Arguing Development Policy: Frames and Discourses

Edited by
Raymond Apthorpe
and Des Gasper

This collection shows how the policy discourses in the fields of national and international development are constructed and operate and how they can be analysed. Dominant discourses screen out certain aspects: they 'frame' issues to include some matters and typically exclude important others. More generally, different policy discourses construct the world in distinctive ways, through language that requires deconstruction and careful review.

Adam Pain re-thinks the themes of the disadvantages of being 'mountainous and remote' that run through Bhutan's development policy; Charles Gore shows precisely how the World Bank has tried to reinterpret in its own free market categories the successful state-guided industrialisation of Japan and some other East Asian countries; and David Moore dissects the Washington establishment's discourses on democracy in Africa, through to the current models of 'good governance' as the key for development.

Broader theoretical pieces complement the case studies. The introduction elucidates meanings of 'discourse' and 'discourse analysis, and outlines topics in the discourse analysis of policy language and practice. Raymond Apthorpe surveys the discourse analysis of development policy, with special reference to poverty studies. Des Gasper examines methods for studying policy argumentation, and looks at the conceptual and normative oversimplifications from various types of essentialism in policy and development discourses: in defining terms, in characterising policies as having inherent virtues or failings, and in identifying schools of thought.

The collection will appeal to readers in development studies and development policy, political science, policy studies, argumentation analysis and rhetoric, applied anthropology and international relations.

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Introduction: Discourse Analysis and Policy Discourse by Des Gasper and Raymond Apthorpe 1
Reading Development Policy and Policy Analysis: On Framing, Naming, Numbering and Coding by Raymond Apthorpe 16
Analysing Policy Arguments by Des Gasper 36
Re-reading 'Mountainous', 'Isolated', 'Inaccessible' and 'Small': The Case of Bhutan by Adam Pain 63
Methodological Nationalism and the Misunderstanding of East Asian Industrialisation by Charles Gore 77
Reading Americans on Democracy in Africa: From the CIA to 'Good Governance' by David Moore 123
Essentialism In and About Development Discourse by Des Gasper 149