THEORIES AND PRACTICES OF DEVELOPMENT M

MULUNGUSHI UNIVERSITY
INSTITUTE OF DISTANCE EDUCATION

COURSE: THEORIES AND PRACTICES OF
DEVELOPMENT

COURSE CODE: SSS 211

First Publication: August, 2012

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

MULUNGUSHI UNIVERSITY
INSTITUTE OF DISTANCE EDUCATION
P.O. BOX 80415
KABWE

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All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the author.

Mulungushi University
Institute of Distance Education
Great North Road Campus
P.O. Box 80415
KABWE
ZAMBIA
Fax: [phone]/223750
E-mail: [Add e-mail address]
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THEORIES AND PRACTICES OF DEVELOPMENT

Author: Francis Lungo [e-mail] GENERAL INTRODUCTION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Institute of Distance Education, School of Social Sciences wishes to thank the following individuals for their contributions, comments and editing of the Modules:

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GENERAL INTRODUCTION

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INSTITUTE OF DISTANCE EDUCATION
P.O. BOX 80415
KABWE

CONTENTS
GENERAL INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................... 6
Unit 1: BASIC CONCEPTS IN THEORIES AND PRACTICES OF DEVELOPMENT .............................................. 10
1.0 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 10
2.0 Objectives.............................................................................................................................................. 11
3.0 Main Content ........................................................................................................................................ 11
3.1 What Development is ....................................................................................................................... 11
3.2 Colonialism ........................................................................................................................................ 14
3.3 North–South Divide .......................................................................................................................... 17
3.3.1 Problems with Defining the Divide ............................................................................................ 18
3.3.2 Defining Development using the North-South Orientation ....................................................... 18
3.3.3 Development Gap ...................................................................................................................... 19
3.3.4 Theories Explaining the Divide ................................................................................................... 19
3.3.5 Closing the Divide....................................................................................................................... 19
3.4 Modernisation requires Internal Changes ........................................................................................ 20
3.5 Impact of Colonialism ....................................................................................................................... 22
3.6 Budget Support ................................................................................................................................. 22
3.6.1 Rationale for Budget Support .................................................................................................... 23
3.6.2 Risks ........................................................................................................................................... 23
4.0 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 24
5.0 Summary ............................................................................................................................................... 24
6.0 References ............................................................................................................................................ 25
Unit 2 THEORIES OF UNDER-DEVELOPMENT AND DEVELOPMENT ............................................................ 26
1.0 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 26
2.0 Objectives.............................................................................................................................................. 27
3.0 Main Content ........................................................................................................................................ 27
3.1 Modernisation Theories (Backwardness Theories)........................................................................... 27
3.1.1 Dualism Theories........................................................................................................................ 29
3.1.2 Strategy Theories ....................................................................................................................... 30
3.2 Social-Psychological Theories ........................................................................................................... 33
3.2.1 Sociological Explanation of Socioeconomic Change .................................................................. 33
3.2.2 Theory of Social Change (Hagen 1962) ...................................................................................... 34
3.3 Dependence Theories ....................................................................................................................... 34
3.3.1 External Trade Theories ............................................................................................................. 35
3.3.2 Imperialism Theory .................................................................................................................... 35
3.3.3 Dependencia Theories ............................................................................................................... 36
4.0 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 37
5.0 Summary ............................................................................................................................................... 39
6.0 References ............................................................................................................................................ 39
Unit 3 PRACTICES OF DEVELOPMENT ......................................................................................................... 42 iv Prepared for, and on behalf of
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Author: Francis Lungo [e-mail] GENERAL INTRODUCTION

1.0 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 42
2.0 Objectives.............................................................................................................................................. 42
3.0 Main Content ........................................................................................................................................ 42
3.1 The Problem ...................................................................................................................................... 42
3.2 Sustainable Development ................................................................................................................. 47
3.3 Successes and Disappointments ....................................................................................................... 49
3.4 Interconnected We Prosper .............................................................................................................. 50
3.5 Foreign Aid ........................................................................................................................................ 51
4.0 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 53
5.0 Summary ............................................................................................................................................... 53
6.0 References ............................................................................................................................................ 53
Unit 4 ETHICS OF DEVELOPMENT ............................................................................................................... 58
1.0 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 58
2.0 Objectives.............................................................................................................................................. 58
3.0 Main Content ........................................................................................................................................ 58
3.1 Sources of Ethics of Development .................................................................................................... 58
3.2 Areas of Agreements-Questions ....................................................................................................... 61
3.3 Areas of Agreements-Answers.......................................................................................................... 63
3.4 Disagreements .................................................................................................................................. 67
4.0 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 74
5.0 Summary ............................................................................................................................................... 74
6.0 References ............................................................................................................................................ 74
Unit 5 PRACTICES OF DEVELOPMENT ......................................................................................................... 78
1.0 Introduction .......................................................................................................................................... 78
2.0 Objectives.............................................................................................................................................. 79
3.0 Main Content ........................................................................................................................................ 79
3.1 The New Security Imperatives and the Risks to Foreign Aid ............................................................ 79
3.2 The United States .............................................................................................................................. 82
3.3 Japan ................................................................................................................................................. 85
3.4 The United Kingdom ......................................................................................................................... 87
3.5 The EU ............................................................................................................................................... 89
4.0 Conclusions ....................................................................................................................................... 91
5.0 Summary ........................................................................................................................................... 93
6.0 References ............................................................................................................................................ 93

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GENERAL INTRODUCTION

MULUNGUSHI UNIVERSITY
INSTITUTE OF DISTANCE EDUCATION
P.O. BOX 80415
KABWE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION
This course introduces students to the historical and theoretical contexts of contemporary development issues and to approaches, strategies, and ethical principles that drive development efforts today. Both economic and non-economic methods of measuring development are introduced with an emphasis on the latter and how the shift towards a broader conceptual framework for understanding development has shaped the Human Development Index and the
Millennium Development Goals.
Each unit contains a number of self-tests. In general, these self-tests question you on the materials you have just covered or require you to apply it in some ways and, thereby, help you to gauge your progress and to reinforce your understanding of the material. These exercises will assist you in achieving the stated learning objectives of the individual units and of the course.
Upon completion of SSS 211, students should be able to:
i.
ii. iii. iv.

Explain the historical roots of development from the Industrial Revolution to today;
Explain different theories that have driven development efforts, especially during the last
60-70 years;
Apply ethical principles in their analysis of development strategies and explain their role in measuring development; and
Explain the Human Development Index and the Millennium Development Goals

As an adult learner your approach to learning will be different to that from your school days: you will choose what you want to study, you will have professional and/or personal motivation for doing so and you will most likely be fitting your study activities around other professional or domestic responsibilities.
Essentially you will be taking control of your learning environment. As a consequence, you will need to consider performance issues related to time management, goal setting, stress management, etc. Perhaps you will also need to reacquaint yourself in areas such as essay planning, coping with exams and using the web as a learning resource.
Your most significant considerations will be time and space i.e. the time you dedicate to your learning and the environment in which you engage in that learning.
We recommend that you take time now—before starting your self-study—to familiarize yourself with these issues. There are a number of excellent resources on the web. A few suggested links are:

http://www.how-to-study.com/
The ―How to study‖ web site is dedicated to study skills resources. You will find links to study preparation (a list of nine essentials for a good study place), taking notes, strategies for reading text books, using reference sources, test anxiety.
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Author: Francis Lungo [e-mail] GENERAL INTRODUCTION

http://www.ucc.vt.edu/stdysk/stdyhlp.html
This is the web site of the Virginia Tech, Division of Student Affairs. You will find links to time scheduling (including a ―where does time go?‖ link), a study skill checklist, basic concentration techniques, control of the study environment, note taking, how to read essays for analysis, memory skills
(―remembering‖).
http://www.howtostudy.org/resources.php
Another ―How to study‖ web site with useful links to time management, efficient reading, questioning/listening/observing skills, getting the most out of doing (―hands-on‖ learning), memory building, tips for staying motivated, developing a learning plan.
The above links are our suggestions to start you on your way. At the time of writing these web links were active. If you want to look for more go to www.google.com and type ―self-study basics‖, ―self-study tips‖, ―self-study skills‖ or similar.
You should know that assignments are pre-requisites for examinations. This means that if you do not do your assignments or if you do not do well in your continuous assessment you will not be allowed to write any examinations in those courses. Remember to adhere to all given deadlines.

