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Abstract
The word’ partnership’ is pervasive within debates about participatory global governance and the idea of partnership acts as an underwriting principle within both the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Paris Declaration. However, there remains general ambiguity about the meaning of the idea of partnership and how its conceptualisation is meant to normatively guide a more co-ordinated move from theory to practice. Indeed, the idea of partnership remains an impoverished theoretical and practical appeal, which is under-defined, poorly scrutinised and unconvincingly utilised as a normative tool in applied practice. This article will provide a more theoretical examination of what an appeal to ideas of partnership means and explore what a normative commitment to a robust conceptualisation of partnership might look like within the MDGs. To do so, it will examine the underwriting normative language of partnership as it is found within the MDGs, theoretically explore the principles inherent within this normative language, and locate present gaps within the MDGs between its normative theory and applied practice. By doing so, it will be possible to outline some additional principles and commitments that are normatively required to satisfy the underwriting spirit of the MDGs in order to bring them in line with said spirit's own normative values.
Notes
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2 C Lancaster, Foreign Aid: Diplomacy, Development, Domestic Politics, London: University of Chicago Press, 2007, p 44.
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5 A Fraser & L Whitfield, ‘Understanding contemporary aid relationships’, in Whitfield, The Politics of Aid.
6 OA Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
7 A Cornwall & K Brock, ‘Beyond buzzwords—“poverty reduction”, “participation” and “empowerment” in development policy’, in UNRISD,Overarching Concerns Programme Paper 10, November 2005, p 5.
8 Westad, The Global Cold War.
9 Degnbol-Martinussen & Engberg-Pedersen, Aid.
10 Fraser & Whitfield, ‘Understanding contemporary aid relationships’.
11 R Riddell, Does Foreign Aid Really Work?, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. See also J Nijman, ‘United States foreign aid: crisis? What crisis?’, in R Grant & J Nijman (eds), The Global Crisis in Foreign Aid, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1998.
12 Lancaster, Foreign Aid, p 45.
13 Ibid, p 241.
14 P Renzio & S Mulley, Donor Coordination and Good Governance, Global Economic Governance Programme Paper, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, p 2.
15 G Harrison, Neoliberal Africa: The Impact of Social Engineering, London: Zed Books, 2010.
16 P Mkandawire & C Soludo, Our Continent, Our Future: African Perspectives on Structural Adjustment, Asmara: Africa World Press, 1998. See also Lancaster, Foreign Aid.
17 Renzio & Mulley, Donor Coordination and Good Governance, p 2.
18 E Crewe & E Harrison, Whose Development? An Ethnography of Aid, London: Zed Books, 1998, p.70.
19 W Wapenhans, ‘Effective implementation: key to development impact’, Report of the World Bank's Portfolio Management Task Force, Washington, DC: World Bank, 1992. See also P Chatterjee, ‘Wapenhans summary and update’, Multinational Monitor, 29 October 1994.
20 Fraser & Whitfield, ‘Understanding contemporary aid relationships’.
21 J Michel, ‘The birth of the MDGs’, DAC News, September–October 2005, at http://www.oecd.org/document/18/0,3343.en_2649_3236398_35401554_1_1_1_1,00.html. See also Fraser, ‘Aid recipient sovereignty in historical context’.
22 D Hulme, ‘The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): a short history of the world's biggest promise’, BWPI Working Paper 100, September 2009.
23 Ibid.
24 K Watkins, ‘Aid under threat’, Review of African Political Economy, 22, 1995, p 517.
25 Fraser & Whitfield, ‘Understanding contemporary aid relationships’, p 77.
26 Michel, ‘The birth of the MDGs’.
27 Hulme, ‘The Millennium Development Goals’, p 13.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid; and C Bradford, History of the MDGs: A Personal Reflection, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2006, p 2.
30 Hulme, ‘The Millennium Development Goals’.
31 DAC/OECD, Shaping the 21st Century, Paris: OECD, 1996.
32 The notion of ‘master’ concept is borrowed from D Mosse, Cultivating Development, London: Pluto Press, 2005. Mosse uses the term ‘master metaphor’.
33 Riddell, Does Foreign Aid Really Work?, p 41.
34 A Fowler, ‘Beyond partnership: getting real about NGO relationships in the aid system’, in M Edwards & A Fowler (eds), The Earthscan Reader on NGO Management, London: Earthscan, 2002.
35 After this the World Bank changed its logo to include itself as a partner. See D Kapur, J Lewis & R Webb, The World Bank: History, Vol I, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1997, p 373.
36 DAC/OECD, Shaping the 21st Century, p 2.
37 Ibid, p 3.
38 Ibid, p 2.
39 Ibid, p 14.
40 Ibid, p 1.
41 Ibid, p 13.
42 Ibid.
43 D Mosse, Cultivating Development. See also D Stone, Policy Paradox: The Art of Political Decision-Making, New York: WW Norton, 2002.
44 Mosse, ibid, makes a similar point about the idea of participation.
45 Hulme, ‘The Millennium Development Goals’, pp 17–18.
46 M Green, ‘Delivering discourse: some ethnographic reflections on the practice of policy making in international development’, Critical Policy Analysis, 1(2), 2007, p 142.
47 Andrea Cornwall, ‘Changing ideals in a donor organization: “participation” in Sida’, IDS Working Paper 317, January 2009, p 7.
48 For a more detailed history of this process, see Hulme, ‘The Millennium Development Goals’, pp 33–43.
49 M Brown, ‘A new direction; a new relationship: Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers and the Millennium Declaration targets’, address to the Seminar on the International Development Goals, World Bank, 19 March 2001.
50 J Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
51 J Bohman, Public Deliberation, Pluralism, Complexity, and Democracy, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996.
52 J Cohen, ‘Deliberation and democratic legitimacy’, in J Bohman & W Rehg (eds), Deliberative Democracy, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997.
53 GW Brown, ‘Safeguarding deliberative global governance: the case study of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria’, Review of International Studies, 36, 2010, pp 1–20.