When ‘development’ devastates: donor discourses,access to hiv/aids treatment in Africa and rethinking the landscape of development

If globalisation is the mighty tremor shaking the landscape of the ‘project of development’, then, in certain regions of the world, hiv/aids is surely its epicentre. Nonetheless, for all the burden of the disease, Western donor policy on hiv/aids still remains largely silent about the provision of anti-retroviral treatment. This paper seeks explanations for this pervasive medical neglect and donor preference for prevention programmes over treatment. The postcolonial approach taken in the paper is to regard donor policy on hiv/aids—as illustrated by the UK's Department for International Development and the Norwegian Agency for Development Co-operation—as cultural and political exchanges framed by prevailing representations of Africa. The different ‘logics’ which skew policies towards prevention are identified. For donors and African states alike, hiv/aids policies—like development interventions more generally—would benefit immensely by foregrounding the human right to health, including, critically, promoting treatment within a genuine ‘prevention–care–treatment’ policy continuum.     

Intellectual Property Rights and the Potential for Universal Access to Treatment: trips,acta and hiv/aids medicine

Where hiv/aids is concerned, the twin goals of ‘zero new infections’ and an ‘aids-free generation’ are now, due to advances in treatment (and treatment as prevention), a realistic possibility. However, these goals can only be achieved through the scaling-up of treatment to the point of universal access. It is inevitable that the success of any scaling-up will be predicated on cost, particularly of hiv/aids medicines. This article argues that recent changes in the global intellectual property landscape—effected by way of bilaterally- and plurilaterally-negotiated trade agreements initiated by developed countries—jeopardise the target of universal access. Enhanced protection of international intellectual property rights increasingly poses a threat to the development of, and international trade in, generic medicines. Unless developing countries move to reinvigorate moribund multilateral institutions, particularly the wto, they will lose control of the intellectual property agenda, and thus the ability to impose an alternative vision regarding universal access.     

Lebanon in the context of regional politics: Palestinian and Syrian involvement in the Lebanese crisis

This article focuses on the negotiation of Economic Partnership Agreements (epas) which form the central focus of the commitments made in the Cotonou Agreement, signed in 2000 by the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (acp) states. epas are part of a much wider trend witnessed since the creation of the World Trade Organization (wto), characterised by the proliferation of bilateral free trade agreements. The article argues that both the material and ideational interests of the EU need to be considered alongside the historical context of EU–acp relations. The EU is making a concerted effort to ‘lock in’ neoliberalism across the seven different sub-regions of the acp group by negotiating epas that include both reciprocal trade liberalisation and various ‘trade-related’ issues. In this way epas will go beyond the requirements for wto compatibility, resulting in a reduction of the policy space for acp states to pursue alternative development strategies. The article then considers the potential developmental impact of epas with reference to the negotiations with seven of the 15 member states of the Southern African Development Community (sadc). It is argued that the EU is promoting ‘open regionalism’, which poses a threat to the coherence of the regional project in southern Africa.     

Bono's Product (RED) Initiative: corporate social responsibility that solves the problems of ‘distant others’

The Product (RED) initiative was launched by Bono at Davos in 2006. Product RED is ‘a brand created to raise awareness and money for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria by teaming up with iconic brands to produce RED-branded products’. With the engagement of American Express, Apple, Converse, Gap, Emporio Armani, Hallmark and Motorola, consumers can help HIV/AIDS patients in Africa. They can do so simply by shopping, as a percentage of profits from Product (RED) lines goes to support the Global Fund. In this article we examine how the corporations that are part of this initiative use RED to build up their brand profiles, sell products and/or portray themselves as both ‘caring’ and ‘cool’. We also show that, more than simply being another example of cause-related marketing (like the pink ribbon campaign or the ubiquitous plastic armbands), RED engages corporations in profitable ‘helping’ while simultaneously pushing the agenda of corporate social responsibility (CSR) towards solving the problems of ‘distant others’.     

Global and Local Health Governance: Civil society,human rights and hiv/aids

From the outset in the mid-1980s the international response to hiv/aids has been characterised by an emphasis on the human rights aspects of the pandemic, and on recognition of the pivotal role of civil society actors (csos). But how the rights-based conception of hiv/aids and the international legitimation of csos play out at the local level depends not only on the vertical coordination between global and local levels but also on government–cso relations and the understanding of the pandemic in individual countries. South Africa and Cambodia provide comparative examples of ‘glocalised’ responses to hiv/aids. Both countries were among the hardest hit in their respective regions. But, while the South African government was slow to acknowledge the severity of epidemic, the Cambodian leadership quickly initiated a comprehensive response to it. The two cases illustrate how opportunity structures at the international and national levels created different local responses to hiv/aids, with significant consequences for the epidemic over time.     

