Tutor: Rikard Bengtsson New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development Power and State compliance

The New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development constitutes a new initiative to development, created by the African states themselves with an ultimate goal to be more integrated in the global economy on more equal terms and thereby reduce poverty within the continent. NEPAD sees democracy, good governance and human rights as necessary for sustainable development. This thesis examines the assumptions made behind the creation of NEPAD and how different forms of power can explain its creation and design from a rational choice point of view. Furthermore the thesis looks at the assumption and design to evaluate how NEPAD can get states to comply with its objectives. The result is that NEPAD show traces of the structural power of global governance by acknowledging the African position as underdeveloped. The initiating states have been able to exercise institutional power when certain values, norms and procedures were put at heart of NEPAD. Institutional power has also effectively excluded other roads to development when the members of the African Unio