Senegal and the Entropy Theory of Development

Abstract

This analysis uses Senegal as a test case to study the assumptions made by the governance agenda. After briefly charting the growth of the governance model and the theoretical assumptions on which it rests, the study outlines an alternative view of state action based on legitimacy and survival. The bulk of the study examines the economic reform process in Senegal, and argues that the governance model of development cannot account for the timing or nature of economic reform efforts there. Instead, the actions of the state in Senegal were dictated by the need to respond to a continuing lack of legitimacy despite the presence of ‘correct’ formal institutional structures. The study concludes that the economic reform process – such as it was in Senegal – was driven from outside, and that institutional reform was either irrelevant or harmful to that process.