Livelihoods as Intimate Government: Reframing the logic of livelihoods for development

Recent donor discourse points to the potential of faith-based organisations (fbos) as ‘agents of transformation’, mobilising the moral energy of faith communities in support of the Millennium Developments Goals (mdgs). This new donor-driven agenda, however, invites scrutiny of complementary processes of organisational change within donor institutions. This article therefore examines donor policy and practice concerned with engagement with fbos. While considering the work of a number of donors, it focuses on the UK Department for International Development (dfid) and traces the reasons for dfid's growing interest in fbos from 1997. It examines the challenges which dfid faces in further developing this engagement and considers whether it and others donors can themselves become ‘agents of transformation’, embracing a less material and less secular vision of well-being and a more culturally inclusive approach to partnership. In contrast to recent scholarship, which presents a benign view of the emerging ‘faith and development’ interface, this article considers it as a controversial new Zeitgeist in development policy and discourse.     

The Asian Development Bank and Developmental Regionalism in East Asia

The Asian Development Bank (adb) has made increasingly important contributions to Asia's (and particularly East Asia's) regionalism over recent years, and especially since Haruhiko Kuroda became the Bank's president in February 2005. This paper argues that the adb's role here has become more significant because of the strong ‘developmental’ characteristics of East Asia's new regionalism. This is not least because, as a regional development bank, the adb has a predilection for linking development, regionalism and capacity-building together when promoting regional co-operation and integration (rci) in Asia. We may refer to this as ‘developmental regionalism’, where rci activities are particularly orientated to enhancing the economic capacity and prospects of less developed countries with the view of strengthening their integration into the regional economy, and thereby bringing greater coherence to regional community building overall. This analysis is partly based on field research undertaken by the author involving a series of research interviews conducted amongst adb officials and with outside analysts of the organisation. It first examines the evolution of the Bank's stance and policies on rci, and the impact made by President Kuroda and the newly formed Office of Regional Integration (orei) in this regard. The main developments of East Asia's new regionalism are then outlined from finance and trade perspectives. Thereafter, an evaluation is made of the adb's contributions toward the emerging developmental regionalism in East Asia.     

The Geography of Participation

Revisiting the critique of participatory development and one of its core political technologies, Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA), this paper suggests that participation in the form of PRA creates ‘provided spaces’ that dislocate ‘development’ from politics and from political institutions of the postcolonial state. PRA thereby becomes what Chantal Mouffe calls a post-political aspiration through its celebration of deliberative democracy (although this is largely implicit rather than explicit in the PRA literature). What makes this post-political aspiration dangerous is that its provided spaces create a time–space container of a state of exception (the ‘workshop’) wherein a new sovereign is created. In combination with other developmental techniques, PRA has become a place where a new order is being constituted—the state of exception becomes permanent and nurtures the ‘will to improve’ that undergirds ‘development’.     

The New Biopower: Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers and the obfuscation of international collective responsibility

As successors to structural adjustment programmes, Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (prsps) were introduced in 1999 as preconditions for World Bank and imf concessional financing and for debt relief. prsps now serve as the basis of negotiations for a variety of development financing and have influenced the design of other aid instruments. This paper considers the impact of the prsp framework on the constitution of global economic governance, in particular its effect in foreclosing possibilities for a radical revision of the rules and institutions of international economic law. The paper argues that the prsp project not only reframes fundamental tenets of international co-operation and global communal responsibility but also establishes a new disciplinary framework for Third World state engagement with the global economy and the international law which sustains it. In this way the discourse and methods of resistance against the injustices of the international order have been appropriated to distil such dissent through qualified operationalising of contestable notions of ‘participation’, ‘ownership’, ‘partnership’ and ‘poverty reduction’, disabling the resurgence of any form of emancipatory politics in the international economic order, whether through a state-led nieo-style revival or cosmopolitan social movement.     

