Developmentality, Corruption and Cultural Ignorance Why is it difficult for aid agencies (donors, NGOs etc) to achieve meaningful "partnerships" and "participation" within aid practices? In your answer, consider credible ways in which aid programmes can address these challenges. Samantha Harper This essay will identify some of the core issues in current and past development aid efforts, and seek to explain why these approaches and/or factors have led to difficulties in aid agencies achieving meaningful partnerships and participation. While the list of potential reasons for these difficulties is extensive and often community specific, this essay will narrow the scope to three overarching impediments. These are the inherently asymmetrical relationship between donors and recipients as a result of developmentality; the prominence of corruption in aid recipient communities; and an ignorance towards broader socio-political contexts within local cultures. Developmentality Historical development aid practices have often followed a colonial-esque, one-size-fits-all style approach to aid programmes. Driven by modernisation theory, past frameworks have often assumed developing countries would (and should) follow the same, linear path towards development as the West has (Mosse 2013). Such frameworks have been riddled with culturally insensitive Western assumptions about what is best, and constrictive donor-driven conditionalities which leave recipients totally removed from the planning and implementation process of their own community’s development. This, time and time again, has led to fraught relationships between donors and recipients of aid as intentions and understandings of project outcomes differ. In the last couple of decades, a new architecture of aid has seen a transition from top-down conditionality to bottom-up developmentality (Lie 2015) in an attempt to rebalance the inherently asymmetrical relationship between donors and recipients. This more recent approach, developmentality, explains the notion of the careful framing of partnerships in a way that aims to “make the donor’s discourse and policy those of the recipient, in order to enable its self-governance” (Lie 2015, p. 735). This perspective, inspired by Michael Foucault’s work on governmentality (Mosse 2013), leads to donors maintaining power through a more indirect form of governance. Under these subtle frameworks donors are able to govern at a distance while aid recipients regain responsibility over the delivery of their own development programs, but crucially are granted permission to do so on specific terms set out by donors. The shift to developmentality has successfully made way for more inclusive, participatory development practices, however difficulties in donor/recipient relationships have ensured. The success of a developmentality approach relies on aid recipients internalising the donor’s way of thinking so much so that a political environment is created which is conducive to the donor policies (Lie 2015). However, with developmentality essentially being a “tacit form of governance within the aid sector” (Lie 2015, p. 735), if recipients have conflicting policy outlooks significant tensions in partnerships may arise. In a case study from Uganda in 2006, Lie (2015) explains how she observed friction in the partnership between the Ugandan government and the World Bank. Uganda had been selected as a pilot country for the roll out of the World Bank’s Poverty Reduction and Strategy Paper (PRSP) model in 1999. In order to secure this partnership and much needed donor funding, the Ugandan government had needed to adopt the World Bank’s adjustment package of liberalisation and privatisation (Lie 2015). This was a clear example of developmentality at play, especially considering Uganda was not politically inclined this way at the time. While the initial stages of the process were smooth, the partnership became tense over time as the World Bank’s extensive procedures and policies did come to conflict with the Ugandan government’s own strategy and intentions. As the project and the release of funds came to a stand still, a thorough process of evaluation ensued comprising of firm requirements around good governance, compulsory prior actions and concerns over questionable public administration expenditure. The World Bank became concerned over government malpractice and a mismanaged political transition and, as a result, eventually cut funding by a tenth which caused the Ugandan government to cut the activities they had planned as part of the national strategy (Lie 2015). This example demonstrates one of the difficulties which can arise as a result of the developmentality approach. Within this framework it can be difficult to achieve meaningful partnerships and participation with recipients who share differing socio-political perspectives and intentions of aid programmes. This struggle also draws attention to the importance of maintaining some level of conditionality within aid programmes in order to minimise the likelihood of corruption so that donors' money is not used to fuel the very issues it set out to fix. Corruption A common criticism of participatory development aid is that donors end up working with elites. The World Bank became increasingly aware of this general trend in the early 90’s (Breidenbach & Nyiri 2009) and in an attempt to minimise further corruption introduced compulsory ‘social assessments’ within their loan projects. Later, they furthered this with the formation of the Partnership for Sustainable Global Growth which demanded “institutional reforms beyond the economic realm”, good governance, and a