Suchergebnisse

This study examines how Norwegian aid to Tanzania has functioned on one of its prime goals: the mobilization of entrepreneurial capacity in the country. The author analyses how the Norwegian aid agency NORAD, through its assistance to five large projects, affected the recipient projects, organizations and public institutions. The purpose is to develop a description of how public assistance channeled through donor agencies in Tanzania, affects the professional competence and the autonomy of the aid projects and their responsible government institutions. The study is based on interviews and registration of data from aid administrators engaged either within the NORAD aided projects or in public administration at the regional or national level engaged in the management and control of the NORAD aided projects. (DÜI-Hff)

Abstract:John Searle has developed a strong theory of how speech acts and agreements generate institutions. How is the general theory specified for political institutions? He, like Max Weber, suggests that a government monopoly of soldiers is a condition for the existence of political institutions. However, governments' wielding of force is only political if those attacked consider the attack a responsible and a morally acceptable act. All political power in Searle's theory is deontic. It is assigned as a right, an obligation or the like, as a status function. If power wielding by a government is not assigned, it is beyond the political; it is only brute force. My contention is that this distinction limits the power of Searle's theory in the analysis of politics. From the idea of political institutions as ultimate institutions in a specific, bordered territory it is the strong idea of deonticity that is misleading. Ultimate institutions cannot by definition have externally assigned status. Leaders of other ultimate institutions can accept their existence, but then mainly because they have the military power to defend their borders. Nation states, demanding territorial sovereignty, therefore logically demand a monopoly of soldiers. This sovereignty seen over time suggests an evolutionary first principle of political institutions.