Graduate School of Development Studies

A Research Paper presented by:

Mohammad Shaiful Islam(Bangladesh)

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for obtaining the degree of

MASTERS OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

Specialisation:Governance and Democracy

(G & D)

Members of the examining committee:

Dr Wil Hout (supervisor)Dr Karim Knio(reader)

The Hague, The NetherlandsSeptember, 2009

‘Ownership’ in the aid architecture and the tension in the approach of governance:

A case study of Bangladesh

Disclaimer:This document represents part of the author’s study programme while at the Institute of Social Studies. The views stated therein are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Institute.Research papers are not made available for circulation outside of the Institute.

Inquiries:

Postal address: Institute of Social StudiesP.O. Box 297762502 LT The HagueThe Netherlands

Location: Kortenaerkade 122518 AX The HagueThe Netherlands

Telephone: +31 70 426 0460

Fax: +31 70 426 0799

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Contents

List of Tables vList of Figures vList of Acronyms viiiAbstract viiii

Chapter 1Introduction 81.1 Relevance and Justification 8

1.1. A. Problem statement 101.2 Objectives 111.3 Question 111.4 Hypothesis 111.5 Methodology 111.6 Organization of the paper 1Error! Bookmark not

defined.

Chapter 2Analytical and conceptual framework 142.1 Analytical framework 14

2.1.1 Introduction 142.1.2 Market is a political construction 142.1.3 Neoliberal’s attempts to address politics failed to acknowledge it as a rationale for development and depoliticised governance 152.1.3. A In structural adjustment paradigm and Washington Consensus era 152.1.3. B In the policy framework of Post Washington Consensus and ‘Integrated Development Model’ paradigm 172.1.4 Agency problem of reforms accencuates the rise of ‘old interest’ 192.1.5 The Post Washington Consesnsus intensified ‘tacit domination’ through aid 21

2.2 Conceptual framework 222.2.1 Participation 222.2.2 Governance 2Error! Bookmark not defined.2.2.3 Ownership 2Error! Bookmark not defined.

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2.2.4 Civil Society 242.3 Conclusion 25

Chapter 3Bangladesh: a brief overview 26

Chapter 4Threshold contribution of different actors in PRSP policy process and manifestation of ownership 284.1 Policy Content 28

4.1.1 Politics is problem driven in ex ante conditionality 284.1.2 Political aspiration kept isolated from policies

Error! Bookmark not defined.04.1.3 PRSPs resonate ‘one size fits all’ and earlier structural adjustment policies Error! Bookmark not defined.1

4.2 Power asymmetry favouring donors and the possibility of local ownership Error! Bookmark not defined.2

4.3 Ownership in PRS policy process by civil society representation Error! Bookmark not defined.34.3.1 Nature and scope of civil society organizations to represent poor Error! Bookmark not defined.34.3.2 Participation of CSO in policy process Error! Bookmark not defined.7

4.4 Conclusion Error! Bookmark not defined.8

Chapter 5Interest maximising actors manoeuvring political process 405.1 Military regimes: the ethos what tied the nexus 405.2 Continuation and breaking down of Military

regimes: entrenchment of the pervasive interest 425.3 Elite interest captured the good governance

narrative 445.4 Conclusion: tuned convergence of elite interest and

depoliticized state mechanism 45

Chapter 6Conclusion

47References 49Appendices 59

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List of TablesTable 4.1 Frequency of variable use in PRSP 29Table 4.2 A Snapshot of Bangladesh’s Trade

Regime 30Appendice A Checklist of Reforms contained in

PRSPsP 59

List of FiguresAppendice B

Foreign Aid as a Percentage of Government Expendit-ures, Per Capita Income, Imports and Investment

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List of Acronyms

AL Bangladesh Awami LeagueBNP Bangladesh Nationalist PartyCDM Comprehensive Development ModelCSO Civil Society OrganizationDAC Development Assistance CommitteeGDP Gross Domestic ProductsGOB Government of the People’s Republic of

BangladeshIDM Integrated Development ModelIFI International Financial InstitutionIMF International Monetary FundI-PRSP Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy PaperLDC Least Developed CountriesNGO Non Government OrganizationNIE New Institutional Economics NPE New Political EconomyNSAPR National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty

ReductionOECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and

DevelopmentPRSP Poverty Reduction Strategy PaperPWC Post Washington ConsensusSAP Structural Adjustment PoliciesSIDA Swedish International Development AgencyWC Washington Consensus

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Abstract

A claimed paradigm change from Washington Consensus to Post Washington Consensus era, as a response to the inefficiency and lack of legitimacy of the structural adjustment period, has initiated a range of socially inclusive policies with a commitment to ensure local control by policy ownership. Its rearranged framework of governance has involved a divergent group of actors in policy process to materialize ownership. The paper argues that the present governance framework is more technocratic targeting to management of ‘problem-driven’ politics in most developing countries and, this technocracy attempts to sugarcoat a long-term contentious aspect of development. Standing on this argument, the study investigates whether the techno-managerial form of governance can materialize ‘local ownership’ in the policy design by reflecting local needs and aspiration. The study examines through the case of Bangladesh the allocated and manifested role of different actors in the PRSP policy process against the claim of materializing local ownership. This study further inspects the emergence of new interest maximising elite and the convergence of interest of both donor and this group with a careful observation of its effect on ‘local ownership’ by means of Bangladesh experience. The paper finds that: firstly, in the space of technocratic form of governance, the role of different actors has been mechanised conforming to ‘one-size fits all’ policies and, this squeezed role makes ‘local ownership’ as empowerment impossible. Secondly, a group of interest maximising local elite emerges and a convergence of their interest with technocratic reform is realised. This convergence and their interest set the embargo to materialize ‘local ownership’.

KeywordsCivil society, governance, ownership and participation

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Chapter 1Introduction

The study will investigate whether the techno-managerial form of governance can materialize ‘local ownership’ in the policy design by reflecting local needs and aspiration. It recognises the fact that ‘local ownership’ is a popular demand in response to sensitivity of sovereignty issue for many newly independent developing countries and harsh experience of structural adjustment conditionality for many of them. The study will examine through the case of Bangladesh the allocated and manifested role of different actors in the PRSP (Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper) policy process against the claim of materializing local ownership. This study will further inspect the emergence of new interest maximising elite and the convergence of interest of both donor and this group with a careful observation of its effect on ‘local ownership’ by means of Bangladesh experience.

1.1 Relevance and Justification:The idea of governance can be traced into regimes of

Thatcher and Reagan who initiated reform to tie the realm of society and the state with the spirit and rules of market. This grammar of the market has been developed under the neoliberal discourse which is linked to a successful marriage of neoclassical economics with Austrian libertarian ideologies. This emergence was mostly an ideological shift from the interventionist and welfare centric model of development under ‘embedded liberalism’ (Ruggie, 1982 in Hout & Robison, 2009:2).

In regard to policy making, as a version of ‘embedded liberalism’, Keynesian regime is earmarked with technocratic and apolitical nature of state-led development planning while the structural adjustment era of 1980s and early 1990s emphasises on propelling market mechanism and minimizing state authority in developing countries in line with policy principles of Washington Consensus (WC). For the development paradigm under WC, the success of development lied on institution building and rigorous training (World Bank 1991: 234-5) which has been criticized as ‘anti-politics machine’ (Ferguson & Lohmann,

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1994) putting a need to emphasis political process in development.

This tension about the ascendancy of politics versus ‘depoliticization’ in development goes with and in some extent leads the emergence of thinking and application of governance with a cyclical shift to the new era of Post Washington Consensus (PWC). This new era brings forth the state authority as a regulator to enhance the market mechanism and accentuates the instruments of governance to shape its regulatory functionaries. Under the ‘Integrated Development Model’ in PWC regime, one group focuses on the need of governance and its application with the ‘primacy of politics’ (Chang, 2001; Leftwich, 1994) for comprehensive development, while the later group sees it, in line with the previous version of technocratic development, as managerial matter by equating it as ‘the exercise of political power to manage a nation’s affairs’ (World Bank 1989: 60).

A staged description of the development of governance as idea and materialization given by Hout and Robison (2009:2) reveals that market centrism and technocracy always posits the core of in every manifested shift of it, while a rising concern to deal with the issue of power and conflict is now developing.

Governance in present development framework is built on the base created by the structural adjustment policies under WC with an intention to deal with the social and political inconsistencies in the governance setting after SAP (Structural Adjustment Policies) era and to embed the success of SAP in social, economic and political structures. In this phase, ‘attitude to politics’ finds its antithetical base on the idea that politics accompanying with conflicts and enthroned interest to the collective goods will destroy the discipline of the market. This assumption inevitably necessitates technical aspects of forms and functions of governance and ‘the politics of procedure’ replacing ‘the politics of bargaining’ with a goal to insulate market from conflicts and interests associated with politics.

Such an insulation of market from political contestation is, according to Jayasuriya, ‘a politics of anti politics’ and, as Hout and Robison explains, ‘a highly political and normative agenda for the reordering of social and political power’ (Jayasuriya, 2001:1; Hout & Robison, 2009:5). This agenda of isulation in neoliberal orthodoxy is targetted to the objective of its successful implementation

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of ‘sound policies’ and providing supportive environment for it.

The aforementioned ‘politics of procedure’ reflects more political understanding of governance by neoliberal and associated donor community as a tool of risk management. The tool box materializes the governance as new aid conditionality and complementarily fixes it with ‘ownership’ and ‘partnership’ as revised aid modality. (Hout 2007).

Ownership in present aid paradigm sets a normative goal by focusing on recipient country’s control of policy outcomes after the initial use of the term by OECD’s (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) in 1995. To manifest this, donor community channels its support through the ‘framework of budget support and other accountability measures’. Pointing to such demonstrated mechanism, vast mainstream literatures suggest that, the reformer prioritizes ‘domestic politics’ to cultivate strong political support for its continuity of reform from its anti-political standpoint (Brinkerhoff 1996; Devarajan, Dollar and Holmgren 2001; Easterly 2001; IMF 2001; Khan and Sharma 2001; IBRD 2005). That is, such framework of support with its socially inclusive polices enhances its attempt to ‘buy in’ domestic support for reform.

But though this anti-political approach fails to recognize any space for people’s struggle, conflict and aspiration and, its contribution to making local reality, politics can not be constrained by such technocratic impasse. Rather the desired ‘reform coalitions’ will fail to draw grassroot people to its ownership scheme of the PRSP policy process because of its apolitical, donor dominating and mechanised apparatus. Instead ‘owning’ may be attributed to instrumental inheritance of certain political and business ellites who will muddle the reform objective for its drive to maximum interest. (Robison 2009).

Hence the tension suggests that, in the framework of techno-managerial governance process, ‘ownership’ in the aid architecture transforms itself as a component of neoliberal toolbox by reinforcing antithetical view to spontaneous political process and, the highly political agenda of IFIs to implement neoliberal reform. This suggestion necessitates empirical studies which can provide evidence on the demonstration of ‘local ownership’ especially from the viewpoint of governance as political process. The study will critically examine through a case

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study if the techno-managerial form of governance is actually capable of adhering to its principles of ‘local ownership’ or is well-gripped with the objective of neoliberal global integration and the interest of particular elite group leading to instrumentalise its principle.

1.1. A. Problem statement:

Adoption of ‘local ownership’ for the aid effectiveness to subsequent policies relates the tension in the approach of governance with the question of empowering local reality by the process and spirit of ownership. The tension goes to the suspicion that such ownership may not only creates space for donor’s control but also provide room for manoeuvre for certain interest maximizing ‘robber barrons’.

The internal logic of the tension reveals that, on the one hand, the technocracy in the system of governance controls and fixes the threshold contribution of its different actors conforming to the global integration undermining local reality. Examining development projects in Lesotho in the 1990s, Ferguson uncovers that the development project fails to reduce rural poverty and to advance agrarian capitalism and instead extends technocratic control. For him, the reason is that it squeezes the space of politics for different actors by making them ‘subjectless’ and translates ‘political qustions of land, resources, jobs or wages’ into technical one. (Ferguson 1994 [1990]:19; Ferguson and Lohmann 1994:174-80). His ‘anti-politics machine’ resembles the technocratic structure comprised of ‘experts’, outsiders and government agencies who hijacked ‘power and voice’ from the poor.

On the other hand, the political process which is bypassed by neoliberal reformers cannot be abolished from the policy apparatus and rather, is kept as ‘intact’ for the interplay of certain classes. Governance as techno-managerial process does not act in a vacuum of politics and that generates a tension in its approach from the room for policy preparing to the reality of policy implementation. The analysis of Robison (2009) shows that different regimes and interest coalitions hijacks the intact space of politics to extract more resources and, these populist, dictatorial and predatory regimes merge into a convergence with the interest of neoliberal reform.

