Evaluating Brazilian South–South Cooperation in Haiti

I focus on evaluating Brazilian development and humanitarian cooperation in Haiti to answer how emerging providers such as Brazil are contributing to global development through cooperation. The paper establishes criteria for evaluation, arguing that global standards for aid effectiveness need to be expanded. I argue that when assessed on ownership, efficiency and sustainability, cooperation holds several advantages and limits, such as misplaced assumptions that Brazil’s approach is appropriate elsewhere. The discussion is rooted in the context of Haiti in order to underline how outcomes are not pre-determined, but rather depend on the model’s interaction with the partner context.     

Solidarity forever? ABC,ALBA and South–South Cooperation in Haiti

The growing influence of the global South in international affairs has prompted a passionate discussion about the role of South–South cooperation (SSC). SSC is sometimes uncritically portrayed as a uniform phenomenon that presents a superior alternative to North–South Cooperation (NSC). To problematise and deepen our knowledge about SSC, this article examines the intriguing case of Haiti, which has seen a wealth of SSC cooperation since the international intervention in 2004. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the study compares the approaches of two distinct Southern groupings working in Haiti: Argentina, Brazil and Chile (the so-called ABC countries) and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) led by Venezuela. We argue that ABC and ALBA display marked differences and that, while their approaches have distinct strengths and weaknesses, they do not necessarily represent a fundamental improvement over NSC.     

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.     

(Trans)regionalism and South–South cooperation: Afrasia instead of Eurafrique?

The paper engages critically with the increasing importance of South–South cooperation and the shift from African–European to African–Asian interaction. It argues that South–South cooperation is too often framed in a spatial logics of regional integration and transregional cooperation and thus reproduces spatial understandings that are characteristic for African–European relations but misplaced in the context of African–Asian relations. Moreover, it analyses perceptions about the difference of European and Asian cooperation partners amongst political and societal elites in Kenya and Tanzania, arguing that instead of a shift from African–European to Afrasian spaces of interaction, the two mutually coexist and fulfil complementary functions.     

Moving Beyond North–South Theatre

The North–South divide is counterproductive to the generation of norms and policies geared toward ensuring human security in a globalising world. Moreover, developing countries productively abandon Southern solidarity when it is in their perceived interests to do so. This article provides an historical overview of the origins of the geographical labels attached to the two main groups of countries and examines how the various constructed roles on the international stage in the global theatre are played by actors from the two major troupes, North and South. It concludes with some encouraging examples of changed stances within the supposedly ironclad categories.     

South–South cooperation and the international development battlefield: between the oecd and the UN

This article discusses the transformation in development architecture, focusing on the role of emerging powers and the growing relevance of South–South cooperation (ssc). Drawing on a conceptual toolkit based on the work of Pierre Bourdieu, it aims to approach ssc as a narrative and to understand the processes of contestation that have turned international development into a battlefield since the end of the 1990s. The article argues that the emergence of ssc has contributed to decentring the field of international development, both in terms of the agents authorised to play and the practices considered legitimate. Within this process the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, led by the oecd’s Development Assistance Committee, and the United Nations Development Cooperation Forum have become two sites on the battlefield on which the borders of international development are being redrawn.     

Canada's views on North‐South negotiations

This article assesses the recent embrace of the concept 'civil society' within development discourses, both conceptually and in the context of the construction of civil society in El Salvador. It challenges the tendency to generalise about civil society, warning against its glorification as a panacea. In a critique of the liberal approach to civil society, commonly used among international agencies, the discussion highlights how civil society organisations in El Salvador are fragmented politically, socially, but also geographically. Furthermore, civil society is not a unified entity with its constituent organisations working towards common goals. Nor may it be created or imposed from above by governments or donors. Instead it comprises a diverse range of competing groups grounded in different historical, political and geographical circumstances. While it is suggested that fostering civil society is a useful aspiration, it is essential that the concept also be recognised as contested.     

