Making good on donors’ desire to Do Development Differently

Foreign aid donors are increasingly focused on changing the way their development agencies function. This discourse has focused on desired qualities, including greater knowledge of local contextual realities, appropriate adaptation to context and greater flexibility to respond to changing circumstances. We argue that more attention needs to be devoted to the achievement of these qualities and turn to contingency theory to identify some under-exploited ways to ‘do development differently’. The qualities sought by donors are emergent properties of complex organisational systems and will only be achieved through a micro-level and interlinked focus on the fundamentals of organisation.     

Governments vs States: decoding dual governance in the developing world

This article begins by questioning the transferability of Western conceptualisations of the ‘state’ to the developing world, particularly to those areas in which security concerns are extreme. It proposes that the complicated relationship between security and political liberalisation produces a reform–security dilemma, which in turn may result in dual-governance structures consisting of an autonomous ‘state’ bureaucracy and a relatively newer, political ‘government’. The dynamics of such a duality are explored through a longitudinal comparison of two critical cases: Iran and Turkey. Both cases reveal evidence of the ‘state’ and ‘government’ as distinct bodies, emerging over time in response to conflicting pressures for security and liberalisation. While the Iranian case remains entrenched in a static duality with an advantaged ‘state’, the Turkish case provides optimism that, under certain conditions, an eventual subordination of the state to the political government can take place.     

The Anti-Politics of Development: donor agencies and the political economy of governance

This article discusses the attempt undertaken by several development aid agencies since the turn of the century to integrate political economy assessments into their decision making on development assistance. The article discusses three such attempts: the Drivers of Change adopted by the UK's Department for International Development, the Strategic Governance and Corruption Analysis (sgaca) developed by the Dutch Directorate General for International Cooperation and the new thinking on political economy analysis, policy reform and political risk advanced by the World Bank. On the basis of a political-economic interpretation of development agencies, two main factors are found to hinder the successful application of political economy assessment. In the first place, the agencies' professional outlook leads them to see development in primarily technical terms. In the second place, the nature of incentives for development professionals leads them to resist the implementation of political economy analyses.     

From aid negotiation to aid effectiveness: the case of food and nutrition security in Ethiopia

This paper looks at aid ownership through the lens of negotiations that take place between a country and its development partners (DPs). Based on the case of Ethiopian food security policies, it combines a structural analysis of the negotiation capital of both parties with an actor-oriented analysis of the institutional setting through which negotiations take place. First, it shows that the growing influence donors have come to have in the shaping of Ethiopian public policies results from the relative loss of legitimacy the government has experienced after the 2005 political crisis and its greater need for external economic assistance. Second, the more recent creation of a negotiation platform between the Government of Ethiopia (GoE) and its DPs has allowed the GoE to enhance donor’s alignment with its development policies and regain some control over its development agenda, while giving them more room to contribute to several food and nutrition security policy reforms which have been positively evaluated. The paper stresses the need for donors to better recognise the centrality of politics in any aid intervention.     

The Obstacles to Foreign Aid Harmonization: Lessons from Decentralization Support in Indonesia

Relying on a new institutional economics analysis of transaction costs, the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness emphasizes donor harmonization as an intermediate objective for increasing the effectiveness of foreign assistance in bringing about development outcomes. Surveys on adherence to the Paris Declaration commitments so far suggest that foreign aid donors are lagging behind targets. This paper explores the political and bureaucratic obstacles faced by bilateral and multilateral aid organizations trying to harmonize aid at the country level. Looking at foreign support for the decentralization and local governance sector in Indonesia??where a ??bold experiment?? in harmonization failed to bring about improved donor coordination??I find evidence that the lack of harmonization can be linked to some of the characteristic pathologies of foreign aid: the dominance of the strategic interests of some donors and the structure of bureaucratic incentives within aid agencies. These traditional problems work through a pathway that is underexplored in the literature: by enabling a lack of coordination among agencies within the recipient government, donors create barriers to harmonization of their own programming. However, I conclude by noting that government coordination failure may not be as much of a problem as donors make it out to be. Decisions about governance and decentralization are necessarily contentious and political. In the case where donors succeed in bringing about government coordination in the interest of their own harmonization, they risk exercising harmful leverage that leads to premature resolution of domestic policy disputes, thereby undermining the Paris Declaration principle of country ownership.     