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About the present shift of developing countries’ policy process to PRSP, some studies focus on the sheer ignorance of local reality and struggle in it. Earmarking PRSP as a tool for global integration, the study of Craig and Porter (2003) on Uganda reveals that the neoliberal attempt for international policy convergence blocks any other alternative drawn from political reality. Rucket’s (2007) analysis on Nicaragua’s PRSP from new-gramscian perspective argues that the country ownership is absent in PRSP process which works as a tool for neoliberal hegemonic expansion and, as a tool to grasp the possibility of true social struggle searching for alternatives.

This paper is a response to the absence, in existing literatures, of the centrality of politics in the intersectional point of governance and ownership in the context of new cyclical shift for more socially inclusive development framework from WC to PWC.

1.2 Objectives:This paper is an attempt to contribute to the pool of literatures on the issue of depoliticization of development by identifying the logic of the relations between the tension in the approach of governance and the principles of local ownership. Another objective is to grip the development phenomena of Bangladesh with necessary insights.

1.3 Question:In what extent does a techno-managerial form of

governance materialize ‘local ownership’ in policy design of Bangladesh?

Sub-question: Subsequent sub-questions are:How do the different actors in the technocratic

governance manifest ‘local ownership’ in the PRSP preparation process of Bangladesh?

Is there any convergent or divergent relation of the ethos between specific group of agents and the forerunner of technocratic governance? How does this relation help to facilitate ‘local ownership’?

1.4 Hypothesis:To deal with the above research question, I have

developed two hypotheses to explore the case. Firstly, in the space of technocratic form of governance, the role of different actors has been mechanised conforming to ‘one-

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size fits all’ policies and, this squeezed role makes ‘local ownership’ as empowerment impossible. Secondly, a group of interest maximising local elite emerges and a convergence of their interest with technocratic reform is realised. This convergence and their interest set the embargo to materialize ‘local ownership’.

1.5 Methodology:The study will rely on qualitative examination with thick

explanation which allows understanding of interconnected complicacy of politics and development. Another reason is that ownership as empowerment or control on policy cannot sensibly be explained by quantitative positivist tool of scales and indicators.

From qualitative options, the study prefers and mostly depends on literature review method. One reason is that though collection of primary data relying on interview method may be helpful to cultivate more details and depth of the issue, both time and fund constraints do not allow opting this. Using this method this paper attempts with its theoretical insight to examine the present pool of knowledge. But where necessary, the study minimally uses discourse analysis cross-country comparison and primary sources of information.

About the selection of Bangladesh as my case, the foremost drive is that this is the country of my nationality and my upbringing. And as a civil servant of the country, I can claim that I am very much part of the process of ongoing governance dilemma in the reform of my country.

Moreover the country can be a good representation of developing countries with its donor dependency status, membership of LDC (Least Developed Countries), rising democracy with the history of 15-year long quasi-military regime and inclination to neoliberal reform since 1975. With substantial features of neoliberal reform success the country has been facing obstacles from underlying political process in its course of reform and still holds a ‘testing ground’ status for the neoliberal reformers. Like most developing countries, relevant to the country’s so called aid and donor dependency, aid effectiveness draws much attention from donor community. This attention gears the national policy process and its implementation towards the tool of PRSP replacing its previous policy instrument of five-year plan since 2003.

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My analysis examines the two hypotheses corresponding to two sub questions in two chapters. Regarding the first sub question, the paper investigates the policy space of PRSP given to local actors by scrutinizing rigidness of its content, symmetry of role between donor community and local actors and, legitimacy of civil society representation of the poor. About the second sub question, the paper inspects the development of an interest maximising elite through the capturing of political process. This further sees their convergence with neoliberal policies and their influence on manifestation of ownership.

The study will mainly be based on the analysis of various policy documents published by IFIs (International Financial Institutions) and Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh (GOB) with careful consideration of subsequent literatures. T

The first chapter uses PRSP as primary information source, a cross country comparison, policy documents published by IFIs (International Finance Institutions) and a broad range of inter-disciplinary academic literatures, whereas the second chapter is mostly informed by a range of political economic analysis on Bangladesh with the use of policy documents published by IFIs.

1.6 Organization of the paper:The paper consists of six chapters including introduction

and conclusion. The second chapter frames analytical and conceptual approaches. The third chapter provides a brief review on Bangladesh with complementary contribution to the rest of the analysis. The fourth examines the threshold contribution of different actors in PRSP policy papers in the context of manifesting ‘local ownership’. The fifth chapter explores the rising of particular elites manoeuvring reform process and their roles in materialising ownership following a conclusive analysis in the sixth chapter of the paper.

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Chapter 2 Analytical and Conceptual framework

In this chapter, I will develop the necessary analytical and conceptual tool to explore the scope of ownership in policy design in the context of the approach of governance in development of Bangladesh. The first chapter will seek to frame the analytical approach of the research following development of the outline of key conceptual issues in the second chapter.

2.1. Analytical framework:2.1.1. Introduction: The tension in the approach of governance in terms of

technocratic versus political and its relation with ownership are inevitable phenomena in the interplay of political ‘making’ of market. My research will be based on the stand that market as a political construction confirms the insulation of the framework of overarching conflicts over power and its approach of distribution (Hout and Robinson 2009). I will further rest on the perspective that this insulation is implanted in its rigid principle of ‘market supremacy’ which does not conform to any paradigm shift with any real change in its core. Rather, it may change the methodology of implementation over time with cyclical shift responding to its constant failure in creating agents of reform. I want to argue that, as a consequence, this insulation will rather create ‘neoliberal clientilism’ which will strengthen the rise of anti-reform coalition with ‘old interest’. The matrix of this coalition will help to test my hypothesis in understanding how the technocratic governance is conducive in materializing ‘local ownership’ in Bangladesh.

2.1.2. Market is a political construction:Neoliberal reform agenda has been driven by the

neoclassic theory with some of its basic assumptions about the constitution of social relations and economic life.

One is that this is the ‘methodological individualism’ which explains the social outcomes. In Elinor Ostrom’s word, ‘individuals compare expected benefits and costs of actions prior to adopting strategies for action’ (Ostrom, 1991:243). That is, individual human being with its rationality and maximizing preferences works as basic units

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to shape political, economic and social relations. This assumption, positing on positivist social science of Hayek (1944) and Buchanan (1989), argues for absolute reliablity or rationality reduced to individual instead of government intervention in terms of the efficienct distribution of resources.

Another important assumption gives the idea of natural emergence of market to coordinate individual’s actions and preferences ‘with varying degrees of efficiency’ (Gilpin and Gilpin 2001:51) through the mechanism of marginal utility.

The ‘naturalist’ ontology of neoliberal perspective on market goes in line with the above neoclassical assumptions on market building and accept ‘a static and abstract’ understanding of market with a perception of economic behaviour free from any tie with ‘historical experience, institutional context and informational or knowledge deficits’ (Jayasuriya 2001:10). Against this natural emergence of market, my understanding rests on ‘the political making’ (Munck 2005: 68 ) of it.

Liberal ideologues including Hayek (1944) told that a market economy is built on individual freedom and its rational action instead of government intervention for the rational efficiency of resource distribution. In that case, for Polanyi (2001:60), where a market economy inevitably depends on a market society, social relations are integral part of the market based economy. But to support the argument that market society is not naturally generated, rather is made, he argued that ‘the market has been the outcome of a conscious and often violent intervention on the part of government which imposed the market organisation on society for non-economic ends’ (Polanyi 2001:258).

Since ‘markets are not just about norms, they are about power’ (Jayasuriya 2001:10), they create winners and losers by reallocating or dislocating existing alliance of interest in the interplay of a market society. Moreover, building market and market society involves closing the scope of political possibilites which is not an autonomous task. Hence, our argument is that ‘markets are embedded in politically contested constellations of power and interests’(Jayasuriya 2001:10). For example, from Marx, we see the ‘primitive accumulation’ stage of capitalist development was involved for creating market and market society by means of ‘violent affair’ with an outcome of a division of losers and winners (Munck 2005: 68).

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Moreover, in contrast to neoliberal view on apolitical market, Institutionalist Political Economy developed by Ha-joon Chang puts emphasis on ‘the institutional nature of the market’ and views that markets are explicitly a political construction, ‘in the sense that they are defined by a range of formal and infomral institutions that embody certain rights and obligations, whose legitimacy (and therefore whose contestability) is ultimately determined in the realm of politcs’ (Chang, 2001: iii).

2.1.3. Neoliberal’s attempts to address politics failed to acknowledge it as a rationale for development and depoliticised governance:

In line with this thinking, necessity of addressing politics in the way of political construction of market and market society can be observed as the underlying driving force for all claimed ‘paradigmatic shift’ in development thinking and practices, from ‘the planning-keynesian model’ to a genuine shift towards ‘structural adjustment paradigm’ which further led to a claimed distinct shift towards ‘Comprehensive Development Model’ (Hatcher, 2006:2-3).

2.1.3.A. In structural adjustment paradigm and Washington Consensus era:

In the early 1980s in the context of a ‘structural crisis’ reflected in world economy, a greater neoliberal ideological storm combined with neoclassical economics and austrian liberatarian ideas challenged the state-led Keynesian model throughout the Europe and US in both domestic economic policies and international aid practices. Keynesian policies which largely depends on ‘an essentially technocratic and apolitical’ state centric planning (Hout & Robison, 2009: 1) and promotes ‘the interventionism and welfare statism’ (Hout & Robison, 2009: 2) are understood as a failed model by neoliberal ideologue for its oversized bureaucracies, corrupt leaders and ‘white-elephant projects’ exacerbatd with ‘lack of price signals’ and costly import substitutions due to rent-seeking. They also describe these policies ‘as the very causes of the poverty they were suppose to alleviate’ (Hatcher, 2006:3).

About the reasons for failure of planning model, the core of this neoliberal understanding which has been identified as the irrational behaviour of the developing governments and epitomized as ‘rent seeking’ by Anne Krueger (1974) has underscored the importance to tackle the issue of politics for solution. This should be noted that in the analysis of rent-seeking theory, Krueger relates this

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as the cause of the handicapped trade liberalization and the associated economic costs of protection in the developing countries instead of taking any direct political conclusion. This inspired the scholars of New Political Economy (NPE) such as Robert Bates (1981) and Mancur Olson (1971, 1982) to develop a neoclassical economic theory of politics and their efforts resulted in the embracing of the structural adjustment paradigm. Its theoretical conceptualization, on the one hand, challenges the idea of planning paradigm that policy makers will prioritize the public interest with maximum cost-effectiveness. (Hatcher, 2006:3). On the other hand, the NPE, by the work of Olson (1982), enforces the idea that the interest groups are the sole sources of socio-economic problems and plays the destructive role to the public interest (as explained by neoclassical). With the NPE, the idea of ‘rent seeking’ has been seen as the ‘use of the state to maximise economic gains for specific self interests’ (Grindle 1991:46) in an apparatus of ‘predatory state’.

This new political economy (NPE), which was actually a neoliberal attempt to unify politics and economics under the flag of rational choice theory (Grindle 1991), attributes third world political leaders and bureaucrats as maximisers of their self-interest. Consequently, its ethos centres on the idea of ‘the pathology of politics’ and a refusal to ‘their legitimate right to govern’ and this ethos led its proponents to an egoist and cynical understanding that those groups and leaders are ‘constitutionally unfit for any political role’ (Mosley et. al 1991:13, 25). Driven by the assumption of neoclassical macro-economics, this neoclassical economic theory of politics offers such conclusion which is actually the starting point of neoclassical economics.

Thus, solutions what the NPE offered is the sine qua non of a minimalist state and a reductionism to the principles of neoclassical theory with its assumption of ‘methodological individualism’, marginal utility, market equilibrium and rational choice. The former one is associated with the antithetical stand to the overwhelming role of the state in development supported by the idea that state agencies always lack ‘time and place knowledge’ about the actual needs and preferences of people (Hayek, cited in Ostrom et. al. 1993:51; Hayak, 1944[1994] cf. Johnson, 2009:6). In addition to considering the neoclassical vision of free market as an instrument for welfare maximizing, this paradigm sees that this market is

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the inevitable condition for the guarantee of ‘political freedom’ (Friedman 1962, in Hatcher, 2006:3).

