Development and the search for connection

Abstract

The stated purpose of development is often characterised by the motivation to ‘help’ – that is, to intervene in the lives of others in supportive ways. This paper argues that this perspective has obscured how development activities are also animated by its twin desire to ‘connect’. While this holds significance for development more broadly, it becomes particularly evident in a mode of assistance that has gained prominence more recently. These are privately funded, small-scale projects led by individual founders, here described as ‘citizen aid’. Based on ethnographic research among citizen aid initiatives in Cambodia, the paper argues that the relevance of ‘connecting’ has been insufficiently recognised so far. It explores different aspects of what participants mean by ‘making a connection’, including face-to-face contact, direct experience of aid activities, and their tangible efficacy. It also finds that establishing interpersonal relationships across national, ethnic and cultural differences, while potentially challenging, is a key motivation for those involved. Finally, the paper argues that acknowledging the desire to connect questions notions of the ‘distant stranger’ as the archetypical humanitarian object, highlighting the wish for familiarity and closeness as potentially just as important for motivating and directing assistance to others.     

China and global development: towards a Global-Asian Era?

The rise of China as an economic and political ‘driver’ of the global economy may presage a new phase of globalization. This paper postulates the emergence of this new phase – a ‘Global-Asian Era’ (GAE) – as a ‘working hypothesis’. It suggests that such an era is likely to be distinct from any of the earlier phases of globalization, and China's global footprint, in terms of its business, economic and political actions and their geopolitical implications, is likely to be markedly different from what has gone before. The paper sketches the reasons for these differences before turning to a discussion of the nature and dynamics of a possible future GAE. Paying particular attention to the developing world, the paper then explores some of the evidence that could be marshalled in support of the hypothesis. It outlines a series of vectors (trade, aid and energy security) along which it is possible to discern some of the ways in which an emergent GAE could be seen as impacting on the developing world. The paper argues that, at least for these vectors, a China-driven GAE is likely to provide dangers as well as opportunities for national development projects.     

The great paradox: how Obama’s opening to Cuba may imperil the country’s reform process

This article examines the kind of development and political model most likely to emerge in Cuba, particularly in the wake of the gradual US–Cuban normalisation currently taking place. The rapprochement process, culminating with President Obama’s historic visit in March 2016, has unleashed stiff resistance in both countries. The liberal democratisation paradigm is held up against what we have termed ‘socialist neo-patrimonialism’, with both seen as alternative tools for assessing the direction of social transformations underway in Cuba, focusing on the debate about the role of the national private sector. Paradoxically, normalisation with the USA may so far have had the contrary effect of what President Obama had in mind in this respect: judging from the 7th Congress of the Communist Party in April 2016, it seems that resistance against economic reforms has hardened, caused by a fear that Obama’s charm offensive, combined with a strengthened entrepreneurial sector, will undermine the entire revolutionary project. The article concludes with a discussion of four development scenarios.     

What might celebrity humanitarianism have to do with empire?

The aim of this paper is to bring into conversation two apparently disparate debates in the fields of politics and International Relations. The first is a debate over celebrity humanitarianism that is divided between optimistic scholars, who see in it an enhancement of democracy, and pessimistic scholars, who link it to capitalist imperialism or a throwback to older colonial tropes. The second is a debate over a (new) American empire which has prompted scholars in IR to redress IR’s historic ‘elision’ of empire and to offer new network theories of empire. The paper argues that these two debates each address the shortcomings in the other and offers speculation on what celebrity humanitarianism might have to do with empire by bridging the connections between structuralist political theories of empire and the cultural accounts offered by postcolonial theory.     

The aid orphan myth

The term ‘aid orphan’ refers to a developing country forgotten or abandoned by the development community. This metaphor has featured prominently in the development assistance policy and research literature over the past decade. Development practitioners, policy makers and researchers have defined aid orphans in manifold ways and often expressed concern over the potential fate or impact of such countries. In this paper we first examine the many definitions of aid orphans and then review the main concerns raised about them. Next we empirically examine more than 40 years of bilateral aid data to identify aid orphan countries and their common characteristics. Our findings suggest that very few countries meet the definition of aid orphan and fewer still raise the concerns collectively expressed about the orphan phenomenon. We conclude by suggesting researchers and practitioners abandon the orphan metaphor and instead focus on issues of equitable aid allocation.     

