*Topicality/Definitions Democracy Promotion Includes Military Intervention

AT: Conditionality is Coercive

Peter Larmour, Australian National University, 2002, Public Administration and Development, Vol. 22, p. 252

Finally, as Michel Foucault has argued, power is everywhere, unavoidable, and everywhere generates resistance. He saw Westem thinking preoccupied with the image of the sovereign, from whom power was thought to devolve (Foucault, 1980). As a result, Westem explorers and traders in the Pacific were often baffled by the absence of centralized authority, and often set about creating petty kingdoms from local materials. Instead Foucault noticed the emergence in the West of new 'disciplinary' forms of power, less centralized around 'the govemment', less easy to avoid, and relying on people to act responsibly and discipline themselves. They operated one step back, through the 'conduct of conduct' (Hindess, 1996). Foucault saw these forms of power as something productive, rather than inhibiting. They enhanced the capacities of those they operated upon, not necessarily at the expense of others. They were tied up with knowledge and expertise. In this way, power in the development business is often linked to professional knowledge and expertise, expressed in sets of data, reports and publications, and applied through training and capacity building. The World Bank is trying to reinvent itself as a 'Knowledge Bank' (Stone, 2000). Foucault also noticed that the exercise of power assumes the prior existence of freedom, and never acts without some resistance, slippage and reversal. If so, we should be worrying less about the exercise of power in structural adjustment or public sector reform. Conditionality is not exceptional, and its coerciveness no greater than apparently kinder and gentler forms of aid, 'ownership' 'evaluation' and 'policy dialogue'. Each of them also arouses resistance.

Conditionality Ethically Justified

Mick Moore & Mark Robinson, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, 1994, Ethics and International Affairs, Vol. 8, Issue 1, p. 142

The result, it is said, is the creation, especially in Africa, of a large number of “quasi-states” that do not even exercise positive sovereignty and thus do not have the capacity to promote development or use development aid effectively. This argument is contentious and unlikely to be generally accepted. There is, however, a second, more direct argument that appears to refute more effectively the claim that political conditionality necessarily constitutes unwarranted interference in the internal affairs of aid recipients. In this world of formally sovereign national states, development aid is not a moral or legal entitlement. If it were so, it is questionable whether the governments of poor nations would be the legitimate recipients. Since aid is a donation, from government to government, intended to improve the conditions of poor people in recipient countries, the donor governments have a moral obligation to do their best to ensure that their money goes to governments likely to use it for the stated purpose. Provided donor governments act in good faith, they are entitled, if not obliged, to deny aid to regimes that they judge to be developmentally ineffective.

Alternatives Fail: Persuasion

Eric Neumayer, London School of Economics, 2003, The Pattern of Aid Giving: the impact of good governance on development assistance, p. 12

Alternatives Fail: Difficult to Implement

DIFFICULT TO IMPLEMENT ALTERNATIVES TO CONDITIONALITY

Raul Hopkins, et al., Economics Lecturer, Queen Mary College, London, 2000, The World Bank: Structure and Policies, eds. C. Gilbert & D. Vines, p. 292

Both the conditionality debate, and table 11.1 that attempts to outline some of the trade-offs involved, oversimplify the practical decisions which the Bank will face in attempting to move towards a policy-level conception of conditionality. This oversimplification is reminiscent of Sellars and Yates’ famous pastiche of English history, 1066 and All That, in which every monarch was either a “good king” or a “bad king.” Most developing country governments will defy this easy classification.

*Anti-Corruption Programs Effective/Good*

Anti-Corruption Efforts Effective: General

EXTERNAL SUPPORT VITAL TO CONTROL CORRUPTION

Larry Diamond, Sr. Fellow Hoover Institution, 2002, Winning the New Cold War on Terrorism: The Democratic-Governance Imperative, Institute for Global Democracy, Policy Paper No. 1, [http://www.911investigations.net/IMG/pdf/doc-267.pdf], p. 12-3

Predatory societies are caught in vicious cycles of corruption, exploitation, lawlessness, cynicism and duplicity. Why would elites who benefit from these conditions put in place institutions with the autonomy and resources to change them? Truly predatory elites will fight serious change. But in most of these societies, particularly the ones that are at least formally democratic, there are surely some elites (especially younger ones) in the party system and the state sector who favor better governance. And there is growing sentiment for serious governance reforms in the independent mass media and civil society, as well as in that portion of the business community that is more oriented outward to participation in the global economy than upward to seeking favors from the predatory state. The vibrancy of civil-society actors in countries such as Nigeria and Indonesia shows that these societies are far from purely predatory, and that constituencies for good governance do exist.

The problem is that these constituencies are weak in relation to those who control the state and the political and social system. The only way that this power imbalance can be altered is by more decisive action from the international community. Financial and technical assistance to civil-society advocates for good governance is important, and is helping in some cases to refine and strengthen social demands for reform. But the most urgent initiative is to alter the incentives confronting leaders of predatory states. For too long, they have had a free ride. They and their cronies plunder their societies, and the international community facilitates this plunder with aid and lending. They pretend to be developing, and we pretend to be assisting them. In recent months, many well-intentioned voices have called for a "jubilee" initiative to write off unconditionally the debts of the poorest countries. Most of these countries are poor not because they are indebted or incapable of developing, but because they have more or less predatory societies with rotten governance. Unless governance is changed, and with it social structures and norms, these countries will remain poor, no matter how much aid and debt relief the West bestows on them.

One potentially powerful lever of change for these predatory societies would be radically changed expectations on the part of the international donor community. We need a new international bargain: debt relief for democracy, and development assistance in exchange for good governance. No country should be relieved of its official international debts if it does not have in place a credible, serious plan to control political corruption. This must include not only appropriate institutions, but also institutional leaders that independent civil-society actors regard as serious. Each country can and should design its own institutions. But some kind of independent body to control corruption is needed, as is an independent judiciary, a free press and (eventually, if not immediately) regular, free and fair elections.

No country that does not meet basic conditions of public accountability and good governance should be relieved of its debts to the United States, to the other donor democracies, or to international institutions like the World Bank. And no state that refuses to institute such conditions should receive official (state-to-state) development assistance. Instead, those countries might receive emergency humanitarian aid, and their civil-society organizations should be generously supported where they demonstrate serious purpose and capacity. But truly predatory states should be cut off from the international flows of finance that sustain them.

CAN TARGET AID TO IMPROVE GOVERNANCE AND REDUCE CORRUPTION

Michael Johnston, Political Science Professor Colgate University, 1993, Corruption and Reform, 7:189-204, p. 189

This paper offers an exploration of what democratization itself might mean for anti-corruption efforts. It identifies familiar reform approaches or anti-corruption tactics which can be implemented at the micro level, for example, those dealing with administrative procedure or personnel policy. It also suggests it is useful to examine the relationship between democratization and corruption at the “macro” level, and that by fostering more balanced relationships between public and private interests, state and civil society, it may be possible to target aid and technical assistance in ways that can improve both politics and “good governance.”

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