With the paradigm shift towards structural adjustment by the World Bank, neoliberal orthodoxy has been operationalized in the framework of Washington Consensus in its heyday of the 1980s and early 1990s with a narrow view of governance. Neoliberal orthodoxy can be understood, according to Weiss, as ‘anything the government can do, the private sector can do better; and that more open markets, free trade and capital flows are necessarily beneficial’ (Weiss, 2000 cf. Hout & Robison, 2009:2). For Washington Consensus, governance focuses on the successful execution of economic liberalization policies with the emphasis on technocratic tools for better efficiency of government and the proviso of legal frame for market centric development (Jayasuriya, 2001:2; Hout & Robison, 2009:2).

Referring to the work of Michel Foucault on discourse, power and governmentality where for Focault governmentality is ‘about the institutionalisation of knowledge and the way political programmes are alligned with the neoliberal individual’ (Munck 2005:68), James Ferguson examined the development project in Lesotho in the 1990s. He showed that ‘the history of “development” projects in Lesotho is one of “almost unremitting failure to achieve their objectives” ’ (Ferguson and Lohmann 1994:176). Instead of reducing rural poverty or advancing agrarian capitalism, it extended bureaucratic state control into the countryside of Lesotho. Ferguson strongly argued that this ‘success’ was not consciously achieved by the development projects. It was rather the outcome ‘of pwerful costellations of control that were never intended and in some cases never even recognized, but [which] are all the more effective for being “subjectless” ’ (Ferguson 1994 [1990]:19). For him, “development” project squeezes ‘political challenges to the system not only through administrative power, but also by casting political qustions of land, resources, jobs or wages as technical “problems” responsive to the technical “development” intervention’ (Ferguson and Lohmann 1994:180). His ‘anti-politics machine’ resembles the technocratic structure comprised of ‘experts’, outsiders and government agencies who hijacked ‘power and voice’ from the poor.

In dealing with the problem of politics in keynesian era, this genuine paradigmatic shift toward structural adjustment model associated with the policy framework of

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WC failed to address politics as a rationale for development and instead tied the social, economic and political realm with the ‘hypothetic-deductive models of individual decision making’ (Johnson, 2009:5) on the basis of ‘methodological individualism’ and a reductionist perspective on the state.

2.1.3.B. In the policy framework of Post Washington Consensus and ‘Integrated Development Model’ paradigm:

Though, in the early 1980s neoliberal belief asserted that the journey towards the market would necessarily end ‘problems of economic inefficiency, corruption and arbitrary rule in developing countries’ (Toye 1987:47-70 in Hout & Robison, 2009:3), belief in self-regulatory cpacity and ‘frictionless’ creation of market has been challenged within the neoliberals (Stiglitz, 1998:1, Rodrik, 1998 in Ahrens, 2004:12 cf. Hatcher, 2006:5, Camdessus 1998) under a new post washington consensus. Following a series of failures in other developing and former communist countries provoked by the structural adjustment policies, this confrontation in neoliberal camp can mostly be attributed to the East Asian Crisis in contrast to the previous consideration of East Asian Miracle as the cornerstone of the Washington Consensus.

In this post structural adjustment context, on one hand, the perspective of rational choice (public choice) political economy, in a certain extent, has increasingly been established in the neoliberal camp with its view that ‘it was entirely rational for coalitions to organize collectively for the purposes of making predatory raids on the state rather than to establish the collective goods that make markets work’ (Bates 1981; Olson 1982; Buchanon and Tullock 1962 in Hout & Robison, 2009:3). Following this, a retreat of the necessity of institutional change advocated in a World Bank report on Africa by Elliot Berg in 1981 has been re-appearing on the Banks later report in 1989 (World Bank 1989:5) to tackle the issue of corruption and clientelism and getting increasing impotance in its further publication (i.e. World Bank 1991).

On the other hand, a form of ‘economic constitutionalism’ influenced by the German ordo-liberal school of thought has become prominent to the neoliberal reformers with the attempt ‘to treat the market as a constitutional order with its own rules, procedures, and institutions operating to protect the market order from

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political inference’ (Jayasuriya 2001:7). ‘Market as a constitutional order’ requires ‘the effective capture of the state by powerfully connected vested interests’ (Jayasuriya 2001:7).

The Post Washington Consensus (PWC) emerged within the neoliberal reformers with the standpoint that ‘what is required is not the retreat of the state but the effective development of state institutions to protect the market order’ (Jayasuriya 2001:8). That is, ‘the internal transformation of the state’ will take place from ‘the political structures associated with bargaining and conflict between interest’ to the ‘economic constitutionalism’ narrated in ‘political procedure’ (Jayasuriya 2001:7).

Under the ethos of this new consensus with its basis on the old one, the World Bank adopted its new ‘Integrated Development Model (IDM)’ (Hatcher 2006:1) including the Comprehensive Development Framework for efficiency in aid allocation and the Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRS) for pro-poor growth centric development in countries under reform process in 1999.

The PWC and IDM has been inluenced by the New Institutional Economics (NIE) which helped the Bank to formulate a broad range of institutional narrative including ‘socially inclusive concepts such as participation, partnership, social capital, empowerment, ownership, etc ’ (Hatcher 2006:2). The NIE developed basically by Douglass North emphasises on the provision of incentive (by the principal-agent framework of rational choice approach) to the key players of the political structure and on the role of the state as a catalyst for neoliberal market building by ensuring symmetrical flow of information and necessary collective action.

As IDM requires a market free from ‘the predatory nature of the state’, which resonates the NPE, or a market as a ‘constitutional order’, the task of PWC is reduced to enhancing the ‘politics of procedure’ and eliminating the scope for ‘politics of bargaining’. ‘Politics of procedure’ operates with a consensus to extend the neoliberal project in social and political domain and with an acknowledgement that ‘markets are not self-regulating or self-legitimizing’ to ‘regulate the market’ and to ‘legitimise the market’ (Munck 2005: 68).

In such a context of necessity from PWC for the effectiveness of IDM, governance enters into the center of the development under the face of ‘an institutional effectiveness imperative’ (Hatcher 2006:7) or ‘the politics

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of anti-politics’ (Jayasuriya 2001:8). The apparatus of governance instrumentally encompasses functioning of ‘enlightened technocrats’ (Williamson 1994) with ‘good governance’, politicians in liberal democratic pattern with limited policy options conforming to neoliberal political agenda (Munck 2005:66) and ‘grass-roots’ initiatives with ‘social capital’ (Putnam 1995) to provide the requirement of IDM.

The duo-combination of PWC and IDM has insulated the centers of decision from social pressures and conflicts for resources and fill the gaps with governance targetting to make technocratic and interest seeking individual agents. In such a way it truly encapsulates a broader horizon for neoclassical market with endorsing a mere cyclical shift without any ‘paradigm’ shift but proves it failure to address rationale of politics by depoliticizing governance.

2.1.4. Agency problem of reforms accencuates the rise of ‘old interest’:

Neoliberalism at present represents itself not only as a set of policies or an ideology but also as ‘governmentality’ (Larner 2000). This dominant ideology is now more concernced on the improvement of governance than on ‘how the market can regulate itself, society and politics’ for its existence (Munck 2005:67). Governance is in most cases considered as ‘a ‘post-political’ steering of the political process towards less directive, more networked, modalities than in the past’ (Munck 2005:67).

In the sphere of its governmentality, governance operates to make reliable agents of reform with its various instruments. One is ‘good governance’ denoting, according to the World Bank, ‘[t]he ability of the state to provide institutions that make markets more efficient is sometimes referred to as good governance’ (World Bank 2002:99). It includes an efficient public administration, manifestation of rule of law, a broad horizon of corporatism with guided laws and anti-corruption mechanism, non-interfering procurement and privatization of public services and supply (Hout and Robison 2009:4). Reformers believe that it insulates politics from neoliberal reform and tries to create agents in two ways. First, it seperates ‘technocratic authority’ from ‘distributional coalitions’ and ensures technocrat’s autonomy (Hout and Robinson 2009:4) and agenciship. Second, ‘[i]t also enables individual to be drawn

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directly into the market process through programmes of inclusion, participation and ownership that bypass competitive politics and established political organisations’ (Jayasuriya 2005:32-7; Bebbington et al. 2004 cf. Hout and Robinson 2009:4) and hence, attempts to expand neoliberal base.

Another one is expansion of market citizenship and limited scope of democracy which are analysed by Punck (2005). ‘[T]he ‘political’ notion of citizenship’ has been reduced to ‘democratic participation’ to the polling booth with a decreasing turnout in many countries. Consumption replaces the ‘old’ production based ‘identity’ and class division and brings ‘a cultural restructuring of society’ enabling a fragmentated and fluid identity (Punck 2005:66). ‘The citizen-become-consumer’ has been dissociated from ‘the public space of politics’ as this is more static and cannot fulfil the need of them. Politics has been restricted to limited policy options and deprofessionalised. The outcome is that a market citizenship and individual freedom make people disentrenced from political participation. On the other hand, politician and political institution can not go beyond neoliberal policies, discourse and governmentality.

Moreover, to legitimise neoliberal policies in the discourse of democracy, a ‘depoliticised’ civil society has been patronized to mobilise against ‘big government’. Before that during the 1970s of authoritarian regime in many developing countries of the South and the East ‘it was the domain of civil society (a terrain between the state and the economy, following Gramsci) where citizens organised and mobilised for democracy’ ((Munck 2005:66).

Another important instrument is ‘social capital’ developed by Putnam (1995) emphasising ‘social co-operation and harmony’ for ‘development’. Harriss (2001) analayses that the World Bank uses the idea of ‘social capital’ to encaptulate community organisations as pro-reform network. According to Harriss, this type of ‘social capital’ building allows the Bank to ignore the power contexts and its distribution (Hout and Robison 2009:2).

We can read the above efforts of neoliberal reformers linking with the agency problem of reforms. For the reformers, in addition to reliance on the primary agency of the IFIs, particularly the IMF and ‘neoliberal technocratic elites’ for ‘the formal introduction of policy reform’, neoliberal reform programs have the ultimate dependency on ‘the response of powerful domestic interests’ (Robison, 2004:408-9, italic added).

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But, for example, about ‘good governance’, Like Hout and Robison we can raise the question ‘whether problems of poverty and violence, corruption and repression are the products of weak institutions and bad governance rather than the results of power disparities and the way resources are organised and distributed’ (Hout and Robison 2009:6). Similar question can be raised for restricted type of democratic building and authencity of ‘lack of social capital’ as the cause of underdevelopment.

The answer is as Robison (2004) explains that the market reform failed to make ‘the self-relient individuals of liberal mythology’ as the agents of reform. Rather it promotes ‘the rise of quite different private interests, often from within the unravelling apparatus of state power,to expropriate wealth by the use of force and extortion, stripping the state of its public assets and using state power to enforce private monopolies and cartels, or to allocate licenses’ (Robison, 2004:408-9; italic added)

I want to argue that in the design and implementation of technocratic governance regime, the rise of such ‘different private interest’ or the continuity of the ‘old interest’ has been avoided or not well-addressed .

This class, representing the ultimate agency of reforms, penetrates into the ‘intact’ process of ‘political relationships’ and ‘social order’ to maximize their gain from the reform process (Robison, 2009: 16), for instance, Increasing influence of ‘robber barrons’ in democratic building has turned it into ‘money politics’. Their power base has been concreted in the WC era of 1980s and consolidated as ‘a new political class that reproduces itself through ‘neoliberal clientilism’’ (Harrison, 2006:109 cf. Robison, 2009:17). They prefer reform like property rights for legitimising and consolidating their wealth and property, accumulated in this period of ‘savage capitalism’ (Robison, 2004:407) and, hence, contribute to the hijacking of market centric development.

2.1.5. The Post Washington Consesnsus intensified ‘tacit domination’ through aid

Agreeing on the existence of material inequality in consideration of how foreign aid influences power structure, theories of international relations provide three prominent perspectives. Aid is, for political realist, ‘reinforcing’ material inequality and, for liberal internationalist, ‘mitigating’ it, whereas with world system theory, aid emphasizes on ‘worsening’ the underlying

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inequality. But with the political economic expansion of anthropological gift theory, Hattori conceptualizes aid as gift rather than redistribution or economic exchange. For him, aid mitigates social conflict, explores its role in the existence of material inequality and social hierarchy between giver and recipient and, does ‘signal and euphemize’ Bourdieu’s ‘symbolic domination’ in opposition to ‘actively reinforce, mitigate or worsen’ underlying social inequality and hierarchy (Hattori 2001: 641; italics added).

What foreign aid helps for costly policy implementation is less important than its more influential dominating role manifested in the relationship of giver and receiver of the aid as ‘gift’ with recognition of the absence of any equal capability to expect reciprocal exchange. (Hattori 2001: 641). This strategic position, for Hattori (2001), places donors in the cognitive throne of ‘tacit domination’.

