Table Of ContentActa Universitatis Lapponiensis 346
Charles Amo-Agyemang
UNDERSTANDING NEOLIBERALISM
AS GOVERNMENTALITY:
A CASE STUDY OF THE IMF AND
WORLD BANK STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT REGIME IN GHANA
ACADEMIC DISSERTATION
To be publicly defended with the permission
of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Lapland
in lecture room 3 on 11 May 2017 at 12 noon
Rovaniemi 2017
Acta Universitatis Lapponiensis 346
Charles Amo-Agyemang
UNDERSTANDING NEOLIBERALISM
AS GOVERNMENTALITY:
A CASE STUDY OF THE IMF AND
WORLD BANK STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT REGIME IN GHANA
Rovaniemi 2017
University of Lapland
Faculty of Social Sciences
© Charles Amo-Agyemang
Sales:
Lapland University Press / LUP
PL 8123
FI-96101 Rovaniemi
Finland
tel. +358 40 821 4242
[email protected]
www.ulapland.fi/LUP
University of Lapland Printing Centre, Rovaniemi 2017
Printed:
Acta Universitatis Lapponiensis 346
ISBN 978-952-484-984-5
ISSN 0788-7604
Pdf:
Acta electronica Universitatis Lapponiensis 214
ISBN 978-952-484-985-2
ISSN 1796-6310
Abstract
In this thesis, I critically interrogate power relations that underlie practices, techniques and
rationalities of contemporary forms of governance represented by the governing strategy of
structural adjustment framework devised by the Bretton Woods institutions— especially the
IMF and the World Bank. Far from being a technique of coercion and domination, the thesis
demonstrates that structural adjustment framework represents a differing modality of global
power that attempts to discursively legitimise external interventions through the imposition of
neoliberal economic agenda. I show that structural adjustment policies are carefully constructed
neoliberal rationalities of governing through which donors seek to transform the government of
Ghana into a self-disciplined neoliberal subject that must behave in an appropriately competi-
tive fashion that is congruent with the ethos of market rationality. I draw on Michel Foucault’s
nuanced conceptualisation of governmentality, a form of productive and relational power work-
ing through individuals’ subjectivities particularly as it coexists with the disciplinary rationale of
power, and extend it to the relation between the IMF and the World Bank and the government
of Ghana. I analyse how these interactions are embedded within a discursive formation and con-
crete practices which establish certain views of ‘a problem’ and mobilise particular authoritative
actors, techniques and forms of truth as solutions. I also explore how over the decades the IMF
and the World Bank through the modalities of conditionality associated with structural adjust-
ment have sought to govern, remake and regulate the economic, political and social institutions
of recipient States. In closing, and by way of illustration, I also examine ‘non-compliance’ as one
possibility into what Foucault has termed ‘counter-conduct’ through which subjects undermine
and challenge governmental forms of power. This being said, within the structural adjustment
discourse, there remains, I would be inclined to argue, repressive and dominant forms of power.
This thesis, contributes to the contemporary scholarship on governmentality to deepen and re-
evaluate the distinctiveness of power relations in the example of the IMF and the World Bank
adjustment programmes in Ghana.
Keywords: Africa, Foucault, governmentality, International Monetary Fund, World Bank,
Ghana, structural adjustment programmes, discourse, neoliberalism, good governance, subjectiv-
ity, power-knowledge, biopower, biopolitics, descipline, counter-conduct, resistance.