Participatory development,complicity and desire

Abstract

This article is an attempt at rethinking participatory development (pd) in terms of empire, undertaking a postcolonial and psychoanalytic reading. Postcolonialism helps point out that our discursive constructions of the Third World say more about us than the Third World; while psychoanalysis helps uncover the desires we invest in the Other. Thus, to the question, ‘why do neo-imperial and inegalitarian relationships pervade pd?’, the article answers, ‘because even as pd promotes the Other's empowerment, it hinges crucially on our complicity and desire’; and ‘because disavowing such complicity and desire is a technology of power’. The argument, in other words, is that complicity and desire are written into pd, making it prone to an exclusionary, Western-centric and inegalitarian politics. The article concludes with possibilities for confronting our complicities and desires through pd's radicalisation.     

Civil war and the coalition government of democratic Kampuchea

This article explores the relationship between the politics of international development and the reproduction of global inequality. I argue that contemporary discourses about— and the practices of—‘development for developing countries’ represent an attempt to reconstitute the political utility of the ‘Third World’. In an era of globalisation the deployment of the notion of a Third World of ‘developing countries’ which require immediate, systemic attention through the discourse and practice of international development continues to provide a way of both disciplining and displacing the global dimension of social and political struggle. I refer to this dynamic in terms of the political utility of the Third World, which, I argue, has been conducive to the organisation of global capitalism and the management of social and political contradictions of inequality and poverty. I develop this argument by drawing on the historical implications and legacy of ‘international development’ as practised in and on the Third World and through a critical analysis of the methodological premises that constitute international development. I illustrate this by drawing on a key strategy aimed ostensibly at development: the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (prsp) approach, promulgated by the World Bank and the imf, which I discuss in relation to the ‘development agenda’ inaugurated during the 1999 wto meeting in Doha (Qatar). I argue that the ideology and practice of the global politics of international development reinforce the conditions of global inequality, and must be transcended as both an analytical framework and an organising principle of world politics. While the prsp and related approaches are currently presented as key elements in the building of the ‘architecture for (international) development’, what is emerging is a form of governance that attempts to foreclose social and political alternatives.     

The Stop Climate Chaos Coalition: climate change as a development issue

After the Working Group on Climate Change and Development recognised the challenge that climate change poses to development, a number of environmental and aid, trade and development organisations formed a new politically active coalition, Stop Climate Chaos (SCC), to demand that stronger climate laws be adopted in the UK. The coalition now frames the issue of climate change as a ‘global climate justice’ one, emphasising the severity of the issue for people in poor countries, who will suffer the worst consequences, but have contributed least to it. The extent to which SCC member organisations address climate change as a global justice issue is explored through a content analysis of their websites, and a survey of participants in the SCC I-Count march, London, 3 November 2006. There is certainly evidence that environmental organisations are ‘facing South’, just as aid, trade and development organisations are ‘turning green’.     

American empire and ‘excluded states’: the millennium challenge account and the shift to pre-emptive development

In March 2002 President George W Bush announced the creation of what many insiders have heralded as a revolutionary development initiative: the Millennium Challenge Account (mca). The latter seeks to provide assistance to 79 of the world's poorest countries—many of which have been often equated with the term ‘failed states’—so that they may reap the benefits of neoliberal-led globalisation. One of the most novel, and coercive, features of this development compact is the ‘pre-emptive’ method in which it will administer aid. Under the mca, only countries that govern justly, invest in their people, and open their economies to foreign enterprise and entrepreneurship will qualify for funding. To this end the Bush administration has devised 16 eligibility criteria—ranging from civil liberties to ‘days to start a business’—that each country must successfully pass before receiving aid. Despite its impact on normalising, and thus legitimating, the tendency towards the privatisation of aid and militarisation of development, there has been very little critical work on the mca. This paper sets out to fill this gap in the literature by attempting to understand historically the mca as a moment of American empire.1 This article builds on the wider arguments developed in my forthcoming book, Contesting Global Governance: Empire, Class, and the New Common Sense in Managing Globalisation, London: Pluto Press. View all notes In doing so, I suggest that, while the form of the mca represents an unabashed articulation of US-led imperialism vis-a`-vis the poorest regions in the South, the content of this allegedly novel strategy reflects the same goals and interests that underlie the neoliberal agenda, namely, that the path to increased growth and prosperity lies in countries' willingness and ability to adopt policies that promote economic freedom and the rule of law.     