Public perceptions of India’s role as an international development cooperation partner: domestic responses to rising ‘donor’ visibility

The literature on South–South Development Cooperation (ssdc) has grown exponentially in the past few years. One focus of analysis has been how domestic institutions and agendas shape the approaches to development cooperation of different Southern partners. However, few analysts to date have commented on how the ‘ordinary’ general public of these countries might perceive or assess their country’s role in international development. Through a study based on interviews and media analysis, this paper attempts to tease out the slim evidence currently available on ‘public’ attitudes in India, concentrating, for reasons explained, exclusively on elites and ‘middle classes’. It argues that, while some domestic criticism will certainly accompany the growing visibility of Indian development cooperation, the attractive blend of discursive positioning and material benefits may provide the Indian government with broad support for its growing investment and profile in international development, or at least offset a degree of criticism. At present there appears to be little public discussion about whether and how India’s external role relates to domestic poverty, or the nature of growth and ‘development’ that India is helping to stimulate in partner countries. The paper also discusses ‘boundary making’ with China through the public construction of Indian development cooperation.     

The European Union’s ambiguous concept of ‘state fragility’

Although scholars and practitioners alike perceive ‘state fragility’ to be a key challenge for security and development, there are significant variations in the definition of this phenomenon. This article analyses the European Union’s notion of ‘state fragility’. Based on a document analysis covering the years 2001–12 and expert interviews conducted in November 2012, the article reveals that the EU has not (yet) decided on a clear-cut definition of ‘state fragility’. Three factors explain this lack of decisiveness: the EU’s complex institutional framework, which impedes policy coherence; developments at the international level that require the EU’s compliance; and the organisation’s diplomatic efforts to maintain cooperative relationships with aid-recipient countries that have been labelled ‘fragile’. The result is conceptual ambiguity that potentially reduces the EU’s capacity to respond to fragile situations.     

Post-development theory and the question of alternatives: a view from Africa

Post-development theorists have declared development obsolete and bankrupt and have called for ‘alternatives to development’. What do they mean by such calls and what should be the African response to such calls? In this paper I will attempt to address three important questions: first, what is meant by post-development theory's call for ‘alternatives to development’? Second, why consider post-development theory from an African perspective? Third, what contributions can a consideration of African difference and diversity make towards debate on ‘alternatives to development’? I conclude by arguing that increased consideration of the African experience would be valuable for all who are seeking alternative ways of dealing with the problems that development purports to address.     

Precautionary and Proactionary as the New Right and the New Left of the Twenty-First Century Ideological Spectrum

Despite its specific origin in the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly after the revolution of 1789, the right–left divide of the ideological spectrum has proved remarkably resilient in anchoring public intellectual life for over two centuries. In this article, I argue that we are witnessing a 90° rotation of this ideological axis, resulting in a new set of poles, each of which combines elements of the old right–left divide. The ‘precautionary’ pole brings together the conservationist side of the right and the communitarian side of the left, whereas the ‘proactionary’ pole unites the libertarian side of the right and the technocratic side of the left. I prepare the ground for discussing these new alternatives with a consideration of the political theology of the old right–left divide, which ultimately turns on alternative visions of how the past determines the future. This ‘left’ basically holds that what is possible significantly exceeds what is probable, with liberals adopting an ‘antirealist’ and socialists a ‘realist’ stance towards the prospect of an optimal social order. Both the precautionary and proactionary poles of the new ideological spectrum are fixated on our attitude towards a future in which the ontological constitution of the polity (i.e. its ‘humanity’) is among the issue under contestation. In this emerging ideological conflict, more of which is transpiring in video than in print, the precautionaries are marked as more ‘risk-averse’ and the proactionaries more ‘risk-seeking’ than had been presumed to be the normal attitude in the modern welfare state.     

The Transformation of Soviet Industrial Relations and the Foundation of the Moldovan Dniester Republic

The debate about post-socialist internal conflict has overcome the ‘ethnic turn’ and increasingly focuses on actors. For the case of separatism in the Moldovan Dniester Valley, research has highlighted the crucial role of industrial factory directors. These managers mobilised their factories’ employees. To refine the knowledge of how collective conflict actors are formed, this article asks the question: what enabled directors to mobilise ‘their’ workers? The sources show that, on the one hand, the managers’ political power was rooted in typical Soviet enterprise structures; on the other, it was further strengthened by perestroika market reforms and the economic crisis entangled to them. These results suggest that separatist mobilisation and internal conflict were entangled to social transformation and functioned as a catalyst to the process of (re-)distribution of capital and power.     

