Rethinking civil society and Pan-African participatory governance: the case of the African Union-New Partnership for Africa’s Development (AU-NEPAD)

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dc.contributor.authorXavier, Romao
dc.date.accessioned2022-12-20T10:32:28Z
dc.date.available2022-12-20T10:32:28Z
dc.date.issued2021
dc.departmentDepartment of International Relations
dc.descriptionA thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy to the Faculty of Humanities, School of Social Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, 2021
dc.description.abstractThis thesis is a journey of critical interrogation of power relations that underpin practices, techniques and rationalities of contemporary forms of governance represented by the governing strategy of the AU-NEPAD. It asks the question, ‘how is the Pan-African civil society made within the context of neo-liberalised Pan-African Institutions?’ To navigate this complex question, the study used a combination of three case studies, drawing on the nuanced conceptualisation of governmentality from Michel Foucault in conjunction with the Arnestein´s ladder of citizens ‘participation and the John Gaventa’s Powercube . The study found that there is a clear disconnect between the discourse on citizens driven AU-NEPAD and the praxis of enabling civil society to meaningfully engage in decision making processes. The use of neoliberal rationalities of governing which transform the governments of Member States into a self-disciplined neoliberal subject that must behave in an appropriately competitive fashion congruent with the ethos of market rationality is the AU-NEPAD attempt to discursively legitimise their political and developmental strategies through the imposition of a neoliberal economic agenda for Africa. AU-NEPAD promotes Pan African civil society to comply with neoliberal requirements and at the same time contests Pan African civil society through what Arnstein calls co-optation, on one hand, and the divide-and rule strategy, on the other hand, allowing AU-NEPAD to maintain the ‛status quo’. Therefore, Pan-African civil society faces monumental challenges to meaningfully participate (hardly going beyond placation and tokenism) in the making of a people´s driven and owned African Union. In addition, the study found that although heterogeneous in scope, capacities, size and resources endowment, Pan-African civil society undertakes ‘non-compliance’ as a counter response of hegemonic dominance from the AU-NEPAD. This is one possibility of Foucauldian ‘counter conduct’ through which Pan-African civil society undermines and challenges the shrinking of civic spaces and the AU governmental-driven forms of power, by setting up what Gaventa calls ´invented spaces´.
dc.description.librarianTL (2022)
dc.facultyFaculty of Humanities
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10539/33852
dc.language.isoen
dc.phd.titlePhD
dc.titleRethinking civil society and Pan-African participatory governance: the case of the African Union-New Partnership for Africa’s Development (AU-NEPAD)
dc.typeThesis
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