its hegemony over the third world. Rita Abrahamsen, (lecturer on African and Postcolonial Politics at the University of Wales, PhD. In Development) 2000 Disciplining Democracy: Development Discourse and Good Governance in Africa, Pg. 43d-44a While it is true that the promotion of democracy has always been part of Western foreign policy rhetoric and that the end of the Cold War allowed this ideal to be pursued more consistently, the good governance agenda is not an expression of pure altruism or idealism. As a discursive transformation we have seen how it is historically contingent, and how it also enables the West to maintain its hegemony over the third world, perhaps with even fewer resources and less resistance than in the past. The emergence of both the good governance agenda and pro-democracy movements in the South at about the same time makes it tempting to regard the two as part of a single, undifferentiated historical and political phenomenon. Certainly, the existence of domestic protest facilitated the representation of the good governance agenda as a ‘moral imperative’, a democratic effort on behalf of the oppressed peoples of the world. But the relationship between the good governance agenda and pro-democracy movements is much more complicated than such a representation suggests. Although the large-scale popular demonstrations against authoritarian regimes in the South share some of the good governance agenda’s conditions of possibility and some of its goals, the two must be kept analytically distinct. Not only are their aims and motivations different, their historical simultaneity is also more apparent than real. While issues of governance and political conditionality are relatively new and can be dated quite precisely to early 1990, there is no such sudden mass conversion to the democratic ideal on behalf of African people. Rather, perennial domestic demands for change could be realized only once external support for African dictators was withdrawn – that is, after the end other Cold War. At the same time, the Left had been pacified in most countries or could no longer rely on financial support from a powerful Communist bloc. In this new world order, the promotion of democracy no longer represented a fundamental threat to the established order. Instead democracy became a powerful tool that could be used both to appease African demands for change and to satisfy Western domestic constituents concerned with human rights in developing countries. In this context, it is perhaps pertinent to mention that in all democratizing African countries moderate political forces committed to liberal market reforms have emerged as the victors in the process. 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