Governance, Representation and International Aid

Abstract

The growth of the postwar 20th century international aid architecture has generated much debate over the successes and failures of aid, its changing forms and its challenges. This article uses this aid landscape to explore the representational or discursive power and authority of the aid donor over the aid recipient. It suggests that representations about what aid does, its modalities and dispensations reproduce a hegemonic discourse and that representational authority in diagnosing aid’s problems and prescribing solutions resides generally on one side of the aid binary. It thus focuses on the hierarchical or asymmetric relations of power implied by such a binary, on the way development aid in particular has come to shape self-understandings of donors in relation to recipients, and on the discursive labour that enables such a construction. It also explores how the post-Washington consensus on poverty eradication has embedded neoliberal solutions to development. The reproduction of the hegemonic aid discourse is examined in reference to NGOs involved in the dispensing of aid in Southeast Asia by drawing on scholarly literature and field research in Southeast Asia and Washington DC.

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Corrigendum

Notes

1 While South–South aid flows have greatly increased in recent years, and non-Western states such as Japan have long played an important role in Southeast Asia, I find that the predominant discourse on aid continues to be shaped by historical flows of aid from North to South, especially in relation to nongovernmental aid recipients in the region.

2 K Rankin in this special issue addresses similar contradictions in her essay on poverty finance in her examination of the ‘paradoxical claims about the nature of poverty, the poor, states and markets’ in the aftermath of the 2007–08 financial crisis.

3 I highlight some key works that are relevant to the approach taken in this paper below.

4 N Kristof, ‘diy foreign-aid revolution’, New York Times, 20 October 2010.

5 See Bono and Ali by Annie Leibovitz, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtFfGEqjR9w.

6 ‘Ali Hewson and Bono Star in Louis Vuitton’s Core Values Campaign’, pr Web, 2010, at http://www.prweb.com/releases/LouisVuittonCoreValues/BonoandAliHewson/prweb4559014.htm, accessed 12 February 2013.

7 This acronym stands for Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy.

8 On its website, ONE promotes itself as ‘a grassroots advocacy and campaigning organization that fights extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa, by raising public awareness and pressuring political leaders to support smart and effective policies and programs that are saving lives, helping to put kids in school and improving futures. Cofounded by Bono and other campaigners, ONE is nonpartisan and works closely with African activists and policy makers’. http://www.one.org/us/about/. Product Red promotes itself as saving lives by marketing products branded as ‘Red’. It works with companies such as Gap, Starbucks, Apple and Nike to produce ‘Red’ products and donate 50% of the profits from sales to the Global Fund for investment in hiv and aids programmes in Africa. It claims to have generated $160 million in funds for the Global Fund, and to have helped five million people in hiv and aids programmes supported by Red purchases. http://www.joinred.com/aboutred.

9 A Fairbrother, ‘Bono brings the $1600 handbag to Africa’, 2010, at http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/11/05/bono-brings-the-1-600-handbag-to-africa, accessed 12 February 2013.

10 L Richey & S Ponte, ‘Better (Red)^TM than Dead? Celebrities, consumption and international aid’, Third World Quarterly, 29(4), 2008, pp 711–729.

11 ‘The Paris declaration on aid effectiveness and the Accra Agenda for action’, 2005/2008, at http://www.oecd.org/development/aideffectiveness/34428351.pdf, accessed 12 February 2013.

12 C Lancaster, Foreign Aid: Diplomacy, Development, Domestic Politics, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007, p xi.

13 P Uvin, Human Rights and Development, Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2004, p 4.

14 This distance was obvious during a three-month fellowship with the East–West Center in Washington, DC. At seminars and events hosted at various think-tank venues, including the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, it was rather striking that scholarly work of the type that I had been immersed in and the ‘policy world’ seemed distant from one another. This was the case even when policy analysts were well known scholars in the field, but were situated within or saw themselves in relation to the policy-making/think-tank sphere.

15 At a panel held by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on African economic growth and whether the ‘African Renaissance [was] for Real’ the panellists were universally policy-oriented in their presentation and the discussion seemed devoid of reference to any theoretical arguments. At least two of the panellists also held or previously had held academic affiliations. Yet very little of the discussion appeared to address debates in the scholarly literature on development and economic growth, etc, even as the discussion revolved around interpretation of empirical data.