Old bottle new wine? The evolution of China’s aid in Africa 1956–2014

Abstract

China’s aid is frequently portrayed as a challenger to established Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) norms, but it is unclear when the distinct ‘Chinese-model’ of aid emerged and how it has evolved over time. Using new historical data on Chinese aid in Africa and the case of Ethiopia, we have three main findings. First, China developed a distinct model of mixing ODA-like aid and commercial forms of economic engagement only after the mid-1990s, reflecting institutional reforms for allocating and managing foreign official finance. Second, social sectors have played a much greater role in China’s aid programme than is commonly perceived. Finally, Chinese aid to productive sectors has changed substantially whereas in social sectors it is relatively consistent.     

The ‘green militarisation’ of development aid: the European Commission and the Virunga National Park,DR Congo

To ‘save’ the Virunga National Park, located in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the European Commission (EC) allocates development aid to the paramilitary training of the park guards, their salaries, and mixed patrols of the guards together with the Congolese army. Moreover, the ‘development’ projects the EC supports around the park have militarising effects as they are based on a soft counter-insurgency approach to conservation and to address dynamics of violent conflict. This amounts to the ‘green militarisation’ of development aid. This article describes how a personalised network of policymakers within the EC renders militarised conservation-related violence and controversy around the Virunga park invisible, by framing contestations and violence in and around the park as solely caused by economic factors and motivations. Moreover, by ‘hiding’ the fact that the EC aid is used to fund armed conservation practices, policymakers circumvent political debate about the use of development funds for (para)military expenditures. While the existing literature focuses on the importance of securitised discourses to explain the militarisation of conservation, this article indicates that in addition, it is important to focus on these more mundane practices of securitisation within international organisations that ultimately fund the militarisation of conservation.     

Russia in the European Home? Convergence,Cosmopolitanism and Cosmism in Late Soviet Europeanisation

The aim is to present a conceptual and historical reconstruction of Gorbachev's notion of a ‘European home’, its underlying philosophy of history as well as its relation to Russian cosmism. The concept is contextualised within the convergence debate of the post-war period, in which a rapprochement between communism and capitalism was posited. The essay concludes with reflections on what the conceptualisation can tell us about the fall of communism and what impact the concept has had on today's search for a common European identity. An argument is advanced that the notion contained paradoxes that contributed to the dislocation of post-Soviet Russia from Europe.     

Wither the ‘development contract’? Historical conjunctures in Naomi Hossain’s The Aid Lab: Understanding Bangladesh’s Unexpected Success

This paper examines methodological avenues for a historical sociology of development through a close reading of Naomi Hossain’s recent book, The Aid Lab: Understanding Bangladesh’s Unexpected Success (2017). Hossain’s conjunctural perspective, the formative moment of Bangladesh in environmental catastrophe, war and famine in the 1970s, establishes a novel account of the country’s development trajectory. Contingencies of the moment and consequent political uncertainties committed an emergent national elite to a largely informal but substantive social compact against future crises of subsistence. The result was a specific, transnational power configuration rendering Bangladesh a test case for developmental interventions and the production of knowledge regarding them. Debates in critical development studies have often posited that such ‘elite commitment’ is a consequence and not so much a precondition for social improvement, brought about through struggles from ‘below.’ How might these positions be reconciled by shifting the temporal frames of reference? By rendering historical processes legible as conflicting and complementary interactions between different social forces and actors? How can such actors be envisaged without presuming their identities and interests as fixed or given, but rather, as shaping and being shaped by such processes? These questions motivate the immanent critique and reappraisal of Hossain’s timely work, highlighting its significance for dynamic analyses of historical capitalism today through the ‘universal particularities’ of the national case.     

Contextualising City-regional Issues,Strategies and their Use: the Flemish Story

This paper presents a contextualised analysis of what might be called the city-regional debate. The debate is unfolded in terms of four types of city-regional issues, eight common strategies to tackle the latter and the use thereof in Flanders. It is concluded that the way in which city-regional issues are dealt with in Flanders can be explained by its regime, consisting of an administrative, political and cultural dimension, in terms of a centralistic policy style combined with a weak institutional position of local governments, by a ‘localisation’ of regional politics and policies, both dominated by an anti-urban bias.     

