Development Paradigms, Neoliberalism and Human Security — Western Style

Abstract

This chapter both extends our discussion of neoliberalism in Chapter 1 and sets the scene for our analysis of police overseas assistance missions in Chapter 3. It takes as its starting point the view that police reform cannot and should not be divorced from economic and political reforms that seek to alleviate socioeconomic inequalities, enhance the position of women, minorities, and young people, and nurture a normative commitment to the democratic process. In short, what we are pointing to is the centrality of larger development questions to police reform endeavours (discussed in Chapter 3). Paradoxically, however, the way that development is conceptualized and the associated projects promoted by key Western states and International Financial Institutions (IFIs) are often in conflict with democratic goals and lead to the structural conditions of inequality that create problems for police democratization and the realization of human security (e.g. increases in crime, social problems, ethnic schisms, and the nurturing and active sponsoring of repressive regimes). The chapter suggests that the failures associated with neoliberal development parallel in many respects those associated with an earlier development paradigm — what was termed modernization theory that achieved pre-eminence in the 1960s (e.g. Rostow 1956, 1960; Eisenstadt 1970; Smelser 1966; Inkeles and Smith 1974; Lerner 1958, 1968). While we acknowledge that neoliberalism and modernization accorded different roles to the state and the market we nevertheless suggest that they share some common assumptions. Like modernization before it, neoliberal development assumes a unilinear diffusionist thesis and an easy logic; it regards interventions from the global North and West to the global South as unproblematic; it has at its core some level of geo-strategic manipulation and an emphasis on donor/national, interest; and, it promotes a universalistic one-size fits all paradigm with similar development/reformist templates used in a variety of contexts that often differ greatly in terms of history, politics, culture and levels of social and economic equality.