16 R Riddell, Does Foreign Aid Really Work?, New York: Oxford University Press, 2007;A De Haan, How the Aid Industry Works: An Introduction to International Development, Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, 2009; Lancaster, Foreign Aid; and W Fengler & H Kharas (eds), Delivering Aid Differently, Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2010.

17 I am principally concerned with aid related to development—and related to human rights, the environment, health, education and other social goods—goals of lenders and recipients. I generally do not account for humanitarian or other forms of concessional aid that explicitly promote security, diplomatic or commercial interests. This is not to suggest, of course, that development aid is free of such interests.

18 Riddell, Does Foreign Aid Really Work?.

19 D Moyo, Dead Aid: Why Aid is not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009; and J Bhagwati, ‘Banned aid’, Foreign Affairs, 89(1), 2010, pp 120–125.

20 In the study of international relations critical theory refers to work that is mainly associated with or derived from historical materialist, feminist, postmodernist, postructural and postcolonial approaches, among others. G Chowdhry & S Nair (eds), Power, Postcolonialism and International Relations, London: Routledge, 2002, pp 6–10. In the development literature such critics may be taken to subscribe to a ‘post-development’ approach. The reference to critical theory encompasses such an approach while also being mindful of those who would resist categorisation as ‘post-developmentalists’.

21 J Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine: ‘Development’, Depoliticisation, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1994; and A Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.

22 See the following: E Mawdsley, ‘The changing geographies of foreign aid and development cooperation: contributions from gift theory’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 37, 2011, pp 256–272; J Hyndman, ‘Acts of aid: neoliberalism in a war zone’, Antipode, 41(5), 2009, pp 867–889; TM Li, The Will To Improve: Governmentality, Development and the Practices of Politics, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007; I Kapoor, The Postcolonial Politics of Development, London: Routledge, 2008; MA Baaz, The Paternalism of Partnership: A Postcolonial Reading of Identity in Development Aid, London: Zed, 2005; D Lewis & D Mosse (eds), Development Brokers and Translators: The Ethnography of Aid and Agencies, Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2006, pp 217–232; D Mosse, Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice, London: Pluto Press, 2005; S Soederberg, ‘American empire and “excluded states”: the Millennium Challenge Account and the shift of pre-emptive development’, Third World Quarterly, 25(2), 2004, pp 279–302; E Crewe & E Harrison, Whose Development? An Ethnography of Aid, London: Zed Books, 1998; F Manji, ‘The depoliticisation of poverty’, in D Eade (ed), Development and Rights, Oxford: Oxfam GB, 1998, pp 12–33; Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine; and Escobar, Encountering Development.

23 Soederberg, ‘American empire and “excluded states”’.

24 Ibid, p 281.

25 Ibid, p 294. For more information on the Millennium Challenge Corporation, see ‘The millennium challenge corporation is an innovative and independent US foreign aid agency that is helping lead the fight against global poverty’, 2013, at http://www.mcc.gov/pages/about, accessed 12 February 2013.

26 J Hyndman, ‘Acts of aid: neoliberalism in a war zone’, Antipode, 41(5), 2009, pp 867–889.

27 Ibid, pp 874–875.

28 Li, The Will To Improve, p 5.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid, p 7.

31 Ibid, p 19.

32 D Mosse, ‘Global governance and the ethnography of international aid’, in D Mosse & D Lewis (eds), The Aid Effect: Giving and Governing in International Development, London: Pluto Press, 2005, pp 1–36.

33 Baaz, The Paternalism of Partnership.

34 Ibid, p 9.

35 Ibid, pp 9–10.

36 Kapoor, The Postcolonial Politics of Development, pp 60–61.

37 Ibid.

38 T Hattori, ‘The moral politics of foreign aid’, Review of International Studies, 29(2), 2003, p 246.

39 Ibid.

40 Mawdsley, 'The changing geographies of foreign aid and development cooperation’, p 263.

41 Ibid, pp 258–261.

42 By no means is this review exhaustive.

43 S Nair, ‘Sovereignty, security and the exception: towards situating postcolonial homo sacer’, in G Delanty & S Turner (eds), Handbook of Contemporary Social and Political Theory, London: Routledge, 2011; and S Biswas & S Nair, ‘International relations and states of exception’, in S Biswas & S Nair (eds), Margins, Peripheries, and Excluded Bodies: International Relations and States of Exception, London: Routledge, 2010.

