Aid Intentions, Imperatives and Incentives: A Case of Too Much Yet Less Effective Aid (original) (raw)
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This paper analyses the meaning of 'local ownership in aid projects', the current vogue in aid practice for improving project results. Ownership by an organization is understood as a metaphor in a behavioural sense when compared to ownership by individuals. Aid involves intercultural relations and aspects of inequality between organizations and individuals. The paper pursues three main lines of inquiry: firstly into the fundamental understanding of individual concepts of cognitive and emotional facilities involved in inter-cultural understanding and exchanges; secondly into the possibility to translate concepts appropriate to individual human beings into useful organizational concepts; and thirdly into the relation between individuals and organizations. Four different perspectives of aid are discussed in relation to local ownership: ethical, bureaucratic, incentives, rational expectations. The outcome of the paper is a critical reflection on different perspectives on local ownership and a comparison between them in terms of complementarities and conflicts. Different notions of ownership relate to these perspectives.
2003
This very interesting book deals with the discussion about the effectiveness of foreign aid and analyzes how the results of foreign aid can be improved. More specifically, this book uses the framework of the principal-agent model to analyze incentive problems that may occur in foreign aid delivery. Since the publication of Assessing Aid by the World Bank (1988), a renewed interest on aid policies has emerged and a lively debate now takes place. The debate focuses primarily on the necessary conditions for aid effectiveness. The main hypothesis of Assessing Aid is that aid does help to increase growth, but only in countries with sound economic management, or 'good' governance. A direct implication of this hypothesis is that Assessing Aid suggests that the responsibility for the effectiveness of aid lies primarily with the recipient countries. In contrast, The Institutional Economics of Foreign Aid claims that the results of aid are not solely a function of recipient country policies. Rather, by focusing on the incentives within the entire chain of the aid delivery process, the book argues that an important part of the responsibility for the fact that foreign aid has often not achieved its intended goals lies with the aid donors and their intermediaries. This may be an obvious conclusion, but still it is highly important, especially in view of the current over-emphasis on recipient behavior to explain aid performance. By pointing to the various agency problems that may arise throughout the chain of the aid delivery process, the book also clearly shows that improving aid performance is far from simple. Agency theory forms the theoretical background for the studies presented in the book. Basically, agency theory assumes that the principal tries to devise contractual arrangements with one or more agents in such a way that it best serves the objectives of the principal. A central issue in agency theory is that a principal needs to delegate part of its work to an agent. However, due to asymmetric information, the agent may work in her own interests and behave sub-optimally from the principal's point of view. The lack of full information may lead to the well-known problems of adverse selection and moral hazard. Principal-agent theory is most useful for analyzing the donor-recipient relationships in conditionality contracts. This becomes more apparent because of a broken feedback loop between the beneficiaries of aid and those who pay for the aid, the taxpayers in the donor country. The broken feedback loop introduces information problems and several conflicts between the different players in the process of aid donations.
Aid as gift - International aid between theory and practice
In this dissertation I attempt an anthropological exploration of international aid from the perspective of gift theory. Gift practices and gift economies have featured prominently within social anthropology, with gift theory becoming a major focus point of anthropological study and debate over the past century. The anthropological literature on practice, structure and agency within development has also been steadily growing over the past 30 years. In this dissertation I follow the lead of anthropologists such as Karen Sykes (2005) and David Graeber (2001) in bringing The Gift (Mauss, 2011) forward into the present and using it as a means for understanding contemporary socio-economic processes. My general aim is to show that gift theory can join development anthropology in building a comprehensive frame of reference for the study of international aid. Guided by the excellent work on international aid and gift of Stirrat and Henkel (1997), Kowalski (2011) and Hattori (2003), I will provide an analysis of aid not as an isolated phenomenon within the capitalist sphere where it originates, but as a platform for cross-cultural interaction. In doing this I support the contention that Mauss’ gift is not an obsolete concept to be forgotten on dusty bookshelves and relegated to the realm of the study of so-called ‘archaic societies’. Instead, it can be an invaluable tool in the analysis of major aspects of market societies such as international aid and the problems that plague it.
The Political Economy of Foreign Aid: An Overview of the Carrot and Stick
2020
In political economy discourse, aid is a focus of world attention. A school of thought sees it as developed nations’ hands of “friendship” to the less developed ones; a way of promoting growth, development and peace. Another school sees it as a way of promoting the national interest of donor nations. This paper examines the political economy of aid from both perspectives to discuss the politics and intrigues involved in the use of carrots and sticks approach. It also dwells on the arm-twisting involved in the allocation of aid by donor nations as well as x-rays the view that foreign aid are more of political economy and less humanitarian. The study found out that less developed countries are the major recipient of foreign aid, and in most cases, aid does not bring the expected anticipated positive changes or development but sometimes leads to crises of arrested development. In conclusion the paper observes that aid by the donor countries is a double edge sword because of the conditi...
AID as Gift: an initial approach
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Este texto propõe que aspectos relevantes das práticas de cooperação internacional para o desenvolvimento são melhor compreendidos à luz do regime da dádiva. Para tanto, confrontam-se dados etnográficos relacionados com o modus operandi do campo da AID em Timor-Leste com os legados de Marcel Mauss e a recente produção do M.A.U.S.S. Indica-se que as políticas internacionais de doação são veículos privilegiados de construção de hegemonia em arenas glocalizadas de negociação, mediante as quais diferentes atores constroem identidades e vínculos de aliança, honra e precedência. Neste debate, sugere-se que a maior contradádiva de Timor-Leste à comunidade internacional seja a de se colocar como um instrumento por meio do qual valores caros aos seus doadores, expressos nos mitos ocidentais de boa sociedade, possam mais uma vez ser cultivados no processo de edificação de um novo Estado-nação.