Infrastructure and the political ordering of development

Conveners: Jan Bachmann, School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg; Jan Aart Scholte, School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg and Peer Schouten, Danish Institute of International Studies

Contact: jan.scholte@globalstudies.gu.se

Large technical systems and infrastructures have gained renewed attention in development policy and practice. Considerable attention has been paid, for example, to China’s resource-for-infrastructure approach in Africa, to the developing world’s “infrastructure gap” that is said to hamper economic growth, or to the mushrooming of special economic zones across theso-called global South. Participation in collective life, globally, increasingly hinges on access to infrastructures for transport, communications, water supply, etc.

Infrastructures, in other words, hold the promise to connect, and to facilitate the movement of information, goods and people. Likewise, parts of development discourse argue that the absence of infrastructure is an explanatory factor for poverty, social inequality and conflict. For instance, poor and absent connections to the Internet may constitute a major new exclusion from development. Development initiatives also increasingly concentrate on infrastructure measures as concrete outputs to address insecurity and preventing conflict.

However, development research rarely addresses assumptions, practices and effects related to how vital infrastructures are governed and secured. This panel builds on Keller Easterling’s claim that “some of the most radical changes to the globalizing world are being written, not in the language of law and diplomacy, but in … spatial, infrastructural technologies” (2014, 15). Papers are sought that explore the relations between infrastructure and forms of political order in the wider area of development studies. We thus conceptualize infrastructures as relational – as entangled with social processes – rather than merely as passive technical support systems.

The panel invites conceptual or empirical studies around themes such as (though not limited to) the following:

• Do roads lead to peace – infrastructure and peacebuilding
• Governing global communication infrastructure
• Exclusionary and violent effects of infrastructures
• The role of expertise in infrastructure interventions
• Large infrastructures as development? The revival of the modernist dream
• Infrastructure and notions of common/public good

22 Aug., 16:00–17:30, Högbom Lecture Hall

• Political engineering: exploring the co-production of infrastructure, security and political order in Western statebuilding efforts in Africa. Jan Bachmann, University of Gothenburg and Peer Schouten, Danish Institute of International Studies.
• Infrastructure for (Under)Development: The Global South in Global Internet Governance. Jan Aart Scholte, University of Gothenburg.
• State-Driven Large-Scale Irrigation Scheme and Smallholder Farmers in the Lake Tana Basin, Ethiopia. Atakilte Beyene, The Nordic Africa Institute.
• China’s Export of Infrastructure-led Growth: Here Comes Noah’s Arc? Yang Jiang, Danish Institute of International Studies.

Abstracts

Political engineering: exploring the co-production of infrastructure, security and political order in Western statebuilding efforts in Africa. Jan Bachmann, University of Gothenburg and Peer Schouten, Danish Institute of International Studies.

Western statebuilding efforts in conflict- and fragile settings have been the subject of a burgeoning literature. This paper identifies and explores a substantial gap in that literature: namely, the failure to recognize that inherently political interventions—aimed at fostering peace and building legitimate state structures—mainly operate through technical practices. We show, on the basis of preliminary evidence, that the main output of current stabilization programmes in the DRC, South Sudan and Somalia is the building of material infrastructure such as roads and administration buildings. Stabilization operations epitomize contemporary statebuilding, yet literature on statebuilding explores and critiques such interventions primarily as matters of governance, or the social construction of political order and stability. We note that rather, contemporary Western stabilization programmes in practice extend and reproduce assumptions of modernization theory. They primarily deploy interventions in the physical environment to stabilize political order: creating ‘islands of stability’ through transport connectivity and built governmental infrastructures. Statebuilders thus assign the provision of physical infrastructure and the connections it engenders a crucial role for security and political order. Drawing on science and technology studies we explore this gap and discuss possible critical positions of the relationship between infrastructure development on the one hand and security/political order on the other.

Infrastructure for (Under)Development: The Global South in Global Internet Governance. Jan Aart Scholte, University of Gothenburg.

Internet connectivity is arguably as core to development infrastructure in the twenty-first century as were roads and ports in earlier times. The so-called ‘digital divide’ is commonly cited as one of the great inequalities restricting contemporary development prospects, particularly for Africa and small island states. Such was a headline message of the 2015 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) review process in the United Nations. This paper explores how online connectivity in the global south (marginalized countries as well as marginalized social and cultural quarters within those countries) is hampered owing to the subordinate position of these circles in Internet governance. The first section of the paper describes the nature and extent of the subordination. The second section maps the institutional arrangements which govern the global Internet. The third section indicates how peripheral countries and social groups have little voice and influence in these polycentric governance networks, particularly in their important private-sector elements. The fourth section enquires into the forces (institutional and deeper structural) which generate this marginalization, which in turn could provide suggestions for reducing the subordination in the future.

State-Driven Large-Scale Irrigation Scheme and Smallholder Farmers in the Lake Tana Basin, Ethiopia. Atakilte Beyene, The Nordic Africa Institute.

This paper explores the development and challenges of institutional and organizational structures (among smallholder irrigators) of a large-scale irrigation canal management systems. The Koga Dam and Irrigation Scheme (7,000 ha), located in the Lake Tana Basin, is the case study where extensive empirical findings have been done during the last two years. The scheme is the first-show case of a series of planned irrigation schemes (about 72,000 ha) by the state in the basin where massive public and multilateral investments are being allocated as a matter of national priority. An interesting aspect of these projects is that the rural households, mainly smallholder farmers, are the major beneficiaries. The involvement of small farmers in such large-scale schemes is new for the country. These projects are expected to not only propel the development of agriculture, but also transform and modernize the economy of the rural areas in the sub-region. The paper identifying the major challenges in the transfer of the canal management from the state to the farmers, in the formation of water cooperatives and in accessing better markets.

China’s Export of Infrastructure-led Growth: Here Comes Noah’s Arc? Yang Jiang, Danish Institute of International Studies.

China is expanding bilateral aid and investment as well as building multilateral development banks (MDBs, including Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, Silk Road Fund, the New Development Bank of BRICS), with a prominent focus on infrastructure. Most of the current media and scholarly discussions are focused on their strategic implications for Western countries and for traditional organisations (e.g. DAC, World Bank, IMF, and Japan-dominated Asia Development Bank). Less attention has been paid to the alternative models of aid and investment that China has offered to host countries, and importantly their developmental impact. The most famous ‘brand’ of Chinese aid is the infrastructure projects, which China relied on heavily for its early development and is now exporting to other countries. Even though they have been a mixed blessing within China, they have been welcomed by many host country governments because they provide alternative models of development to those from traditional donors—sometimes by combining Keynesianism and developmental state. Therefore, the leading questions of the paper are: How are institutions within China and between China and host countries set up to support aid and investment in infrastructure, and how do their power relations affect such institutions and contracts? Under which conditions can China-involved infrastructure projects carry the most potential or risks for local development in host countries?