Governance through Development: Poverty Reduction Strategies, International Law and the Disciplining of Third World States

by Celine Tan

Governance through Development locates the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) framework within the broader context of international law and global governance, exploring its impact on third world state engagement with the global political economy and the international regulatory norms and institutions which support it. The PRSP framework has replaced the controversial structural adjustment programmes, as the primary mechanism through which official development financing is channelled to low-income developing countries. It has changed the regulatory landscape of international development financing, signalling a wider paradigmatic shift in the cartography of aid and, consequently, in the nature of north-south relations. Governance through Development documents and analyses this change within the legacy of postcolonial economic relations, revealing the wider legal, economic and geo-political significance of the PRSP framework. Celine Tan argues that the PRSP framework establishes a new regulatory regime that builds upon the disciplinary project of structural adjustment by embedding neoliberal economic conditionalities within a regime of domestic governance and public policy reform. The book will be of interest to scholars, researchers and students of law, political science and international relations, sociology and development studies.

268 pages, Hardcover

First published December 28, 2010