International Development Assistance

The article discusses the efforts to undertake economic reconstruction in Bosnia following the end of the war. It argues that, despite certain successes such as the rehabilitation of
infrastructure and the privatization of the banking sector, overall progress has been below expectations. The study, accordingly, attempts to analyse the reasons behind the reconstruction
failure by grouping Bosnia’s problems into four different challenges for analytical purposes: the post-Dayton institutional deficiency; overcoming political fragmentation; creating appropriate conditions for economic revival; and graduating from dependency on foreign economic aid. In this respect, it is concluded that the intersection between the economic and political dimensions of post-conflict reconstruction has generated a paradox: while huge amounts of economic assistance have intended to facilitate political reconciliation, the nature of the administrative (political) structure that was established in the post-war period has in turn hindered economic
recovery and the creation of a unified economic space. Moreover, political fragmentation and slow progress in economic reconstruction have been in a mutually constitutive relationship in which the existence of the one has contributed to the sustenance of the other.

This Mapping Study seeks to support international engagement on security sector reform in Ukraine by identifying the extent and scope of current rule of law, security sector governance (SSG) and democratic oversight programming. By covering international and regional organisations’ initiatives, as well as national projects, the Study seeks to comprehensively map programmes assisting Ukraine’s democratic institutions, executive, government, independent oversight institutions, civil society, media and the security sector itself.

DCAF gratefully acknowledges the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ financial support for the project.

В XXI в. одной из важнейших составляющих трансформации глобальной архитектуры содействия международному развитию стало расширение присутствия «восходящих» («новых») доноров – государств, не входящих в Комитет содействия развитию ОЭСР. Помимо стран БРИКС и Персидского залива наибольшее внимание среди них привлекает к себе Турецкая Республика. Оставаясь реципиентом иностранной помощи, Турция в новом тысячелетии сделала выбор в пользу ускоренного наращивания объемов сотрудничества с развивающимися странами, что позволило ей прочно закрепиться в тройке крупнейших «восходящих» доноров. Существенно расширился и круг реципиентов, особое место среди которых в последние годы занимают наименее развитые страны, в том числе затронутые нестабильностью и вооруженными конфликтами. В статье раскрываются специфика современных подходов Турции к оказанию помощи зарубежным государствам, ключевые внутренние и внешние детерминанты этой политики, а также взаимосвязь с общими политико-стратегическими интересами Анкары и ее пониманием императивов развития и безопасности в современном мире. Особое внимание уделено самовосприятию Турецкой Республики в качестве «восходящего» донора и ее отношению к другим участникам международного сотрудничества, а также особенностям оценки турецкой донорской деятельности в научном и экспертном сообществах. Сделан вывод о том, что турецкий подход во многом опирается на модели оказания помощи, применяемые западными донорами. Однако отношение Турции к международному сотрудничеству основывается в том числе на ее историческом прошлом, культурно-языковых и религиозных особенностях, которые турецкие власти оценивают как конкурентные преимущества перед большинством «традиционных» доноров.Используя эти преимущества, Турция, как и другие доноры, руководствуется отнюдь не только гуманитарными мотивами, но и стремлением обеспечить реализацию своих политических и экономическим интересов в турбулентном мире, рассматривая инструменты содействия развитию в том числе в контексте обеспечения национальной безопасности в самом широком смысле этого слова.

It has recently been suggested that the age of human rights is over. The West, itself often not respecting human rights, is said to have abused the concept as a tool to retain control over the developing world. Human rights have remained a foreign construct in Africa, the Near East, and Asia. They have "underperformed," and the level of privation in many parts of the world is more intense than ever. This Article acknowledges elements of truth in these observations, but argues that the battle for human rights is not lost. Using the right to education in Africa as an example, three arguments will be presented to explain how human rights can regain their moral cogency and actually help change a world of misery for the better. First, human rights need to be "domesticized," made "home-grown" achievements with which local populations can identify. Regional human rights institutions need to give specificity to universal norms. These "locally-owned" norms must then be effectively enforced. Second, pure "development goal" approaches to reducing global poverty need to be debunked. Instead, a human rights approach needs to identify clear duty-bearers, including notably the World Bank, who, when they have failed to comply with specified duties, should be considered "human rights violators" and held accountable accordingly. Third, and perhaps most importantly, human rights must be recognized to give rise to extraterritorial state obligations. These are obligations of states, in appropriate circumstances, to respect, protect, and fulfill the human rights of those beyond their own territory. The extraterritorial human rights obligations of states must structure bilateral development assistance and cooperation, the lending operations of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and free trade within and beyond the World Trade Organization (here, meaning the General Agreement on Trade in Services and the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights).