In the manifestation of structural adjustment, with aid this strategic domination was openly concerted by the name of ‘conditionality’ through ‘buy in’ reform policies. Through cyclical shift, the PWC brings forth WC principles in its core with the mask of more socially inclusive policies in its surface. Importantly, by aid the domination in local reality may not be reflected in the surface of the power in aid relations of PWC regime. What PWC is doing that it confines ‘buy in’ process of reforms to only poorly defined or culminated space of bargaining in the recipient’s technocratic apparatus leaving out any scope of mass protest developed by political process. As a consequence, the PWC intensifies ‘tacit domination’ in the aid architecture.

Conclusively, Governance and ownership are developed in the interplay of political ‘making’ of market. Market making involves the ‘politics of anti-politics’ (Jayasuriya 2001) to insulate ‘the context of wider conflicts over power and the way it is distributed’ (Hout and Robison 2009). In doing so, neoliberal reform has failed to acknowledge the rationale of politics in development and rather it accentuates depoliticising of governance and development. With using aid, a cyclical shift of it from WC to PWC further intensifies the ‘anti-politics’ through heightening ‘tacit domination’, and, as a result, fails to create a base of reform agents. But the insulated political process has not ended in void and conversely been kept as ‘intact’ which has channelled ‘the rise of quite different private interests’. From the WC regime, it has contributed to the development

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of ‘neoliberal clientilism’ which hijacks the neoliberal reform to maximise their ‘old interest’.

2.2. Conceptual framework:My research will deal with some key concepts to

examine the hypothesis. A set of important concepts embodies the tension of ongoing debate on their technocratic and political understanding. In this chapter, I will frame the extent of their meaning used in the paper and will posit the politics in the core of their meaning representing the standpoint of the paper. Inevitably, I will avoid discussion on etymology, theoretical development of the concept and detail of the debate. The chronology of discussion will follow participation, governance, ownership and civil society recognising supplementary understanding to each other.

2.2.1. Participation:Participation in PRSP is different for its policy centric

process from the earlier participatory exercises targeting to compensation of the effects of development projects or poverty measurement including poor in the process. An insight of the relevant literatures on participation indicates its approach either as instrumental or as empowerment.

On the one hand, the instrumental one fears about ‘economic populism’ which ignores resource constraint or rational choices of resource distribution and allocation. Instead of granting any broad scope of participation, this approach rather highlights the necessity of limited space for participation with the target of perception building and getting signal from the involved actors. An instrumental participation may at beat deal with a poor decision making power (Nelson and Wright 1995) or may denote as a mean (Goulet 1989) of improving efficiency of policy implementation. On the other hand, participation as a tool of empowerment implies as an end goal for at least a substantial control over decision making (Stewart and Wang 2006; Nelson and Wright 1995; Goulet 1989).

Whatsoever the approach, participation minimally requires a joint involvement of a certain number of actors throughout the decision making process. This involvement may refer to any or all stages of a continuum leading to higher degree of control ‘ranging from (1) information sharing, (2) consultation, (3) joint decision making, to (4) initiation and control by stakeholders’ (World Bank 1996; McGee 2000; Narayan et al. 2000 cf. Stewart and Wang

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2006; italic added). An empowerment approach of participation, as Stewart and Wang (2006) points out, shall involve all three stages of this continuum.

Moreover, empowerment as an outcome of the independent effect of local actors’ involvement in the process shall galvanize the local reality and exclude any manoeuvring role of other external actors. The conflict and contestation over accessibility to resources and political aspirations shall be represented and mediated by the role of local actors. Among them, the government, as legal and authorised space of such representation, shall posit the centre in the policy design with supportive role playing of true civil society organization.

2.2.2. Governance:Governance is much more fluid concept and buzz word.

When it relates to the architecture of development it underpins a tension in its understanding with technocracy and politics. The technocratic meaning lies on managing development with the unitary set of neoliberal reform policies. This consists of harmonized standard procedure for market supremacy in the fixed neoliberal framework and associated environment in the doctrinarian of ‘good governance’ components with an objective to global integration ignoring divergence of the local reality of development. When the question relates to development, it focuses on better risk management (Craig and Porter 2003) through ‘politics of procedure’ (Jaysuria 2001) in response to its consideration of politics as ‘problem driven’. Governance as a concept of technocratic process works in the apparatus of management and control with the convergent interest group lifted from the reality created by its standard procedure for development.

But the question of ‘local ownership’ necessarily relates the vibrant sphere of politics with the actual empowerment and turns the conceptualisation of governance into the unrestrained process of ‘politics of bargaining’ (Jaysuriya 2001). Governance becomes a legal space to collaborate with the social struggle and conflicts for effective production, distribution and allocation of resources. In consequence, the task of government and policy design becomes responsive to people’s voice and continuously contested by the political process.

2.2.3. Ownership:

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The concept of ownership in the area of jurisprudence is old with a meaning of possession of both physical and absolute things. Later, an evolution of its common understanding reached to a relations between a person and a thing. Though since the 1980s, some rare and synonymous use of this term was confined to certain part of donor community, like the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), this was the OECD’s Development and Assistance Committee (DAC) who in May 1995 brought the word ‘ownership’ into their policy document with the title of ‘Development Partnerships in the New Global Context’ by stating that ‘For development to succeed, the people of the countries concerned must be the ‘‘owners’’ of their development policies and programmes.’ (OECD 1995: 2). In the following year, the OECD’s DAC published its new century’s development manifesto where it placed ‘local ownership’ as the core theme in its agenda and one of its five policy principles. (OECD 1996). It defined that ownership makes recipient countries able to “exercise effective leadership over their development policies” and “co-ordinate development actions” (OECD 2008).

In policy papers, ownership is considered as a proxy indicator of the perception of the executors in terms of the convergence of their owning and interest (Killick, Gunatilaka & Marr 1998: 98). The fundamental logic of ownership is defined in a number of literatures as the salient need of donor community to secure support from domestic political forces while keeping intact the holiness of the neoliberal prescriptions (Collier 1997; World Bank 1998; Easterly 2001). Hence, it resembles a psychological attachment: ‘a perception of possession’ without any material change (Stewart and Wang 2006:291). More popular ‘theatre’ of participation (Lazarus 2008:1207) will surely cement this psychological template with an objective to global policy convergence over local reality.

Against the technocratic and narrow understanding, ‘local ownership’ shall confirm empowerment over a frequent interaction of ideational-material or material-ideational policy setting if the governance is placed on understanding and materializing of the process where ‘conflicting ideas and interests are negotiated and contested’ (Lazarus 2008:1212). Ownership in such setting will encompass the local control on policy, reflect true aspiration of local reality and bolster the sense of sovereignty keeping the state’s role in the centre.

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2.2.4. Civil society: The notion of civil society is much debated with

conflicting ideas encompassing much of the academic and policy space. Where the question is curtailing power of the state and enabling market centric development, for neoliberal reformers this notion is highly focused on all institutions other than the state and informally developed collective social movement (Blair 1996; World Bank 1994, 1996; Hadenius and Uggla 1996; Feldman 2003: 19-20). Replacing struggle, conflict and contestation in the sphere of the distribution and allocation mechanism, neoliberal reformers embrace civil society ‘as a process of seizing access to political participation’ (Feldman 2003:20). For the reformers, this definition mostly counts welfare centric role of it giving prominence to NGO and links its social changing role with service providing capacity to the ‘poor’ (World Bank 1996:2; White 1999: 323).

The World Bank in its numerous reports has justified its bottom-up approach on the basis of its definition of “civil society” as ‘the wide array of nongovernmental and not-for-profit organizations that have a presence in public life, expressing the interests and values of their members or others, based on ethical, cultural, political, scientific, religious, or philanthropic considerations’ (World Bank 2003:20). The IFIs led donor agencies perceives CSOs with their comparative advantage over state and private sector. That is, the comparative advantage lies on CSO’s perceived capacity to be the voice of the poor, less bureaucratic and more efficient, innovative in developing and implementing new ideas and solutions, more technical, fluent to contribute local knowledge in development and to cultivate ‘social capital’ (World Bank 2003, 2000).

Centring on the comparative advantage of CSOs, donor led IFIs stresses on ‘broad-based participation by civil society’ within the framework of voluntary mechanism of promoting ‘national ownership’ (IMF/World Bank 2002; Dawson & Bhatt 2001), and justifiably give credit of excellence to them for their more accountable and service providing role in the ‘new’ development paradigm than the state.

In the claimed metamorphosis, NGOs and CSOs are placed as ‘proxy representatives’ for the poor legitimized by the rubric of apolitical usage of ‘participation’ and ‘partnership’ in this ‘third way’. Such inclusion of poor’s

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voice nonetheless suggests “spin and deceit”, which Craig and Porter explains by referring to Levitas (1998), as ‘embodying a basic duplicity in dealing, on the one hand, with “the poor”-who are to be “included” – and, on the other hand, with the political economy of poverty and inequality- which is not robustly addressed’ (Craig and Porter 2003: 54).

In the context of the approaches of poverty reduction, inclusion of the poor through CSOs’ ‘proxy’ representation can be seen as a tool of risk management where ‘the risks of exclusion and instability’ is more highly concerned with the promotion of ‘universal global integration’ than serving the poor (Craig and Porter 2003: 55).

Against this technocratic and purposive design, an autonomous process of politics suggests that the civil society is an area of struggle and dispute settlement by giving the space to divergent voices and, continuously redresses the state’s authority and accountability in policy design and implementation. It reacts to hegemonic control (Giner 1995) of external or internal forces and, shapes the desire arisen from locality.

In the framework of political process, empowerment is the main body of all these concepts. Participation will cover the full continuum of it, from knowledge sharing to policy initiative and control. Governance denotes a policy space for social struggle and mass aspiration. Ownership shall embody local control on policy with frequent and dual interaction of ideational and material things. On the other hand, civil society will allow divergent voices of the community a horizon for struggle and dispute settlement.

2.3. Conclusion:The analytical approach provides me the insight of how

a national policy space is tied with and dominated by the neoliberal stand of the managerial and problem centric vision of politics. I will use this to explore how the technocratic governance manifests the policy space with ‘local ownership’ in PRSP process of Bangladesh and, how aid with its dominating role intensifies this manifestation. Further, revealing the logic of interest-convergence between reformers and certain elites and the evident failure to create reliable agents, the approach helps me to explain the role of newly emerged elite whether they facilitate or hinder actual ownership and, to understand the causal connection of their conformity to the reformers’

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technocratic stand with their interest maximising in Bangladesh. The frame of the concepts, on the other hand, will contribute to the research in identifying the instrumental use of these buzzwords to mask the technocratic failure of addressing actual ownership in Bangladesh.

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Chapter 3 Bangladesh: a brief overview

This chapter will provide a brief overview on Bangladesh complementary to the analysis in the paper. The overview covers its struggle for democracy, patron-client relations in social, political and economic structure, and a review on its aid and donor dependency.

Bangladesh becomes independent in 1971 after a blood-spattered war with West Pakistan following a parliamentary form of government. Facing an upsurge of social, economic and political crisis, this government established one party rule making the President more powerful over all other institutions. But a military coup violently removed the then rulers from power in August 1975 following an establishment of control on power of military and quasi-military regimes till 1990. A parliamentary form of government re-established in December, 1991 after the overthrow of the last military government of General Ershad by a popular movement in December, 1990. Thereafter, the country has been in the track of liberal democratic process. (Khan 1998; Sarker 2008)

The rulers of the country regularly attempts to cultivate their regime legitimacy by nurturing and feeding patron-client relations rooted in the country’s social, political and economic structures. The patron-client relations work by a reciprocal interaction of demand and supply from both patron and client influenced by a range of ideational factors. Client demands for credit, land, tenancy, or employment opportunity as cash and kind along with political protection standing on the bottom of vertical tie. On the other hand, patron appropriates his giving with a right to extract cheap labour, services, loyalty and respect from his client. Ideational factors involve a sense of moral right to the client to get material blessing from well-placed people within family and society. It translates into ‘pattern of mutual obligations’ and places higher-ranked patron in the throne of ‘higher moral authority’. The relation favours development of ‘highly personalized’ authority and charismatic leadership. Instead of posing any threat to this relationship, political parties and associations capture the system of relations for their legitimacy, integrity and expansion. (Kochanek 1993: 44-9)

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Aid money becomes not only crucial for post war development and construction or for management of natural disaster, but also proves influential for regime legitimacy and cultivation of patron-client tie. Bangladesh received a fairly large amount of foreign aid over the years with a range of annual average from US$1.0 billion to around US$1.5 billion significant part of which accrued from the source of official development assistance. But the contribution of aid to the country’s GDP has been decreasing (shown in figure of Appendix B) in response to the increasing input to the GDP from mostly economically less feasible sources, such as remittance flow and comparative advantage centric growth of garments export. This decreasing pattern of aid flow suggests more about the ‘growth’ of the national economy than the decrease in the volume of aid flow. (Quibria and Shafi 2007; Sobhan 2003; Green and Curts 2005)

Involvement of donor communities in restructuring the economy with aid and reform has been initiated in Bangladesh since 1975. Soon they found the country as ‘testing ground’ for experimenting reform tools. Now the reform has been extended into reorganization of social fabric by the planning mechanism and components of PRSP.