Health,Need and Politics: The Determinants of Bilateral HIV/AIDS Assistance

Over the last 10 years foreign aid for HIV/AIDS control has grown from ‘millions to billions’. This study investigates donor motivations in the targeting of bilateral HIV/AIDS assistance. Are donors selecting recipients primarily based on level of need or are political and merit-based considerations at play as well? The results of our two-stage statistical analysis of bilateral HIV/AIDS assistance flows over the period 2002–2007 suggests that recipient need is an important determinant of aid flows. We also find limited evidence of dyadic political relationships having an effect on assistance targeting, while the quality of recipient policy environments seems to have a minimal impact on donor allocation decisions.     

Co-opting Good Governance Reform: The Rise of a Not-so-Reformist Leader in Kebumen,Central Java

Challenging the existing literature, which tends to downplay the impact of good governance reform in post-Suharto Indonesia, the article suggests that greater intervention by international donors, combined with the process of decentralisation, has influenced the dynamics of political competition at the local level. It suggests that the increasing availability of international aid has provided local elites with an option to engage in a new form of patronage politics that relies less on old instruments, such as money politics and violence. By selectively committing themselves to good governance reform, Indonesian local elites can now seek a new source of power in the form of support from international donors, with which they can raise their profiles as ‘reformists’ and consolidate power, only to engage in familiar, if less blatant, forms of patronage politics. The article highlights such a dimension of local politics with reference to the case of Kebumen's former regent, Rustriningsih.     

The rise of an anti-politics machinery: peace,civil society and the focus on results in Myanmar

‘Results’, ‘value for money’, ‘effectiveness’ and similar buzzwords have become commonplace in development cooperation and peace building. The use of technical instruments such as project cycle management and evaluations is hardly questioned anymore: these are presented as a minor shift of focus to make current practice more effective. This paper argues that there is far more to this shift: a machinery of practices and institutions has been installed that removes political questions on development or peace from the political realm and places them under the rule of technical experts. Drawing on a Foucauldian understanding of discourse analysis, the paper analyses how this machinery prioritises gradual reform, subjugates other approaches to societal change and reproduces power/knowledge networks in both the global South and North. Based on ethnographic field research in Myanmar, it also explores discursive strategies of local actors and assesses how they are aiming to create spaces to challenge this machinery.     

‘New’ approaches confront ‘old’ challenges in African public sector reform

The disappointing performance of conventional public sector reforms in developing countries has led to the rise of ‘new’ approaches seeking to overcome traditional bureaucratic barriers to change: leadership-focused interventions like the Africa Governance Initiative (AGI); accountability-focused initiatives like the Open Government Partnership (OGP); and adaptation-focused models like those of Africa Power and Politics (APP). While these approaches are appealing to aid donors in their promise to move beyond the limitations of purely formal institution building, they fail to provide new answers to the ‘old’ analytical and practical challenges of public sector reform, in particular administrative patrimonialism, public corruption and political capture. The evidence is yet inchoate, but all points to the need for these approaches to work together with conventional ones. Beyond novel implementation tactics, however, there is a need for new strategies of sustained political support for embattled reformers who face powerful incentives against institutional change.     