В данной статье дается анализ американской зарубежной помощи Израилю. Показана динамика потоков помощи в 1949-2012 гг., структура и основные тренды. Особый акцент сделан на военной помощи Израилю, призванной обеспечить т.н. Качественное военное превосходство (Qualitative military edge, QME) страны в ближневосточном регионе и гарантировать региональную стабильность. Для понимания механизмов влияния военной помощи США странам Ближнего Востока применен теоретико-игровой анализ, в частности повторяемые игры. Показаны основные направления помощи США в рамках развития систем противоракетной обороны Израиля, а также в контексте реализации ряда гражданских программ. Приводятся основные направления критики американской помощи Израилю, а также дается оценка влияния "Арабской весны" и мирового экономического кризиса на потоки помощи.
This article provides an analysis of the U.S. foreign assistance to Israel. It shows the evolution, structure and key trends of aid flows in 1949-2012. Particular emphasis is placed on military assistance to Israel, aimed to provide Qualitative military edge (QME) of the country in the Middle East and to ensure regional stability. The game-theoretic analysis in particular the repeated games is applied in order to understand the mechanisms of the effect of U.S. military assistance to Middle Eastern countries. The basic directions of U.S. aid (development of missile defense systems in Israel and financing of a number of civil programs) are shown. The main point of critic of U.S. foreign assistance to Israel, as well as an assessment of the influence of the "Arab Spring" and the global economic crisis on aid flows are provided.

Since 2009 the USA and the Bolivian government have been trying to fix their broken diplomatic relations. These negotiations culminated in 2011 in the signing of a bilateral agreement but, ultimately, failed to establish a basis for mutually acceptable development aid relations. This article analyses these negotiations and suggests a partial explanation that accounts for their dynamics and results. Specifically it shows how the negotiations have pitted Bolivian demands for state sovereignty and mutual respect, based on an egalitarian understanding of inter-state relations, against the US emphasis on common obligations and universal rights, informed by a non-egalitarian notion of liberal hegemony.

В данной статье изучаются механизмы продвижения внешнеполитических и внешнеэкономических интересов ведущих стран мира посредством системы международной помощи. Анализируется роль связанной помощи и основные
инструменты реализации экономических интересов стран-доноров в рамках международных банков развития. Приводятся основные гипотезы по продвижению внешнеполитических, в том числе геостратегических, интересов посредством оказания содействия международному развитию. Разбирается переход от продвижения национальных интересов к шкале ценностей доноров, которая инкорпорируется в систему критериев обусловленности выделяемой помощи. Показана роль международных рейтингов в продвижения ценностей посредством международной помощи. Описан эффект «финансового рычага» привлечения стран-союзников донора, а также частных партнеров, разделяющих продвигаемые ценности.

This paper analyzes the mechanisms of national political and economic interests promotions via the foreign aid system. The role of tied aid and basic tools to promote national economic interests of donor countries in the international development banks are shown. The basic hypotheses for promoting foreign policy objectives, including geo-strategic interests through the provision of international development assistance is analyzed. The transition from narrow national interest concept to the promotion of donors values’ scale is described. Above values scale is incorporated into the criteria of allocated aid conditionality. The role of the international rankings in the mechanism of promoting the values via international assistance. Finally, the effect of "finance leverage" of foreign aid through the involvement of allied donors and private partners sharing the same values is analyzed.

SCHOLARLY debates on Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP) have been one of the most contested, in the history of International Economics and Development Assistance Programs, outstandingly on Africa. Most of these debates have been against SAPs following the short term austerity, social crisis and economic stagnation that they precipitated in most African countries; and the context of their implementation. This paper holistically examines the SAPs’ short-term and long-term effects in Africa from liberalist political and socio-economic prism. The liberalisation and market economy principles of SAPs that were in their conditionalities are critically examined as if progressive or not, through a comparison with how most East Asian countries developed through these homologous market economy principles. In addition, this paper looks at the circumstances - state of African economies and political praxis that led to SAPs introduction; as well as an examination of the criticisms against SAPs, such as that of economic imperialism, rapidity, inadequate consultations and contextualisation by some scholars. In furtherance to this, this paper reviews the challenges that SAPs had.

This chapter investigates the paradox that the perceived crisis in development that has prompted development assistance, most recently in the form of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), has itself shown signs of crisis during most of its existence. In this regard, crisis does not so much designate a turning point, a critical moment for decisive intervention, but rather is an enduring catastrophe or impasse. The chapter explores the permanent crisis of development aid and the failure of its promoters and practitioners to learn from crisis. Rather than tackling the doubts about legitimacy of aid in a reflexive way, the aid industry limits its understanding of the crisis by focusing on actual symptoms (and corresponding narratives) rather than digging beneath symptoms to underlying real causes -- and then formulates its responses on the basis of its changing construal of the symptoms. This explains why, despite spending several trillions of US dollars in aid, poverty has remained a serious concern and development goals formulated in the MDG and SDG projects are almost impossible to achieve.