Symposium Introduction: Competency and Higher Civil Servants

‘Competency’ is a word that seems to have crept into the language of public administration and policy relatively recently, although largely under the radar of academic scholarship in Europe. This article introduces a symposium of papers that address key questions about competency management: how and why has it become popular and what are the implications of the spread of ‘competency’ approaches? As the introductory paper, it outlines the intellectual background to competency approaches and outlines three interpretations of their development. One interpretation sees them as a passing fad; a ‘difference’ interpretation sees them as a common label for widely varying patterns and practices; and a ‘sameness’ interpretation treats competency management as a symptom of broader politico‐administrative developments.     

Citizen aid: grassroots interventions in development and humanitarianism

Abstract

The introduction to this collection brings together, under the umbrella terms of citizen aid and grassroots humanitarianism, interdisciplinary research on small-scale, privately funded forms of aid and development. It notes the steady rise of these activities, including in the Global South as well as North, such as in the context of the recent European refugee crisis. It considers their position vis-à-vis more institutionalised forms of aid; methodological approaches and their challenges; and asks what political dimensions these initiatives may have. It outlines key themes arising from the contributions to the collection, including historical perspectives on ‘demotic humanitarianism’, questions of legitimacy and their apparent lack of professionalisation, motivations of their founders, the role of personal connections, as well as the importance of digital media for brokerage and fundraising. Being mindful of its critiques and implicit power imbalances, it suggests that citizen aid deserves more systematic academic attention.     

Norm-making,norm-taking or norm-shifting? A case study of Sino–Japanese competition in the Jakarta–Bandung high-speed rail project

This paper’s main aim is to contribute to the debate on the impact of China’s rise on the established norms and practices in the field of international development. To do so, it zooms in on a single infrastructure project, the Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail line, which involved intense competition between China and Japan. Specifically, it examines how competition between China, a non-Western emerging power, and Japan, an OECD member, led to a recalibration of both China and Japan’s approaches to infrastructure financing in the region. The findings suggest that rather than straight convergence or competition between diverging models, there is an ongoing process of two-way adjustment between China, and representatives of the dominant global norms and practices. We also argue that to understand the implications of China’s participation in the field of international development, and its impact on the ‘rules of the game’ of global governance, researchers should avoid positioning inquiries within the premises of China’s one-directional impact on the development assistance regime. Rather, it is necessary to take into account a complex set of relationships including China, host countries and other ‘socialised’ actors, and the process of negotiation between them.     

Anti-corruption or accountability? International efforts in post-conflict Liberia

This paper analyses anti-corruption efforts in post-conflict Liberia. It highlights citizens’ views on the definition of corruption and argues that, in the past, anti-corruption efforts have often focused on institution building and formal justice mechanisms without sufficient understanding of accountability dynamics on the ground. Anti-corruption approaches in Liberia have only nominally examined whether there is a shared understanding of what ‘corruption’ is and why it is regarded as a problem. The paper examines the social norms and perceptions that underlie understandings of the term corruption. It argues that the international community may have overlooked the fact that ‘corruption’ has become an all-encompassing term that masks a myriad of differing priorities and concerns. The authors posit that ‘accountability’ may be a more useful lens for those actors hoping to improve governance in these contexts.     

War-torn countries,natural resources,emerging-power investors and the UN development system

The unsustainable aid dependency of war-torn countries – most of which are rich in natural resources – makes it imperative to start gradually replacing aid with foreign direct investment (fdi) and exports. This article identifies ways in which stakeholders – governments, the international community, including the UN development system, foreign investors, and local communities – could work together in a ‘win-win’ situation. Most crucial is avoiding conflict-insensitive policies that fuel discord by putting governments and foreign companies, often from emerging markets, in direct confrontation with local communities. The control of natural resources is often a root cause of conflict, and the latter’s exploitation can become a major challenge as wars end. The peculiarities of war-torn countries are discussed along with the specific impediments to attracting fdi into the exploitation of natural resources. An effective and fair legal framework is necessary to ensure that investors do not operate as ‘enclaves’, creating new conflicts.