Individual BRICS or a collective bloc? Convergence and divergence amongst ‘emerging donor’ nations

Abstract

In recent years a number of countries have established more prominent development assistance programmes. These ‘emerging donors’ are generally low- and middle-income countries with fewer links than traditional donors to multilateral frameworks for coordination. This article focuses primarily on whether these increasingly important donors will converge upon or challenge the behavioural norms that have emerged from traditional donor operations. It offers two main findings. First, although the evidence is incomplete, it suggests that the group of emerging donors is too heterogeneous to pose a collective alternative to the existing aid architecture, though these states may well provide new insights to enrich and improve our understanding and practice of development assistance. Second, it suggests that the case of Russia as a re-emerging donor highlights the conceptual weaknesses of theorizing simply in terms of ‘emerging donors’ versus ‘traditional donors’.

Notes

This article builds on research conducted for the International Development Research Centre (IDRC); I would like to acknowledge their intellectual and financial support. I would also like to thank the authors of the original project studies: Alcides Costa Vaz, Cristina Yumie Aoki Inoue, Gregory Chin, B Michael Frolic, Subhash Agrawal, Wolfe Braude, Pearl Thandrayan and Elizabeth Sidiropoulos. Kafui Dansou (IDRC) provided wonderful support and management for the project and comments on the research, and participants at seminars at IDRC and York University added considerably to the quality of the original and subsequent research. I also benefited from discussions with Jean Daudelin, Bill Morton and Yiagadeesen Samy, and from the timely research assistance of Matt Gouett. I also thank the editors and the two anonymous referees for their comments.

¹ This article draws on four emerging donor reports that were produced for the IDRC on Brazil, China, India and South Africa (Vaz and Inoue 2008; Chin and Frolic 2008; Agrawal 2008; Braude et al 2008) and the synthesis report (Rowlands 2008). The original research and findings are supplemented with updated information on these and other emerging donors, especially Russia.

² The original version of O'Neill's (2001) grouping—the BRICs—constituted Brazil, Russia, India and China. These four are still the most commonly used in analysis (for example Hurrell 2006), despite other versions that include countries such as Mexico and South Korea. I have followed the convention of adding South Africa to the group to have a more balanced regional representation, and in keeping with the original IDRC project. This membership structure was given official credence in 2011, when South Africa first joined the original four BRIC countries in their annual summit, which first took place in Russia in 2009.

³ The term ‘emerging donor’ is far from ideal (Manning 2006; Rowlands 2010). Some observers would claim that these countries have been involved in some forms of development cooperation for an extended period of time, while others may object to classifying them as donors at all, given that their programmes often fail to meet the technical definitions of development assistance. Despite these flaws, the term is used here both because of its correspondence with the term ‘emerging market’ and because it does highlight the challenge to some of the traditional notions of what activities makes a country a ‘donor’.

⁴ Other coordinating institutions include the World Bank and IMF. See Kim and Lightfoot (2011) for a useful and more detailed discussion of DAC norms.

⁵ As Manning (2006, 377) points out: ‘Certainly, the DAC itself is a diverse group. Contrary to the views of some developing countries and civil society advocates, it is a long way from a group of would-be monopolists of wisdom, procedures or indeed standards.’

⁶ Hattori (2001) argues that foreign aid should be seen primarily as a symbol, one that is arguably more consistent with constructivist approaches to international relations rather than materialist ones. From this perspective, norms surrounding development assistance could be construed as evidence of constructivism consistent with moral foundations of foreign aid (Hattori 2003).

⁷ Of course, it should be emphasized that these numbers overstate the relative aid efforts, since they include only formally identified ODA. The assistance flows from many non-DAC donors, especially private donors, will be understated.

⁸ Kragelund (2008) uses a donor typology that is slightly different than Manning (2006): EU and OECD; OECD but not EU; EU but not OECD; and neither EU nor OECD. The typology in Kharas (2009) uses DAC bilateral, non-DAC bilateral, multilateral and private.

⁹ According to one source, the People's Republic of China is trying to limit Taiwan's engagement with the OECD, in which Taiwan has observer status on a number of committees (Hsu 2008). In any event Taiwan's full membership will clearly remain problematic given the complexity of its international status.

¹⁰ Lichtenstein is not a member of the World Bank or the IMF, and it has had difficult relations with the OECD over its identification as a tax haven.

¹¹ All DAC members are high-income countries according to the World Bank (2011), 2010 gross national income (GNI) per capita ranging from a low of US$19,890 (South Korea) to US$79,510 for Luxembourg. According to Freedom House (2011) they rank at worst 1.5 (Japan, Korea, Greece and Italy) on Freedom House's 1 (free) to 7 (not free) scale. By contrast, per capita income ranges from a low of US$1340 in India to a high of US$9910 in Russia, Freedom House measures ranging from of 2.0 for Brazil and South Africa to 6.5 for China.

¹² Much of the information on Brazil, China, India and South Africa is drawn from the original IDRC country reports.

¹³ Russia is listed as a recipient of development assistance as recently as 2008–2009 by donor agencies such as the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the United Kingdom's Department for International Development.

¹⁴ The ultimate triumph over Taiwan was the transfer to the People's Republic of the sole ‘China seat’ at the UN in 1971 and its promotion to the UN Security Council. It is unclear whether the break in China's aid programming in the mid 1970s should be seen as the result of having achieved its strategic objective and a reduction in its need to foster relations with other developing countries (especially in Africa) or whether it was the result of internal political turmoil and changes (see Davies 2008, 3).

¹⁵ Naim (2007) criticizes many emerging donors as self-interested and counter-productive, though he also acknowledges the self-serving motivations of traditional donors as well, particularly the United States. Woods (2008) reviews and questions many of these criticisms.

¹⁶ South Africa's early aid programme—established under its racist aparthied-era regime—was designed to maintain control over the unsustainable homeland states it created, and to maintain a measure of diplomatic approbation.

¹⁷ It is perhaps also informative that the central department managing development assistance is located in the Ministry of Commerce, providing added weight to the observation by Woods (2008) that China's assistance programme in particular links aid to both trade and investment. Whilst such commercial connections would traditionally be seen as contaminants of DAC donor programmes, and evidence of donor self-interest, the increased recognition of the need for investment and trading opportunities as being of equal or greater importance than aid in the development process forces us to think more carefully about the ‘donor interest versus recipient need’ debate.

¹⁸ The complete name is the African Renaissance and International Cooperation Fund.

¹⁹ Whilst Hochstetler (2012) is the immediate source of this citation, I thank an anonymous referee for identifying the original IPEA–ABC study.