Данная статья посвящена анализу различных ситуаций конфликта интересов, возникающих в системе международного сотрудничества в целях развития. Приводятся наиболее известные теоретические концепции, в т.ч. принципал-агентская модель, Дилемма Самарянина, задаются функции полезности при наличии нескольких доноров и реципиента, а также в ситуации «донор-подрядчик-реципиент». Приведенные модели рассматриваются с позиций теоретико-игрового подхода и иллюстрируются посредством ряда фактических примеров. Теория игр позволяет понять глубинные мотивации различных участников режимов оказания содействия международному развитию, что особенно актуально в сегодняшней ситуации становления российской политики оказания международной помощи.
This article analyzes the different conflict of interest situations that arise in international development cooperation. The most popular theoretical concepts are given, including Principal-Agent Model, Samaritan's Dilemma, the Utility function in the presence of several donor and recipient, as well as in the situation of "donor-recipient-contractor" interactions. These models are considered in terms of game-theoretic approach and are illustrated by a series of actual examples. Game theory allows us to understand the underlying motivations of various actors of international development assistance regimes, that is especially important today as the Russian global policy of international assistance is shaped.

В начале XXI в. роль Турецкой Республики на Ближнем Востоке существенно возросла. Активизация внешней политики страны была тесно связана с ее участием в урегулировании региональных вопросов и застарелых конфликтов, в том числе палестино-израильского. В 2000–2010-х годах пропалестинская позиция Турции особенно укрепилась, а вопросы содействия развитию Палестинских территорий стали занимать все более важное место в ее ближневосточной политике. В данной статье изучена эволюция турецко-палестинского взаимодействия по широкому кругу вопросов, начиная с экономического восстановления и государствостроительства и заканчивая реформированием сектора безопасности и решением острых гуманитарных проблем региона. Особое внимание уделено рассмотрению роли Турции в развитии палестино-израильского экономического сотрудничества. В этой связи автор обращается к изучению деятельности Турецкого агентства по сотрудничеству и развитию и «Анкарского форума», в частности, в рамках проекта «Промышленность ради мира». Данная инициатива была нацелена на ревитализацию промышленной зоны Эрез и позиционировалась Турцией как пример реализации проекта по развитию, учитывающего риски возникновения конфликта. Однако в связи с ухудшением международной обстановки на Ближнем Востоке во второй половине 2000-х годов эта и другие масштабные инициативы Анкары в регионе столкнулись с непредвиденными трудностями. В итоге турецкое правительство перенесло акцент с экономических программ на меры по содействию укреплению государственности и сектора безопасности, реализуемые преимущественно в форме локальных проектов, максимально учитывающих нужды местного населения.

This article examines the crisis of capitalist seduction through the lens of online shopping platforms that raise funds for international assistance organizations and development celebrity advertising. Consumer-based giving has altered the commodity fetish into cliché, subsequently masking the capitalist produced crisis of endemic poverty and global inequality. Celebrity supported consumer-based giving and product advertising are used to illustrate the seductions of capitalism. This article argues that international assistance organizations are embedded in the substance and lifeblood of capitalisms' dependence on inequality and poverty to generate profits/wealth. Consumer driven assistance remains a pervasive crisis hidden by seductive shopping platforms camouflaged as compassion.

Considerable effort in recent years has gone into rebuilding fragile states. However, the debates over the effectiveness of such state-building exercises have tended to neglect that capacity building and the associated good governance programmes which comprise contemporary state building are essentially about transforming the state – meaning the ways in which political power is produced and reproduced. State capacity is now often presented as the missing link required for generating positive development outcomes and security. However, rather than being an objective and technical measure, capacity building constitutes a political and ideological mechanism for operationalising projects of state transnationalisation. The need to question prevailing notions of state capacity has become apparent in light of the failure of many state-building programmes. Such programmes have proven difficult to implement, and implementation has rarely achieved the expected development turnarounds or alleviation of violent conflict in those countries. In this article it is argued that, to identify the potential trajectories of such interventions, we must understand the role state building currently plays in domestic politics, and in particular, the ways in which processes of state transformation affect the development of different and often conflicting power bases within the state. This argument is examined using examples from the Australian-led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands

Summary of USAID's program of grants supporting innovation in approaches to development assistance. Summarizes impact of projects by The College of William & Mary’s AidData Center for Development Policy; University of California-Berkeley’s Development Impact Lab; Duke University’s Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke; Makerere University’s ResilientAfrica Network of universities in Uganda, Ethiopia, Ghana and South Africa; Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Comprehensive Initiative on Technology Evaluation and International Development Innovation Network; Michigan State University’s Global Center for Food Systems Innovation; and Texas A&M University’s Center on Conflict and Development.

