Researching the politics of development
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Deciphering the confusing new politics of international aid
12 March 2014.
Listen to Thomas Carrothers on whether aid can be purely technical:
[vimeo height=”HEIGHT” width=”WIDTH”]http://vimeo.com/85161643[/vimeo]
Lecture summary
After decades of avoiding open discussions of the political nature of aid, many parts of the international assistance community now assert that effective assistance requires thinking and acting politically. Yet considerable confusion exists about what it means for aid to be political and whether the new politics agenda for development assistance will be primarily a source of solutions or of problems.
- Providers of development assistance have political interests
- Development assistance often has unintended political consequences
- application of political goals and political methods in development assistance
Thomas Carothers, a leading authority on international support for democracy, rights, governance and comparative democratization, presented a summary of the use of political goals and methods in development. He makes the distinction between goals and methods as follows:
- Goals: openly political programmes, for example achieving democratic governance
- Methods: the use of aid programming to enter the process of developmental change, which is inevitably political
A brief history of development assistance:
- 1960s: Apolitical foundations of assistance, focused on socio-economic development. Technical solutions were offered and accepted by recipients on the conditions that donors stay out of politics and just give the assistance
- 1970s: Basic needs, new international economic order, continued technocratic approach
- 1980s: Neoliberalism and market reform
- 1990s: Major aid providers began talking about political concepts, such as governance, democracy, participation, and adopting political goals. Politics now considered to be central to socio-economic development and 10-15% of development assistance is devoted to this new sector
- 2000s: Growing recognition of the importance of analysing and understanding local realities. The need has been identified to match top-down programming with bottom-up approaches. Integrating of political thinking and action, with aid as a political method
Why did significant changes occur during the 1990s?
Different lines evolved within the politics revolution, with diverging approaches:
- Governance – focus on efficiency and effectiveness
- Democracy – promotion of democratic processes and institutions
- Human rights – rights-based approach
These three communities were often at odds based on mutual suspicion of each other’s concepts but have mostly reconciled, united by accepted buzzwords – transparency, accountability, inclusion, participation.
The almost revolution… The incorporation of political thinking into development assistance programmes has evolved but is not complete.
How has it fallen short?
- Marginalisation of the sector, there is a need for integration across programmes
- Undermined by other interests
- Political economy analysis is still a hesitant epistemic community – it is considered by some to be just one more kind of analysis
Why is integration still not happening in many cases?
- The idea of making politics intrinsic to development is contested with assistance still mainly focused on socio-economic goals
- It is challenging to prove outcomes of investment in political objectives. This is a difficult research problem, as it is hard to attribute causality
- Institutional forms and structures are limiting due to the need for control. Public scepticism about aid budgets creates a need to produce tangible results
- The relationship between donors and recipients is difficult – uncomfortable issues, lack of consensus
- The aid world is changing – new actors, recipient governments have more choice
Conclusion:
The Thomas Carothers lecture took place on 27 January 2014 as the second of the Adrian Leftwich Memorial Lecture series hosted by the Effective States and Inclusive Development (ESID) research centre.
For further information visit:
- Thomas Carother’s profile at Carnegie Endowment:
- Development Aid Confronts Politics: The Almost Revolution (co-authored with Diane de Gramont)
- Carnegie Endowment for International Peace