Power and Ideas: the Role of Multilateral Institutions in Development Policy

2nd MULTI-conference3rd session: Ideas in Development

The CANDID Project[1]

Desmond McNeill, Morten Bøås et al.

SUM (Centre for Development and the Environment), University of Oslo

Presentation by Desmond McNeill

“Framing the World: the role of ideas in

multilateral institutions”

ABSTRACT:

Framing the World? The role of ideas in multilateral institutions

Desmond McNeill, Centre for the Development and the Environment - University of Oslo

e-mail:

The relationship between power and ideas is challenging. Do ideas have power in themselves? Or only to the extent that they are actively taken up by powerful individuals or groups? And what sort of power do ideas have: to motivate, or to alter the actions of individuals or groups? Clearly, their power must be tied up with the institutionalisation of social action and the material capabilities that such kind of institutionalisation is built upon. What then is the nature of this relationship? To what extent do ideas change institutions; or do institutions change ideas?

The main objective of this volume is to increase our understanding of how ideas contribute to bring about new policies and institutional change, but also new challenges within the multilateral system at large. For multilateral development institutions, it is important to achieve consensus, both internally and externally. However, rivalry is common, and institutions gain international prestige (and funding) by having good ideas and new ideas. The aim of this volume is therefore to contribute to the improvement of our understanding of the relationship between ideas and development assistance policy. How are ideas taken up by multilateral institutions, how are they interpreted and subsequently translated into policy, and then modified, in response both to debate (within and between the academic community and the policy community) and to feedback from implementation experience.

The contributors come from a range of disciplines - political science, economics, philosophy, sociology and anthropology - and a number of different countries. They have thoroughgoing knowledge both of the issues and the institutions concerned. They represent a mixture of very senior and experienced academics, and younger researchers at an earlier stage in their careers, who have been involved in different ways with a range of multilateral institutions.

This presentation will consist of two parts:

- the outline of a forthcoming book to be edited by Bøås and McNeill, based on the CANDID project, but containing contributions from a number of other researchers also, who attended a workshop at SUM in September 2000.

- ‘work in progress’: some preliminary thoughts linking the work so far (and largely contained in the forthcoming book) and the next phase, in which we will go more in-depth in relation both to the key CANDID ‘ideas’, and to the conclusions that may be drawn from these.

1. Phase I. Book outline: Framing the World: the role of ideas in multilateral institutions[2]

What is special about an ‘idea’ as dealt with in this book is that it operates in both academia and policy domains. It arises and is developed in the interplay between these two domains, but it derives its credibility for policy-making largely from its basis in academia. An important idea is therefore one, which is widely used by policy-makers and has significant influence on them. Legitimacy in the making of development policy is often sought from grounding the proposals in a theoretical base and in supporting empirical analysis. In multilateral institutions, whose constituency is relatively ill defined, this is especially important. Moreover, originality in ideas seems to be highly valued – whether because of the beauty of new ideas or the hope that new policies will be more successful than old ones; hence the often heard critical comment on "fashions" in development assistance policy.

The ideas that we are concerned with in this book fall under the category of collective images of social order. The ideas put under scrutiny here differ both as to the nature and legitimacy of prevailing power structures, and with respect to the meanings of issues such as justice and the question of distribution of and access to collective public goods. There can therefore be several competing collective images off, for instance governance, each strongly opposed to the others.

Given that the focus of this book is on institutions, and the relationship between power and ideas, it is not surprising that the disciplinary focus of five of the authors is that of political science. But insights from economic sociology, anthropology, economics and philosophy are also much in evidence. It is our view that important contributions to the study of institutions can be gained by incorporating insights from for instance, economic sociology (the new institutionalism and the old institutional economics), anthropology (not only in relation to small and informal social groups, but also formal institutions such as development agencies), and from philosophy (certainly to the extent that the power of ideas derives from their moral content). In studying similar topics, these different disciplines also find themselves confronting similar issues and questions. These include issues such as embeddedness and autonomy; the agency-structure question; and the issue of mutually constitutive phenomena. All these issues are currently common concerns in several disciplines.