Lengthy Military and quasi-military regime with its need of legitimacy, intensified patron-client relations along with aid dependency and donor’s domination over policies give a possibility of complicacy when the question comes about issues of governance and ownership.

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Chapter 4

Threshold contribution of different actors in PRSP policy process in terms of ‘ownership’

A claimed paradigm change to Post Washington Consensus era, as a response to the inefficiency and lack of legitimacy of the structural adjustment period in post-independent Bangladesh, has been operationalized through the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP) positing the core of its new Integrated Development Model (IDM) approach. This brings a promise of bringing the government of Bangladesh back ‘in the driver’s sit’ and, manifests this in its call for broader partnership between a co-ordinated group of donors and Bangladesh and in its commitment for ‘local ownership’ in policy initiatives.

During the rule of a strong parliamentary government in Bangladesh, the first initiative has been taken in the formulation of an interim PRSP (I-PRSP) which become finalised in March 2003 with the title of ‘A national strategy for economic growth, poverty reduction and social development ’ (Government of Bangladesh (GOB) 2003). A subsequent development to the full version of PRSP has come with a title of ‘Unlocking the Potential: National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction’ in 2005 (GOB 2005). The second NSAPR, titled “Moving Ahead: National Strategy for Accelerated Poverty Reduction II,” has been prepared as a continuity of the first one in 2008 (GOB 2008).

Centring on the paper’s purpose, in the first chapter I will discuss how the policy content of the PRSP itself culminates the scope of policy space driven by local political process. On the other hand, the second will examine how the power asymmetry favouring donors and their associated controlling mechanism constraints the threshold contribution of participating local actors in PRSP policy process. I will conclude the chapter following an analysis of civil society representation questioning the legitimacy of their capability to represent poor.

4.1. Policy content:

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In this part, my research focus makes me restraint to only examine the core of the policy content and not all of PRSPs. I will seek its approach to politics. I will draw conclusion from this sub-chapter whether policy space provided in the core of PRSP content can necessarily accommodate owning of any alternative policy options derived from uninterrupted political process.

4.1.1. Politics is problem driven in ex ante conditionality:

Policies in all three consecutive PRSPs of Bangladesh resonates the idea of the ‘selectivity’ requirement that ‘good’ governance with accountability and transparency should be placed as the ‘end’ which will be the basis in priority setting. From World Bank’s influential report in 1998 on Assessing Aid (World Bank 1998) to a recent one (World Bank 2007) emphasis has been continuously giving on this ‘selectivity’ criterion of development assistance replacing ‘conditionality’ of structural adjustment era. I-PRSP publication in 2003 followed the World Bank’s report on Bangladesh Taming Leviathan Reforming Governance in Bangladesh (World Bank 2002b) not only in terms of sequential publication but also apprehending the latter’s idea of good governance as end goal. Doing justice to its title, this report deals with the politics from a ‘problem-driven’ perspective and treats the nature of the politics as ‘pervasive clientalism’, well organized concert of interest groups and underworld ‘muscle-power’ with rampant corruption (World Bank 2002b: vi-viii). A similar tone has been echoed in another important report on Participatory Poverty Assessment in Bangladesh by NGO Working Group on the World Bank of Bangladesh (Nabi et. al 1999:14). It recognises that ‘political institutions and interests’ create obstacles to and provide the sources of legitimacy problem of donor driven reform in the 1990s.

The following table represents weight of the importance of specific type of contents given in PRSP in terms of how frequently the relevant words are used and, simultaneously confirms the assertion of the above selectivity criterion with antithetical strand to the politics:

Table 4.1 Frequency use of variables in PRSP

Name of PRSP

Frequency use of variables in PRSPGoverna

nceIn

stitutiPolitics Libe

ralizati

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on onI-PRSP 51 (most

cases associated with ‘good’)

136 5 (preceded with the word of ‘criminalization’ (2) and ‘polarization’ (3)

9

NSAPR-I

176 257 4 (associated with ‘problem driven’ use)

9

NSAPR-II

160 336 11 (in almost every case used with negative word like ‘confrontational’

08

Source: Own analysis

The above table shows the symmetry of importance level of the used variables in every of three PRSPs denoting the higher importance on governance and institutional building in contrast to lowest importance given on politics which is used in PRSPs in almost every case with negative resonance. Comparatively lower stress given on different type of liberalization represents the deregulated economic base built in structural adjustment era. This is further suggested from the following table 4.2 and World Bank’s country assistance strategy 2006-09 (World Bank 2006) which expressed its pride-feeling for the liberalized economic base already made by the last thirty years effort of IFIs in Bangladesh.

Table: 4.2: A Snapshot of Bangladesh’s Trade Regime

POLICY CRITERIA STATUSExchange Rate UnifiedExchange Rate determination Free FloatPayment ConvertibilityCurrent AccountCapital Account

YesNo

Import restrictionsImport licensingQuantitative Restrictions (QRs)

on imports

NoNoNo

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State monopoliesTariff structureTop Rate, 2009Average Protective Rate 2009Tariff slabs (customs duty)Para-tariffs

2520.13, 7, 12, 25Supplementary

DutiesExistence of high level of

NTBsNo

Trade Openness (trade-GDP ratio)

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Source: World Bank (2009)

4.1.2. Political aspiration kept isolated from policies:

NSAPR II sets its objective to reduce poverty by flourishing private sectors with concerted support from government by promoting ‘more market oriented’ institutional arrangements and ‘good’ governance where non-political efforts will be made available by ensuring ‘effective participation’ of NGOs and the civil society (GOB 2008: xiv).

Earlier, political forces had a concentrated reliance on the country’s traditional five-year plan to ensure allocation of state-led venture in any desired sector (Mahmud, 2009:92). Extensive conditionality of deregulation and liberalization in structural adjustment era has made it irrelevant in policy matter and confirmed its death after the last 5th five-year plan of 1997-2002 by initiating I-PRSP in 2003. Report on Participatory Poverty Assessment in Bangladesh has stated this with their observation that ‘as part of the condition of the structural adjustment programme, [the government] has cut public sector expenditure and eliminated subsidies from almost all sectors of the economy’(Nabi et. al 1999: 14). Notwithstanding a denouncement of the earlier structural adjustment era, PRSPs in Bangladesh exclusively suggest establishing market supremacy in all aspects of ‘pro-poor growth’, for instance, in sensitive issue of primary health care even in ‘hard-to-reach areas’ (GOB 2008: 296).

What is most striking here is that the political forces are now replaced with apolitical representation of NGOs and civil society and, any genuine aspiration coming out from politics cannot enter into the territory of private sector

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governed by the market. For example, whereas present policies in PRSP advocate for comparative advantage based (mostly for low labour cost) promotion of RMG (readymade garments) or SME (small and medium enterprises), (GOB: 2005: 274) on the basis of ‘supremacy of the market’, any political aspiration to overcome the stage of present ‘comparative advantage’ cannot lead policy change within the framework of market supremacy in PRSP.

4.1.3. PRSPs resonate ‘one size fits all’ and earlier structural adjustment policies:

I have used a table (shown in Appendix A) developed by Stewart and Wang (2006: 310-11) where they examined the contents of macro-economic and structural reform in PRSPs of 27 countries excluding Bangladesh. I have used this as a benchmark to test the level of conformity of the same policy contents in three PRSPs (GOB 2003; 2005 and 2008) of Bangladesh with that of those countries. The use of this table in my examination of policy content of Bangladesh PRSPs provides some advantageous inputs. Firstly, it can show the pattern of policies across the developing countries: its similarity or dissimilarity and importantly, the original table deals with the I-PRSPs or first version of PRSPs which may provide a benchmark to check whether there is any change of contents in course of time in the further version of PRSP (GOB 2005 and 2008) in Bangladesh.

It shows that firstly there is at least no fundamental shift in PRSP from structural adjustment programmes in terms of market centric policy reform. Policies to ensure ‘get the prices right’ is distinctively present in reform contents of PRSP (GOB 2008) with financial and trade liberalization, privatization, public sector, social sector and different sectoral policies reform.

Secondly, the same set of structural reform has been chosen across all the countries’ PRSP neglecting highly broad range of economies. In line with the policies of the countries in Appendix A, PRSPs of Bangladesh formulates policies for maintaining macroeconomic stability by following rigid monetary and fiscal policies with the target of lowering inflation and fiscal and current account deficit in terms of debt payment and public spending, maintaining a stabilized real exchange rate and reducing interest rate along with highlighting ‘tax and customs reforms’ to increase revenue (GOB 2008: 35-36). The consistency of policy instruments over the inconsistent economic structures across the countries questions the claim of local

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ownership (Stewart and Wang 2006:312) by suggesting the domination of ‘one size fits all’ policies. For example, as a sign of macroeconomic stability, as Stewart and Wang (2006: 312) informed, the average level of inflation in 2000, in four countries of Appendix A (Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia) was above 20 percent per year whereas that in the other countries was approximate 3.5 percent per year (UNCTAD 2002) including a trend of one digit inflation rate with 6.5 percent in FY05 in Bangladesh (GOB 2008:3). But the policy prescription in PRSP overlooks the different level of inflation across countries and avoids addressing the crucial ‘supply side’ and ‘demand side’ causes of inflation.

These policies are arranged with the core content of technocratic institution building which can be seen as an attempt to embed the policies of Washington Consensus in a ‘demand driven’ technocratic political institutional framework to solve the problem underlying the lack of local support in the agency imposed SAP. Inevitably, politics is excluded from the policy space which has no room for any alternative policy options.

4.2. Power asymmetry favouring donors and the possibility of local ownership:

We see an inclusive donors’ involvement controls the scope of local ownership. Donors represent the interest of ‘the global formal and technical framework’, whereas local ownership embodies the control on local ‘productive and political realities’ (Craig and Porter 2003: 56). The global integration approach of the claimed paradigmatic shift translates national development plans into PRSP. The PRSP approach ties donors’ global integration approach with the local realities of Bangladesh counting it tools to provide development assistance. For instance, the assistance or concessional loans from the World Bank and IMF is conditioned with the contents of PRSP. Under the rubric of realignment and harmonisation other multilateral and bilateral donors considers the content and implementation of PRSP as basis for their support.

How the global integration materialises in Bangladesh can be understood by examining the staged operation for preparing PRSP. In initial stage, the ‘participation’ process includes donors’ engagement, which is advised by the World Bank’s (2002a: 250, Box 7.6) Source Book for Poverty Reduction Strategies, a guide book for PRSP preparation. A drafted PRSP through participatory process is then presented to the Bangladesh Development Forum, a

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co-ordinated group of donors for Bangladesh, for its review and necessary feedback. The process then follows a joint assessment by the World Bank and IMF to check the contents and accuracy. The Joint Staff Assessment (JAS) judges the soundness of PRSP and gives input to the Board of Directors of both the IFIs about the reasoning of their support. The procedure ends by its presentation to and endorsement of the Board of Directors of the World Bank and IMF. The success of getting approval in these staged procedures drives the government to apply for IMF’s Poverty Reduction and Growth Funds (PRGF), which replaced its earlier Expanded Structural Adjustment Funds (ESAF), and for the World Bank’s Development Support Credit (DSC) which is determined by its business plan for the PRSP of specific country named Country Assistance Strategies (CAS). I have avoided explaining the notion and relevance of HIPC (highly indebtedness poor countries) as Bangladesh is out of this category. This has been reported in the literatures that Bangladesh has followed the above procedures in preparing I-PRSP in 2003 (Dev et al. 2004) and then in developing a full version in 2005 (Mahmud 2009) and, subsequently has received the soft loans under a medium term policy framework.

A drive for harmonisation and co-ordination has convinced other multilateral and bilateral donors to align their aid and development tasks taking the PRSP as base alongside their separate goals. This drive has been reflected in the ADB’s Bangladesh Country Strategy and Program for 2006 – 2010 and the United Nations Development Assistance Framework in Bangladesh 2006 – 2010,

The staged operation of preparing PRSP and subsequent alignment of other donors with it clearly demonstrate donors’ involvement with united domination to restructure the local realities in line with global framework. Such domination certainly requires the techno-managerial governance for better ‘risk management’ of ‘problem-driven’ politics and associated confrontation and contestation. The success of preparing PRSP and a manifestation of conformity to the donors’ line of thinking for global integration certainly demonstrates such presence in Bangladesh.

