Divide et Impera? Foreign Aid Interventions in the Middle East and North Africa Region

ABSTRACT

Causes and consequences of the Arab Spring have received considerable attention since winter 2010/11. While concerns about the stability of regimes go back many decades, fears about the decreasing legitimacy of long-supported allies and the growing instability in the Middle East and North Africa are at a higher level now than before. The traditional trade-off between the foreign support channelled in the form of aid to ‘cooperative’ governments in the Middle East and benefits (stability) gained from such support has been challenged by the Arab Spring. The paper aims to explore the interactions between foreign aid and legitimacy by focusing on how Western foreign aid functions when channelled to parties with conflicting interests and values. The results suggest that foreign aid may contribute to stability as long as the internal legitimacy of the beneficiary is not challenged on the grounds of serving foreign interests.

KEYWORDS:

• Arab Spring
• development assistance
• foreign aid
• legitimacy
• military aid
• stability
• MENA
• WANA

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

Beata Paragi obtained her PhD-degree at Corvinus University of Budapest (2008). In addition to her decade-long teaching experiences at CUB since 2003, she has participated in research projects related to the Middle East and to international development cooperation. Currently she is a Marie Curie researcher at Fafo, Oslo. Her research focuses on the ‘exchange and gift’ interpretations of foreign aid relations in MENA countries, being in close proximity to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict (Jordan, Egypt, Israel, Palestine) in order to understand better the ‘price’ paid by recipient societies (see https://aidinmena.wordpress.com/). ([email protected])

ORCID

Beata Paragi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7432-7810

Notes

1. MENA or West Asian and North Africa (WANA) are concepts used interchangeably in the literature.

2. The term (Western) foreign aid denotes (mainly bilateral) aid from OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) countries (for military, development and humanitarian purposes alike) and (multilateral aid) disbursed via international financial organizations, such as the World Bank (and the International Monetary Fund to lesser extent within the MENA context). It is mostly (non-refundable) grants being about strengthening miltary cooperation/alliances (military aid) or pursuing development goals with or without conditions attached (development assistance); humanitarian/emergency aid is unconditional (in principle), but 'conditional’ on the significance of the emergency situation to the donor country (in practice).

3. It is beyond the scope of this paper to summarize the main arguments of the literature as to why and how MENA countries have resisted democratic changes; the question emerged decades ago only to become dominant after Fukuyama's ‘end of history’ (Hudson 1977; Brown 1984; Salamé 1994; Brynen et al. 1998; Niblock et al. 1999; Halliday 2005; Hinnebusch and Ehteshami 2002, 2014; El Fadl 2015; Diamond et al. 2003; Fawcett et al. 2005).

4. The term Arab Spring marks the popular uprisings (regardless of their outcome) in various countries in the MENA, such as Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrein, Yemen, Iran, Oman, Syria, Libya, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. It was ‘invented’ in January 2011 (Lynch 2011; Moisi 2011; on its Arab critique see Khouri 2011). The term WANA uprisings, used in critical literature, tries to express a certain distance from the colonial past and legacies—such as ‘Middle East' (more on this in Mullin and Pallister-Wilkins 2015).

5. There is a debate in the development economics literature, which is indirectly related to the concept of stability. On the importance of timeframe in recurrence of conflicts and civil war, the durability of peace agreements and their relatedness to economic growth, see Hoeffler's (2012) literature summary and analysis.

6. Unearned foreign income is defined as ‘income generated from outside a country's border that can change (either directly or indirectly) a government's revenue base’, foreign aid is ‘understood as a transfer of funds from the donor government to the recipient government’, whereas remittances represent a ‘transfer of funds from individuals abroad to individuals (households) in the home country'. Project aid—more specifically, development and humanitarian assistance which is channelled from foreign government to non-governmental or civil society organizations (NGO, civil society organization (CSO))—is not part of Ahmed's model. However, taking into consideration that such aid is mostly spent on salaries (consumption of goods) and on providing ‘public’ services (mainly health care and education), one can assume an effect similar to that of the remittances (Ahmed 2012).

7. Analysing the effects of ‘unearned foreign income’ by econometric means (sample of 97 countries between 1975 and 2004), Faisal Z. Ahmed argued that foreign aid and remittances led to policies that resulted in reducing government expenditures on ‘welfare goods’ in order to fund patronage. The established mechanism identified a combined effect: a fraction of foreign aid finances patronage directly (income effect), whereas the remittances permit the government to divert expenditures from the provision of welfare goods to patronage (substitution effect) due to the fungibility of money (Ahmed 2012).