This article seeks to understand the demands of the security sector in Latin America, in the context of reforms promoted by international aid agencies in the region. The hypothesis of this study is that international aid programs focused on Security Sector Reform (SSR) in Latin America have been generic, and have overlooked recipient countries' own reform agendas. Latin American perspectives on SSR have been inferred from Organization of American States (OAS) documents. Information on international assistance for SSR programs was gathered from the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) database for the years 2004-2014. The analysis shows that assistance programs are not generic and that the profile of projects, resources allocated and countries targeted differ greatly according to the donor. The study also reveals differences in programs funded by bilateral and multilateral aid agencies in the region, which fits with the findings of previous studies, showing that, in general, programs funded by multilateral agencies are more attentive to local needs than those promoted by bilateral agencies. By contrast, programs funded by bilateral aid are less demand-driven and more guided by donor interests.

This paper examines Japan's ODA to the Philippines from a historical perspective. It traces the evolution of aid institutions and policy framework over time; the disbursement patterns and strategic priorities of Japanese assistance to the Philippines and the evolving and deepening aid relations of the two nations. In doing so, the research highlights the role of initial aid priorities and practices and their persistence over time. Japan's ODA to the Philippines came in four waves which were shaped by critical historical juncture. The case of the Philippines demonstrates that the interests of the donor and Philippine leaders crucially shape the aid priorities and programs.

Выход императивов бюджетной экономии на первый план после глобального финансового и экономического кризиса 2008-2009 гг. и кризиса суверенных долгов в еврозоне обнажил противоречия между интересами национальной безопасности и обеспечения подотчетности перед налогоплательщиками в развитых странах по всему спектру инструментов «жесткой» и «мягкой» силы, включая внешнюю помощь. Несмотря на значительный исследовательский интерес к теме влияния неблагоприятной экономической конъюнктуры на процесс предоставления внешней помощи, в полной мере эти противоречия еще не осознаны. Данная статья призвана заполнить существующую нишу, используя в качестве примера опыт крупнейшего мирового донора - США. В статье обобщен широкий массив новейших исследований, посвященных выявлению специфики американской модели оказания внешней помощи, и на этой основе сформулированы три гипотезы - по одной в отношении каждой партийно-политической конфигурации, которая имела место в США в 2008-2014 гг. Вместо конвенционального подхода, домысливающего мотивы политики донора по характеру распределения объемов помощи между различными странами-реципиентами, в статье мотивация исследуется «на входе» - по распределению средств между различными по целям и задачам статьям, которое зафиксировано в «Обоснованиях бюджета перед Конгрессом». Введение в научный оборот комплекса этих новых данных позволило выявить существенные вариации в формате распределения средств в эпоху бюджетной экономии в зависимости от баланса сил между партиями.

The ‘age of austerity', which followed the global financial and economic crisis of 2008-2009 and the Eurozone crisis, has sharpened the trade-offs between national security interests and concerns about accountability to taxpayers across all dimensions of foreign policy, hard and soft power, including foreign aid. Despite a substantial scholarly interest in ‘aid allocation' and ‘aid effort', an understanding of these trade-offs remains lacking. This paper fills this gap in the literature with the example of the United States. Drawing from previous findings about the role of party control in the U.S. aid policies, this paper posits three hypotheses about foreign aid allocation amid austerity: one for each political setting represented in the US from 2008-2012. Instead of using the conventional recipient country-based approach and OECD data that envisages donor's motivation from geographical aid allocation, this paper studies motivation at the entry point - by extracting statistics from the Congressional Budget Justifications, showing allocation for different purposes, and finds substantial variations in aid allocation decisions under different political settings.

Over the last twenty years, numerous international assistance programmes have aimed to provide support for reconstruction and assist the policy reform process in the Western Balkans. In this context, concerns have arisen that poor government policies and inadequate donor coordination have reduced the effectiveness of such assistance. The paper discusses the sources of policy success and policy failure of such international assistance programmes within a principal-agent framework that models the influence of misaligned objectives, differing incentive structures, asymmetric information and moral hazard facing the different actors in the institutional structure of assistance programmes. In this political economy approach the varying influences on multiple principals and agents are key determinants of the effectiveness of policy. The paper takes a sectoral view in examining assistance programmes in the vocational education sector, where large donor effort has been applied in the Western Balkans over the last decade to modernise and reform the education system. The specific focus is on secondary vocational education in Serbia. The paper identifies causes of policy failure in EU pre-accession assistance in this key policy area.