Performing Development

Community-driven Development Discourse and Interventions

Emmanuelle PoncinLondon School of Economics and Political ScienceGovernment Department

Presentation Overview

1. CDD discourse and interventions

2. Analytical model of development discourse performativity

3. Case study: The Philippines’ Kalahi-CIDSS programme

CDD Programmes

•Aims: Empowerment and good governance

•Means: Give communities control over resources and decision-making to design, implement and manage their development project

•World Bank: $16 billion towards 637 CDD programmes in the 2000s

•New paradigm in international development?

The Gap between Discourse and Interventions

CDD as discourse:•The alternative to top-down development•Effective instrument of good governance

and empowerment

CDD as interventions:•Scarce, inconclusive empirical evidence•May exacerbate socio-political

inequalities

Three Approaches in Development Discourse

Analyses1.Rhetorical device to mask the realities of

the ground (e.g. Bauer)

2.“Dominant” representations parasitical upon the social world (e.g. Escobar)

3.Practice deployed to order arenas for intervention, to enable interventions (e.g. Ferguson, Li)

1. Producing Interventions by forming intelligible arenas for intervention

1. Represent domain to be developed in terms of a set of deficits and deficiencies that interventions propose to address

2. Exclude what lies beyond the scope of intervention

Form arenas where interventions become intelligible and thus possible

2. Legitimising & Reproducing Interventions by forming

enabled/constrained arenas of intervention

•“Constrained” environments: deficit of agency, poor governance

•“Enabled” environments: high stocks of social capital, empowerment, “progressive” leaders

Shift the responsibility for failure from interventions onto their recipients

Validate the legitimacy of interventions, enable their reproduction

3. The formation of enabled/constrained environments depends on performances triggered by CDD discourse, regardless

of the operations & effects of interventions

• Discourse “hails” individuals as specific subjects / CDD discourse “hails” local officials as “progressive”

• It succeeds or not in triggering recognition by those hailed, expressed in their performances

• Discourse’s performative strength resides in the institutional conditions of its production and enactment

In the context of poor understanding of CDD & World Bank’s priorities of producing and reproducing interventions, performances are substituted for interventions’ operations and effects to form enabled/constrained environments

4- Discursive representations affect the power dynamics of

arenas of intervention

Impact on: 1.Local officials’ power2.Institutions’ legitimacy

By misrepresenting arenas and interventions, risk of participating in reproducing social inequalities and legitimising capture-prone institutions

Bohol: Discursive Representations

Before Kalahi:• Poor, unproductive, agricultural economy• Lacking public goods & services, human & social

capital• Ideal arena for Kalahi intervention

During Kalahi:• “Enabled” province – less poverty, greater

political stability, governance innovations• Thanks to Kalahi, development projects,

“progressive” leadership

Evidence of rising poverty and inequalities challenging Bohol development/CDD “success story”

Kalahi Operations

Local officials’ capture:

• Funding for local government’s priorities• Manipulated processes• Irregularities• Clientelism

Yet, Bohol’s representation as “enabled” legitimised Kalahi operations and enabled its reproduction

Why was Bohol formed as an “enabled” environment

1- Institutional Conditions of Reception

• Lacking local basis for capital accumulation

• Dependency on external resources

Local officials’ recognition as “progressive” leaders hailed by development discourse

Offer adequate performances

2- Institutional Conditions of Production

• World Bank’s staff awareness of captureversus

• Normative appeal of empowerment/good governance

• Disbursing funds quickly & replicating programmes

• Lack of viable alternative to CDD

Discursive formations of local arenas based on local officials’ performances rather than CDD’s operations and effects

The Effects of Performance-Based CDD Discourse

1.Increase local politicians’ power, reproduce power structures

2.Legitimise capture-prone institutions

3.Legitimise and reproduce institutional set-up of counterinsurgency-led development that engendered harassment and killings of political activists

Some ConclusionsFlawed theoretical premises of CDD:1.Disempowerment is not based on deficits of agency, but

on deeply entrenched inequalities2.Local officials’ pursuit of particularistic interests is not

caused by insufficient social capital, but by their comparatively huge power

3.Poor governance is not an issue of insufficient popular demand, but is rooted in social inequalities and capture-prone institutions

Overlook issues of power, inequality, contention and meanings

Systematic misrepresentation of local “arenas” and interventions, to enable interventions’ production and reproduction, participates in legitimising capture-prone institutions and reproducing social inequalities

Thank you!

Emmanuelle Poncine.poncin@lse.ac.uk