Perceptions,identities and interests in South–South cooperation: the cases of Chile,Venezuela and Brazil

The relevance acquired in recent years by South–South cooperation seems to be connected with deeper structural transformations occurring in the international system. However, the variety of cooperation models promoted by new providers in the South requires the identification of complementary factors to help explain current patterns. A set of socio-cognitive elements, related to each country’s perceptions, identities and interests, can yield greater understanding of the variety of South–South cooperation models. Such an approach is here applied to the cases of Chile, Venezuela and Brazil – three important providers from the South – in order to explore their different cooperation models.     

Reconciliation through Sports? The case of South Africa

Abstract

Can sports—and if so how—serve as a vehicle for reconciliation and increased social cohesion in countries wrecked by civil conflict? This article analyses the case of South Africa and its experiences in the sports sector since the fall of apartheid, in an effort to explore the processes necessary to understand the potential sports may hold for peace building. By identifying initiatives in South Africa employed at the national, community and individual level of analysis, the article outlines the possible effects of sports on reconciliation in divided states. Through linking experiences from state policies, ngo activities and donor projects with social identity and reconciliation theory, the article outlines the possible positive and negative aspects of sports. Finally, important avenues for further research to uncover how to turn sports into effective political tools for post-conflict peace building are suggested.     

Global South rhetoric in India’s policy projection

While an on-going statist project tries to portray India as a ‘rising power’ in world politics, the fact remains that India’s global projection continues to be heavily fashioned by the Global South rhetoric. Such rhetoric is inclusive of irredentism and contestation with western norms and ideals along with cooperation leading to a complex process of interactions shaping up the global order. For countries like India being claimant to the status of ‘civilisational state’, the strong urge for autonomy along with the self-perception of national and cultural greatness is shared by the elite along with a sense of strategic importance. Such identity formation, however, reduces and sometimes obliterates the gaps between ‘internal’ and ‘external’, bringing into academic scrutiny the whole range of policymaking and to what extent it matches the state rhetoric.     

Aiding democracy? Donors and civil society in South Africa

During the 1990s the North has increasingly used a new tool, political aid, to influence its relations with the South. More commonly known as 'democracy assistance', political aid is targeted at governmental structures such as parliament, the judiciary and local government, as well as civil society organisations, with the aim of strengthening the institutions and culture of liberal democracy. However, despite its increasing deployment, the shape and extent of foreign political aid in individual countries in the South remain largely undocumented. This article shows the importance of political aid in South Africa since the pivotal elections of 1994. It then critically examines the role assigned to civil society by donors within the 'democratisation' process. Unlike most writers on the new political aid regime, who are often both its chroniclers and mandarins, this author questions the emancipatory potential of the kind of democracy being 'helped along' by democracy assistance.     

The North‐South dialogue revisited: Some personal reflections

This article focuses on the experiences of South Korea and the Philippines and examines the relationship of corruption to political and economic development. It argues that corruption is a manifestation of specific sets of state-society relations, political systems, development trajectories and types of external linkages. Corruption in these contexts should not be seen as pathological phenomena but as deeply integrated into the particular path of political and economic development. The article further identifies the context and scope for reform.     

Regions that matter: the Arab–South American interregional space

This article critiques interregionalism as a concept that is trapped in the European Union (EU) foreign policy toolkit narrative, which in turn structures what can be said meaningfully and legitimately about interregionalism. Drawing on the experience of the Arab–South American (ASPA) Summit, it shows that, when speaking on interregionalism in International Relations (IR), one need not be speaking about the EU interregional model, which is understood as a vertical relationship established between the EU and an objectified regional partner of its choice. Rather, a broader definition for interregionalism is proposed, one that builds up from the basic ‘region-to-region’ dialogue–arrangement–cooperation and interrogates the meaning it has for those who engage in this practice. This was made possible by the construction of a framework for the analysis of the practices that lead to the materialisation of the ASPA interregional discourse and that reveal how this form of interregionalism in the Global South ‘matters’ in IR.     