44 Apart from the secondary literature, I draw also from information gathered from interviews with leaders of national-level NGOs and officials at international donor in Malaysia, Cambodia, Indonesia and the US, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia and Washington D.C. donor and ngo reports, self-assessments and panel discussions. The interviews included officials from the following aid agencies: Danish International Development Agency (danida), usaid, UK Department for International Development (dfid), the United Nations Development Program (undp), the Global Environmental Facility’s (gef) Small Grants Programme, Asia Foundation, ausaid and representatives of at least 20 other NGOs, many of them long-standing, active organisations. In addition, participation at aid-related conferences and events was critical to developing the section on donor–think-tank–private sector representations.

45 Uvin, Human Rights and Development, p 12.

46 Exemplified in Harry Truman’s declaration that ‘For the first time in history, humanity possesses the knowledge and skill to relieve the suffering of these people’. Quoted in S Browne, Aid and Influence: Do Donors Help or Hinder?, London: Earthscan, 2006, p 15.

47 Fengler & Kharas, Delivering Aid Differently, p 6.

48 There is of course much attention justifiably being given to multilateral aid via international financial institutions (IFIs) evident in other contributions to this special issue.

49 Lancaster, Foreign Aid, p 23.

50 Ibid, p 9, emphasis in the original.

51 The Washington Consensus barely merits a mention in Lancaster’s study, which has been hailed as landmark work on foreign aid.

52 Lancaster, Foreign Aid, pp 60–61.

53 Fengler & Kharas, Delivering Aid Differently, p 1.

54 A Bebbington, ‘Donor–ngo relations and representations of livelihood in nongovernmental aid chains’, World Development, 33(6), 2005, pp 937–950; and M Edwards & D Hulme, ‘Too close for comfort? The impact of official aid on nongovernmental organisations’, World Development, 24(6), 1996, pp 961–973.

55 A Fowler, ‘Authentic ngdo partnerships in the new policy agenda for international aid: dead end or light ahead?’, Development and Change, 29(1), 1998, p 138.

56 Edwards & Hulme, ‘Too close for comfort?’, p 961.

57 Browne, Aid and Influence, p 24.

58 Humanitarian relief is obviously an essential element of aid policies and allocations. However, development aid and other forms of non-humanitarian assistance constitute the type of aid that is generally programmatic and project-based. Examples of such project-based funding may include the setting up of a rural health clinic in rural Siem Reap province or an hiv/aids counselling and testing centre in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

59 Mosse, Cultivating Development, p 2.

60 Ibid, p 3.

61 Nair, ‘Sovereignty, security and the exception’.

62 Ibid.

63 Manji, ‘The depoliticisation of poverty’, p 23.

64 See D Brown, The State and Ethnic Politics in Southeast Asia, London: Routledge, 1994.

65 Kapoor, The Postcolonial Politics of Development, p 30.

66 ausaid, at http://www.ausaid.gov.au/publications/pdf/good_governance.pdf, accessed 12 February 2013.

67 usaidIndonesia, A Partnership for Prosperity: USAID Strategy for Indonesia 2009–2014, Jakarta, Indonesia: U.S. Agency for International Development, December 15, 2009.

68 Interview with usaid officials in Jakarta, September 2010.

69 S Ali & U Dadush, ‘Whither Africa?’, Carnegie Policy Outlook: Endowment for International Peace, 2011, at http://carnegieendowment.org/files/WhitherAfrica.pdf, accessed 12 February 2013.

70 ‘About global economy and development’, 2013, at http://www.brookings.edu/global/about-us.aspx, accessed 12 February 2013.

71 ‘About cgd’, Center for Global Development: Independent Research & Practical Ideas for Global Prosperity, 2013, at http://www.cgdev.org/section/about, accessed 12 February 2013.

72 For a comprehensive discussion of the shifts in aid paradigms and the new aid paradigm, see R Renard, The Cracks in the New Aid Paradigm, Discussion Paper 2006.01, Institute of Development Policy and Management, University of Antwerp, 2006.

73 ‘Creating Opportunity: From the Local to the National to the Global’, programme flyer, Brookings Institution, 8 February 2011, at http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/Files/events/2011/0208_creating_opportunity/20110208_creating_opportunity.pdf, accessed 12 February 2013. Burwell was also employed with the consulting firm McKinsey and Company.

74 Ibid, emphasis added.

75 Escobar, Encountering Development.

76 ‘Creating Opportunity’.