This leads us to suggest that the perspectives of Gramsci and Cox; the former for his theories of hegemony, and the latter for the application of such theory specifically to the field of international political economy, but also the so-called realist-constructivist debate within international relations theory are concerned with issues and questions that have implications far beyond disciplinary borders. In fact, we will argue that most of the authors in this book (political scientists or not) explicitly or implicitly seek to establish a middle ground in the realist-constructivist debate: not merely because the extreme positions in this debate are not sufficiently nuanced, but more specifically because neither perspective is well equipped to cope with the central issue: the relationship between power and ideas in multilateral institutions.

A perspective in the sense that the word is used here connotes a set of values, beliefs and assumptions. Thus, when we talk about the constructivist, neogramscian and realist perspective we are thinking about intellectual frameworks rather than specific theories. This implies that adherents to these three perspectives are linked by a common set of assumptions concerning the objects of study and the methods to be employed in seeking answers to the intellectual puzzles generated by the perspective

2. Phase II. Work in Progress

The workshop was fruitful both in terms of the papers presented and discussions that were generated. This was especially satisfactory given that several different disciplines were represented, and a range of different ‘ideas’. An important factor was that those attending had a common interest in the major issues, and (hopefully) a sufficiently common approach.

The concept of ‘framing’ appears to be central, and this needs to be further elaborated and explored, in relation to the interaction between researchers and policy-makers in multilateral development. Our central claim is that in this arena there are powerful, and to some extent conflicting, forces influencing how and why ideas are used and abused. It is an arena in which overtly political issues tend to be avoided or at least downplayed – for example by blurring them, by concentrating on more technical aspects of an issue, or on those aspects which are least controversial. This gives rise to the legitimate question whether the ideas which survive longest are those which are clear and strong in their implications for policy, or those which are most pliable.

To give a preliminary, and sketchy, indication of the forces and how they operate, consider the following four ideas each of which has been adopted in an attempt to break out of the mould of development thinking in a different way; to address issues which I characterise as, respectively, invisible, unresolvable, inadmissible or intractable.[3]

Invisible: the informal sector:

The term ‘the informal sector’ was used to describe a whole set of activities that were invisible: they escaped attention because they fell outside the standard perception, outside the standard categories – of economists and statisticians, of western/modern planners. The biography of this idea shows how it was indeed taken up by both researchers and policy-makers, and exerted significant influence. It also shows how the idea was, to some extent, distorted. I suggest that it is a good example of an idea which made a difference, although it did not radically alter development policy.

Unresolvable: sustainable development:

The perceived conflict between economic growth and environmental sustainability found a resolution in the concept of sustainable development. But it remained to be seen whether the idea had empirical content and analytical clarity. In the years that have passed since the report of the Brundtland Commission, some progress has been made in determining to what extent, and in what respects, there is or is not conflict between these twin aims. The ‘idea’ has been hugely successful in putting the environment issue on the agenda, but there are differing views: has the term has in fact been refined conceptually, resulting in enhanced knowledge and better policies, or has consensus been reached at the cost of blurring the conceptual issues and side-stepping some controversial decisions?

Inadmissible: governance

The realm of politics was, formally, outside the scope of multilateral development agencies such as the World Bank. This situation has, however, changed; not least with the debates surrounding structural adjustment[4]. The agenda has therefore been expanded to include what has been known as ‘governance’. This is, of course, an old concept, but it has taken on a very particular meaning – because of the constraints, both formal (such as the legal mandate of the multilateral institutions) and informal (the beliefs and practices of those involved). As a result governance has often been interpreted in a rather narrow and technocratic manner.