Course Marking Scheme The following table lays out how the actual course marking is broken down: Assessment Marks
 1 Assignment giving you 10 marks;
 2 tests giving you 15 marks each (Total 30 marks). Therefore your Continuous
Assessment is equal to 40% of course marks
 Final examination 60% of overall course marks
 Total 100% of course marks
How to Get the Most from this Course
In distance learning, the study units replace the university lecture. This is one of the great advantages of distance learning; you can read and work through specially designed study materials at your own pace, and at a time and place that suit you best. Think of it as reading the lecture instead of listening to a lecturer. In the same way that a lecturer might set you some reading to do, the study units tell you when to read, your text materials or set books. You are provided exercises to do at appropriate points, just as a lecturer might give you an in-class exercise. Each of the study units follows a common format. The first item is an introduction to the subject matter of the unit and how a particular unit is integrated with the other units and the course as a whole. Next to this is a set of learning objectives. These objectives let you know what you should be able to do by the time you have completed the unit. These learning objectives are meant to guide your study. The moment a unit is finished, you must go back and check whether
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P.O. BOX 80415
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you have achieved the objectives. If this is made a habit, then you will significantly improve your chances of passing the course.
The main body of the unit guides you through the required reading from other sources. This will usually be either from your set books or from a Reading Section.
The following is a practical strategy for working through the course. If you run into any trouble, telephone your tutor or post the question on the Course Coordinator or lecturer‗s email address that will be provided. Remember that your Course Coordinator‗s job is to help you. When you need help, don‗t hesitate to call and ask your tutor to provide it.
Read this Course Guide thoroughly:
i.

ii.

iii. iv. v.

vi. vii. viii.

Organize a Study Schedule. Refer to the Course Overview for more details. Note the time you are expected to spend on each unit and how the assignments relate to the units.
Important information, e.g. details of your tutorials, and the date of the first day of the
Semester is available from Institute of Distance Education. You need to gather together all this information in one place, such as your diary or a wall calendar. Whatever method you choose to use, you should decide on and write in your own dates for each unit.
Once you have created your own study schedule, do everything you can to stick to it.
The major reason that students fail is that they get behind with their course work. If you get into difficulties with your schedule, please let your tutor know before it is too late for help. Turn to Unit 1 and read the introduction and the objectives for the unit.
Assemble the study materials. Information about what you need for a unit is given in the
‗overview‘ at the beginning of each unit. You will almost always need both the study unit you are working on and one of your set books on your desk at the same time.
Work through the unit. The content of the unit itself has been arranged to provide a sequence for you to follow. As you work through the unit you will be instructed to read from your set books.
Keep an eye on your emails. Up-to-date course information will be continuously posted there. Keep in mind that you will learn a lot by doing the assignment carefully. They have been designed to help you meet the objectives of the course and, therefore, will help you pass the examination. Submit all assignments not later than the due date.
Review the objectives for each study unit to confirm that you have achieved them. If you feel unsure about any of the objectives, review the study materials or consult your tutor.

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ix.

x.

xi.

xii.

When you are confident that you have achieved a unit 's objectives, you can then start on the next unit. Proceed unit by unit through the course and try to pace your study so that you keep yourself on schedule.
When you have submitted an assignment to your tutor for marking, do not wait for its return before ' starting on the next unit. Keep to your schedule. When the assignment is returned, pay particular attention to your tutor 's comments. Consult your tutor as soon as possible if you have any questions or problems.
After completing the last unit, review the course and prepare yourself for the final examination. Check that you have achieved the unit objectives (listed at the beginning of each unit) and the course objectives (listed in this Course Guide).
Do not hesitate to contact your tutor by telephone, e-mail, or discussion board. If you need help the following might be circumstances in which you would find help necessary.
Contact your tutor if:
a. You do not understand any part of the study units or the assigned readings.
b. You have difficulty within the exercises.
c. You have a question or problem with an assignment, with your tutor 's comments on an assignment or with the grading of an assignment.

xiii.

xiv.

You should try your best to attend the residential school. This is the only chance to have face to face contact with your tutor and ask questions which are answered instantly. You can raise any problem encountered in the course of your study. To gain the maximum benefit from course tutorials, prepare a question list before attending them. You will learn a lot from participating in discussion actively.
Use the time between finishing the last unit and sitting the examination to revise the entire course. You might find it useful to review your self-assessment questions, assignments and comment on them before the examination. The final examination covers information from all parts of the course.

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GENERAL INTRODUCTION

MULUNGUSHI UNIVERSITY
INSTITUTE OF DISTANCE EDUCATION
P.O. BOX 80415
KABWE

Unit 1: BASIC CONCEPTS IN THEORIES AND PRACTICES OF DEVELOPMENT
1.0 Introduction
2.0 Objectives
3.0 Main Content
3.1 What Development is
3.2 Colonialism
3.3 North–South Divide
3.3.1 Problems with Defining the Divide
3.3.2 Defining Development using the North-South Orientation
3.3.3 Development Gap
3.3.4 Theories Explaining the Divide
3.3.5 Closing the Divide
3.4 Modernisation requires Internal Changes
3.5 Impact of Colonialism
3.6 Budget Support
3.6.1 Rationale for Budget Support
3.6.2 Risks
4.0 Conclusion
5.0 Summary
6.0 References
1.0 Introduction
Development is a word which is totally a power related term. There are so many questions which need to be answered as we discuss what development is. For example, ―Who defines development? Is it me? Is it my parents? Is it a person who earns K500, 000 per month? Is it a person who earns K20m per month?‖
Again, ―Who says that you are developed or not developed? Was Shaka not developed because he used to wear only a loin cloth? Is a Muslim woman wearing a veil not developed? Is a mother who controls the whole family and work in home providing unpaid labour not developed?
Fascinating enough, ―Who have given United States of America the right to define development?
Is our own culture, religion and religious practices not developed especially before the propagation of Christianity? Is a person who does not speak English, underdeveloped? Is a person who does not speak our local language developed?
It is our considered view that ‗development‘ is a term which is used by powerful people who have resources and try to dominate the world by showing their superiority.

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2.0 Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
i.
ii.

Define the concepts related to Theories and Practices of Development
Apply the concepts to our day to day life as we confront the issues affecting our development. 3.0 Main Content
3.1 What Development is
Development is hard to define, but as close as we can get is that ‗it is the act or process of expansion and growth‘. For example in a country, development is classified as growth of the economy, growth of the people and the people‘s quality of life.
Development has been defined differently by various scholars depending in the context the term is used. It has been defined to refer to transforming of the people‘s ways of living/doing things for the better (Advanced Oxford Learners Dictionary, 2006). Development involves changing people‘s attitudes positively. It is also defined as a specified state of growth/advancement. In this context, development means positive transformation/ change of the people‘s ways of living, attitudes, behaviours among others as a result of their accessing relevant, adequate and timely information services courtesy of the prevailing digital age.
Let us look at concepts which will be used in this unit:
a. Underdevelopment in a certain nation or a country is always attributed by a variety of factors. Some of the factors are as follows:
i.

ii.

