Discourse analysis of development policy

"Global structural politics as an answer to the crisis of the development policy? The red-green North South politics examined using the example of the development dispositive in the age of globalisation"

Term: 2004-2006
Sponsor: German Research Foundation (DFG)

At the beginning of the 21st century development policy is in crisis. The changed historical conditions under the age of globalisation have on the one hand caused legitimization problems, on the other hand led to far-reaching processes of change in this policy area which were neither grasped in their complexity until now nor explained theoretically to the full extent. The concept of "global structural politics" presented by the red-green government, a re-orientation away from development projects to the useful constitution of the global basic conditions of development, is explicitly conceptualized as an attempt to adopt development policy to changed conditions. Therefore, it can be seen as an answer to the crisis situation and as a typical example of those change processes. The research project deals with the following setting of tasks: 1. Is the concept of "global structural politics" an adequate answer to the crisis of development policy in the age of globalisation? 2. Which hegemonic constellations causes the concept to fail? A discourse-and power analysis based on Foucault seems the most suitable in order to answer these questions. From this perspective the discrepancy between claim and reality of the global structural politics should be grasped analytically and explained theoretically with the notions of discourses, power relations and institutions in the area the North-South relations, meaning the dispositive of development in its contemporary form. Only embedding in this frame permits a judgment of the problems and borders, but also the latitudes and perspectives of "global structural politics".