v
Contents
CHAPTER ONE – I ntroduction ..................................................................................................................................................1
1.1 Structural Adjustment Project in Global Governance: Overview ...........................................1
1.2 Context of the Study ................................................................................................................................................7
1.3 Rationale for the Case of Ghana ......................................................................................................................8
1.4 Ghana and the Neoliberal Restructuring Reforms .............................................................................9
1.5 Framework for Analysis......................................................................................................................................12
1.6 Research Aims and Objectives ......................................................................................................................15
1.7 Research Questions and the Statement of the Problem ...............................................................15
1.8 Research Methodology .......................................................................................................................................18
1.9 Synopsis of the Study ...........................................................................................................................................19
CHAPTER TWO – D iscourse, Power-Knowledge, Subjectivity ...............................................................21
2.1 Introduction ...............................................................................................................................................................21
2.2 Discourse Analysis à la Foucault ..................................................................................................................22
2.3 Enter Power-Knowledge Nexus ....................................................................................................................28
2.3.1 Bringing Power Back In .....................................................................................................................28
2.4 Power and its Relation to Knowledge ......................................................................................................33
2.5 Understanding Subjectivities ..........................................................................................................................38
2.6 Concluding Remarks ...........................................................................................................................................40
CHAPTER THREE – T he Neoliberal Challenge: A Critical Re-reading of the Political
Economy of A. F. Hayek and Milton Friedman, and of the Intellectual History of
Neoliberalism ............................................................................................................................................................................42
3.1 Introduction ...............................................................................................................................................................42
3.2 Neoliberalism: Historical and Intellectual Context .......................................................................43
3.3 Fredrick Albert Hayek — A Case of his Economic and Political Philosophy .............47
3.4 Milton Friedman’s Neoliberal Political Economy ............................................................................56
3.5 Conclusions of this chapter .............................................................................................................................61
CHAPTER FOUR – F oucault, Governmentality and Neoliberal Reason ..........................................63
4.1 Introduction ...............................................................................................................................................................63
4.2 Foucault’s Governmentality: Power as the Art of Government .............................................64
4.3 Liberal and Neoliberal Governmentalities ...........................................................................................68
4.3.1 Post-War German “Ordoliberalism” .........................................................................................69
4.3.2 American Neoliberalism (”Anarcho-Liberalism”) ..........................................................77
4.3.3 Governmentality and Development in International Relations ...........................83
4.4 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................................93
vii
CHAPTER FIVE – N eoliberalism: The Emergence of a Dominant Paradigm? ............................96
5.1 Introduction ...............................................................................................................................................................96
5.2 The Concept of Neoliberalism ......................................................................................................................97
5.3 Neoliberalism: An Incongruent Concept? ...........................................................................................98
5.4 Neoliberalism: Standard Narratives ........ ............................................................................................101
5.5 The Meteoric Rise of Neoliberalism as Development Orthodoxy ....................................105
5.6 Concluding remarks ..........................................................................................................................................108
CHAPTER SIX – N eoliberal Discursive Formations: of Regimes of Knowledge,
Subjectivity, Technologies, and Techniques of Good Governance in Ghana ............111
6.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................111
6.2 ‘Good Governance’ Discourse and the Problem of Structural Adjustment ...............112
6.3 Considering Foucault: World Bank and ‘Good Governance’ Reform Agenda .......113
6.3.1 The ‘truth’ of a crisis-prone Sub-Saharan Africa that must be managed
for the sake of markets .....................................................................................................................114
6.3.2 The will to construct political legitimacy for SAPs .....................................................115
6.3.3 The politics of blame .........................................................................................................................116
6.3.4 The restructuring of the postcolonial Africa State .......................................................117
6.3.5 Governance and state capacity ...................................................................................................119
6.3.6 The logic of institutions-building and markets imperatives ..................................121
6.3.7 The cross-over between State and civil society ...............................................................123
6.3.8 Good Governance within the new “feel-good rhetoric”..........................................124
6.4 Reorienting Development Policies: ‘Good Governance’ in Neoliberal Ghana .......126
6.4.1 Fields of visibility ................................................................................................................................126
6.5 The discursive production of knowledge /truth ............................................................................128
6.6 Production of subjectivities ..........................................................................................................................130
6.7 Technologies and techniques .......................................................................................................................132
6.8 Politics of resistance: ruptures and recapitulations ......................................................................135
6.9 Conclusion ...............................................................................................................................................................137
CHAPTER SEVEN – R ehabilitating the Centaur State: Structural Adjustment as a
Disciplinary Technology ..............................................................................................................................................139
7.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................139
7.2 Disciplinary Power of Structural Adjustment .................................................................................139
7.3 “Normalisation” and the Bretton Woods Institutions: The Foucauldian Gaze .......143
7.3.1 R einventing governable social actors: the making of the homo
economicus .................................................................................................................................................144
7.3.2 Visibility of country ..........................................................................................................................148
7.3.3 Towards the analysis of knowledge rationalisation ......................................................153
7.4 Resistance to neoliberal governmentality: Terra Incognita? ................................................156
7.5 Governing principles of BWIs: the logic of policy conditionality ....................................158
7.5.1 The PNDC’s counter-conduct ..................................................................................................158
7.6 Conclusion ...............................................................................................................................................................162
viii | Amo-Agyemang: Understanding Neoliberalism as Governmentality
CHAPTER EIGHT – R eflections and Concluding Thoughts: Revisiting the Main Issues 164
8.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................164
8.2 Summary and key findings of the research of this thesis ..........................................................164
8.2.1 Chapter Summaries ...........................................................................................................................164
8.3 Contribution of the research: neoliberal governmentality, structural adjustment
and neoliberalism ................................................................................................................................................172
8.4 Concluding reflections ....................................................................................................................................175
References .................................................................................................................................................................................179
ix
