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Can Foreign Aid Be Used to Promote Good Government in Developing Countries?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2012

Mick Moore  and
Mark Robinson
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In the five years since the collapse of communist rule in Eastern Europe, there has been a major shift in the way in which development aid is conceived and discussed in the aid agencies and foreign affairs ministries of the donor nations. There is a new agenda, the “ new political conditionality ” or “good government ” agenda. Formally, at least, aid increasingly is being tied to the practice of “good government ” as defined by the aid donors. Aid projects are now being justified in terms of their contribution to this god. More significantly, the practice of good government by recipients is becoming a general condition for eligibility for aid. The coercion of the Kenyan government into holding general elections in December 1992 has been the most vivid and publicized example of such practice to date, It is widely believed that there have been several other instances recently where aid donors, generally acting more covertly than in the Kenyan case, have had a major influence on the constitution of African governments.

Type
Articles
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 8 , March 1994 , pp. 141 - 158
Copyright
Copyright © Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs 1994

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References

1 Georg Sorensen, “Conditionality, Democracy and Development,” Paper presented at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (Oslo, 1993), 5, citing Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

2 Hawthorn, Geoffrey, “How to Ask for Good Government,” IDS Bulletin 24 (1993), 24–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Barya, John-Jean B., “The New Political Conditionalities of Aid: An Independent View from Africa,” IDS Bulletin 24 (1993), 16–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Lancaster, Carol, “Governance and Development: The Views from Washington.” IDS Bulletin 24 (1993), 12–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Japan and France employ cross-conditionality to a lesser extent than other major aid donors. See Adrian P. Hewitt and Tony Killick, “Bilateral Aid Conditionality and Policy Leverage,” Paper presented at the 7th General Conference of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (Berlin, September 15–18, 1993).

6 See IDS Bulletin 24 (1993), 7–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Fur summaries of these two conflicting positions see Kausikan, Bilahari, “Asia's Different Standard.” Foreign Policy 92 (1993), 24–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar. and Neier, Aryeh. “Asia's Unacceptable Standard.” Fareign Policy 92 (1993), 42–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 See Thomas Carothers. In the Name of Democracy U.S. Policy Toward Latin America in the Reagan Years (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and Oxford: University of California Press. 1991). 247–48.

9 West Africa (London), July 2–8, 1990.

10 The Guardian (London), June 5, 1993.

11 For the World Bank's formal policy statement on these issues, see its Governance and Development (Washington: The World Bank, 1992).

12 For a critique, see Moore, Mick. “Deelining to Learn from the East? The World Bank on ‘Governance and Development,“’ IDS Bulletin 24 (1993), 39–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 This is one of the five criteria for eligibility for German development aid announced in October 1991. The others are respect for human rights, popular participation in the development process, observance of the rule of law, and the commitment of the recipient government to development. See Peter Waller. “Aid and Conditionality: The Case of Germany,” Paper presented at the 7th General Conference of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (Berlin. September 15–18, 1993). 3.

14 For more detail, see Pedersen, Jorgen D., “The Complexities of Conditionality: The Case of India,” European Journal of Development Research 5 (1993), 100–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robinson, Mark, “Will Political Conditionality Work?” IDS Bulletin 24 (1993), 58–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Robinson, Mark, “Aid, Democracy, and Political Conditionality in Sub-Saharan Africa,” European Journal of Development Research 5 (1993), 85–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Most of Latin America experienced a transition to democracy and greater respect for civil and political rights in the 1980s, before the good-government agenda became prominent.

16 The failures of UN and U.S. military intervention and near-intervention in Somalia and Haiti, respectively, constitute a separate but related story.

17 In 1989 the World Bank indicated it could not continue to disburse structural adjustment loans to Benin until there was a government there that had “the consent of its people.” This forced the president to seek political accommodation with the opposition. He called a “national conference” that effectively seized control of public policy and called elections that led to a change of regime (Lancaster, “Governance and Development.” 10).

18 Robinson. “Will Political Conditionality Work?”

19 Carothers, In the Name of Democracy; and Pinto-Duschinsky, Michael, “Foreign Political Aid: The German Political Foundations and Their U.S. Counterparts.” International Affairs 67 (1991), 33–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 With regard to the idea that aid projects should themselves respect good-government principles, we suggest, for example, transparency in negotiations with recipient governments; consultation with potential beneficiaries within developing countries; and ensuring that aid projects do not themselves result in the violation of human rights, as have some large civil engineering projects in the past involving population resettlement.

21 Przeworski, Adam and Limongi, Fernando, “Political Regimes and Economic Growth,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 7 (1993), 51–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Sirowy, Larry and Inkeles, Alex, “Effects of Democracy on Economic Growth and Inequality: A Review,” Studies in Comparative International Development 25 (1990), 126–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Peter Uvin. “Political Conditionality as a Regime and as a Policy Instrument: Nature and Probable Effectiveness,” Paper presented at the 7th General Conference of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (Berlin, September 15–18. 1993), 6.

23 Waller, “Aid and Conditionality.”

24 See Mark Robinson, “Political Conditionality: Implications for NGOs,” Paper presented at the 7th General Conference of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (Berlin, September 15–18, 1993).

25 See Harry Blair, Defining, Promoting and Sustaining Democracy: Formulating an A.I.D. Strategy for Development Assistance and Evaluation (Washington: USAID, September 1992).

26 This is not to dismiss the importance of economic, social, and cultural rights, which were placed on the same footing as civil and political rights in the Vienna Conference; it is simply much harder to find agreement on basic principles and to find a mechanism to enforce their observance. There might also be resistance from some developing countries who could justifiably point to resource and time constraints as impediments to the successful realization of this category of rights.

27 Carothers, In the Name of Democracy.

28 See, for example, Diamond, Larry, “Promoting Democracy.” Foreign Policy 87 (1992), 28–29Google Scholar, and Halperin, Morton H., “Guaranteeing Democracy.” Foreign Policy 91 (1993). 105CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Halperin was as the title of his paper indicates, making a case for a very active American policy of “guaranteeing” democracy, rather than merely promoting it.