Intractable: social capital

Although issues such as community participation have long been a concern of multilateral development institutions, they have often been regarded as intractable - at least by economists. The ‘idea’ of social capital has proved attractive to many in the World Bank, and elsewhere[5]. It has also been criticised – from both ends of the methodological scale (economists and anthropologists), though for very different reasons. It is too early to tell what will be the ultimate fate of this idea, but it does serve to illustrate how an idea can be promoted, and the power of economists in setting the agenda in an institution such as the World Bank.

In each of these four case, the idea was, in a sense, an attempt to break out of the mould¸ to respond actively to the limitations of the existing frame or structure. Each therefore tells us something about that frame: in what respects it was seen to be wanting. But the subsequent biography of each idea – the fate of each apparently novel concept - also tells us something about the nature and strength of the frame; how and to what extent it resists such change.

The next stage of the research - which is intended to result in the publication of a co-authored volume by myself and Bøås - will be concerned with seeking to build on the case studies undertaken, so as to establish some more general claims about power and ideas in the very special arena which is constituted by the multilateral development institutions; an arena in which the drive for consensus may lead not so much to the rejection, but the distortion of ideas.

It is too early yet to give more than an indication of what themes are likely to be further developed. One issue concerns the dominance of ideas emanating from ‘the North’ - and perhaps even more specifically from USA and Britain. These ideas may range from quite limited ones such as the informal sector to far more wide-ranging perspectives and policies on development.

Another central issue is the hegemony of economics as a discipline. Economics (here understood to refer to what is commonly called ‘the mainstream’) enjoys both high status and influence within the multilateral institutions. But it is not well equipped to take account of social and historical context, and indeed social phenomena generally. As noted above, opinions differ as to the merits of recent attempts to develop the ‘idea’ of social capital in the World Bank, but there can be little doubt that the efforts made to do so are evidence of the hegemony of economics within that institution. Economics seeks to be value-free, and derives much of its strength from its claim to analytical rigour. But many economists either ignore power or deal with it in a way which, arguably, distorts comprehension. This relates to a third important issue: the technocratic approach to the use of knowledge.

The technocratic approach implies the application of ‘expert knowledge’ for the resolution of problems. It implies also an ‘apolitical’ approach. It is a central paradox of multilateral institutions that they deal with issues which are unavoidably political – poverty and inequality, governance and empowerment – and yet seek to do this in a way which is drained of political content; and this is one of the major reasons why ideas become distorted (or resisted). The research referred to above supports this hypothesis; for example, how the debate about sustainable development has focussed so largely on technological solutions on the environmental side. Or to take a more extreme example, the ‘idea’ of governance. Here it is interesting to consider, for example, the experience of the Asian Development Bank, where ‘governance’ has been translated into ‘sound development management’.

These issues are linked, and the relationship between them merits further study, in relation to the different ideas and institutions, to test and elaborate on our central claim that in the discourse on development policy, ideas are ‘framed’. That the development policy debate is structured and constrained in certain specific ways - without anyone necessarily intending this, or even being aware of it. As a result, the capacity of ideas to bring about substantive change is powerfully modified. The processes whereby ideas from the world of academia and of policy-making interact are subtle and difficult to comprehend, but we hope that by the careful study of selected cases we will enhance understanding; and hence perhaps also the capacity for knowledge to bring about change.

Framing the World? the role of ideas in multilateral institutions

Part I

1. Introduction

Morten Bøås & Desmond McNeill (Norway)

Part II

2. The Informal sector: biography of an idea

Desmond McNeill

3. Reproductive Health: Using "Policy-stories" to Unwrap the Cairo-process

Ole-Jacob Sending (Norway)

4. Environment and the World Bank:

Robert Wade (Britain)

5. Sustainable Development and the WTO:

Jonas Vevatne (Norway)

6. Social Capital and the World Bank:

Desmond McNeill

7. Governance and the IMF: A Gramscian Perspective

Ian Taylor (South Africa)

8. Governance and the Asian Development Bank:

Janne Jokinen (Finland)