‘All the world's a stage’: structure, agency and accountability in international aid

Abstract

This paper explores recent critiques of aid and responses to them, with a particular focus on attempts to address accountability concerns. It describes, with particular reference to Africa and Melanesia, some of the assumptions that underpin these responses. Using the allegory of theatre, we suggest that much of the formal process of interaction between aid agencies and local actors can be seen as a ‘performance’, and what goes on behind the scenes is often, and sometimes deliberately, ignored. We review why this ‘theatre’ is constructed and how it is maintained, as well as why attempts to dismantle it, or at least change the way it functions, have not met with much success. As a result, we propose alternative ways of addressing issues of accountability, as it relates to International Aid and Cooperation, based on some rather different assumptions about states, civil society, citizens and change than those upon which many of the current attempts to address accountability are based.

Keywords:

• international aid
• accountability
• state
• development
• theatre state
• performance

JEL classification:

• O19

Notes

1. See SPHERE project (http://www.sphereproject.org), ALNAP, Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action (http://www.alnap.org) and HAPi, Humanitarian Accountability Partnership (http://www.hapinternational.org) for more details.

2. See also Burgis and Zadek (2006).

3. Also see Kuipers (2003) on citizens as spectators through the use of performative oratory.

4. This is not to say that we endorse Luttwak's claim that wars or other conflicts should be allowed to resolve themselves without international interference, which in his opinion prolongs conflicts (Luttwak 1999).

5. See http://globalvoicesonline.org/-/human-rights-video/.

6. See http://www.msf.ca/blogs/ or http://www.oxfam.org.uk/applications/blogs/.