Tom Young

Governance, the World Bank and Liberal Theory

We examine the recent debates about governance, focusing particularly on the World Bank and identify certain factors which have in recent years moved the Banks thinking beyond narrowly economic notions of development. Our account is tentative and we suggest further avenues of research. We try to connect the Banks thinking systematically with key features of liberal discourse and suggest that this can do much to illuminate practice. We illustrate this with a discussion of the growing relationship between the Bank and NGOs, to contribute to forms of analysis which go beyond the ideas vs. interests polarities that still inform so much of contemporary social and political theory. There ought not to be two histories, one of political and moral action and one of political and moral theorizing, because there were not two pasts, one populated only by actions, the other only by theories. Every action is the bearer and expression of more or less theory-laden beliefs and concepts; every piece of theorizing and every expression of belief is a political and moral action. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, p.61

Civil Society and the Liberal Project in Ghana and Sierra Leone

Abstract This article examines the policies and practices of Western states and development agencies in their support of civil society in two cases: Ghana and Sierra Leone. While rather different, these cases illustrate well the typical forms of interventions that target civil society. The article argues that donor discourse about the role of civil society in the construction of good governance replicates the arguments typically found in liberal theory, and that the donor practice that follows from this should be seen as a specifically liberal project of social transformation.

SOUTH AFRICA: HOW MANY MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT?

South Africa, as all those with even a cursory acquaintance with it know, is an extraordinary place. For the Western mind in the second half of the twentieth century, it represents a very peculiar condensation of fears, hopes and symbols, of gestures that must be made and things that cannot be said. Millions of words have been penned and millions more will doubtless follow. The books under consideration here represent the concerted efforts of a substantial number of observers to come to grips with the contemporary realities of the country. They are to some extent overlapping, sharing common authors and frequently referring to each other. Two (those edited by Johnson and Brewer) cover the whole range of issues while Davies et al. cover the whole domestic scene. Two others (Murray and Cobbett and Cohen) are entirely devoted to opposition movements. Several of these volumes pay some attention to regional and international matters and two make these matters their principal concern. Overall, then, these contributions may be grouped under three broad headings: the state, the political opposition and the regional and international context in which South Africa exists. Almost all these texts devote some attention to the state either as their principal concern (Spence, Uys and Brewer in Johnson; Giliomee and Mitchell/Russell in Brewer; substantial sections of Davies et al.) or as