Description
Critiques of international development have long focused on the issue of expertise, or “capacity building”, as a means of governing societies in the Global South. This has been traced from colonial expertise, to the “antipolitics” of international aid, and the global dominance of “best practice” management techniques. At the same time, over the past forty years, critiques neo-liberal ideology have analysed the proliferation of market-based solutions to all manner of social and economic problems. Whilst the role of expertise and technocracy in neo-liberal governance has already been noted, this paper focuses on the ways that entrepreneurship is increasingly promoted as a form of expertise among NGOs and civil society organisations in the international development sphere. Concentrating on democracy and human rights promotion in Zimbabwe, the paper highlights the rise of the “social enterprise” model of NGO management, which combines established forms of expertise like monitoring, evaluation, accounting and project management, with newer entrepreneurial skills like innovation, marketing and social media proficiency. The paper argues that this melding of the entrepreneurial and the technocratic sees the emergence of new forms of governance in international development and democracy promotion, where civil society and business become increasingly entangled.
