Reconceptualizing Good Governance

Abstract

Since its appearance in the late 1980s, the concept of good governance has become a nearly unavoidable part of development discourse emanating from international organizations such as the World Bank. Nonetheless, the concept has been criticized by scholars due to its tendency to be used as a justification for policies and projects which depoliticize power relations and neoliberal economics. Drawing on a framework of power in global governance, the case of the World Banks Demand for Good Governance project in Cambodia is examined and several of the critiques of the concept of good governance are found to be justified in practice. Building on the case study and the history of the idea of good governance and its critics, a reconceptualization is presented in an attempt to redefine the concept and avoid some of its issues by allowing it to be purely contextually defined via participation and repolitization.