A Global Political Economy of Democratisation: Beyond the Internal-External Divide by Alison J. Ayers

Author:Alison J. Ayers [Ayers, Alison J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781351710374
Google: yOFLDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-02-13T09:38:07+00:00

5 Conclusion

Interrogation of the democratisation project in Ghana and Uganda reveals that ‘democracy’ interventions accord with the particular model of neoliberally-constituted procedural democracy that has come to constitute the orthodox notion of democracy, informing and propagated by the democratisation project. This endeavour promotes transformations in the three key domains (as detailed in Chapter 3): a (neo)liberal limited, ‘neutral’ state, ‘civil society’ and ‘self’ that underpins the orthodox notion of neoliberal democracy and governance. As such, the dominant political agents of the democratisation project are intent on reconstituting social relations in Africa overwhelmingly in neoliberalism’s own particular image and ‘manufacturing consent’ around this orthodox notion, thereby foreclosing attempts to understand or constitute democracy in any other terms.

This chapter has been concerned with the modes of intervention deployed by Western and international agencies seeking to constitute a neoliberal procedural notion of DG and how these interdigitate with domestic politico-economic forces. As the analysis has shown, adherence to a rigid internal-external dichotomy fails to capture the complex contours and dynamics of domestic-international relations. Rather, external agency is insinuated within the very sinews of these states:

This goes beyond the traditional debates … concerning external influences on policy making, agenda setting and policy outcomes. Rather, the focus is also on how “habits and conduct have deepened” and the way in which “the neoliberal repertoire has become more embedded in social practice.”191

It entails an interpellative process shaping the very subjectivities of domestic elites both within the state apparatus and within ‘civil society’ such that the neoliberal agenda has been internalised: “This re-constitution of elites’ subjectivities involves a shift away from the concept of the state as provider to one of enabler in a new pro-business, pro-competitive environment that emphasises open borders in terms of trade and capital.”192 It entails a historically embedded, mutual but profoundly unequal assimilation of donor/creditor and state power and ideas within the context of neoliberal reform – underpinned by a ‘permanent crisis’ of indebtedness and aid dependence structured by Africa’s terms of (mal-)integration within the GPE (explored further in Part III).193

However, such analysis is only part of an understanding of this political project. As 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.”194 The preceding analysis has examined the democratisation project predominantly from the standpoint of the power relationships, but the impact and effectiveness of these extensive programmes, as well as strategies of struggle, remain open and under-researched questions. Insofar as the social world is over-determined and fluid, the historical trajectories that ensue from such social engineering may well not be those intended. Indeed, as the voluminous postcolonial literature, including that on hybridity and liminality, has highlighted, the ‘West’ has been historically less able to remould subjectivities along (neo)liberal lines than might be acknowledged.195 Such questions are explored in the next chapter, ‘Encountering the Orthodoxy,’ as well as in Part III.

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