Illiteracy as a factor for underdevelopment according to modernisation theory implies that in a certain nation/region it can be realized that the region has low rates individuals who can read and write, this means that with low level for education in the countries underdevelopment looms. High level of illiteracy thus accounts for a country to be termed as underdeveloped.
The use of traditional methods of farming and production of food for subsistence use is a factor for underdevelopment. This is because a country is not in a position to export any cash crop in order to get foreign change in return for exports in their own country, unlike usage of sophisticated technologies where farming is done for export a country is able to gain and get foreign exchange and the foreign change can be used for other development in some other sector to boost the countries‘ economy.
In underdevelopment country the use of plough and animals drops the economy whereas modern machines for farming can enable good production of food and cash crops for country consumption and exports hence development.
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iii.

Communication as a factor for underdevelopment entails several forms of information exchange between two or more computers through any of the several methods of interconnection, principally the internet. These technologies provide speedy, inexpensive and convenient means of communication. If a country lacks proper ways of communication, the more likelihood of a country being underdeveloped. This is because communication is very vital in any setting — be it in a family, institution and also a country for it to be termed as developed. Several revolutions or advances have taken place over the past 100 years in several sectors such as transport, communication, electrification and medicine and this is due to growth in technology.

And again, developing infrastructure is expensive and requires heavy funding, which cannot be borne by individuals in rural communities. The problem relates not only to the cost themselves but also to financial sustainability of the infrastructures. If a country lacks experts in special cases therefore, the local or national government must be involved in the construction of the projects with a notion that IT should be universal services to all inhabitants of the country. In developed countries, individuals are well connected to the internet via various communications links but in developing countries, individuals might not be connected due to several reasons. These include absence of adequate communication network infrastructure, relatively high cost of equipment that could not be afforded by the large low-income position of population and lack of government interest and support. Lack of these leads to underdevelopment in a country.
One of the basic laws underlying all stages of development is the law of saving time. Each successive economic system is characterized by the fact that society, through the expansion of its industrial capacity, produces more and more consumer‘s values, while employing the same or a smaller amount of man power. Here, low division of labour by not having professionals of many fields to supplement each other for the final object of producing consumer and industrial goods can contribute to underdevelopment in a country. Thus the division of labour has two aspects specialization and cooperation. Those, in their turn, act as a stimulus to technological progress; promote the development of the industrial hence a country‘s development. In the case of manufacture, itself based on the division of labour, we find industrials cooperation in the form of exchanges. Relations between individuals in industry thus take the form of market relations. Accordingly, there exists a definite correlationship between extended divisions of labour and market expansion and likewise between market and expansion and increased production hence development in a nation or a region. b. Economic growth refers to the increase in an economy and also the quantity of goods and services produced. This entails the social and technological progress which can imply
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c.

d.

e.

f.

g.

a change in the way of goods and services are produced, not merely an increase in production obtained using the old methods of production on a wider scale.
Industrialisation is defined as the transition to an economy based on the large scale machine-assisted production of good by a concentrated and thus marginalization of human welfare concern whereby they maximize on man power for them to get quantities.
People‘s Equal Rights should be treated with respect and dignity as representative values. For example if you value equal rights for all and you go to work for an organization that treats its managers much better than it does its workers, you may form the attitude that the company is an unfair place to work, consequently you may not produce well hence leaving the company.
People‘s Customs and Traditions: This entails people‘s way of life and values here exist in relation to cultural values either in agreement with or divergent from prevailing norms. Beliefs in a Supernatural Being: This is a life aspect that reflects cultural values and behavior. This is indicated by the fact that, individuals , or groups and society at large puts their belief in a supernatural being by showing a lot of respect to themselves and others regardless of the religious background.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is mainly concerned with the region in which income is generated and focuses on where the outputs are produced rather than who produced it whereas the Gross National Product (GNP) does not necessarily focus on the region where an output was produced or where the firms for the produced items are located.
In contrast, both Gross Domestic Product and Gross National Product pertain to the measures of the value of the outputs produced by the ―Nationals‖ of a region.