77 Some see NGOs—in this view they are the new masters of the universe—adding to the burden of the world’s poor, especially when they demand that environmental and other safeguards be implemented in projects. According to Mallaby, ‘safeguard policies of one kind or another inflate (World Bank) total project preparation costs by somewhere between US$200 million and US$300 million annually. ‘level of conditionality is essential, but after waves of punishing assault by NGOs, the World Bank has come to reflect the agenda of activists who insist upon perfectionist safeguards. In sum, the world’s premier development institution has come perilously close to losing touch with the needs and realities of developing countries’. S Mallaby, ‘NGOs: fighting poverty, hurting the poor', Foreign Policy, 144, 2004, p 57.

78 According to such a view, ‘the thin line that separates weak states from truly failed ones is manned by a hodgepodge of international charities, aid agencies, philanthropists, and foreign advisors. This armada of non-state actors has become a powerful global force, replacing traditional donors’ and governments’ influence in poverty stricken, war-torn world capitals. And as a measure of that influence, they are increasingly taking over the key state functions, providing for health, welfare, and safety of citizens. These private actors have become the “new colonialists” of the 21st century’. M Cohen, M Figueroa & P Khanna, ‘The new colonialists’, Foreign Policy, 167, 2008, p 74.

79 In one interview with a programme director at a leading Northern ngo whose offices are spread all over Southeast Asia, I was told that there was an ‘an obvious clash between funders’ and the interests and realities on the ground. ‘We seek a middle ground…for the aid agency…in working with…local…NGOs. But a lot of NGOs are not driven by the grassroots, although they claim to speak on behalf of the grassroots’. He was referring to the lack of a mass membership in local NGOs, which are typically small organisations with just a handful of staff and a fairly stable leadership.

80 Manji, ‘The depoliticisation of poverty’.

81 See, for example, the World Bank-commissioned study by C. Malena and K. Chhim, Linking Citizens and the State: An Assessment of Civil Society Contributions to Good Governance in Cambodia, Washington, DC: World Bank, 2009.

82 The question of whether these services are actually working in the way they are designed to work is beyond the scope of this article.

83 A Bebbington, ‘Donor–ngo relations and representations of livelihood in nongovernmental aid chains’, World Development, 33(6), p 938.

84 See also M Kane in this issue for a discussion of NGOs as agents of legitimisation and reproduction of power: ‘by implementing aid, even in the name of strengthening democratic civil society, they can be agents of legitimisation and reproduction of the very relations of power that they seek to transform. As integral social forces within the power relations of the aid industry INGOs often act as legitimisers of its paradigm of development, facilitators of consent to its structures of governance, and agents of discipline towards civil society in the South.’

85 T Tvedt, ‘Development NGOs: actors in a global civil society or in a new international social system?’, Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 13(4), 2002, pp 363–375.

86 M Nahan & D D’Cruz, ‘NGOs undermining democracy’, Institute of Public Affairs Review, 56(4), 2004, pp 7–9; D D’Cruz, ‘Dangerous liaisons’, Institute of Public Affairs Review, 54(3), 2002, pp 7–11; Mallaby, ‘NGOs’; and R Sankore, ‘What are these NGOs doing?’, New African, 443, 2005, pp 12–15.

87 F Loh, ‘Procedural democracy, participatory democracy and regional networking: the multi-terrain struggle for democracy in Southeast Asia’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 23(1), 2008, pp 127–141.

88 G Clarke, The Politics of NGOs in South-East Asia: Participation and Protest in the Philippines, London: Routledge, 1998.

89 K Nomura, ‘Democratisation and environmental non-governmental organisations in Indonesia’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 37(4), 2007, pp 495–517.

90 C Hughes, ‘Transnational networks, international organisations and political participation in Cambodia: human rights, labour rights and common rights’, Democratisation, 14(5), 2007, pp 834–852.

91 Interviews with ngo representatives in Kuala Lumpur and Penang, August–September 2010, and in Phnom Penh, November 2010.

92 Interviews with ngo activists, Kuala Lumpur and Penang, July and August 2010.

93 Crewe & Harrison, Whose Development?.

94 B Hadiwinata, The Politics of NGOs in Indonesia: Developing Democracy and Managing a Movement, London: Routledge, 2003; and P Eldridge, Non-Government Organizations and Democratic Participation in Indonesia, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.