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For good governance in Africa we should be thinking more actively about alternatives to the agenda that western donors have been pushing since 1989 Events in the Middle East have the present generation fired up in much the way their parents were after the movements in eastern Europe in 1989. Right now, it is hard to have a conversation about anything in the field of politics and development without somebody throwing in “what about Tunisia, Egypt, Libya… Syria?” This is all very exciting – as it was in 1989. But from the point of view of anybody whose main concern is enduring poverty and bad governance in low-income Africa, it is also troubling. I write with some feeling as the director of a research programme – Africa, power and politics – that is trying to get across some fresh and evidence-based ideas on the latter subject. Why troubling? Well, consider a couple of aspects of the 1989 precedent. The euphoria about liberal-democratic convergence (remember Francis Fukuyama ‘s “end of history”?) was seriously dented as the different parts of the former Soviet bloc went their very different ways. The immediate outcome was a useful reminder that historical trajectories and socio-economic preconditions do matter for the way countries develop. Unfortunately, though, that was not the end of the story. Among the more lasting effects of 1989 on the rest of the world was a simple-minded, history-free concept of the politics of progress: liberal-democracy was the thing – for everyone, at all times. Thanks in part to Iraq and Afghanistan, we are, decades later, backing off from this self-confident universalism. Warnings against, for example, staging elections when an inclusive elite bargain has not yet been established are now getting a hearing . In and around the World Bank, there is recognition of the dangers of a one size fits all approach to reforming institutions. We are getting accustomed to the idea that countries need to discover their own routes to progress, and that well-wishing outsiders should start by understanding country systems better (pdf). In the current climate, however, it is hard sustaining the momentum of this new enlightenment. I think we should remain optimistic but also alert to some big dangers. Let me explain further with reference to some findings emerging from research in the programme I lead. Our starting point has been the need to find alternatives to the good governance agenda that western donors have been pushing in Africa – and many Africans have been embracing with enthusiasm – since around 1989. We are searching for a better understanding of the kinds of institutional arrangements that actually work for development in African countries. We are not satisfied that the recent acceleration of economic growth means Africa has turned a corner development-wise. Apart from anything else, the current growth lacks the rural, smallholder bias that helped many Asian countries to overtake their African peers over past decades. On top of that, the governance of development remains abysmally bad almost everywhere. What makes us optimistic in spite of all this is that African governance has gone through different phases since independence; it’s not all failure. And approaches differ between countries. These facts suggest a room for manoeuvre, a space for drawing creatively on Africa’s own institutional resources and social creativity that Afro-pessimists tend not to recognise. At national level, we are working to distinguish between more and less progressive forms of the type of authority known to political scientists as neo-patrimonialism. As in Asia and earlier in Europe, it makes a difference whether the country’s elite succeeds in centralising management of the main economic “rents” and using them in ways that help to grow the national economy. Historically, this has been the crucial difference between those pre-capitalist regimes that usher in capitalism and those that block this transition indefinitely. Such differences, we argue, are far more important – including for the eventual prospects for democracy – than whether or not a country has the formal trappings of a competitive political system. At sub-national levels, the key difference is between arrangements that permit some local problem-solving and those that don’t. We are finding that so-called democratic decentralisation is not usually conducive to local problem-solving, and not just because it is seldom fully implemented. Under prevailing socio-economic conditions (because, yes, levels of development do matter), local political competition intensifies vote-buying, not provision of the basic public goods that poor Africans need. It strongly discourages decent governance where this involves regulation (eg of crop or medicine markets) or enforcing rules (eg on sanitation or the environment). We should be thinking more actively about alternative ways of improving governance based on the “local reforms” and practical hybrid institutions that we are finding here and there in several countries (Ghana, Malawi, Niger), and more comprehensively in at least one (Rwanda). In short, a more sophisticated approach to institution building for development in Africa may be possible. But it will help if we can avoid being diverted all the time into dictatorship v democracy debates. More fundamentally, we must try to avert a new tidal wave of the one size fits all approach inspired by events in the Middle East. • David Booth heads the Africa, power and politics programme at the Overseas Development Institute guardian.co.uk