Positive hybridity? Unpacking UN security sector reform in South Lebanon

Rebuilding the local legitimacy of a national army after civil war is an important part of security sector reform (SSR) to help ensure the survival of the institution once the statebuilding bandwagon has moved on. The peacebuilding literature argues local ownership can provide international actors with local legitimacy. This article shows how an international actor can help to legitimise a local institution. Using new empirical material, this article examines the capacity-building work of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) with the Lebanese Armed Forces, and opens up the ‘black box’ of the micro-processes of SSR. First, it shows how an international actor can build the local legitimacy of a national army over time to build local knowledge and develop strong relationships with key stakeholders at national and civilian levels. Second, it explicates the political tensions that impact local and international agency and create hybrid solutions on the ground. Finally it argues that a successful hybrid solution in peacebuilding is possible when the normative values of the SSR project are accepted by key stakeholders and the local population. The article argues that UNIFIL’s SSR is assisted by the factors of time, flexibility, and pragmatism.     

Gender wage inequality and export‐led growth in South Korea

This article investigates the relationship between gender, wage inequality, and export‐led growth in South Korea. The persistent gender wage gap in Korea's manufacturing sector is found to be linked to women's segregation in the country's major export industries where real wage growth has lagged productivity growth, despite favorable market conditions that might drive up women's wages relative to those of men. The interaction of state‐ and firm‐level hiring, training, and promotion practices that structure women's and men's employment opportunities differently appear to have resulted in a relatively weaker fall‐back position for women in labour markets. Econometric results are consistent with the hypothesis that women's weaker fall‐back position limits their ability to bargain for wage increases commensurate with productivity growth. Further, evidence is presented which links gender wage inequality to the growth of Korean exports.     

Small Business’ Place in the South Korean State–Society Relations

Korean small businesses have come a long way as sources of industrial power more important than heretofore credited. The nation's undemocratic dirigisme had largely slighted small businesses to the country's disadvantage. Although the government's policy bias against them started to change in the early 1980s, its support of them remained less than fully-fledged. Despite tough socio-economic conditions, however, both the first and second generation small entrepreneurs have strived to prove their self-worth as viable business enterprises and constantly—and increasingly over time—contributed to the incremental improvement of the economy. By shedding light on the little-known motivations, perceptions, and performances of the small business people, this article offers a more balanced and nuanced account of the past and present state of small businesses in the country, which provides a tentative basis for considering alternative vision for future development.     

Women’s Movements in the Global South: Towards a Scalar Analysis

This article explores the politics and ethics of scale in reading women’s movements in the Global South—how they have always been simultaneousy regional, national and transnational in scale (materially if not imaginatively) and read through the twin lens of the global and the local. The first part of the essay underscores the constitutive internationalism in the history of feminism. From the ‘second wave’ of the women’s liberation movement, attempts at recognizing the internationalism in ‘global feminism’ have poorly served feminists in the ‘third world’. In more recent times, transnationalization has become the dominant signifier of women’s movements with renewed attempts at capturing the shifting scales of feminist politics in ‘transnational feminism’. Recent processes of transnationalization and NGOization bespeak an ontology of relatedness and a scalar epistemology as has been mobilized in recent writings in postcolonial sociology. The second part of the essay uses the mass protests around the rape and murder of a young woman in Delhi in 2012 as a way of thinking through the changing scales and sites of contemporary feminist protest in the Global South. I use the spatial concept of the assemblage to emphasize the multi-scalar dimensions of this protest especially through the determining influence of the media. Such a ‘protest assemblage’ produced endless possibilities of mobilization in the name of women but not always in clearly recognizable ‘feminist’ ways.     

The ‘green revolution’ in South Asian ricefields: Environment and production

Many of the arguments on the ‘green revolution’ in rice‐growing in South Asia are concerned with socio‐economic factors in the adoption of the new technology and with unequal distributive consequences. This essay, while not denying the importance of these arguments, shows that the varying natural environment in South Asia still exercises a critical and differential effect on the adoption of new varieties, with implications for equity and lessons for plant‐breeders and others.