The Political Economy of Aid and Governance in Cambodia

The impact of massive aid on development and governance has been studied for a decade with mixed results. Using the results of an elite survey on aid and quality of governance based on Kaufmann et al.'s six dimensions (voice and accountability, political stability, government effectiveness, regulatory quality, rule of law, and control of corruption), this article offers a case-study of Cambodia. The country's challenges in light of high aid dependence and ‘Dutch disease’ in the aid sector are elaborated, and disappointing human development outcomes are examined. Despite more than five billion dollars in aid, infant and child mortality and inequality have worsened. Key informants are overwhelmingly in agreement that, save for political stability, aid has not had a positive impact on governance in Cambodia. The failure on control of corruption shows how hard it is for donors to be tough on a country with extreme poverty. On the basis of what has been accomplished to date, however, aid seems unlikely to be able to deliver large improvements in governance and in many ways may even contribute to its further deterioration.     

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.     

Symbolic Gestures: The Development Terrain of Post-Tsunami Villages in (Southern) Sri Lanka

This article analyses how rituals and ceremonies were deployed in the post-tsunami rehabilitation process in Sri Lanka to ‘incorporate’ development projects into the habitus and social reality of local communities. It argues that even though the aid delivery process is represented as a gift, in reality it is more concerned with strengthening the social capital of the local and foreign donors. Through this process there is an expectation and an implicit demand for acquiescence from the beneficiaries, which leaves them with a social debt. This, in turn, compels them to participate in the game of development rituals and ceremonies, in order to express their (ambivalent) gratitude and thankfulness. Through two case studies, we explore how the good intentions of donors to provide aid and alleviate suffering and the acceptance of this aid by the local communities, results in an asymmetric relationship where both become accomplices of Bourdieuian notions of subtle and gentle violence.     

Aid as an encounter at the interface: the complexity of the global fight against poverty

International development discourse has recently shifted its focus from top‐down economic adjustment to participative anti‐poverty policy. This shift hints at an acknowledgement of the local complexities within the poverty process and at a need to listen to and develop actions with the ‘poor’. But, whereas the mainstream argument remains couched in a technical framework, we argue that the fight against poverty is inevitably political. Conceptualising the aid industry as a set of global–local interfaces, it follows that a closer look at ‘participation’ in anti‐poverty interventions is needed to come to grips with the political issues involved. Four issues are discussed: the complexity of local ‘participation’, given the ‘polycephalous’ character of third world societies; the power biases in the aid chain; the potential problem of ‘false consciousness’; and the ambiguities of the role of local development brokers. We conclude that anti‐poverty policy is in need of ‘interface experts’, who, through ‘provocation’ can beget ‘participation’.     

From ‘gender equality and ‘women’s empowerment’ to global justice: reclaiming a transformative agenda for gender and development

The language of ‘gender equality’ and ‘women’s empowerment’ was mobilised by feminists in the 1980s and 1990s as a way of getting women’s rights onto the international development agenda. Their efforts can be declared a resounding success. The international development industry has fully embraced these terms. From international NGOs to donor governments to multilateral agencies the language of gender equality and women’s empowerment is a pervasive presence and takes pride of place among their major development priorities. And yet, this article argues, the fact that these terms have been eviscerated of conceptual and political bite compromises their use as the primary frame through which to demand rights and justice. Critically examining the trajectories of these terms in development, the article suggests that if the promise of the post-2015 agenda is to deliver on gender justice, new frames are needed, which can connect with and contribute to a broader movement for global justice.     

International Organisations and the Production of Hegemonic Knowledge: how the World Bank and the oecd helped invent the Fragile State Concept

This article examines the role of the World Bank and the oecd in the emergence and circulation of the ‘fragile state’ concept. These organisations were critical to the early development of the concept and in the consolidation of a knowledge-based agenda set out by Western aid donors to justify international assistance to poor and conflict-ridden countries. Attention is focused on three normative processes affecting the production of transnational knowledge: normalisation, fragmentation and assimilation. ‘Normalisation’ is the process by which influential knowledge producers help to transform a rough concept into a widely accepted transnational norm based on expert knowledge, detailed definitions and statistical exercises. Once the concept has been appropriated by several international actors, it undergoes normative ‘fragmentation’ as it is subjected to various interpretations across time and space. ‘Assimilation’ is the process by which the overarching concept is renewed, enriched and gradually adapted through the incorporation of additional insights. The article argues that the World Bank and oecd have functioned as central knowledge hubs, facilitating the circulation of new and controversial ideas on fragile states and their integration into the prevailing policies of the most powerful aid donors. The two organisations have thus taken an active role in the consolidation and perpetuation of the aid donors’ policy doctrine, ultimately protecting it from major normative dissent.     