drive for “transparency and accountability of government and civic participation” (Breidenbach & Nyiri 2009, p. 95). This trend of corruption often occurs as a result of leaders wanting to maintain their positions of power or, similarly, wealthy government or community members wanting to influence development in a direction that will continue to benefit them individually. Many minority groups are subsequently left out of participatory development due to low literacy rates or culturally enforced gendered roles (Mosse 2005). Consequently, aid agencies have difficulties achieving meaningful relationships within these complex power dynamics and amidst varying levels of subtle or overt corruption in recipient communities. An example of such difficulties occurred during a Participatory Rural Appraisal project in Vanpur village in West India in 1992. Six months after the tadvi (village leader) had originally welcomed the project into his village, he promptly retracted his support after realising it would threaten his lucrative moneylending and land mortgaging business (Mosse 2005). In doing so, he also forced the withdrawal of his dependents from the project and forbade his son from signing on to the new bank account (Mosse 2005). Thankfully the project’s Community Organisers were able to bypass the obstructive leader through collaboration with other influential community members, however, such examples illustrate the struggle agencies are faced with as they seek out meaningful partnerships and participation. It becomes hard to identify which recipient members are involved for genuine reasons and who are involved for lucrative personal gain. As a result, aid agencies have to be intuitive and thorough in their ethnography of broader socio-political contexts. Cultural Ignorance Ignorance towards socio-political elements in aid recipient countries and/or communities is another key contributor to difficulties in the achievement of meaningful partnerships and participation. In 2005, the German development agency and the Goethe Institute argued in their Culture and Development project that experience had shown a “lack of knowledge and comprehension of foreign cultures and values is one of the main reasons why projects and programmes fail” (Breidenbach & Nyiri 2009, p. 96). In a similar vein to critiques of colonial-esque approaches to development through the lense of modernisation theory, aid agencies sometimes engage in projects before gaining a deep understanding of how their aid practices will fit into the broader cultural framework of that specific community. This can include gender dynamics, lasting ancient traditions, complex kinship relationships, and unique social norms. Rather than assuming some cultures are simply not conducive to development (Huntington via Breidenbach & Nyiri 2009), more weight should be placed on developing a greater sense of cultural relativism. That is, the ability to understand a culture on its own terms rather than through the perspective of your own culture and it’s standards. A prime example where ignorance towards local structures of ownership and kinship led to the failure of an international aid effort can be observed in a case study from southern Sudan (Breidenbach & Nyiri 2009). In this scenario from 1998, aid providers Operation Lifeline Sudan lacked a crucial understanding of local redistribution channels within the Dinka community during their assistance in the severe famine at the time. The context the aid providers missed was that local people viewed aid as belonging to the same category as grazing land, and therefore expected it to be distributed equally under all circumstances. This noton went directly against predetermined aims of the project to provide food for the most vulnerable community members first. However this cultural understanding was so strong that many recipients secretly returned their rations to chief leaders to redistribute. This subsequently led to tense allegations over withholding aid between aid workers, chiefs and local authorities. This example reiterates the deterioration in partnerships and participation that can come from a lack of cultural understanding. Conclusion The creation of authentic partnerships and participation continues to be a struggle for many aid agencies as they seek to meaningfully connect with aid recipients. This essay has discussed the notion of developmentality, corruption and cultural ignorance as some of the overarching impediments to achieving these meaningful connections. While development aid is an inherently complex field, much can be done to alleviate some of the difficulties which arise out of these issues. This includes, continuing to prioritise bottom-up, participatory development within reasonable frameworks under a developmentality approach. Resisting corruption through extensive kinship ethnography and utilising involvement of community allies in aid practices. And lastly, valuing and respecting local cultural traditions in order to gain a deeper understanding of cultural context. References Lie, Jon Harald Sande 2015, ‘Developmentality: Indirect Governance in the World Bank–Uganda Partnership’, Third World Quarterly 36 (4): pp. 723–40. Mosse, David 2005, ‘The Goddess and the PRA: Local Knowledge and Planning’, Cultivating Development: An Ethnography of Aid Policy and Practice, no. August: pp. 75–102. Mosse, David 2013, ‘The Anthropology of International Development’, Annual Review of Anthropology 42 (1): pp. 227–46. Nyíri, P & Breidenbach, J 2009, Chapter 2: Culture. In: ‘Seeing Culture Everywhere, from Genocide to Consumer Habits’, Seattle: University of Washington Press, pp. 84–121.
