Governing failure : [electronic resource] provisional expertise and the transformation of global development finance / Jacqueline Best.

Part I Understanding how global governance works; 1 Introduction; How and why the shift occurred; How the new practices work; Implications; Empirical contributions; Methodological innovations; Theoretical insights; The importance of practice: between materiality and ideas; Understanding change; Expertise and failure; Provisional governance beyond risk; The plan of the book; 2 A meso-level analysis; Understanding governance as practice; Focusing on governance strategies; Examining factors of governance. ActorsTechniques; Knowledge and ideas; Authority; Power; Recognizing governance styles; Understanding change; Part II History; 3 What came before; What came before; Before standardization; Before ownership; Before risk and vulnerability; Before results-based measurement; A confident style of governing; Tensions emerge; 4 Transformations; Some traditional accounts; An alternative account; The fragility of expert authority; The politics of failure; The problematization of structural adjustment practices; The problems (and possibilities) of politics; The limits of technical universals. Debating success and failureThe problem of contingency; Conclusions; Part III New governance strategies; 5 Fostering ownership; The evolution of ownership; Redesigning conditionality; Streamlining at the IMF; A more gradual change at the World Bank; More radical shifts in some donor states; Analysing conditionality reform; Small ""i"" ideas; Symbolic and informal techniques; Informalizing power; Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs); The push for the PRSP; Analysing the PRSP; Engaging new actors; New techniques; New forms of authority and power; A more provisional style of governance. 6 Developing global standardsGood governance; The evolution of a governance agenda; The World Bank; International Monetary Fund; Analysing good governance; A new kind of universal; New actors and sites of authority; New techniques: governing through universals; New forms of power and authority; Standards and codes; Developing the initiative; An analysis of standards and codes; A new kind of universal; More performative techniques; New actors and sites of authority; More indirect power; A more provisional kind of governance; 7 Managing risk and vulnerability. Assessing poor countries' vulnerability to shocksUnderstanding the shift; Three new policies; Changing governance factors; Small ""i"" ideas; Actors; Techniques; Power and authority; Redefining poverty as social risk and vulnerability; Understanding the shift; The social risk and vulnerability framework; Changing governance factors; Small ""i"" ideas; Techniques; Actors; Power and authority; A more provisional kind of governance; 8 Measuring results; Where it came from; The ""failure"" of government and new public management; Results in development agencies.

Jacqueline Best argues that the changes in International Monetary Fund, World Bank and donor policies in the 1990s, towards what some have called the 'Post-Washington Consensus, ' were driven by an erosion of expert authority and an increasing preoccupation with policy failure. Failures such as the Asian financial crisis and the decades of despair in sub-Saharan Africa led these institutions to develop governance