Arguing Development Policy

This collection shows how policy discourses in the fields of national and international developments are constructed and operate and how they can be analysed. Dominant discourses screen out certain aspects: they frame' issues to include some matters and typically exclude important others. More generally, different policy discourses construct the world in distinctive ways, through language that requires deconstruction and careful review. Introduction - discourse analysis and policy discourse, Des gasper and Raymond Apthorpe; reading development policy and policy analysis - on framing, numbing, numbering and coding, Raymond Apthorpe; analyzing policy arguments, Des Gasper; re-reading mountainous, isolated, inaccessible and small - the case of Bhutan, Adam Pain; methodological nationalism and the misunderstinding of East Asian industrialization, Charles Gore; reading Americans on democracy in Africa - from the CIA to good governance, David Moore; essentialism in and about development discourse, Des Gasper.