Lindsay Whitfield
Project Senior Researcher, DIIS
Presentation of The Politics of Aid
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Why aid has had a limited impact
1. Some policy advice and conditions have
been inadequate, irrelevant or wrong
2. A lot of aid goes to non-productive sectors
3. A lot of aid intended for productive
sectors is used in non-productive ways
4. Aid is a game
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The Politics of Aid: African strategies for
dealing with donors
Introduction Aid and Sovereignty, Lindsay Whitfield and Alastair Fraser
Chapter 1
Negotiating Aid, Lindsay Whitfield and Alastair Fraser
Chapter 2
Aid Recipient Sovereignty in Historical Perspective, Alastair Fraser
Chapter 3
Understanding Contemporary Aid Relationships, Alastair Fraser and Lindsay Whitfield
Chapter 4
Botswana:The African Success Story, Gervase Maipose
Chapter 5
Ethiopia: Retaining Sovereignty in the Face of Aid, Xavier Furtado and Jim Smith
Chapter 6
Rwanda: Milking the Cow? Creating Policy Space in Spite of Aid Dependence,
Rachel Hayman
Chapter 7
Ghana: Breaking out of Aid Dependence? Economic and Political Barriers to
Ownership, Lindsay Whitfield and Emily Jones
Chapter 8
Mali: Origins, Patterns and Limits of Donor-driven Ownership, Isaline Bergamaschi
Chapter 9
Mozambique: Contested Sovereignty? The Dilemmas of Aid Dependence,
Paolo de Renzio and Joe Hanlon
Chapter 10
Tanzania: A Genuine Case of Recipient Leadership in the Aid System?,
Graham Harrison and Sarah Mulley with Duncan Holtom
Chapter 11
Zambia: Back to the Future?, Alastair Fraser
Chapter 12
Aid and Power: A Comparative Analysis of the Country Studies, Lindsay Whitfield
Conclusion
Changing Conditions?, Lindsay Whitfield
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In defence of sovereignty
‘“Paternalism is the greatest despotism imaginable.” This is
so because it is to treat men as if they were not free, but
human material for me, the benevolent reformer, to
mould in accordance with my own, not their, freely
adopted purpose.’
Isaiah Berlin, Two Concepts of Liberty (1958), Oxford: Clarendon Press, p.22, quoting Immanuel Kant
In fact, of course, not every independent state is free, but the
recognition of sovereignty is the only way we have of
establishing an arena within which freedom can be fought
for and (sometimes) won. It is the arena and the activities
that go on within it that we want to protect, and we
protect them, much as we protect individual integrity, by
marking out boundaries that cannot be crossed, rights
that cannot be violated. As with individuals, so with
sovereign states: there are things that we cannot do to
them, even for their own ostensible good.
J.S. Mill, paraphrased in Walzer (1977: 89)
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Simplified model of an aid negotiation
Recipient Negotiating
Capital
Derived from
economic, political,
ideological & institutional
prior conditions
Recipient
Negotiating
Strategies
Derived from
perceptions of
relative negotiating
capital and policy
preferences
Donor
Negotiating
Strategies
Derived from
perceptions of
relative negotiating
capital and policy
preferences
Donor Negotiating
Capital
Derived from
economic, political,
ideological & institutional
prior conditions
Aid Agreements
Priorities, terms and
conditions of transfer
Implementation Phase
Outcomes
Relative degrees of
donor and recipient
control over
implemented policy
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Conclusions of the country studies:
Assessing the degree of control
Spectrum of Government Control in the Country Studies
Strongest
Botswana
Weakest
Ethiopia
Rwanda
Ghana, Zambia,
Mali, Tanzania,
Mozambique
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Aid dependence of case countries
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Explaining the degree of control
Debt & Balance of payments
crises in early 1980s
Different economic
conditions
Rwanda &
Weak group
Different
ideological,
political, &
institutional
conditions
Mozambique,
Tanzania, Ghana,
Mali, & Zambia
Botswana &
Ethiopia
Strong national development
vision
Strong bureaucracy
Centralized aid management
Rwanda
State of permanent negotiation
Geo-strategic importance
Institutional entanglement
Moral high ground
Politics of aid dependence
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Perverse outcomes of aid reforms
 Instead of decreasing the bureaucratic
burden of aid management for recipient
governments, increasing it.
 Instead of strengthening and using recipient
government systems, intensifying institutional
entanglement.
 Instead of increasing ownership, expanding
donor participation and creating norms that
legitimize it.
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