Governing Afghanistan. A poststructural critique of European Union “good” governance intervention policy to Afghanistan

Abstract

Today the promotion of good governance is a major priority for European Union external policy. The European Commission’s 2001 White Paper on European Governance directly equates European governance with the EU’s principles of good governance, which are shaped by a form of neoliberal governmentality. The White Paper makes clear that the Union should apply their principles of good governance not only within the EU, but also on a global scale. The professed will of the EU to globally spread their neoliberal conception of good governance directly aids the goals outlined in their Security Strategy and Consensus on Development. The EU Security Strategy outlines that good governance will help maintain the international order while safeguarding European security. Similarly, the EU Consensus on Development promotes good governance as the best way to foster sustainable development. Afghanistan is one of the states that the EU promotes good governance to and EU intervention has increased there since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. EU governance intervention policy in Afghanistan is informed by the same neoliberal conceptions of governance that helped the EU construct its White Paper. With the aid of the critical investigative tools that derive from the method of poststructuralism, this thesis provides an exposition of European Union “good” governance policy in Afghanistan. Poststructuralism seeks to uncover how dominant representations are constructed and how alternatives are discounted. A genealogy of governance in Afghanistan uncovers a plethora of global governmentalities that since the nineteenth century have aimed to govern the lives of the people, even if this means discounting local conceptions of Afghan governance. A critical discourse analysis of EU governance intervention policies in Afghanistan highlights how the EU has drawn on neoliberal discourses of security and sustainable development to construct their governance intervention. This thesis problematizes EU good governance intervention policy in Afghanistan for its disregard of Afghan conceptions of governance, and for its homogenous construction of the people of Afghanistan as an “extremely vulnerable” population who are consequently in need of EU good governance intervention.