Govern Like Us: U.S. Expectations of Poor Countries PDF
Preview Govern Like Us: U.S. Expectations of Poor Countries
Govern Like Us U.S. Expectations of Poor Countries M. A. THOMAS Govern Like Us Govern Like Us U.S. Expectations of Poor Countries M. A. THOMAS Columbia University Press New York Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Copyright © 2015 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thomas, Melissa Annette. Govern like us : U.S. expectations of poor countries / M.A. Thomas. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-231-17120-5 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-231-53911-1 (electronic) 1. Developing countries—Politics and government. 2. Public administration— Developing countries. 3. Poverty—Political aspects—Developing countries. 4. Political culture—Developing countries. 5. Developing countries— Foreign relations—Western countries. 6. Western countries— Foreign relations—Developing countries. I. Title. JF60.T48 2015 320.9172’4—dc23 2014025326 Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. This book is printed on paper with recycled content. Printed in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 cover photo: © Jan Banning/www.janbanning.com cover design: Milenda Nan Ok Lee References to websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. Contents Acknowledgments vii 1. Blind Spot 1 2. The Governance Ideal 21 3. Paper Empires, Paper Countries 44 4. Poor Countries, Poor Governments 76 5. Governing Cheaply 100 6. The Rule of Law 132 7. Governance as It Is 158 8. A Different Conversation 178 Notes 209 Index 245 Acknowledgments Writing this book was a challenge. I have benefited from seven years of field research, but I have been unable to call on any of that work explicitly for this book. The interviews I conducted and the reports I wrote were confidential and for other purposes. Academia would have liked me to attempt to conduct some of these interviews over again so that I could quote people, but it was simply not possible for reasons of both cost and access. Instead, I was obliged to support and illustrate my argument where I could by drawing on the existing secondary literature. Much of it is already there, if fragmented across the disciplines and bur- ied in technical jargon. Many parts of this puzzle have been considered and explored by political scientists, economists, sociologists, lawyers, and aid practitioners. Part of the reason why our foreign policy has lagged beyond the insights from the academic and practitioner worlds is because those insights are not always easily available to the general audience. As a lawyer and a political economist, I understand terms like “ethnolinguistic frac- tionalization,” “neopatrimonialism,” “purchasing power parity,” “constitu- tive theory of statehood,” and “tax effort,” but I saw no reason to burden the reader with them. I’ve tried to keep it straightforward, albeit sometimes at the expense of nuance. I owe enormous thanks to many people and can only thank a few of them here. Thanks to Francis Fukuyama, who hired me at SAIS and was kind enough to read and comment on the manuscript; to SAIS, which gave me a home while I was writing it; to the Max M. Fisher Excellence in Teaching Award that helped me write the first paper that crystallized this line of thought in 2008, and to Policy Review that eventually published it; to the foundation that provided grant support and the program officer whose demand for regular updates helped keep me to the task; to mentors and colleagues Robert Bates, Deborah Brautigam, Thomas Carothers, Gerald viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Hyman, Seth Kaplan, and Richard Messick for their unflagging encourage- ment, comments on the manuscript, and advice on dealing with the pub- lishing world; to research assistants Nate Hanson, Rachel Ort, and Megan Vaughn-Albert; to SAIS students that devoured and mercilessly shredded parts of the manuscript like a school of intellectual piranhas; to the col- leagues, friends, and family who encouraged me and patiently bore my unavailability as I worked on the book; to the people who opened their homes, lives, and hearts to me over the years as I learned about governance in poor countries. Govern Like Us
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