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Performing Development
Community-driven Development Discourse and Interventions
Emmanuelle PoncinLondon School of Economics and Political ScienceGovernment Department
Presentation Overview
1. CDD discourse and interventions
2. Analytical model of development discourse performativity
3. Case study: The Philippines’ Kalahi-CIDSS programme
CDD Programmes
•Aims: Empowerment and good governance
•Means: Give communities control over resources and decision-making to design, implement and manage their development project
•World Bank: $16 billion towards 637 CDD programmes in the 2000s
•New paradigm in international development?
The Gap between Discourse and Interventions
CDD as discourse:•The alternative to top-down development•Effective instrument of good governance
and empowerment
CDD as interventions:•Scarce, inconclusive empirical evidence•May exacerbate socio-political
inequalities
Three Approaches in Development Discourse
Analyses1.Rhetorical device to mask the realities of
the ground (e.g. Bauer)
2.“Dominant” representations parasitical upon the social world (e.g. Escobar)
3.Practice deployed to order arenas for intervention, to enable interventions (e.g. Ferguson, Li)
1. Producing Interventions by forming intelligible arenas for intervention
1. Represent domain to be developed in terms of a set of deficits and deficiencies that interventions propose to address
2. Exclude what lies beyond the scope of intervention
Form arenas where interventions become intelligible and thus possible
2. Legitimising & Reproducing Interventions by forming
enabled/constrained arenas of intervention
•“Constrained” environments: deficit of agency, poor governance
•“Enabled” environments: high stocks of social capital, empowerment, “progressive” leaders
Shift the responsibility for failure from interventions onto their recipients
Validate the legitimacy of interventions, enable their reproduction
3. The formation of enabled/constrained environments depends on performances triggered by CDD discourse, regardless
of the operations & effects of interventions
• Discourse “hails” individuals as specific subjects / CDD discourse “hails” local officials as “progressive”
• It succeeds or not in triggering recognition by those hailed, expressed in their performances
• Discourse’s performative strength resides in the institutional conditions of its production and enactment
In the context of poor understanding of CDD & World Bank’s priorities of producing and reproducing interventions, performances are substituted for interventions’ operations and effects to form enabled/constrained environments
4- Discursive representations affect the power dynamics of
arenas of intervention
Impact on: 1.Local officials’ power2.Institutions’ legitimacy
By misrepresenting arenas and interventions, risk of participating in reproducing social inequalities and legitimising capture-prone institutions
Bohol: Discursive Representations
Before Kalahi:• Poor, unproductive, agricultural economy• Lacking public goods & services, human & social
capital• Ideal arena for Kalahi intervention
During Kalahi:• “Enabled” province – less poverty, greater
political stability, governance innovations• Thanks to Kalahi, development projects,
“progressive” leadership
Evidence of rising poverty and inequalities challenging Bohol development/CDD “success story”
Kalahi Operations
Local officials’ capture:
• Funding for local government’s priorities• Manipulated processes• Irregularities• Clientelism
Yet, Bohol’s representation as “enabled” legitimised Kalahi operations and enabled its reproduction
Why was Bohol formed as an “enabled” environment
1- Institutional Conditions of Reception
• Lacking local basis for capital accumulation
• Dependency on external resources
Local officials’ recognition as “progressive” leaders hailed by development discourse
Offer adequate performances
2- Institutional Conditions of Production
• World Bank’s staff awareness of captureversus
• Normative appeal of empowerment/good governance
• Disbursing funds quickly & replicating programmes
• Lack of viable alternative to CDD
Discursive formations of local arenas based on local officials’ performances rather than CDD’s operations and effects
The Effects of Performance-Based CDD Discourse
1.Increase local politicians’ power, reproduce power structures
2.Legitimise capture-prone institutions
3.Legitimise and reproduce institutional set-up of counterinsurgency-led development that engendered harassment and killings of political activists
Some ConclusionsFlawed theoretical premises of CDD:1.Disempowerment is not based on deficits of agency, but
on deeply entrenched inequalities2.Local officials’ pursuit of particularistic interests is not
caused by insufficient social capital, but by their comparatively huge power
3.Poor governance is not an issue of insufficient popular demand, but is rooted in social inequalities and capture-prone institutions
Overlook issues of power, inequality, contention and meanings
Systematic misrepresentation of local “arenas” and interventions, to enable interventions’ production and reproduction, participates in legitimising capture-prone institutions and reproducing social inequalities