Beyond budgetary support: pro‐poor development agendas for Africa

The latest fashion in a sequence of global interventions by donors, designed to make a difference to the lives of poor people, is the use of budgetary support mechanisms. These have emerged afresh at the start of the twenty‐first century as the increasingly dominant mode of desired aid delivery for many donors in the African context. However, this paper argues that such an approach to ‘development’, particularly when combined with an understanding of poverty largely as an absolute concept that can be eliminated through economic growth, will have damaging effects on the lives of the poor and marginalised across the continent. The time is ripe for a new global agenda that seeks to place as much emphasis on equity as it does on economic growth.     

Participatory development and empowerment: The dangers of localism

Recent discussions in development have moved away from holistic theorisation towards more localised, empirical and inductive approaches. In development practice there has been a parallel move towards local ‘participation’ and ‘empowerment’, which has produced, albeit with very different agendas, a high level of agreement between actors and institutions of the ‘new’ Left and the ‘new’ Right. This paper examines the manifestations of this move in four key political arenas: decentralised service delivery, participatory development, social capital formation and local development, and collective actions for ‘radical democracy’. We argue that, by focusing so heavily on ‘the local’, the see manifestations tend to underplay both local inequalities and power relations as well as national and transnational economic and political forces. Following from this, we advocate a stronger emphasis on the politics of the local, ie on the political use of ‘the local’ by hegemonic and counter-hegemonic interests.     

‘Fragile States’: introducing a political concept

The special issue ‘Fragile States: A Political Concept’ investigates the emergence, dissemination and reception of the notion of ‘state fragility’. It analyses the process of conceptualisation, examining how the ‘fragile states’ concept was framed by policy makers to describe reality in accordance with their priorities in the fields of development and security. The contributors to the issue investigate the instrumental use of the ‘state fragility’ label in the legitimisation of Western policy interventions in countries facing violence and profound poverty. They also emphasise the agency of actors ‘on the receiving end’, describing how the elites and governments in so-called ‘fragile states’ have incorporated and reinterpreted the concept to fit their own political agendas. A first set of articles examines the role played by the World Bank, the oecd, the European Union and the g7+ coalition of ‘fragile states’ in the transnational diffusion of the concept, which is understood as a critical element in the new discourse on international aid and security. A second set of papers employs three case studies (Sudan, Indonesia and Uganda) to explore the processes of appropriation, reinterpretation and the strategic use of the ‘fragile state’ concept.     

Making Land Rights Accessible: Social Movements and Political-Legal Innovation in the Rural Philippines

In recent years, rule of law and legal reform has grown to be a major concern of national governments, international financial institutions, development agencies and donor organisations. Part of this concern has focused on expanding access to justice for the poor. However, little effort has gone into understanding the role of justice sector institutions in shaping the opportunities and limits of redistributive justice. Little attention has been paid to the actual workings of obstacles entrenched within the justice sector to land reform, for example. Instead, pro-market scholars cite difficult legal problems as a reason to turn away from state-led land reform and toward market-oriented land policies. Yet as this paper shows, a closer look at the details of dynamics around land reform in the Philippines suggests that political-legal problems associated with implementation of the agrarian reform law can be overcome under certain conditions. It is argued that for rural poor claimants it is important to have access to a support structure for political-legal mobilisation, particularly an alternative ‘rights-advocacy’ outreach network, and also to adopt an integrated political-legal strategy. An integrated political-legal strategy is one that is capable of activating state agrarian reform law, exploiting independent state actors' pro-reform initiatives, and resisting the legal and extra-legal manoeuvres of anti-reform elites. However, such a strategy appears to have limits as well.