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Governance, the State and the Politics of Development
Author(s) -
Leftwich Adrian
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
development and change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.267
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1467-7660
pISSN - 0012-155X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-7660.1994.tb00519.x
Subject(s) - contest , politics , orthodoxy , corporate governance , fallacy , state (computer science) , administration (probate law) , public administration , government (linguistics) , law and economics , political science , good governance , sociology , political economy , law , economics , management , epistemology , philosophy , theology , linguistics , algorithm , computer science
Current western aid and development policy aims to promote ‘good governance’ in the third world. Few would deny that competent, open and fair administration is both a worthy aim and a self‐evident requirement of development. However, the current orthodoxy clearly illustrates the technicist fallacy, which is implicit in the following quotation from Pope, that the effective administration or ‘management’ of development is essentially a technical or practical matter. This article argues that development is fundamentally a political matter and that it is illusory to conceive of good governance as independent of the forms of politics and type of state which alone can generate, sustain and protect it. For Forms of Government, let fools contest; Whate'er is best administered, is best. (Pope, 1734: Bk 3, lines 303‐4).