The World Bank and Africa

The Construction of Governance States

By Graham Harrison

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About the Book

Shortlisted for the Inaugural International Political Economy Group annual book prize, 2006.

An incisive exploration of the interventions of the World Bank in severely indebted African states. Understanding sovereignty as a frontier rather than a boundary, this key study develops a vision of a powerful international organization reconciling a global political economy with its own designs and a specific set of challenges posed by the African region. This analysis details the nature of the World Bank intervention in the sovereign frontier, investigating institutional development, discursive intervention, and political stabilization. It tackles the methods by which the World Bank has led a project to re-shape certain African states according to a governance template, leading to the presentation of 'success stories' in a continent associated with reform failure.

This conceptually innovative book details a political economy of the World Bank in Africa that is both globally contextualized and attentive to individual states. It is the only volume to look at the bank's relations with Africa and will interest all students and researchers of African politics and the World Bank.

Reviews

'Graham Harrison's The World Bank and Africa is an important contribution to this debate that situates recent interventions in the by the World Bank in Sub-Saharan Africa within a more diverse context of regional government structures.'- Adam David Morton, Modern African Studies

'Graham Harrison's analysis of governance states in Africa - linked to the shaping of a new terrain of intervention by the World Bank - is a winner.'- Adam David Morton, Modern African Studies

'The World Bank and Africa should be required reading across the study of political economy, development, post-colonial African studies, and historical sociology.'- Adam David Morton, Modern African Studies

Table of Contents

Section I. the Governance Encounter: The World Bank, Governance States and a New Sovereign Frontier
Chapter 1: The Road to Governance: The World Bank and Africa
Chapter 2: Governance States in Africa: Conceptualising the Encounter between the World Bank and the Sovereign Frontier
Chapter 3. Conceptualising the World Bank: Governance and Global Régimes
Section II. Constructing Governance States: Institutions, Discourse, Security
Chapter 4: Introducing Post Conditionality
Chapter 5: The Mechanics of Post Conditionality
Chapter 6: Liberalism and the Discourse of Reform in Governance States
Chapter 7: Securing Governance States
Chapter 8: Neoliberalism's Revenge

About the Author(s)

Graham Harrison lectures politics at the University of Sheffield, UK. He is an editor of New Political Economy and Review of African Political Economy, and is currently working on the concept of empire in international relations, and administrative reform in Tanzania.

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