How the presence of dominated techno-managerialism is ubiquitous surrounding PRSP policy design and inversely culminates the process of contestation in policy space to

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represent the actual local need and aspiration will be well illustrated from an example of PRSP policy matrix on power sector. In the first full PRSP (GOB 2005), PRSP has refrained itself from proposing any public sector investment to generate additional power capacity to make itself fully conformed to the donors’ line of thought to promote privatization. But power failure is such a thing to debar privatization. Later the realization might induce the Bank as Mahmud (2009) informs that it has recently agreed to provide a soft loan to the government for establishing power plant under its control. My point is that a domination of donor apparatus and its associated technocratic governance did not allow the state actors to realize the crying need.

4.3. Ownership in PRS policy process by civil society representation:

This part will essentially treat NGOs as active civil society actors counting its importance in donor-led IFIs’ civil society discourse and for its affiliation with huge number of rural people. In a review paper of World Bank in 1990 on Bangladesh, expansion of NGO activities was more focused indicating its comparative advantage over the government (World Bank 1990). A new partnership between NGO and the state is claimed to be mutually beneficial complementarily to each other (World Bank 1996: xv). From the context of such efforts to build partnership, and by following Hulme and Edwards (1997:6), development of civil society in Bangladesh can be seen as a manifestation of expansion of NGO as supplement to the governmental efforts and service delivery.

The chapter will be divided into two sub-parts. In the first part I will examine the legitimacy of CSOs to represent poor where the second part will proceed with a concise examination of their participation in policy process.

4.3.1. Nature and scope of civil society organizations to represent poor

In Bangladesh, on the one hand, other non-NGO civil society actors are accused of being mostly grasped by the loyalty of political parties. The major political parties, which differ more with regard to ‘personalities’ than mere ideologies or ‘platform’ (Stiles 2002: 110; Kochanek 1993:45), provide ‘an arena for elite competition via patronage distribution’ (Stiles 2002:110). Assurance of political loyalty is foremost important for political parties in Bangladesh and is consistently confirmed by the means of violence and necessary infiltration of any ‘agency’ to

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increase the party influence in society. Partisan division is such extreme that there is hardly any professional body who could think to advance their career without joining or being affiliated with any of the main parties (Stiles 2002: Table 4.1: 110).

On the other hand, the role of NGOs in the territory of civil society functionaries is further criticized. They have been accused of ‘monopolizing’ it (Kamal, A. 1999), destroying genuine grassroots movement and of maintaining typical professionalism. Even there are some beliefs that NGOs have already been co-opted by partisan demarcation. (according to opinion of different people in Bangladesh. Interview collected by Stiles 2002: 111). However, partisan division of NGO seems mostly contradictory as they are by and large apolitical, maintain professionalism, have accountability to donors and possess more financial solvency than the other actors of civil society (Stiles 2002: 111). Rather they have gained and been placed in a position of comparative advantage over the state and other actors with their claimed role to represent the poor and monitor the state agencies. In that case, collaboration with state agencies is possible instead of partisan role. The right conclusion may be taken by Stiles (2002) who states that ‘there is a strong tendency for NGOs to simply divorce themselves from civil society in practice while at the same time taking on its mantle’ (Stiles 2002: 111). This will be clear by tracing into the extent of its functional nature.

Contribution to three national crises consecutively reconstruction after liberation war in 1971, disastrous flood in 1988 and devastating cyclone in 1991 has concreted the high profile of NGO against the confrontation they faced. Among these crises, support to the development works of nongovernmental organization immediately after independence can mostly considered as benevolent and free from self interest as a demonstration of ‘public spirit’ which can be attributed in response to ‘the absence of an entrenched industrial elite or entrepreneurial class’ and the need of development of infrastructural capacity (Feldman 2003:17). But this earlier vision of ideational-material has changed in course of time both functionally and structurally.

In post independent Bangladesh, when an ideational surge of ‘public spirit’ did not get any scope to be materialised in successive military regimes, NGO offered a considerable space for people with progressive thinking to

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implement their ‘vision’ and to see the positive outcomes which any political parties could not offer (White 2000: 321). This points to the time when ‘the rise of NGOs is itself held as an indication of a strengthening of civil society: NGOs stand as examples of the citizens’ association which will guarantee civil liberties and a broader distribution of basic rights’ (White 2000: 320).

A turn from this earlier type of ideational-material to the later material-ideational has been concreted in the function and structure of NGO by the instrumental necessity of NGO in the claimed paradigm and a set of rigorous measures to be accountable to the donors. These transformations lead NGOs to a change in its size, professionalization, question of accountability and ultimately to a renovation as a technical and apolitical tool box.

This turn and consequential transformation has been experienced in the last twenty years after the end of military regime in the late 80s. In this time, NGO has placed itself as ‘honest brokers’ (White 2000: 320) and ‘buffers’ (Feldman 2003:22) between state and its citizen responding to the demand of material-ideational shift. That is, its ethos and operations is very far from the notion of civil society as ‘a relation of contestation and an arena of political struggle where people seek to realise their practical as well as strategic interests and challenge their exclusion from controlling political structures’ (Feldman 2003: 21-2). As broker, NGO speaks for its ‘target group’ and ‘beneficiary’ which may at best be seen as a mere sampling distribution of the huge number of poor whom they claimed to represent. As buffer, instead of encouraging collective struggle and any ‘transformative’ actions, it promotes individual responsibility by serving only practical interest through training and support to enhance ‘self reliance’ which cultivates ‘methodological individualism’ among rural poor.

About their rise, size and professionalization in the later material-ideational transformation, these are not the case of institutionalizing any earlier social or political movement. Rather, these question the continuity of earlier ideational-material initiative and can be traced into, on the one hand, ‘exchanges between their organizers and members of the international aid community, whether the Ford Foundation, the LMG, or a broad array of official donors’ and on the other hand, a formulation of NGO-participants relation embodying ‘commitment to institutional reproduction and staff employment security’ which are achieved by the

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process of ‘collaboration, accommodation, and, contestation’ (Feldman 2003:19-20).

The sheer size of NGO, from anthropological point of view, present themselves to the villagers as ‘hybrid of state or market’, a new version of ‘officer class’ or ‘with more disillusionment-simply as a particularly lucrative type of business’ (White 2000:321). The rise, size and professionalism of NGO are linked with the initiative role of their first generation innovative organizers coming from elite, urban and educated families with kin relations in state’s civil and foreign services and international donor agencies along with the foreign study and employment record. Their profile can be contrasted to their counterpart in different ministries with urban middle class (Feldman 2003: 16). Feldman further reported about next generation employee in NGO sectors coming from lower-middle and middle class who in most cases could not ensure their employment in ‘elite civil service’ (Feldman 2003:17) and hence rely on professional development for their livelihood instead of carrying any motivation to facilitate any social movement. Large NGO, like BRAC and Grameen Bank, now have state-of-art training and research institutions equipped with skilled staffs many of them having PhDs. Such size and professionalism is enough to make them aloof or ‘disenfranchised’ from their ‘stakeholders’ as they are highly intended to collaborate with state functionaries and accommodate their institutional interest with donor’s demand and need from clientele. But, consecutively, they ‘fail to link their efforts to political and economic transformation’ (Feldman 2003: 21) shrinking necessary space for political contestation which should be the prominent task of civil society actors.

In terms of question of accountability, Geof Wood in his big volume research in 1994 raises his careful concern about the accountability mechanism. Comparative advantage of NGO calls for bypassing state in service provision with underlying logic of ‘’state failures’ in delivering essential service to its citizen and, derails accountability mechanism. For example, if NGO fails or withdraws its service what is the place to complain for? Ironically, the state is the final resort in that case. The government in Bangladesh, with its status of rising democracy, has at least some reliable accountability mechanism, such as election, parliament, a legal framework and court. White notes that, though NGOs accountability goes to the donors with certain procedure, recently a

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strong development of ‘sustainability’ for some NGOs, like BRAC, who are ‘effectively independent of any single donor’, questions and helps to bypass the donor directed accountability system (White 2000: 321-2). Their sustainable positions helped them to take position against IMF’s attempt to convince the government to sign the PSI (Policy Support Instrument) agreement which would provide the IMF a legal capacity to control country’s economic policy. Against the consideration of such protest as a protection of people’s right (Ahmed 2003) by NGO community, we may see this differently beyond their accountability to and representation of the poor mass. As the proposal of PSI does not correlate any financial support reciprocal to the transfer of control on national policy, NGO/CSO community does not perceive this profitable. Though they claim, like Grameen Bank, that poor are their ‘stakeholders’, the reality is that there is no effective mechanism to make them meaningful ‘shareholders’.

Moreover, their technical and apolitical toolbox allows them to work with a cognitive model of ‘modernisation’ drawing an assumption of ‘ignorant villagers who needed to be taught enlightened ways’ (White 2000:322). Their approach of works, which follows ‘accommodation’ and ‘collaboration’ only by providing some ‘practical interests’ to their participants, allow them to avoid the issues of rights and social justice of the ‘ignorant’ stakeholders.

Moreover, similar to the illustration of Jaysuriya in the context of rising unemployment following to the Asian Economic Crisis (Jaysuriya 2003:2), Feldman analyses that self reliance and training program of NGO in Bangladesh is shifting the responsibility of unemployment from the idea of social duty of private and state institutions to the responsibilities of communities and individuals and, transferring unemployment problem from ‘social issue’ to ‘social conduct’. For instance, in Bangladesh, NGO considers women ‘stakeholders’ as ‘producers’ by keeping intact the structural and political conditions of inequality underlying the role of women in family and society. Moreover, it shifted the focus from generating employment to generating income by offering credit and skills according to the neoliberal premises. Among NGOs working for women, Saptogram, Naripokho, and Bhaste Shekha are good examples dealing with the motto of income generation and skill development in which case underlying logic of gender inequality in the labour market remains untouched. (Feldman 2003: 10-16).

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In conclusion, NGOs, who are considered as prominent forces of entire civil society in Bangladesh, enter as ‘Trojan horse’ (White 2000) into the terrain with the popular goal of democratization, conscientalisation, representation, liberties, and social development. But observation shows that it ‘carries quiet a different cargo’ (White 2000) with the motif of restructuring social mechanism compatible with ‘market supremacy’, destroying possible social forces for effective movement of change, and depoliticizing the role of actors in policy process. Hence, the mainstream civil society actors cannot claim the legitimacy to represent ‘poor’.

4.3.2. Participation of CSO in policy process:In addition to questioning the legitimacy of

representation by civil society organizations in policy process, the other end of the story involves a searching inside the mechanics of ‘participation’ by civil society since an essentialism has been tagged by the donor (IMF 2002) to the 'participation' of civil society in the PRSP policy process for the achievement of national ownership. Other than this essentialism of CSO’s involvement, Mahmud (2009) acknowledges that a technocratic inclination of the government restricts its motivation to include the country’s electoral representation in policy process by granting donors’ view of ‘problem-driven’ politics. Both the donor’s view and technocratic role of government confine ‘the importance of parliamentary endorsement’ to mere ‘symbolic value’ (Mahmud 2006:11). Exclusion of the perceived ‘confrontational politics’ may reinforce the claimed importance of CSO in PRSP policy design.

Notwithstanding the lack of policy space for electoral representative through participation, the joint study of Mahmud (2006) with the Commonwealth Secretariat claims that ‘[t]he ownership of PRSP has been enhanced by the fact that the government has managed the process of its preparation entirely on its own, using local expertise and involving a participatory process’ (Mahmud 2006). My investigation will cover a concise assessment whether the participation of CSO contributes to change in policy content and programme coverage. Due to lack of necessary and quality literatures on this issue, my analysis may be constrained to understanding the scope and nature of participation in the PRSP policy design of Bangladesh.

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Available literatures about the participation of CSO in I-PRSP process raised questions about the poor number (153) of representatives outside the government (Chaudhury 2002) with only 21 consultation meeting via BRAC, a leading NGO of the country and, about the domination of bureaucrats through inter-ministerial committee (Dev et al. 2004:75) directing to a common demand of more representation from CSO by the name of poor’s voice (Akash 2002; Hossain 2002). For the lack of this voice, I-PRSP participatory process is stigmatized as ‘eyewash’ (Akash 2002). If civil society of Bangladesh is inherently unable to represent poor I do not find it worthy to put the same set of questions as fault line of participation.

