Governance And The Postcolony

Civil society, NGOs, governments, and multilateral institutions all repeatedly call for improved or ‘good’ governance – yet they seem to speak past one another. Governance is in danger of losing all meaning precisely because it means many things to different people in varied locations This is especially true in sub-Saharan Africa. Here, the postcolony takes many forms, reflecting the imperial project with painful accuracy. Offering a set of multidisciplinary analyses of governance in different sectors (crisis management, water, food security, universities), in different locales across sub-Saharan Africa, and from different theoretical approaches (network to adversarial network governance); this volume makes a useful addition to the growing debates on ‘how to govern’. It steers away from offering a ‘correct’ definition of governance, or from promoting a particular position on postcoloniality. It gives no neat conclusion, but invites readers to draw their own conclusions based on these differing approaches to and analyses of governance in the postcolony. As a robust, critical assessment of power and accountability in the sub-Saharan context, Governance and the Postcolony: Views from Africa brings together topical case studies that will be a valuable resource for those working in the field of African international relations, public policy, public management and administration.

Are postcolonies haunted more by criminal violence than other nation-states? The usual answer is yes. In Law and Disorder in the Postcolony, Jean and John Comaroff and a group of respected theorists show that the question is misplaced: that the predicament of postcolonies arises from their place in a world order dominated by new modes of governance, new sorts of empires, new species of wealth—an order that criminalizes poverty and race, entraps the “south” in relations of corruption, and displaces politics into the realms of the market, criminal economies, and the courts. As these essays make plain, however, there is another side to postcoloniality: while postcolonies live in states of endemic disorder, many of them fetishize the law, its ways and itsmeans. How is the coincidence of disorder with a fixation on legalities to be explained? Law and Disorder in the Postcolony addresses this question, entering into critical dialogue with such theorists as Benjamin, Agamben, and Bayart. In the process, it also demonstrates how postcolonies have become crucial sites for the production of contemporary theory, not least because they are harbingers of a global future under construction.

The manifestation of the colonial nation-state as a legal-bureaucratic-police structure – an exploitation tool – undermined customary modes of governance in colonies. When post-World War II independence of colonies transferred ownership of the state structure to the colonized elite, electoral and civil society politics battled for capture of this post-colonial state. Meanwhile, the state was also forced to build its legitimacy in the face of customary governance practices seeking rehabilitation and decolonization in the midst of civil wars and strife. This "state-building social movement" was further complicated with the global spread of neoliberalism and neocolonialism, and herein lies the significant difference between the post-colonial nation-state and the Western nation-states. This book fills the gap in literature and argues that it is necessary to foreground discussions of the nature of the post-colonial nation-state in examining resistance and provides a window into the dynamics of the post-colonial state and its implication in everyday organizing and resistance.

This collection provides an analytical approach that combines postcolonial thought and governmentality to understand power, identity, inequality and insecurity.

Two hypothesis form the basis of this study. First, that development in African countries follows many models, on many time-scales; and secondly that private indirect government is taking the place of the state in controlling individual conduct. The author concludes that a new form of the organisation of power is emerging based on the control of the means of coercion - in effect, privatisation of public violence.

This book uses a postcolonial lens to question development’s dominant cultural representations and institutional practices, investigating the possibilities for a transformatory postcolonial politics. Ilan Kapoor examines recent development policy initiatives in such areas as ‘governance,’ ‘human rights’ and ‘participation’ to better understand and contest the production of knowledge in development - its cultural assumptions, power implications, and hegemonic politics. The volume shows how development practitioners and westernized elites/intellectuals are often complicit in this neo-colonial knowledge production. Noble gestures such as giving foreign aid or promoting participation and democracy frequently mask their institutional biases and economic and geopolitical interests, while silencing the subaltern (marginalized groups), on whose behalf they purportedly work. In response, the book argues for a radical ethical and political self-reflexivity that is vigilant to our reproduction of neo-colonialisms and amenable to public contestation of development priorities. It also underlines subaltern political strategies that can (and do) lead to greater democratic dialogue.

Refreshing a stale debate about power in the postcolonial state, this book addresses a topic debated across the humanities and social sciences: how to define, discuss, and address power and the subjective experience of ordinary people in the face of power?

This edited volume asks how governmentality and postcolonial approaches can be brought together to help us better understand specific sites and practices of contemporary postcolonial governance. The framework/approach was inspired by the recent use of governmentality approaches that emphasize how governance functions not solely through states but through multiple tactics and means that regulate the conduct of individuals and institutions through both freedom and constraint. A postcolonial approach to governance exposes the role of postcolonial sites and practices in shaping governance and the inequalities embedded within it, insofar as standards of conduct determine which subjects are privileged and excluded.Postcolonial perspectives show how governance can be both productive and repressive, functioning to impose a fixed code of conduct that objectifies (gendered, racialized, sexualized) ‘others’ as part of its project of improvement. In discussing governance, we must also consider how power is negotiated and challenged through forms of resistance and counter-conduct. This volume argues that we need to incorporate postcolonial theories and carefully examine postcolonial practices and sites, to understand how contemporary governance shapes various transnational inequalities and social divisions. The authors in this edited volume illustrate the value of postcolonial governance as a conceptual framework through empirical examples from Asia, Australia, Africa, and Europe. These cases unpack practices of governance operating within complex political landscapes.

This edited volume analyses the global making of security institutions and practices in our postcolonial world. The volume will offer readers the opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the global making of how security is thought of and practiced, from US urban policing, diaspora politics and transnational security professionals to policing encounters in Afghanistan, Palestine, Colombia or Haiti. It critically examines and decentres conventional perspectives on security governance and policing. In doing so, the book offers a fresh analytical approach, moving beyond dominant, one-sided perspectives on the transnational character of security governance, which suggest a diffusion of models and practices from a ‘Western’ centre to the rest of the globe. Such perspectives omit much of the experimenting and learning going on in the (post)colony as well as the active agency and participation of seemingly subaltern actors in producing and co-constituting what is conventionally thought of as ‘Western’ policing practice, knowledge and institutions. This is the first book that studies the truly global making of security institutions and practices from a postcolonial perspective, by bringing together highly innovative, in-depth empirical cases studies from across the globe. It will be of particular interest to students and scholars interested in International Relations and Global Studies, (critical) Security Studies, Criminology and Postcolonial Studies.

This broadly interdisciplinary book offers deep insight into Africa's colonial history for an understanding and explication of contemporary governance crises, security challenges, and state failure on the continent. It traverses political science, political economy, sociology, African history, and African studies in general.