h. Exhaustible resources are the resources which when used cannot be brought into use again, for example, minerals that can only be replenished over geologic time whereas renewable resources are the ones which can be brought into use after usage. They include forests, fisheries and wildlife.
Indeed, ―development‖ is a difficult socio-spatial dynamic process to conceptualise (similar to the problem of trying to define evolution), and implementation involves more than just overcoming technical problems. Reinvention of the definition of development is needed because many (mostly Western) ideas about development have alienated many in the developing or lesser developed countries (LDC). There is a long history of Third World resentment toward Western developmentalism chronicled by the likes of Sachs (1992), Escobar (1994), and Rahnema and
Bawtree (1997).
Escobar (1994) explains the resentment best. Pre-1940 colonial thinking was that economic development was pointless because the ―native‖ capacity for science and technology (the basis
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for economic development) was nil. The best that could be hoped for was some enlightenment by being around the coloniser (the white man). Over time (around 1950), colonial concern began to center around various ―social interventions‖ (or philanthropic work) aimed at improving native habits of association, hygiene, morality, and child-rearing. Soon (around 1960), the social problems of LDC became objects of public management, by commissions and advisors (lots of them), all determined to root out the true causes scientifically and anxiously in accordance with the implementation of comprehensive social planning. When such planning failed (as it often did), the commissions and advisors would simply report ―if only the people were more committed to helping themselves.‖ Failure was caused, not in small part, by the resentment of people toward the West‘s messianic quest for salvation and desire to make LDC a ―shining example‖ of how more civilized people could bring progress toward the uncivilized. Easterly
(2006) echoes this by criticizing Western developmentalism for being driven by The White
Man‘s Burden — a kind of utopian, social engineering where Western planners think they know all the answers. Easterly (2002) also chronicles the rise and fall of various ―fads‖ in development policies.
3.2 Colonialism
This is a relationship between an indigenous (or forcibly imported) majority and a minority of foreign invaders. The fundamental decisions affecting the lives of the colonized people are made and implemented by the colonial rulers in pursuit of interests that are often defined in a distant metropolis. Rejecting cultural compromises with the colonised population, the colonizers are convinced of their own superiority and their ordained mandate to rule.
More than three decades after most African nations became independent; there is no consensus on the legacy of colonialism. With most African countries still only tottering on their feet and many close to collapse, some people ask whether the problem is due to Africa‘s colonial experience or inherent adequacies of the African. For apologists of colonialism, the answer is simple. Whatever may have been the shortcomings of colonial rule, the overall effect was positive for Africa. Sure, the colonial powers exploited Africa‘s natural resources but on the balance, colonialism reduced the economic gap between Africa and the West, the apologists argue. Colonialism laid the seeds of the intellectual and material development in Africans. It brought enlightenment where there was ignorance. It suppressed slavery and other barbaric practices such as pagan worship and cannibalism.
Formal education and modern medicine were brought to people who had limited understanding or control of their environment. The introduction of modern communications, exportable agricultural crops and some new industries provided a foundation for economic development.
Africans received new and more efficient forms of political and economic organisation.
Those who argue for colonialism further advance the following as its benefits:
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a. Integration into Global Market
The prime legacy of colonialism was the integration of colonies into the international capitalist economy. The main force keeping economies in the global system and sustaining imperialism is the market itself. For people with the means to pay the market is a very seductive place, offering everything and anything. It enables African elites to consume products of western civilisation without having to go through the difficult and long-term process of building the productive base of their societies. It is far easier to shop in the global market than try to build industries yourself.
When considering the economic conditions of the people in the world, it is useful to think of them as belonging to different layers in the global pyramid. At the bottom are the absolute poor, the majority of humanity who are too impoverished to participate fully in the economic, cultural and political life of their society. At the apex of the pyramid is a tiny minority of super-rich. In between are layers of people of varying degrees of wealth and access to local markets and the global economy. The richest fifth of the world‘s population consumes more than eighty per cent of global wealth. Most Africans are in the bottom fifth, consuming less than 1.5 per cent of global wealth. There are a few African elites among the top fifth and many more are scrambling to get there. The wealth pyramid is a better way of considering income distribution than seeing it strictly in national terms. For instance, to say that Nigeria is poor because its GDP per capita income is less than $399 per annum says nothing about the affluence of the country‘s rich minority that feed off its resources to maintain its position high on the global pyramid. Africa‘s poor gained little or nothing from colonialism but its elites bloomed as a result of it. They were given a ladder to climb the global pyramid. African millionaires, who today live on the upper layers of the pyramid with bank accounts in western capitals, certainly owe their fortune to colonialism. Without opportunities created by the linking of Africa to the western world, it is unlikely that indigenous ruling classes would have catapulted themselves from pre-capitalist levels of wealth to modern bourgeoisie affluence. So the answer to the often posed question, ‗did
Africans benefit from colonialism‘ is the elites definitely gained while the poor majority did not.
Having tasted life as consumers in the international market, African elites became ardent believers in the global economy. Imperial powers no longer needed to administer their colonies, at least nit for reasons of economics.
Local ruling classes would out of their own volition keep their nations in the market and direct the bulk of their national resources and capital to the west.
The strength of the global market is its attractiveness to classes of men and women who have the wealth to participate in it. For the wealthy, the market offers the means to realize all material dreams. For those who aspire to become rich, it is the ―open sesame‖. The market is an alluring, even corrupting force that requires strong ideological or moral commitment to resist. It was its appeal that eventually subverted socialist regimes in the former Eastern Bloc and is now
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transforming China. Much of the trouble in Africa today stems from a scramble to climb the global pyramid.
b. The Idea of Progress
The most subversive act of colonialism was to introduce into the minds of Africans and peoples of other pre-capitalist societies the idea that material progress and prosperity were possible for the masses of people.
Ordinary people in pre-colonial times assumed that their material conditions were fixed. A good harvest may provide a few more yams to eat but the idea that living conditions could be fundamentally altered was alien. The prospect that rather than trek miles to fetch water, running water could be piped into homes was unknown. With colonialism came the idea of progress — that humanity is capable of improving its existence-today can be better than yesterday and tomorrow better than today. After or even before people‘s basic needs are met, there is an endless world of consumer products and services for self-satisfaction. Africans learnt that they live in a world that offers a variety of experiences that were beyond their wildest dreams. Like people elsewhere in the world, they want what the West has.
More than anything else, it has been people‘s desire for material improvement and wealth that has given western civilisation its overwhelming strength. Its main power has not come from its armies or colonial administrators or even its multi-national corporation bosses. It is the simple fact that most people in the world believe in material progress and desire of most of the things the West has to offer. Coca Cola sells in 200 countries and the brand is recognised by the majority of humanity not because it was physically forced upon the world but because through power of advertising people have taken the drink as a symbol of progress and modernisation and of course many people like sugary elixir.
It was the allure of modernity, with its promise of greater material self-fulfillment that subverted
African societies during colonialism. It was not the handful of European troops sent to conquer and maintain colonial order that was irresistible, but the power of western materialism.
Subjugated Africans may not have liked the arrogance of colonizers, but they wanted the civilisation that the Europeans had to offer.
Virtually every nation in the world, whether colonized or not, has to deal with western hegemony. Antonio Gramsci defined hegemony as an order in which a certain way of life and thought is dominant and one concept of reality prevails throughout society.
The dominant ideology permeates every facet of human existence-taste, morality, customs, religious and political principles. Since the nineteenth century, the West has defined human development and set the pace of change which others have followed. The West has not imposed
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its will on the world by force but by sheer attractiveness of its civilisation and the belief in the desirability of material progress and prosperity. It is able to get people in other nations to desire what it desires and thereby manipulates their aspirations. This is the bedrock of imperialism. It is what enables it to control and use the resources of underdeveloped nations in a manner advantageous to the developed nations and at the expense of the economies of underdeveloped countries. The dilemma facing Africans is how to deal with the overwhelming presence and power of western civilisation. If the desire of Africans for modern facilities — electricity, pipe borne water, cars, modern medicine, television, etc is legitimate, then we should accept the position of
19th Century evolutionists that western civilisation is of higher material order to African civilisation. It is able to meet the new aspirations of Africans which traditional society cannot.
Putting aside for a moment the physical unpleasantness of colonialism, it can be argued that its failing was not to have sufficiently transformed African society and laid foundations for modernisation. It introduced the idea of material progress but did not give people the tools to build the new civilisation that would enable them to realise their new dreams.
Africans came through the colonial experience full for modernity but without the wherewithal to create the coveted civilisation.
Besides the shortage of skills and infrastructure, Africans lacked an appreciation of the total and complex nature of the transformation from simple agrarian society to modern technological civilisation. Having blamed Africa‘s material backwardness on colonialism, independent African thinkers and leaders believed that the removal of external force would automatically result in modern development. There was little understanding that modernisation required radical internal changes. 3.3 North–South Divide
The north–south divide is a socio-economic and political division that exists between the wealthy developed countries, known collectively as ―the North‖ or ―Global North,‖ and the poorer developing countries (least developed countries), known as ―the South‖ or ―Global
South.‖ Although most nations comprising the ―North‖ are in fact located in the Northern
Hemisphere (with the notable exceptions of Australia and New Zealand), the divide is not wholly defined by geography. The North is home to four of the five permanent members of the United
Nations Security Council and all members of the G8. ―The North‖ mostly covers the West and the First World, with much of the Second World. The expression ―north–south divide‖ is still in common use, but the terms ―North‖ and ―South‖ are already somewhat outdated. As nations become economically developed, they may become part of the ―North‖, regardless of
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geographical location, while any other nations which do not qualify for ―developed‖ status are in effect deemed to be part of the ―South.‖
The idea of categorizing countries by their economic and developmental status began during the
Cold War with the classifications of East and West. The Soviet Union and China represented the developing East, and the United States and their allies represented the more developed West. Out of this paradigm of development surged the division of the First World [the west] and the Second
World [the east] with the even less developed countries constituting the Third World. As some
Second World countries joined the First World, and others joined the Third World, a new and simpler classification was needed. The First World became the ―North‖ and the Third World became the ―South‖.

3.3.1 Problems with Defining the Divide
Following the fall of the Soviet Bloc, which was commonly referred to as the Second World, many of its constituent countries were reclassified as developing, despite being geographically northern. At the same time, geographically southern nations previously considered ―developing,‖ such as the East Asian Tigers or Turkey, have joined the modern First World, but are classified inconsistently in maps showing the north–south divide. Similarly, dependencies of developed nations are also classified as Southern, although they are part of the developed world.
On an ideological level, some development geographers have argued that current concentration on the north–south divide as the main organizing principle for understanding the world economy has overlooked the role of inter-imperial conflicts between the United States, Japan, and Europe.

3.3.2 Defining Development using the North-South Orientation
Being categorized as part of the ―North‖ implies development as opposed to belonging to the
―South‖ which implies a lack thereof. The north becomes synonymous with economic development and industrialization while the South represents the previously colonized countries which are in need of help in the form of international aid agendas In order to understand how this divide occurs; a definition of ―development‖ itself is needed.
The Dictionary of Human Geography defines development as ―processes of social change or [a change] to class and state projects to transform national economies‖. This definition entails an understanding of economic development which is imperative when trying to understand the north–south divide.
Economic Development is a measure of progress in a specific economy. It refers to advancements in technology, a transition from an economy based largely on agriculture to one based on industry and an improvement in living standards.
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Other factors that are included in the conceptualization of what a developed country is include life expectancy and the levels of education, poverty and employment in that country.

3.3.3 Development Gap
The north–south divide has more recently been named the development continuum gap. This places greater emphasis on closing the evident gap between rich (more economically developed) and poor (less economically developed) countries. A good measure of on which side of the gap a country is located is the Human Development Index (HDI). The nearer this is to 1.0, the greater is the country‘s level of development and the further the country is on its development pathway
(closer towards being well developed), exemplified well by Walter Rostow‘s model of development (which will be discussed later) and the Clark Fisher model.