8. One may argue that Palestine should be excluded from the sample since it is not a state, its territory is (partially) occupied by Israel, and in general it does not enjoy full sovereignty. However, Palestinians would cite quite strong counterarguments (based on international law) starting with their declaration of independence (1988), the recognition of it by almost 150 states since then, the UN General Assembly (GA) resolution (GA/11317) to accord Palestine a ‘non-member observer state’ status in the UN (2012) or the recent step to join the International Criminal Court (2014). In addition, foreign aid strongly interacts with legitimacy issues regardless of the question/state of sovereignty. It applies to the Palestinian case in particular, since the PNA has been among the top ODA/capita recipients in global comparison since the early 2000s (the second intifada) (see the OECD DAC statistics, various years).

9. For the concept of legitimacy see for example Blackwell Encyclopedia and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy building on Weber (1964); and Gelpi (2003) and Gilley (2009).

10. The opposite of participation can be described as ‘alienation’ (Weatherford 1991) or ‘marginalization’ (social exclusion, following Hirschman 1970), but it would be too simple to say that non-participation in political life is the opposite of legitimacy (Sedgwick 2010, 253).

11. In terms of the Middle Eastern context we will lean on the notion that legitimacy (and its measurement) is mainly a matter of framing and formulation (Sedgwick 2010; Schlumberger 2010). The term will be used throughout the rest of the text as a ‘state of appropriateness’ ascribed to an entity (actor, system, structure, process, action) stemming from its integration with ‘socially constructed norms, values and beliefs’ (Suchman 1995, 574).

12. Religion and nationalism serve as the main sources of macro-loyalty, whereas the family, clan, various sects, associations, occupations constitute the main sources of micro-loyalty. These latter, in the absence of strong and shared religious or nationalist values, may generate social conflicts (Razi 1990).

13. Not all non-state beneficiaries are actively promoting change. Carapico (2014) provides a great overview on the differences between NGOs, government-organized NGO (GONGO), donor-organized NGO (DONGO), etc. in the region (see Chapter 4, Denationalizing Civic Activism; in particular 153–157).

14. It is not only mirrored by local perceptions, but also observed by diplomats and journalists alike, see for example: ‘While the EU is neither able nor willing to seriously challenge the US’ seat at the head of the negotiating table, Europe does have an important role to play as an “outrider” to create conditions favourable to a future US peace push, even more so if Washington takes a back seat in the short term' (Levitt 2015).

15. For a graphic image of MENA's relative share in global comparison (ODA/capita and ODA volume) see the OECD map: http://www.compareyourcountry.org/aid-statistics?cr=302&cr1=oecd&lg=en&page=1

16. On the military balance between Israel and its neighbours, see for example Cordesman (2011); on military expenditures see the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database which offers data on military expenditure by country as percentage of government spending; military expenditure per capita by country; military expenditure by country as percentage of gross domestic product; military expenditure by country. SIPRI database is available et: http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex/milex_database.

17. Unlike with Israel and Jordan, currently there is no US–Egyptian memorandum of understanding specifying a particular amount of total US aid pledged to Egypt over a certain time period in the present/future. As summarized by Jeremy Sharp, ‘in July 2007, the Bush Administration had announced, as a part of a larger arms package to the region, that it would begin discussions with Egypt on a proposed $13 billion military aid agreement over a 10-year period. Since Egypt was already receiving approximately $1.3 billion a year in military assistance, the announcement represented no major change in U.S. aid policy toward Egypt. Since then, no such bilateral MOU on U.S. military aid to Egypt has been reached either by the Bush or Obama Administrations with the Egyptian government' (Sharp 2015, 11).

18. This argument is part of the ‘aid debate’ as well, see for example: “the British duplicity about Palestine and the Arab independence did not help set the region on a path toward peaceful development” (Easterly 2006, 293–297).

19. The best examples can be found in the documents describing the agendas, objectives and means of cooperation between the EU and Jordan (and Egypt and Palestine) respectively, such as the association agreements, (country) strategy papers, national indicative programmes, action plans (2007–13). As, for example, the association agreement between Egypt and the EU says, ‘[t]he political dialogue shall cover all subjects of common interest, and, in particular peace, security, democracy and regional development' (article 4).

20. The American National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has been involved in influencing elections and overthrowing governments in anti-US regimes since the 1980s. This is achieved by providing funding, training and strategic advice to opposition groups, political parties, journalists and media outlets (Ignatius 1991; Nixon 2011; O'Connor 2012).

21. These are well documented by NGO monitors, such as The International Journal of Not-for-Profit Law or the Global Trends in NGO Law, various issues, http://www.icnl.org/research/trends/

22. Of course not all NGOs receive money from abroad and the views on them are dependent on various factors.

23. The phrase is attributed to Philip II, king of Macedon (382–336 BC), describing his policy toward the Greek city-states, and was first discussed (in the Middle Age) by Traiano Boccalini and Niccolò Machiavelli as a common principle in politics.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the European Union under a Marie Curie IEF grant—AIDINMENA project, 2013–2015 (2016), host institute: Fafo, Oslo [grant number PIEF-GA-2012-327088] and by The Research Council of Norway.