Discourse Analysis of Development Policy

Sponsor: German Research Foundation

At the beginning of the 21st century, development policy finds itself in a crisis situation. The changed historical conditions in the age of globalization have led to legitimacy problems on the one hand and to far-reaching processes of change in this policy area on the other, the complexity of which has neither been fully grasped nor theoretically explained to date. The concept of "global structural policy" presented by the red-green government, which proposes a reorientation away from development projects and towards the meaningful shaping of the global framework conditions for development, is expressly designed as an attempt to adapt development policy to the changed conditions. It can therefore be seen as a response to the crisis situation on the one hand and as a typical example of these change processes on the other. The research project addresses the following questions: 1. is the concept of global structural policy an appropriate response to the crisis of development policy in the age of globalization? 2. which power relations prevent the consistent implementation of the concept? A discourse and power analysis perspective based on Foucault appears to be the most suitable way of answering these questions. From this perspective, the difference between claim and reality of global structural policy is to be analytically grasped and theoretically explained from the interplay of discourses, power relations and institutions in the area of North-South relations, i.e. the dispositif of development in its current form. Only when embedded in this framework is it possible to judge the problems and limits, but also the scope and prospects of global structural policy.