3.3.4 Theories Explaining the Divide
i. Capitalism
Capitalism leads to inequality: the capitalist ideology relies on the constant motivation to produce capital accumulation. The nature of capitalism leads those countries with a comparative advantage (developed) to accumulate capital through dispossession or in other words to take capital from those less advantaged (un-developed/developing). This accumulation by dispossession leads to the unequal development that feeds the north–south divide. ii. Globalization
Globalization, or Global Capitalism, as the leading cause for global inequality: globalization enhances social and economic gaps between countries, since it requires economies and societies to adapt in a very rapid manner, and because this almost never happens in an equal fashion, some nations grow faster than others. Rich countries exploit poorer countries to a point where developing countries become dependent on developed countries for survival. The very structure and process of globalization perpetuates and reproduces unequal relationships and opportunities between the North and the South, it tends to ―favor the privileged and further marginalize the already disadvantaged‖. iii. Immigration
Uneven immigration patterns lead to inequality: in the late 18th and 19th Centuries, immigration was very common into areas previously less populated (North America, Argentina, Brazil,
Australia, New Zealand) from already technologically advanced areas (United Kingdom, Spain,
Portugal). This facilitated an uneven diffusion of technological practices since only areas with high immigration levels benefited. Immigration patterns in the twenty-first century continue to feed this uneven distribution of technological innovation. People are eager to leave countries in the South in attempts to better their life standards and get their share in the prosperity of the
North. ―South and Central Americans want to live and work in North America. Africans and
Southwest Asians want to live and work in Europe. Southeast Asians want to live and work in
North America and Europe‖.

3.3.5 Closing the Divide
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Some would argue that free international trade and unhindered capital flows across countries will lead to a contraction in the North-South divide. In this case more equal trade and flow of capital would allow the possibility for developing countries to further develop economically. As some countries in the South experience rapid development, there is some evidence that those states are developing high levels of South-South aid. Brazil, in particular, has been noted for its high levels of aid ($1 billion annually — ahead of many traditional donors) and the ability to use its own experiences to provide high levels of expertise and knowledge transfer. This has been described as a ‗global model in waiting‘.
The United Nations has also established its role in diminishing the divide between North and
South through its Millennium Development Goals. These goals seek to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; and develop a global partnership for development all by the year 2015.
3.4 Modernisation requires Internal Changes
The 19th Century German Philosopher Karl Marx thought imperialism could play a progressive role by creating in underdeveloped countries the basis for a similar process of industrialisation that took place in the West. He thought that colonial powers should destroy primitive precapitalist cultures and lay the material foundation for modern western society. For Marx, all societies were destined to be like Europe. ―The country that is more developed industrially only shows to the less developed the image of its own future,‖ he wrote. Some African nationalists accuse Marx of ethnocentrism.
These nationalists do not understand that modernisation is as much a cultural phenomenon as a technological achievement. Marx was correct – it is impossible for a pre-industrial culture to create and sustain an industrial civilisation.
The idea that societies head in the same general direction seems proven by the development of the global economy. Nations that have made economic progress have irrespective of ideology undergone similar processes.
Development has involved capital accumulation, industrialisation, and the transformation of productive forces through machine technology and the introduction of factory systems of production. It entails urbanisation, the rationalisation of thought and changes in social beliefs and institutions including family life. Investment in physical and human capital has been indispensible. In all developed countries, the economy was given primacy in the political system.
Perhaps most importantly, development has been underpinned by certain values including
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efficiency, hard work, precision, honesty, punctuality, thrift, obligation to one‘s duty and wealth creation. All modernisation involved a move away from traditionalism.
There have been differences in the methods of organisation adopted by modernising nations.
Under socialism, the means of production were state-owned and emphasis placed on ideology in the mobilisation of workers as against private ownership and wage labour under capitalism.
Nevertheless, both socialists and capitalists followed the same fundamental steps to economic development. The American Economist J.K. Galbraith argues that ―Development is the faithful imitation of the developed‖.
African nationalists find this basic idea difficult to accept. Despite the failure of African
Socialism, there remains a belief among some African thinkers and writers that there is an
African way to development that is different from the European path.
No one has been able to describe this African way in detail. However, the search for an African model continues. Some liberal western writers have supported the notion that Africa is a special case and not subject to the laws that govern societies in other regions of the world.
British Economist Michael Barratt Brown in his book ―Africa‘s Choices claims that his old friend Basil Davidson in his book ―The Black Man‘s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the NationState‖ given him a clue to the explanation of Africa‘s development problem. Brown argues that
―African Society was different and apparently immune to economic rationality which is the basic assumption of European political economy. It is not clear how Davidson shows Africa‘s immunity from economic rationality.
Davidson has argued that Africa‘s crisis is due to it being forced by colonialism to abandon its traditional systems and values for unsuitable western institutions. Brown also quotes several
African writers who believe that an African way to development exists. They include Hassan
Zaoual of Morocco who wrote that ‗The African model exists and is alive but it is not a model of economic rationality‘.
It is not known how economic non-rationality can possibly result in development, which occurs in the material world and not the spiritual domain. Development is not abstract art where any combination of brush strokes and colours can pass as a completed picture. What we have seen in
Africa is a tragedy in which intellectual opposition to the West has prevented African thinkers from developing a coherent ideology for change. Ironically, in its penchant to criticise colonialism and defend the integrity of traditional African society, African political and economic thought has been trapped by its own myths.

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3.5 Impact of Colonialism
Debate about the perceived negative and positive aspects (spread of virulent diseases, unequal social relations, exploitation, enslavement, infrastructures, medical advances, new institutions, technological advancements to mention but a few) of colonialism has occurred for centuries amongst colonizers and colonised. This continues to the present day. The questions of miscegenation; the alleged ties between colonial enterprises, genocides and the questions of the nature of imperialism, dependency theory and neo-colonialism (in particular the Third World debt) continue to retain their actuality.
i. Impact on Health: Encounters between explorers and populations in the rest of the world often introduced new diseases which sometimes caused local epidemics of extraordinary virulence. It has been argued that over the centuries, Europeans had developed a high degree of immunity to diseases such as small pox, measles, malaria, yellow fever and many others. ii. Food Security: A global exchange of local crops and livestock breeds occurred. Key crops involved in the exchange include maize, tomatoes, and potatoes. New crops that had come to Asia from Americas via Spanish colonisers in the 16th Century including maize, and sweet potatoes contributed to population growth. Maize was introduced to
Europe in the 15th Century. Due to high yield, it quickly spread to Africa and India. Since it was introduced by the Portuguese, maize replaced traditional African crops as the continent‘s most important staple food crops.
3.6 Budget Support
This is a particular way of giving international Development aid, also known as an aid instrument or aid modality. With budget support, money is given directly to a recipient country government, usually from a donor government. Budget support differs from other types of aid modalities such as:
i.

ii.

Balance of Payments Support, which is currently mainly the domain of the International
Monetary Fund. With balance of payments support the funds go to the central bank for foreign exchange purposes, while with Budget Support they generally go to the Ministry of Finance or equivalent and into the budget for public spending.
Project Aid - where development assistance funds are used by donors to implement a specific project, with donors retaining control of the project 's financing and management.

