When Donors and Disciplines Meet Political Settlements: Co-opting Critical Approaches for Governance and State-Building

Over the last two decades, political settlements analysis (PSA) has been widely published in academic journals and has been influential in development programming on governance, conflict and state-building. This paper is based on a review of 75 peer-reviewed publications employing PSA across social science journals. In line with existing research, it identifies two schools of PSA research: an ‘as process’ approach that is based on structuralist understandings of the challenges of late development and an ‘as agreement’ approach, which shows both signs of dissent from and alignment with dominant New Institutional Economics and Good Governance approaches. As donor-funded research programmes encouraged a proliferation of PSA within policy and academia, 'as agreement' approaches have become more prominent. As a result, PSA has departed significantly from its historical materialist and structuralist roots. As 'as agreement' PSA approaches have attempted to speak to disciplines, they have been applied increasingly in line with key assumptions associated with New Institutional Economics and liberal peacebuilding approaches (as opposed to alternative heterodox and Marxian approaches). The popularity of ‘as agreement’ approaches highlights how dominant liberal peacebuilding approaches and market-led governance frames often co-opt critical approaches because of incentives within academia and the preferences of development organisations.