Performing Development

1. Performing Development Community-driven Development Discourse and Interventions Emmanuelle Poncin London School of Economics and Political Science Government Department

2. Presentation Overview • CDD discourse and interventions • Analytical model of development discourse performativity • Case study: The Philippines’ Kalahi-CIDSS programme

3. 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?

4. 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

5. Three Approaches in Development Discourse Analyses • Rhetorical device to mask the realities of the ground (e.g. Bauer) • “Dominant” representations parasitical upon the social world (e.g. Escobar) • Practice deployed to order arenas for intervention, to enable interventions (e.g. Ferguson, Li)

6. The Performative Operations of CDD Discourse

7. 1. Producing Interventions by forming intelligible arenas for intervention • Represent domain to be developed in terms of a set of deficits and deficiencies that interventions propose to address • Exclude what lies beyond the scope of intervention • Form arenas where interventions become intelligible and thus possible

8. 2.Legitimising & Reproducing Interventionsby 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

9. 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

10. 4- Discursive representations affect the power dynamics of arenas of intervention Impact on: • Local officials’ power • Institutions’ legitimacy • By misrepresenting arenas and interventions, risk of participating in reproducing social inequalities and legitimising capture-prone institutions

11. Case Study: Kalahi-CIDSS in the Province of Bohol

12. 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”

13. 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

14. 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

15. 2- Institutional Conditions of Production • World Bank’s staff awareness of capture versus • 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

16. The Effects of Performance-Based CDD Discourse • Increase local politicians’ power, reproduce power structures • Legitimise capture-prone institutions • Legitimise and reproduce institutional set-up of counterinsurgency-led development that engendered harassment and killings of political activists

17. Some Conclusions Flawed theoretical premises of CDD: • Disempowerment is not based on deficits of agency, but on deeply entrenched inequalities • Local officials’ pursuit of particularistic interests is not caused by insufficient social capital, but by their comparatively huge power • 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

18. Thank you! Emmanuelle Poncin e.poncin@lse.ac.uk