It is true that the mode of participation is mechanical associated with lacking of many representative settings as if it lacks soul inside it. Against the above questions, some points can be considered underlying the technocratic logic of participation in Bangladesh. Firstly, the problem may lie on ‘cognitive resonance’ associated with participation, though, thereafter in the full version of PRSP, a wide variety of NGOs and professional from academics to media-men have been brought into the design process (GED 2005). A ‘pseudo’ or ‘unreal’ participation (Vebra and Nie 1972) has been echoed from the ‘invited’ participants in the discussion of Divisional Commissioner’s office and of capital city (Kamruzzaman 2009: 68). That is, discussing those things what is expected to be heard. Secondly, considering cognitive demand of participants for symbolic status, placement of individual or organization in any level (division or central) of participation of policy apparatus has much possibility to be counted as more of a case of status-symbol than providing policy inputs by many of them. Finally, a formal apparatus of partnership provides a space of view exchange between state actors and CSO and, channels legitimacy for greater partnership in policy implementation level. Complementary to the legitimising goal, the ‘participation’ is a rehearsal of an orchestra of ‘donor-like minded’ bureaucrats (Green and Curts 2005) and non-state actors (Kamruzzaman 2009) to be played in implementation level as choir.

Similarly, any type of ‘participatory’ discussion beyond ‘symbolic value’ has not been heard when the 2nd full version of PRSP has been very recently placed in the parliament (on 15/09/09 according to the Daily Star, a

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national Bangladeshi daily) for a short period (on 23/09/09 it has been placed to LCG meeting according to the Daily Star). Additionally, no any epistemic input from political parties has been taken or given in any cases from I-PRSP to 2nd version of full PRSP.

Instead of identifying the problem as the absence of soul inside the process, the problem has additionally been directed to the control of bureaucratic hierarchy (Kamruzzaman 2009: 68) and the lack of their skills (Dev et al. 2004). But the bureaucrats identify the problem inherent in donors’ dictation-power and its use in taking out the government from the driver’s seat (Green and Curts 2005: 393).

To me, alongside the structural problem of ‘tacit domination’, the problem is mostly associated with functional restraint as I have analysed earlier. That is, the problem lies on the culmination of freedom of choice from the policy content by a set of pre-occupied neoliberal content. According to my earlier analysis on policy content, it can be concluded that instead of establishing any control on policy, the process of participation can only facilitate policy transfer by sharing knowledge from a participation continuum. These problems inherent in the ‘participation’ do not validate the claim of ‘paradigm’ shift with a qualitative change putting politics in centre; rather endorse a mere cyclical shift with ‘risk management’ approach to politics.

4.4. Conclusion:In this chapter I have excluded the analysis on the scope

of exploring threshold contribution of the state actors in the PRSP policy process mainly because of the unavailability of relevant literature and of the methodological constraints, though this discussion might help to further concrete our understanding on the technocratic governance and its impact on achieving local ownership as empowerment. Till mid 90s, Bangladeshi top governmental bureaucracy has been occupied by former CSP (Civil Service of Pakistan) most of whom with western educational background and has supported neoliberal reform since its global initiation like ‘Los Chicago Boys’ in Chile. Thereafter, the presence of ‘donor like minded’ groups reported by Green and Curts (2003) is assumed to be prominent in technocratic

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governance. But our present analysis suggests at least a thoughtful extent of such understanding.

It is observed from the discussion that the role of the government has already been shrunk or culminated in the process of depoliticizing development. The foremost thing is policy space which is pre-occupied with neoliberal macroeconomic contents and its social residuals and, will automatically fail to allocate any room for policy alternatives developed from a process of continuous contestation of different actors. Moreover, it is impossible for a technocratic governmental and policy apparatus to recognise real needs of the poor mass by ignoring ‘tacit domination’ of donors and donor led IFIs. Finally, CSO works to establish ‘market supremacy’ and to embed neoliberal policies in the country’s social, political and economic structures. Associated with its depoliticizing role as ‘buffer’, it shrinks or culminates the wings of government and relevant state actors to take initiative for searching and prioritizing alternatives.

In addition to the role of the state as actors, I want to point out the invalidity of the claim of paradigm shift by Post-Washington Consensus. In terms of content, the salient features of Washington Consensus remains same. What are added these are residuals to the core and considered as social masks of the leading contents. Donors’ domination posits a ‘tacit’ strand. Civil society organizations are working for social entrenchment of the core contents and destroying political uncomforting. Hence, this cannot be treated as a paradigm shift which requires a substantial change in the core. Rather I may denote the change as cyclical – appeared as the same but with a mask.

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Chapter 5

Interest maximising actors manoeuvring political process

My another proposition of the hypothesis is that political process, which is stigmatized as ‘problem-driven’ and hence, insulated from policy design by a replacement of techno-managerialism, is used as a manoeuvring tool by certain actors to extract maximum interest. This extraction helps the emergence of them as ‘robber-barron’ elites by a convergence with neoliberal policies of the market supremacy. My proposition further assumes that there is a causal relation between the confinement of ownership as empowerment to a mere policy transferring toolbox and the interest maximising process with its convergence. This relation set the embargo to materialize ‘local ownership’.

Bangladesh case reveals a story of how a ruling elite class has emerged in the spectrum of failure of structural economic reforms and consolidated the power base in the space of both private and state by a cycle of regime change subsequently as a trade-off of the reform failure and as a ‘highly ambiguous relationship’ (Robinson 2009: 15) with the neoliberal reformers. A well informed literature by Quadir (2000) analyses the political economy underneath such emergent of ‘robber-barron’ class. I will attempt with other supporting literatures to identify the link of the state’s reform initiative with the ascendency of such class and the consecutive impact on the intersecting point of technocratic governance and ownership as empowerment, with necessary critical inputs where needed. I will search the link from the very onset to the end of structural adjustment era in Bangladesh within the extent of a period from 1975 to 1996. The reason is that in the absence of a strong elite and capitalist class immediately after the liberation war of 1971, this period is remarkable for development and maturity of the ‘robber-barron’ elite and, of the convergence of their interest with neoliberal reform mantra. Then I will correlate the link with two bold marked good governance agenda suggesting that the elite captured reform is installing and enhancing bad governance in Bangladesh.

In the first part of my discussion I will analyze the underlying spirit of building a nexus of interest in military regime. In the second, I will show how a pervasive interest

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has been entrenched in the social, political and economic construction through the continuation and change of the regime. Finally, I will give a short analysis of two good governance matrix to show how pervasive elite interest captured the good governance narrative ended up with a conclusion.

5.1. Military regimes: the ethos what tied the

nexus: Targeting to a socialist transformation of the economy,

the then Prime Minister Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1972-75), the ruler powered immediately after the country’s independence, nationalised all industries and increased state controls over 92 percent manufacturing sector in 1972 from a poor figure of 34 percent in 1969-70 period with a reverse decrease of private sector control from 66 percent in 1969-70 to a mere 8 percent figure (Sobhan and Ahmed 1980: 132-3). But the project failed in the context of a post-war political economy of distribution, allocation and management issues.

The successive regime of General Ziaur Rahman (1975-81) abandoned the socialist model of development and instead was attracted to neoliberal prophecy of development and its mechanism for agency building considering the legitimacy crisis of his power. A challenge of post-war reconstruction and poverty along with the aspiration for economic growth grounded such stepping stone of legitimacy building.

Starting from the Revised Investment Policy of December 1975 (RIP 1975) for a comprehensive denationalisation program this regime aimed at creating an expanded horizon for private sector. With the strong promise of this regime to tackle the macroeconomic growth centric issues, such as budget deficit, inflation and poor private savings among others, Bangladesh has entered much earlier into the terrain of neoliberal restructuring than most of its counterparts. After that, successive regimes have fuelled the global integration over local realities with a focus on public sector reform, private sector promotion along with liberalization of trade and exchange rate. But track records of long two decades reform have proved the neoliberal forecast of strong macroeconomic indicators fairytale (Quadir 2000) and worsened political

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economy of inequality. Though the causes of failure have been directed towards the ‘unfinished reform’ and subsequently prescribe ‘the high road of faster policy and institutional reform’ (World Bank 1995: xvii), some literatures instead point to the ignorance of local realities in development as the root causes (Sobhan 1993: 925-931; Quadir 2000:198). But, to be more specific, I argue that the fault line is mostly found in the technocratic nature of reform agenda which forecloses the entry of politics and in consequence blocks a pragmatic reflection of local political, economic and social realities in the reform prescription. By default, a muddle process hijacks the development potentiality of politics and has hooked almost every scope of reform for ensuring regime support and elite interest leading to a nexus of ruling and business elites. In such a nexus of interest, the poor has no accessibility to claim empowerment through control of policy space.

With the association of rulers, this nexus is comprised of

business-entrepreneurs, industrialists who became losers for nationalising policy, bureaucrats enlightened from US and retired military elites. All found their political and financial prospects in the reform. The point of landing to a maturity of this nexus is the long term military and quasi-military regime from 1975 to 1990, a period which almost covers the structural adjustment era of donor-led IFIs in Bangladesh and, when the ruling elites were always impulsive to insulate threats coming from political contestation and to concrete their legitimacy. This nexus found its base on the patron-client based social, political and economic structure which grounded positioning of an unchallenged ‘highly personalized pattern of authority’ (Kochanek 1993:49). This nexus manoeuvred the facilities of this structure which is reflected as ‘weak political institution, and authoritarian and unresponsive bureaucratic culture, and highly factionalized political parties and associations which are no real threat to the pattern of dependence on charismatic and patrimonial leadership’ (Kochanek 1993: 49). A commonality of both this nexus and donor-led IFIs is that both consider the realisation of political contestation as threats to their interest.

5.2 Continuation and breaking down of Military regimes: entrenchment of the pervasive interest:

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What Quadir (2000) shows that rulers of the said military regimes were politically vulnerable and hence sought for getting the commanding position of elites who would help them to engineer the mass support. Gen Zia attempted to build an alternative political alliance antithetical to the then socialist Awami League (AL), the party of Sheikh Mujib, with the dominant variety of elites including a majority of civil-military bureaucrats and emerging business-industrial classes to remain in power for long-term. He subsequently filled his new parties’ Council of Advisors and ‘civilian’ cabinet with them and, gave them party nomination for parliamentary election.

Underneath the reform consensus, he ‘deliberately offered legal and illegal, formal and informal, economic and political concessions’ to this group (Quadir 2000:201). His private sector development program offered incentives for export led sectors with providing land, utilities and huge concession. Privatization program includes massive sale of nationalised industries in very cheap rate and, channels huge financial flows as low interest loan-support with very flexible payment condition by state-owned financial institutions to the entrepreneur elites so that they could buy cheap priced industries and set up new industries (Sobhan and Mahmud 1991: 158; Quadir 2000:199). As Quadir (2000) notes, this concessions further include divergent overwhelming practices such as discouraging state-owned loan provider institutions in devising and executing strict credit policy, ignoring legal steps for huge amount of tax avoidance and keeping ineffective law-enforcing agencies like Election Commission in taking actions against those elites. As a result, maximum borrowers encouraged to become ‘wilful defaulter’ and to invest money in unproductive sectors and in various quick money-making illegal enterprises. The rise of this oligarchy translated the logic of the reform into the extraction of public resources for private interest.

This group had continuously been manoeuvring the weak point of the rulers and cultivating patrimonialism in the local reality. In return, they helped Zia to develop a ‘personalised’ charismatic authority in politics and ensured major victory in the parliamentary election for Zia’s new Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). They did this by providing huge funds to the newly elected party and by spending a lavish amount of money for successful patron ship.

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Like Gen Zia, the then military ruler Gen Ershad (1982-1990) followed the same strategy with more sophistication and aggressiveness for a successful ‘civil-military bureaucratic oligarchy’ (Alam 1993 cf. Quadir 2000: 204) which was further expanded to commercial and political elites. He continued attracting, creating and using political and business elite by the tool of reform program. He devised the ‘New Industrial Policy’ (NIP) of 1982 and the ‘Revised Industrial Policy’ of 1986 (RIP 1986) for enhancing liberalization, deregulation and privatization. During first few years of his regime the privatization of profit making SOEs increased from 32% in 1981 to 78% in 1985 in number (Sobhan and Ahsan 1984:47). Additionally, he ensured a satisfactory flow of external fund by securing the confidence of donor led IFIs with the conformity to donors’ conditionality.

His legitimacy driven tie with political and economic elites fed him huge political funds for his party survival to channel money to divergent clientele from rural voters to opposition party leaders (Kochanek 1993: 226-7; Quadir 2000:204) in exchange for participation in fake electoral process in 1986 and 1988. But the sole reliance of Gen Ershad, like Gen Zia, was on commercial and civil-military elite. This reliance intensified facing a movement of anti-military regime from middle class and student alliance under the banner of main opposition parties. This coalition with ‘robber-barrons’ helped him being in power for almost ten years without any popular support.