Defining morality: dfid and the Great Lakes

This article examines the work of the UK government's Department for International Development (dfid) in the Great Lakes region of central Africa. It traces the formulation of policy and compares it with dfid's operations in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) from 1997 to 2001. Drawing on research from the region and the UK, the article argues that dfid's ‘new humanitarianism’ offers little new, and that the spoken poverty agenda is misleading. It concludes that, while dfid's moral terminology suggests that there is a framework for response, in fact dfid defines what is ‘good’ and redefines events—including its own activity—to fit with it.     

South–South cooperation and the future of development assistance: mapping actors and options

International development cooperation is undergoing fundamental changes. New – or often re-emerging – actors have gained importance during the past two decades, and are increasingly challenging the traditional approach to development cooperation associated with the members of the Development Assistance Committee of the oecd. Their supposedly alternative paradigm, ‘South–South cooperation’ (ssc), has been recognised as an important cooperation modality, but faces contradictions that are not too different from those of its North–South counterpart. ssc providers are highly heterogeneous in terms of policies, institutional arrangements, and engagement with international forums and initiatives. This article contributes to current debates on ssc by mapping the diversity of its actors – based on illustrative case studies from the first and second ‘wave’ of providers – and by presenting and discussing some possible scenarios for the future of ssc within the international aid system.     

The hares,the hounds and the African National Congress: on joining the Third World in post-apartheid South Africa

The utility of framing questions of global inequality in relation to a ‘First World’ and a ‘Third World’, a North and a South, or developed countries and developing (or underdeveloped) countries, has been much debated since the end of the Cold War. This article addresses the issue of the perceived weaknesses and possible continued strengths of the notion of the ‘Third World’ in general terms, and then grounds such a discussion through an analysis of the way that the African National Congress (anc) government in post-apartheid South Africa has approached the question of global inequality. Since its election in 1994, and more particularly since Thabo Mbeki succeeded Nelson Mandela as president, the anc has presented itself as having an especially important leadership role on behalf of the Third World. The profound contradictions inherent in the anc's effort both to retain its Third Worldist credentials and to present itself as a reliable client to the Bretton Woods institutions and foreign investors provides insights into how to design alternative strategies for overcoming world-wide poverty, strategies which might be more effective than those chosen by the anc. Since the anc was elected to government in 1994 it has pursued a brand of deeply compromised quasi-reformism, analysed here, that serves primarily to deflect consideration away from the options presented by other, much more meaningfully radical international and South African labour organisations, environmental groups and social movements. At the present juncture a range of increasingly well-organised grassroots movements in South Africa find that they have no choice but to mobilise in active resistance to the bankrupt policies of the anc. The increasing significance of these efforts points to the possibility that they might eventually be able to push South Africa—either through a transformation of the anc itself or through the creation of some new, potentially hegemonic, political project in that country—back into the ranks of those governments and groups that seek to use innovative and appropriately revolutionary approaches to challenge the geographical, racial and class-based hierarchies of global inequality.     

Assessing the G77: 50 years after unctad and 40 years after the nieo

This article views the history of the Group of 77 through the lens of its relations with unctad’s establishment in 1964, its unsuccessful struggle for the nieo in the 1970s, and the subsequent loosening of ties. The debt crisis of the 1980s, the Uruguay Round negotiations, and the arrival of the wto are seen as crucial forces unravelling the previously close links. Growing differentiation among developing countries and the changing leadership of the G77 are also cited as important influences on its current relationship with unctad.     

Semi-peripheral countries and the invention of the ‘Third World’, 1955–65

Revisiting the events leading to the collapse of Third World summitry in 1965, this article proposes that the rise and fall of Third World unity efforts in the years 1955–65 originated from the unsuccessful attempt by industrialised Afro-Asian (aa) countries to turn unindustrialised aa states into their export markets. As a case study, this article explores Egypt’s economic foreign policy towards other aa countries and its activity within the aa and the Non-aligned movements, and compares Egyptian strategy in this field with that of China and Ghana.     

Rising powers at the UN: an analysis of the voting behaviour of brics in the General Assembly

This article examines the long-term trends of foreign policy convergence of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (brics) to determine the similarity of their positions on world issues, as they seek to ‘insert’ themselves more fully into global decision making. The analysis is based upon their votes in the UN General Assembly. The article compiles two indexes of voting for the period 1974–2011. Both demonstrate a high and now growing degree of cohesion among brics. Their voting is broken down by pairs to show common themes and the major issue divergences, and how often individual states voted with others. Nuclear disarmament and human rights are the two areas that reveal persisting divergences between these states.     

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.