Aid as a Catalyst: A Rejoinder (original) (raw)
Related papers
Honours Thesis, 2017
Over the years, aid in its many forms has sought to assist developing countries both in times of crisis, and in achieving developmental objectives. Developing nations have for long been recipients of donor aid from international donor agencies and governments. However, many developing nations are still faced with economic, social and political challenges that act as stumbling blocks to sustainable development. This paper seeks to map out the discourses on developmental aid by drawing on old and new literature. Much of today’s interactions between developed and developing nations are informed by old colonial relationships. Developing nations have experienced little autonomy over their own development policies and objectives. Development aid plays a part in the loss of this autonomy. However, this is being overcome by the shift in paradigms of development that place more emphasis on autonomy of the recipient nations’ state and citizens as the main drivers in achieving sustainable developmental goals.
Foreign Aid in Developing Countries
Journal of Political Sciences & Public Affairs, 2015
Interpreted through the realist lenses, aid programmes of donor countries are assumed to be driven by donors' national-interest motivations, which are both political and economic [5,6]. The basic reason for this is that so long as states fear and suspect each other
Because of this background, terms like “fragile” and “failed” state are frequently used to label Timor-Leste. In the light of the current circumstances, the question emerges among Timorese and scholars is “what happened with the billions of dollars that have been spent under the banner of peace building?” This paper assumes that peace is not only about the absence of the war, but also about the conditions for democratic governance, rule of law, and sustainable development. Based upon this assumption and looking at the current circumstance, this paper argues that foreign aid has failed to establish conditions for long-term peace and stability in Timor-Leste, which is the main objective of international community over the last eleven years. Among various aspects that have contributed to its failure, this paper focuses attention on three aspects: decision-making, economic development, and community development.
Foreign Aid: Inconvenient Truths
2017
Achieving foreign aid’s well-advertised goals of equitable development remains elusive. That truth is inconvenient for those convinced of development aid’s positive potentials. But despite its failures, and the attacks it suffers, foreign aid keeps growing. Is this a case of hope triumphing over experience? Or is failure a useful pretext for keeping alive a large old, ineffective industry? Or are there interests at stake other than those of the world’s poor? This article probes another kind of inconvenient truth: in today’s world system, benefits largely flow from poor to rich, and that the development aid system colludes in redistributing wealth upward.
Catalysing development?: a debate on aid
2004
Development and Change Book Series As a journal, Development and Change distinguishes itself by its multidisciplinary approach and its breadth of coverage, publishing articles on a wide spectrum of development issues. Accommodating a deeper analysis and a more concentrated focus, it also publishes regular special issues on selected themes. Development and Change and Blackwell Publishing collaborate to produce these theme issues as a series of books, with the aim of bringing these pertinent resources to a wider audience. Titles in the series include: Catalysing Development? A Debate on Aid Jan Pronk et al.
Rethinking Foreign Aid for Socio-Economic
African Renaissance, 2019
Foreign aid as a ratio to the Gross Domestic Income for Sub-Saharan (SSA) countries has been on the rise from an estimated 4% in 1970 to around 17-20% in 2013. However, the causality of foreign aid on economic development has been weak for SSA countries. The weak relationship between economic development and foreign aid is what motivates the pursuit of this study. The objective of this paper is to explore the nature of, and if there is a significant part, relationship on the puzzle of foreign aid and economic development in the SSA countries. The study uses a qualitative method employing literature to sift out themes that are of use in order to meet the objective. The findings of the study indicate that foreign aid has been increasing whilst there is no positive response from the economic development front for the aid receiving countries. Also the findings of our study indicate that foreign aid has caused corruption and inefficiency to increase in the aid receiving countries. Lastly, there are countries that have become aid dependent, in funding their budgets, again, and worsening inefficiency. Policy recommendations arising from the findings point mainly to two things. Sub-Saharan countries need to strongly adopt a zero-tolerance to corruption so that national resources are devoted to where they benefit the country at large. Secondly, the study recommends that Sub-Saharan countries need to shun aid and start to mobilise resources domestically so that The dependency syndrome can be dealt with