In practice, Budget Support varies dramatically and is done in a large range of different ways.
One of the broadest distinctions is between general budget support and sector budget support.
General budget support is budget support that is unearmarked for a specific sector of government spending. Sector budget support is budget support that is earmarked for use in a specific sector or budget line, e.g. health or education.
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3.6.1 Rationale for Budget Support
The underlying rationale for budget support is variously seen as:
a. Researchers at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) describe how highly fragmented, ad hoc, small projects were not delivering results and cumulatively may have been undermining aid agencies ' own objectives. There is some evidence that the effect of ad hoc, small projects is not systematic, but there is a wide range of individual evaluations of project as well as some more meta-review data such as Wapenhans Report
(1992) and ‗Assessing Aid‘ (1998). Thus the ODI highlights the following benefits:







High transactions costs from the multiplicity of different reporting and accounting requirements, including tied aid;
Inefficient spending dictated by donor priorities and procurement arrangements;
Undermining of state systems through the special staffing arrangements and parallel structures; Corrosion of democratic accountability as mechanisms are designed to satisfy donor rather than domestic constituencies;
Hard to sustain positive impact beyond the short term, with high level of reliance on donor funding which undermined sustainability;
Corruption, fraud and rent-seeking were also a feature of the management of projects and not overcome by their independence from government control.

b. That building recipient government capacity and accountability to their own populations for service delivery, as the only sustainable way of reducing poverty in the long term.
Evidence is scarce, since it is hard to tell what level and type of effect budget support is or even could have on these long term and highly political processes. The findings of the largest review to date are over all positive.
In practice the other types of aid instruments are still running concomitantly which means the potential expressed in the underlying rationale is unlikely to be fully tested.

3.6.2 Risks
The risks for donor governments and recipient governments are very different. The literature describes a range some of which are summarised below:
For the donor government, the risks include:
i.
ii.

Political risk of a recipient government doing something high profile and unpalatable;
Fiduciary risk of putting resources into weak systems or supporting poor policies (but this is partly the point of budget support also). This type of risk includes that of corruption in the recipient government; and
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iii.

Loss of profile- donors tend to like to be able to report on specific outputs that they are responsible for, which is not possible with budget support.

For the recipient government the risks include:
i.
ii. iii. iv.

Much greater levels of intrusion by donors in your budget process;
Reduced levels of flexibility about the allocation of resources, which with time may undermine the incentives for improving the efficiency of public spending;
Increased volatility and unpredictability of aid flows; and
Increased vulnerability to ‗aid shocks‘ if donors decided to withdraw funding

4.0 Conclusion
Development is very growth-oriented, based on sectors or particular areas in the economy which produce or generate growth. Because of this, lower priority is given to social sectors, such as health, education, welfare, etc. This also means that resources distributed by the Government tend to be directed towards a very small percentage of population, the section which promises to generate more wealth (the business sector). Therefore, a country 's resources, are directed towards a small percentage of population, and not distributed evenly. This seemed to be a trend in development strategies in the Africa. We need to re-orient our position and adopt those ways which promote African uniqueness, utilization of our resources sustainably for the benefit of our people. 5.0 Summary
Development has involved capital accumulation, industrialisation, and the transformation of productive forces through machine technology and the introduction of factory systems of production. It entails urbanisation, the rationalisation of thought and changes in social beliefs and institutions including family life. Investment in physical and human capital has been indispensible. In all developed countries, the economy was given primacy in the political system.
Perhaps most importantly, development has been underpinned by certain values including efficiency, hard work, precision, honesty, punctuality, thrift, obligation to one‘s duty and wealth creation. All modernisation involved a move away from traditionalism.
Self Assessment Exercise
1. Define colonialism. How does it help to explain Africa‘s development agenda today?
2. Is capitalism the answer to development in Africa? Justify your response.
3. Is the Western concept of development relevant to Africa‘s orientation of development?
How do we explain the development gap between the west and most of Africa?
4. What is budget support? Is it an instrument for development? Discuss.

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6.0 References
Andrew, L., Booth, D., Harding, A., Hoole, D., and Naschold, F., (2002) General Budget
Support Evaluability Study: Phase 1 - Final Synthesis Report. London: Overseas Development
Institute.
Corbridge, S., (1986) Capitalist World Development. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
Gallaher, C et al (2008) Key Concepts in Political Geography. London: Sage Publications Ltd
Painter, J. and Jeffrey, A. (2009) Political Geography 2nd ed. London: Sage Publications Ltd
Therien. J.P., (1999) Beyond the North–South Divide: The Two Tales of World Poverty. Third
World Quarterly. Vol 20. No. 4. pp723-742

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Unit 2 THEORIES OF UNDER-DEVELOPMENT AND DEVELOPMENT
1.0 Introduction
2.0 Objectives
3.0 Main Content
3. 1 Modernisation Theories
3.1.1 Dualism Theories
3.1.2 Strategy Theories
3.1.2.1 Theory of Balanced Growth
3.1.2.2 Theory of Unbalanced Growth
3.1.2.3 Theory of Stages of Growth
3.1.2.4 ‗Big-Push‘ Theory
3.1.2.5 Theory of Development Poles
3.1.2.6 Theory of Circular Causation
3.2 Social-Psychological Theories
3.2.1 Sociological Explanation of Socioeconomic Change
3.2.2 Theory of Social Change
3.3 Dependence Theories
3.3.1 External Trade Theories
3.3.1.1 Theories of Circular Deterioration of Terms of Trade
3.3.1.2 Theory of Immiserizing Growth
3.3.2 Imperialism Theory
3.3.2.1 Classical Imperialism Theory
3.3.2.2 Modern Imperialism Theory
3.3.3 Dependencia Theories
4.0 Conclusion
5.0 Summary
6.0 References
1.0 Introduction
Since the end of World War II, we have been experiencing a worldwide struggle for the improvement of living conditions in the so-called developing countries. At the beginning, there was little query as to the causes of underdevelopment; the newly independent countries as well as United Nations bodies and industrialised countries tried to promote development by applying measures like the introduction of know-how through the assignment of experts, the expansion of education, the development of infrastructure, etc., i.e., they followed the example of the industrialized countries. In the course of time it became obvious that this was more or less a treatment of symptoms instead of causes, and the gap gradually widened between the developed and less developed countries of this world.

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3.1 Modernisation Theories (Backwardness Theories)

Author: Francis Lungo [e-mail] During the early period of development efforts there was little discussion on the historical causes and the real nature of underdevelopment. Theoretical considerations at this time of ―cold war‖ explained the situation of underdevelopment and the path for development from the viewpoint of western or socialist metropoles. Only in more recent times has the viewpoint of developing countries gained momentum in development theory. This has great practical implications: development theory offers the justification for policies. The answer to the question ―What is development?‖ determines which strategies, policies, projects, what type of industry, or what organisation of agriculture should be considered to be in line with development goals or detrimental to these. Different positions in development policy are based on differences in underlying development theories.
There are a great number of explanations for underdevelopment and concepts of development.
This unit tries to introduce the reader to the most important theoretical explanations of underdevelopment and development without aiming at completeness. As regards its presentation, there are several possibilities of organizing this unit. Some authors organise the theories along the scientific disciplines which are basic for the analysis and differentiate between economic theories, sociological theories, demographic theories, climate theories, etc (Bohet, 1971).
Others differentiate between socialistic and market-economy oriented theories because these two groups have a different way of analysing and diagnosing the causes of underdevelopment, and they are distinct as to their opinion on the possibilities of reform or revolution with a view to influencing the development process (Kebschull, 1971).
For the purpose of this course, the theories are organised according to their basic conception of the causes of underdevelopment.
2.0 Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
i.
ii. iii. Understand Theories of Development;
Explain the differences between different categories of Theories of Development; and
Apply the different theoretical perspectives to modern society today.

