Governance and politics

Since the 1990s, donors have seen corruption, weak government capacity and haphazard rule of law as impediments to development in Africa and they have tied much of their aid to improvements in governance. Yet, governance indicators have remained low and stable across the continent despite aid conditionality, suggesting a failure on the part of donors, a degree of equilibrium in the nature of African governance, or both. Moreover, there does not appear to be a correlation between change in governance at the country level and economic performance. It is not a surprise, therefore, that a growing literature has been critical of donors’ attempt to change African governance. Similarly, an increasing number of scholars have sought to understand “effective” or “real” governance outside the formal institutions of the state. We take these critiques a step further and suggest that “bad” governance might actually be good politics, for two reasons. First, bad governance might reflect neopatrimonial practices by regimes more focused on structural and political stability than on growth. Second, the use of the state as an instrument of extraction by elites might be heightened by aid conditionality that limits resource inflows.