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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Structural Adjustment, State Power and Genocide: The World Bank and Rwanda |
Author: | Storey, Andy |
Year: | 2001 |
Periodical: | Review of African Political Economy |
Volume: | 28 |
Issue: | 89 |
Period: | September |
Pages: | 365-385 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Rwanda |
Subjects: | World Bank economic policy genocide Development and Technology Economics and Trade international relations Politics and Government Law, Human Rights and Violence Ethnic and Race Relations |
External links: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03056240108704546 http://ejournals.ebsco.com/direct.asp?ArticleID=4955B4B4A81B25FAC7F9 |
Abstract: | The Rwandan genocide of 1994 has been partly attributed to State weakness or collapse, and the weakness or collapse has in turn been partly attributed to the policies of the World Bank and the IMF, which continued to support this State. Neither argument is valid. The elaboration of these two arguments constitutes the main theme of this article. It first outlines the centrality of State power to an anlysis of Rwanda in general and of the preparations for genocide in particular. Next, it examines the themes that constituted the staples of World Bank discourse vis-à-vis Rwanda in the early 1990s: the insistence on the State as a mediative/neutral actor; the underplaying of social divisions within the country; the stress on the (technical) 'correctness' of adjustment policies; the analysis of politics in terms of abstracted 'interest groups'; and the need to persuade the population of the merits of reform. These themes flowed directly from the institutional requirements of the Bank itself, and not from any detailed analysis of the specificity of Rwanda. In Rwanda, the Bank's discursive construction missed a critical element of what was actually happening - sharply rising inequality, accelerating élite enrichment and corruption, and preparations for massive violence on the part of those who controlled the State. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. |