3.0 Main Content
3.1 Modernisation Theories (Backwardness Theories)
Disagreements about what modernisation theory is and what has been learned from comparisons bedevil discussions between users and critics. Those who applied the theory often failed to be specific or to supply supporting explanations to establish it as a powerful set of generalizations in the forefront of cross-disciplinary social science analysis, while critics usually neglected to define the theory precisely or to make an effort to balance its merits against alleged shortcomings. Although the theory exerted a huge impact on the disciplines of history, political
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science, and sociology, and on thinking about capitalism versus socialism, East Asia versus
Western advanced capitalist countries, and more versus less developed countries, to many its legacy remains confusing, as does its connection to recent globalization theory. Even at the beginning of the twenty-first century, there is little agreement on what modernisation theory is and how it has advanced social science analysis.
The theory of modernisation normally consists of three parts: (1) identification of types of societies, and explanation of how those designated as modernised or relatively modernised differ from others; (2) specification of how societies become modernised, comparing factors that are more or less conducive to transformation; and (3) generalisations about how the parts of a modernised society fit together, involving comparisons of stages of modernisation and types of modernised societies with clarity about prospects for further modernisation. Actually, reasoning about all of these issues predated postwar theory. From the Industrial Revolution, there were recurrent arguments that a different type of society had been created, that other societies were either to be left permanently behind or to find a way to achieve a similar transformation, and that not all modernising societies had equal success in sustaining the process due to differences in economic, political, and other institutions. In the middle of the 1950s, these themes acquired new social science and political casting with the claim of increased rigor in analysis.
In the early post–World War II era, approximately twenty societies were regarded as highly modernised and roughly another ten to twenty were depicted as having passed a threshold on the path to modernisation. Definitions of modernised varied. Some noted structural features, such as levels of education, urbanisation, use of inanimate sources of energy, and fertility. Others pointed to attitudes, such as secularization, achievement orientation, functional specificity in formal organisations, and acceptance of equality in relationships. Conscious of the ethnocentric nature of many earlier explanations for growth in national power and income, social scientists in the 1950s and 1960s generally omitted cultural traits associated closely with Western history from definitions of modernity. Yet, given the rhetoric of the Cold War and a preoccupation with democracy in the western world and national identity, political institutions became a central factor in many definitions.
According to modernisation theories, internal factors in the countries, such as illiteracy, traditional agrarian structure, the traditional attitude of the population, the low division of labour, the lack of communication and infrastructure, etc., are responsible for underdevelopment.
Differences in structure and historical origin are considered of little importance; international dependencies are not taken into account.
Consequently, a change of these endogenous factors is the strategy for development. The industrialized countries are the model for economy and society, and this model will be reached sooner or later. There is a continuum between the least and the most developed country and each
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Author: Francis Lungo [e-mail] country has its position on this line. The difference as compared to the industrialised countries is the degree of backwardness which has to be made up for. Suitable measures are the modernisation of the production apparatus, capital aid, transfer of know-how, so that the developing countries can reach the stage of industrialized countries as soon as possible.
Development is seen as an increase of production and efficiency and measured primarily by comparing the per capita income.

3.1.1 Dualism Theories
Dualism theories belong to the range of topics of the development theories. On the basis of the acceptance of at least two connected economic, social, technological or regional sectors in case of developing countries a pessimistic prognosis is particularly placed. Dualism theories assume a split of economic and social structures of different sectors so that they differ in organisation, level of development, and goal structures. Usually, the concept of economic dualism (Boeke,
1953) differentiates between two sectors of economy:
— the traditional subsistence sector consists of small-scale agriculture, handicraft and petty trade, has a high degree of labour intensity but low capital intensity and little division of labour; and
— the modern sector of capital-intensive industry and plantation agriculture produces for the world market with a capital-intensive mode of production with a high division of labour.
The two sectors have little relation and interdependence and develop each according to its own pattern. The modern sector can be considered an economic enclave of industrial countries, and its multiplicator and growth effects will benefit the industrial countries but have little effect on the internal market.
Several authors stress the dualism of specific factors. Eckhaus (1955), for instance, differentiates, in his concept of technological dualism, between labour and capital-intensive sectors. Gannage
(1962) explains regional dualism as a lack of communications and exchange between regions, the capital sometimes being an island which, in geographical terms, belongs to the developing country, in economic terms, however, to the industrialised country.
Economic, technological, and regional dualism are often the consequence of a social dualism, the absence of relationships between people of different race, religion, and language, which, in many cases, is a legacy of colonialism.
Development in dualism concepts is the suppression of the traditional sector by concentrating on and expanding the modern sector. In time, it is assumed that the trickle down effects will reduce and abolish dualism. In this line of thinking, the main problem is capital formation because its degree determines the scope and speed of expansion of the modern sector. In general, agriculture has to provide the resources, labour as well as capital, for expanding the modern sector. In
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details, the strategies vary. Some authors, like Lewis (1965) and Fei and Ranis (1964), assumed that a reduction of the labour force in agriculture, because of the widespread disguised unemployment, would not reduce agricultural production. The productive employment of these labourers in the modern sector would increase the total production of the economy and hence priority of investment in industry is necessary. Concentration on the modern sector led to an increasing regional disparity, rural urban migration, urban unemployment, a decrease in agricultural production, and hindrance in industrial development because of a lack of purchasing power in the rural areas. The anticipated trickle-down effects hardly ever happened. In praxis, development plans following this line of thinking led to failures like the early Indian development planning.
Therefore, other authors, like Jorgenson (1966), Lele (1971), and Mellor (1976), emphasize the important role of agriculture at the beginning of development, i.e., proceeding or parallel to industrial development in order to provide enough internal resources for the development process. 3.1.2 Strategy Theories
Underdevelopment from the viewpoint of these theories is the result of vicious circles of factors.
One example is based on the fact of low real income in developing countries which is the result of low labour productivity. This low labour productivity, in turn, is a consequence of capital shortage which is a result of the population 's low saving ability. As the saving rate is determined by the low real income, the circle is closed.
Strategy theories intend to break up this cycle at a certain point which they consider critical and which varies according to the different theories. Thus, they want to initiate development and transform traditional subsistence economy into a modern market economy. Their main emphasis is on capital formation and investment (investment theories) and, by and large, they prescribe action for overcoming underdevelopment while they contribute little towards explaining the causes of underdevelopment.
3.1.2.1 Theory of Balanced Growth (Nurske, 1963)
This theory sees the main obstacles to development in the narrow market and, thus, in the limited market opportunities. Under these circumstances, only a bundle of complementary investments realized at the same time has the chance of creating mutual demand. The theory refers to Say‘s theorem and requests investments in such sectors which have a high relation between supply, purchasing power, and demand as in consumer goods industry, food production, etc.
The real bottleneck in breaking the narrow market is seen here in the shortage of capital, and, therefore, all potential sources have to be mobilised. If capital is available, investments will be
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Author: Francis Lungo [e-mail] made. However, in order to ensure the balanced growth, there is a need for investment planning by the governments.
Development is seen here as expansion of market and an increase of production including agriculture. The possibility of structural hindrances is not included in the line of thinking, as are market dependencies.
The emphasis is on capital investment, not on the ways and means of achieving capital formation. It is assumed that, in a traditional society, there is ability and willingness for rational investment decisions along the requirements of the theory. As this will most likely be limited to small sectors of the society, it is not unlikely that this approach will lead to super-imposing a modern sector on the traditional economy, i.e., to economic dualism.
3.1.2.2 Theory of Unbalanced Growth (Hirschman, 1958)
Contrary to the theory of balanced growth, in Hirschman‘s opinion, the real bottleneck is not the shortage of capital, but lack of entrepreneurial abilities. Potential entrepreneurs are hindered in their decision-making by institutional factors: either group considerations play a great role and hinder the potential entrepreneur, or entrepreneurs aim at personal gains at the cost of others and are thus equally detrimental to development. In view of the lack of entrepreneurial abilities there is a need for a mechanism of incentive and pressure which will automatically result in the required decisions. According to Hirschman (1958), not a balanced growth should be aimed at, but rather existing imbalances — whose symptoms are profit and losses — must be maintained.
Investments should not be spread evenly but concentrated in such projects in which they cause additional investments because of their backward and forward linkages without being too demanding on entrepreneurial abilities. Manufacturing industries and import substitutions are relevant examples. These first investments initiate further investments which are made by less qualified entrepreneurs.
Thus, the strategy overcomes the bottleneck of entrepreneurial ability. The theory gives no hints as to how the attitude of entrepreneurs and their institutional influence will be changed in time.
3.1.2.3 Theory of Stages of Growth (Rostow, 1960)
This theory tries to explain the long-term processes of economic development from the point of view of economic history by describing five ideal types of stages through which all societies pass: The ‗traditional society‘ has more than 75 per cent of the population engaged in food production, and political power is in the hands of landowners or of a central authority supported by the army and the civil servants.

