The Law of the Project: Government and "Good Governance" at the World Bank in Indonesia
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Transnational institutions such as the World Bank and the are not supposed to meddle in the political affairs of creditor nations. Indeed, the Bank’s charter forbids such meddling. The Bank is supposed to focus on economic matters such as growth and poverty reduction. As Bank experts have come to recognize that these economic goals cannot be achieved without ‘good governance’, the line between the political and economic has become blurred. But there still is a line. The Bank cannot set the law for a sovereign nation. What it can do, however, is use the leverage of project funds to set conditions to encourage one course of action and discourage another. The chapter explores how the World Bank attempted to use the ‘law of the project’ to transform the conduct of the Indonesian state apparatus, and millions of Indonesian villagers conceived as members of communities. It examines how the Bank used the opportunity presented by administrative decentralization to reform the conduct of senior officials. Then, it examines the billion-dollar subdistrict development program designed by the Bank’s social development team to institute new practices of participation and accountability in village-level planning. It examines two extensions of the Bank’s subdistrict development program, one focused on changing the culture of corruption, the other focused on conflict management. In both cases, the social development team used project rules and incentives to guide behavior in an ‘improving’ direction. The latter part of the chapter considers how the Bank’s ambitious program of social transformation worked out on the ground in some Sulawesi villages and reveals the limits of the law of the project as a means to govern conduct.
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