The present thesis outlines an ideology-critical research approach for analysis of the World Bank's current conception of good governance as it is displayed in the "Governance and Anticorruption Strategy". The study refers to the scientific discussion regarding the concept and analyses the World Bank Paper "Problem-Driven Governance and Political Economy Analysis. Good Practice Framework". The conception of good governance takes a reform-political stance. It became a key concept in development

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... olitics throughout the 1990s. The World Bank played a crucial part in the concept's formulation and enforcement. The scientific discussion of the subject sets out the importance of distinguishing an analytical from a normative approach to governance. In this study the spelling (good) governance is introduced to point out that the World Bank's conception of governance mingles these two approaches. Good Governance can be located in context of the discourse on development respectively in the history of development politics whereas it can be associated with the construction of "development" and "underdevelopment" and a "neo-institutional syn-thesis" in development politics. Critics bring together the conception of good governance with the donor countries' attempt to spread the western model of statehood, the liberal notion of market-economy and democracy in recipient countries while at the same time good governance is presented as non-political, as the World Banks mandate demands. The conception is seen as de-politicised representation of social relations. Some critics call it an ideology because of the selectivity in the representation of "reality" and the suspicion of hidden interests. To be able to analyse the notion of ideology and the particular representation of social reality it seems important to outline an ideology-critical research approach. The centrality of language, the linguistic representation of reality and the influence of thought patterns leads to the integration of discourse-theoretic considerations. The out [...]