The ‘robber-barrons’ reciprocally got generous access to public resources for their private money making. Like Gen Zia, without any standard mechanism, Gen Ershad handed over SOEs to this class by much undermining the state’s interest. By liberalization, the floodgate of import has been opened for another way of easy money-making. This elite class maximises their interest from officially shown import by using undervalued exchange rate and avoiding custom duties and taxes through under-invoicing and bribe to government officials. Besides this, unofficial import or smuggling which was around 18% in the 1990s was another way of such easy interest maximising (World Bank 1996b:7). Money lending and becoming ‘wilful defaulter’ was another common phenomenon in both military regimes associated with legal and illegal concession to and compromise with this new interest (Sobhan 1991:10).

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Amount of loan defaults surged and became doubled from 5.2 billion taka of 1982 to taka 10.5 billion of 1990 (Sobhan 1991:5) whereas 96.5% of this defaulted loan was fed to private sector.

What these 15 years long military and quasi-military regimes did is that it brought a qualitative change in formal representative politics in terms of high importance of money and higher currency for businessman. While, after the end of one and half decade long military regime, Khaleda Zia (the widow of Gen Zia) led BNP came into power in 1991 through a democratic electoral process, its business and industrial elite-captured electoral nomination and their dominance in the number of elected legislators shows the increasing trend of money and elite confined politics and policies. For instance, Quadir (2000) notes that where there number was 67 in 1973 and 91 in 1979, this sharply rose to 177 in the parliament of 1991. Among the BNP lawmakers, this group represents 28% in 1979 election, where it reaches at 67% in the parliament of 1991. Irrespective of partisan division, 59% newly elected lawmakers represent the business and industrialist group revealing around 95% increase over the last 12 years. (Quadir 2000: 207). In addition to aid dependency centric donors’ domination, interest driven coalition of these elites with neoliberal reform drove BNP in more aggressive neoliberal reform. The influence of the commercial elite debarred BNP led government to take legal and penal measures for effective consumer rights, preventing use of public resources for private gain or penalizing defaulters. As a source of corruption, ‘legal and illegal concession’ could not be stopped (Quadir 2000).

The space of politics has been formally confined to electoral process which, I argue, has been done by a rewritten patron-client relation manifested in ‘vote buying’ or the high spending of money. The scope for contested scrutiny of state-led policy design from people’s side has been ‘buy in’ in exchange for money. That is, patron sitting on the ‘top’ has purchased a pseudo independence from the people at ‘down’. This becomes possible because placing the political process in the governance has been blocked and, any protest to the extraction by elites and attempting to marginalise them is impossible to organize. As a result, this pseudo independence allows them to continue extracting or to use power apparatus for the security of wealth and/or continuation of extracting it. Hence, elite

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capturing of the state in the framework of depoliticized governance works to make grass root people disconnected from the process of local ownership which rather is confined to state or non state pseudo representatives including ‘robber-barrons’ elites on the surface.

5.3 Elite interest captured the good governance narrative:

One of the important good governance principles narrated in PRSP is public service reform mainly to deal with its structure, efficiency, dynamism, accountability and corruption issues. Though from 1980s a number of commissions, committees or study groups has been set up and reports have been published with the initiative of national government and donor community (a brief overview: Sarker 2008: Appendix A: 1438-40), all attempts have resulted persistent failure in producing effective outcomes.

Though the causes of failure to reform have mostly been indicated as pervasive clientelist pressures and politicization of the service ( Sobhan 2004), I want to argue that the failure rather is rooted on depoliticized governance apparatus and its capturing by elite. Our previous analysis shows that the legal or illegal ‘demand’ for favour, concession, compromise and facilities to use public resources for private gain has been merged with the interest of the ‘robber-barrons’ and ruling elite. This ‘demand’ in the form of powerful command or request has inevitably created a generous ‘supply’ of such quested services. The interaction and continuity of this ‘demand’ and ‘supply’ on the one hand, has created the phenomena of bad governance and on the other hand, has set the embargo on reform initiative. The form of embargo may vary from time to time and, at best, accord to above-said clienteles’ pressures or politicization.

About the second narrative of decentralization, a good number of committee has been formed and subsequent report has been published in 1982, 1992, 1997 and 2001 leading to some successive initiatives (Sarker 2008: 1424-28). The failure of all local government initiatives is evidently linked with the material and political interest maximisation of the rising ‘robber-barrons’. By local government mechanism, the reality of resource extraction by elite has been successfully replicated from urban centre to rural setting. Newly grown patron in centre has grasped

59

and exploited this mechanism for building rural clientele targeting to creating its long term power base.

Gen Zia attempted to expand the clientele tie by initiating Union Parishad and Gram Sorkar (Village Chairmanship) with formal provision of local government and channelling them huge development funds in his regime. Gen Ershad took the same attempt with somewhat different form in the face of urban and middle class opposition of his regime. These local establishments turned into a mechanism for patronage distribution and ‘private accumulation of wealth’ (Blair 1985; Sarker 1992; Rahman 1994; Siddiquee 1997; Sarker 2008) and a successful ‘class alliance between urban and rural elites’ (Rakodi 1988; Slater 1989 cf. Sarker 2008: 1427).

Unlike the rise of ‘savage capitalism’ and the associated establishment of better ‘governance’ in other developed countries, no any political struggle, conflict, contestation and aspiration from mass citizenry has led better institutional building, rule of law or implementation of property rights in Bangladesh.

5.4 Conclusion: tuned convergence of elite interest

and depoliticized state mechanism:

I have tried here to suggest a link of elite interest with state mechanism, neoliberal reform, depoliticized governance and local ownership by analysing the development of such elite nurtured by the state and fed by reform. Though Hossain (2005:967) advocates that ‘contemporary national elites rely on the state less for their wealth and position ………..than their predecessors in the liberation period’, I will strongly suggest that the prominent elite groups will not leave the state centric power with an objective to hinder any truly politicized exploration of reform alternatives from mass participation. This is for the fact that the maintenance and expansion of their wealth largely depend on the state’s regulatory system, its policy option and its dealing with the political process. Both reform and their interest have been merged and both interact in the depoliticized space of the state.

We have seen that the placement of business and industrial elites in the parliament has been increasing from

60

Gen Zia regime to first BNP led government in the 1990s. The trend becomes unchanged even in the recent 9th

parliamentary election of 2008 where 59% lawmakers reported themselves as businessman raising a suspect of hiding information about the profession and following a common perception about this parliament as ‘millionaire club’ (Majumdar 2009). Even Hossain (2004 :967) admits by referring Khan and Haque (1996) and Sobhan (2001) that ‘[n]ational politics is increasingly dominated by businessmen, replacing the mainly urban professional middle class politicians from the independence era’. A convergence of elite interest and donor community interplays against local reality by remaking and reshaping it in line with greater global integration which denies any ‘voice’ of poor for their empowerment considering this as threat.

61

Chapter 6

ConclusionThe paper has visited the socially masked grey area of

PWC to explore the scope of local empowerment in policy design process responding to its ‘ownership’ principles of claimed metamorphosis. The paper has found that a mere cyclical shift from WC to PWC fails to manifest ownership principle because of its high dependency on technocratic governance and adversative stand to politics.

The study has established the set hypotheses of the paper as true. On the one hand, different actors engaged in policy design reinforce ‘one-size fits all’ policies by culminating the scope of local ownership. On the other hand, the ‘intact’ political process has been muddled to confirm the constant flow of interest to a certain elite.

The paper has showed that policy content itself is very rigid and cannot be responsive to any demand for change from ‘problem driven’ terrain of politics. The local actors’ role is apolitical, non-representative. The claim of CSO to represent poor does not have legitimacy. The role of the national parliament, which is actually the most legitimate representation of people, is constrained to a role of ‘symbolic value’ in policy process. The dominating role of donor community in the process through the conditionality for loan and aid attached to PRSP content insulates its process and components from local reality and real need.

The paper has exposed the other side of failure of technocratic governance to materialize ‘ownership’. This failure is attached to the rise of particular group of elite, their interest and the convergence of their interest with reformers’ stand. In the framework of neoliberal reform, a stable relation of such interest with the continuity of technocratic governance does not allow any manifestation of ownership.

The whole scenario comprised of rigid political contents, technocratic or ‘symbolic’ contribution of different actors, interest maximising urban and rural elite and the convergence of interest between reform proponents and elites strongly reinforce disconnection of technocratic policy design process from the local reality, power, conflict and aspirations.

62

Notes

63

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AppendicesA. CHECKLIST OF REFORMS CONTAINED IN PRSPS

Reform ALBANIA

AZERBAIJAN

BENIN

BOLIVIA

BURKINAFASO

CAMBODIA

CAMEROUN

CHAD

ETHIOPIA

GHANA

GUYANA

HONDURAS

KYRGYZSTAN

MALAWI

Economic Management

Reliance on micro-economic stability for poverty reduction

X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Trade Policy (tariff reduction/export promotion)

X X X X XX X X X

Monetary Restraint

X X X X X X X X X X X X

Exchange Rate Policy

X X X X X X X X X X

Fiscal Restraint X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Tax & Customs Reforms

X X X X X X X X X X X

Price Control/Wage Policies

X XX

User Fees X X X X X

Sectoral Policies

X X X X X X X X X X

Public Sector Governance and ManagementBudget Management

X X X X X X XX

X

X X X

X

MTEF X X X X X X X

X

X

Decentralization

X X X X XX

X

X X X X

X

Public Administration Reform

X X X X X XX

X

X X X X

X

Anti-curroption X X X X X X X X X X X

Financial Sector Reform

Financial Institutions

X X X X X X X

X X X

Financial Intermediation Policies

X X X X X

X X X

Private Sector DevelopmentPrivatization X X X X X X X

X X X

Price Liberalisation

X X X

Legal and Judicial Reform

X X X X X X X X

X X X X

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Land Tenure Laws

X X X X X

X X X X X

Social Sector Reforms

Education X X X X X

X

Health X X X X X X X

X X X X

Social Protection/Employment Promotion

X X X X X X X X

X X X

Rural Livelihoods

X

Food security X X X X X X

X X

Environmental Protection

X X X X X X X X X X

Ethnic Minority Protection

X X X X

Gender Equity X X X X X X X

X X X

Children/Disabled

X X X X X X X

Vulnerable Groups X X X

Macro and Poverty sections separate?

Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

Y Y Y Y Y

Ex ante assessment of impact?

N N N N N N N N N

N N N N N

CHECKLIST OF REFORMS CONTAINED IN PRSPS (CONTINUED)Reform LI M

AURITANIA

MOZAMBIQUE

NICARAGUA

NIGER

RWANDA

SENEGAL

SRILANKA

TAJIKSTAN

TANZANIA

UGANDA

YEMEN

ZAMBIA

A B C

Economic ManagementReliance on micro-economic stability for poverty reduction

X X X X X X

X X X X X X

Trade Policy (tariff reduction/export promotion)

X X X X X

X

X X X

77

Monetary Restraint X X X X X

X X X

X X X

Exchange Rate Policy X X

X X X X

Fiscal Restraint X X X X X

X X X

X X X

Tax & Customs Reforms

X X X X X

X X X X

Price Control/Wage Policies

X X

User Fees X X X X X X X X

Sectoral Policies

X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Public Sector Governance and ManagementBudget Management

X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

MTEF X X X X X X X X X X X

Decentralization

X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Public Administration Reform

X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Anti-curroption

X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Financial Sector ReformFinancial Institutions

X X X X X X X X X X X X

Financial Intermediation Policies

X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Private Sector DevelopmentPrivatization

X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Price Liberalisation

X X X X X X

Legal and Judicial Reform

X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Land Tenure Laws

X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Social Sector ReformsEducation X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Health X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Social Protection/Employment Promotion

X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Rural Livelihoods

X X X X X X X X X

Food security

X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

78

Environmental Protection

X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Ethnic Minority Protection

X X X X X

Gender Equity

X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Children/Disabled

X X X X X X X X X X X X

Vulnerable Groups

X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

Macro and Poverty sections separate?

Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y Y

Ex ante assessment of impact?

N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N N

Note: A, B and C denote consecutively I-PRSP (GOB 2003), first full PRSP (GOB 2005) and second full PRSP (GOB2008) of Bangladesh

Source: Stewart and Wang (2003: 20-21: Table 2 and 2006: 310-311: Table 11.2) and my analysis of GOB (2003; 2005 and 2008)

B. Foreign Aid as a Percentage of Government Ex-penditures, Per Capita Income, Imports and In-vestment

79

Source: Data from World Development Indicators (2007)

80