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The ‗transitional stage‘ creates the preconditions for take-off by bringing about radical changes in the non-industrial sectors. Export of raw material gains momentum; a new class of businessmen emerges; and the idea of economic progress coming from outside spreads through the elite.
The ‗take-off stage‘ brings a sharp increase in the rate of investment in the per capita output.
This stage of industrial revolution is accompanied by radical changes in the production techniques. Expansion takes place in a small group of leading sectors at first and, on the social side, is accompanied by the domination of the modern section of society over the traditional one.
The ‗drive to maturity‘ brings a spread of growth from the leading to the other sectors and a broader application of modern technology followed by necessary changes in the society at large.
The ‗stage of high mass consumption‘ can be reached after attaining a certain level of national income and formulating an economic policy giving priority to increased private consumption.
The critical phase for development is the ‗take-off stage‘ during which net investment rates have to increase from 5 to 10 per cent of the national product and during which the political, social, and institutional framework has to be built in order to reach a situation of self-sustained growth.
The financial resources must be accumulated internally by higher saving rates. Income distribution favouring classes and strata which are willing and able to use capital more productively than others has the same effect.
While this theory became widely known, perhaps because of its author‘s political post and the fact that it is a counter-position to Marxian approaches, this ―time-table of development‖ does little to explain why some societies go ahead on this ladder and others not. As well, its value for forecasting the results of development activities is limited. The rather fixed stages hardly allow for alternative goals and processes of development and incorporate a high degree of ethnocentrism. 3.1.2.4 ‘Big-push’ Theory (Rosenstein-Rodan, 1970)
This theory is an investment theory which stresses the conditions of take-off. The argumentation is quite similar to the Balanced Growth Theory but emphasis is put on the need for a big push.
The investments should be of a relatively high minimum in order to reap the benefits of external economies. Only investments in big complexes will result in social benefits exceeding social costs. High priority is given to infrastructural development and industry, and this emphasis will lead to governmental development planning and influence.

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3.1.2.5 Theory of Development Poles (Rerroux, 1957)
The promotion of regional development centres will serve as focal point and incentive for further development. Such a regional concentration helps to reap the benefits of technological external economies and makes the growth centre attractive to entrepreneurs, thus initiating further development. This theory is a sort of ‗regional unbalanced growth theory‘ which uses temporary regional imbalances to initiate development. Little attention is given to the process which is necessary to ensure a spread or linkage from the centres to the hinterland without which the poles may transform the economy of the region into a dual economy.
3.1.2.6 Theory of Circular Causation (Myrdal, 1957)
Myrdal opposes the strategy of development poles because social systems and economic processes do not develop towards an equilibrium but, on the contrary, factors tend to cumulate to positive or negative cycles. Under laissez faire conditions in developing countries, there is a tendency towards a negative cumulation. In principle, Myrdal‘s theory is a negation of the monocausal explanation of problems of developing countries by economic factors alone. Rather, in a comprehensive way, all social relations have to be incorporated. At national level — different stages of development between regions — as well as international level — trade between industrialized and developing countries — differences tend to increase because of the spread effects in the more developed areas and modern sectors and backwash effects in backward areas and traditional sectors. For instance, industrial import goods are in competition with traditional crafts; terms of trade deteriorate; capital is being transferred, etc. The direction of processes depends on the initial situation and the factors causing the change. Under the conditions in developing countries, increased regional dualism often is a consequence of such processes of circular causation.
3.2 Social-Psychological Theories
In the dualism and (economic) strategy theories discussed so far, underdevelopment and development are explained by economic factors alone while individual or group values and motivations are neglected.
The social-psychological theories consider these very factors as main determinants of underdevelopment and development. Thus, they add a new component to the discussion.
Because they reduce the causes to aspects of one discipline, like economic theories, they are partial explanations as well.

3.2.1 Sociological Explanation of Socioeconomic Change
One of the earliest and widely discussed concept is Weber‘s (1922) treatise ―Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism‖ in which he combines Psychological and Sociological variables with economic development. Because of its determination of the value systems of societies, he put primary importance on religion. According to Weber, the Protestant religion was a precondition for capitalistic development for two reasons: Protestant ethics led to an ascetic life
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style which, instead of advocating affluence, reinvested the proceeds. As well, it is the basis of rationalism and goal achievement behaviour. While a value system which motivates economic development can hardly be limited to Protestantism Weber‘s stress on values and the resulting motivation influenced later thought.
In more recent times, Parsons (1975) and Smelser (1963) explained economic development as a result of tension and unrest in societies. If a traditional undifferentiated society experiences economic growth and economic differentiation as a result of external inputs, this leads to unrest.
Frustration of groups of the population not & participating and gaining generates further differentiation and growth, and these small steps happen within relatively short times.
McClelland (1961) sees the cause of underdevelopment in the absence of achievement motivation. The desire to do well to attain an inner feeling of personal accomplishment is the pre-requisite for innovative activity.

3.2.2 Theory of Social Change (Hagen 1962)
Following McClelland‘s concept that a level of development is correlated with achievement motivation, Hagen tried to explain why this achievement motivation varies between societies and their classes and strata. He argues that in traditional societies the status of individuals is fixed.
Children learn to act according to established norms, and deviations (initiative!) are punished. If by external influences a new group gains power, the status of the old elite is challenged and weakened. The insecurity and frustration leads to changed behaviour which has consequences on the family structure. Children tend to become dissatisfied with the society and readily accept new values. In time, they become innovative personalities. If these persons become dominant groups in the society, this causes economic development. Similar phenomena may happen as far as the changing situation of marginal groups or minorities is concerned.
3.3 Dependence Theories
According to dependence theories, the cause of underdevelopment is the dependence on industrialized countries while internal factors of developing countries are considered irrelevant or seen as symptoms and consequences of dependence. The development of industrialized countries and the underdevelopment of developing countries are parts of one historical process.
Developing countries are dependent countries. The economic and political interests of industrialized countries determine their development or underdevelopment. The goals are superimposed. Underdevelopment is not backwardness but intentional downward development. As to the causes of dependence, the various theories differ, economic factors always dominating. External trade theories concentrate on economic relations between countries. Imperialism theories stress the
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politico-economic interest while dependencia theories concentrate on the deformation of internal structures by dependence which perpetuates the situation.
Dependence theories concentrate on explanations of the genesis of underdevelopment and pay little attention to strategies for overcoming this situation. Implicit development here means liberation, end of structural dependence, and independence.

3.3.1 External Trade Theories
The structure of supply and demand in industrialized and developing countries is such that industrialized countries are able to reap the benefits from international trade. This transfer of resources makes development impossible, and these unequal trade relations are seen as the reasons for underdevelopment.
3.3.1.1 Theories of Circular Deterioration of Terms of Trade (Prebisch, 1959)
The structure of supply and demand is such that industrialized countries offer industrial products and buy raw products and the developing industries do the reverse. According to Engel‘s law, the demand for raw materials tends to be inelastic while the demand for industrialized goods is elastic. The technological progress in the production of industrialized goods not only makes it possible for industrial countries to increase their incomes and thus the standard of living, but, because of the elastic demand on the world market, also to enforce higher prices.
The situation in developing countries is the opposite: technological progress in primary production results in lower prices because of the inelastic demand. This mechanism leads to deteriorating exchange relations between industrialised and developing countries (and, as well, between the industrialized and the agricultural sector in developing countries). Myint‘s (1954) and Rao‘s (1971) ‗theory of partial pauperization‘ and Perroux‘s (1964) ‗theory of dominating economy‘ argue along very similar lines.
3.3.1.2 Theory of Immiserizing Growth (Bhagwat, I958)
This theory follows the argumentation of the theory of circular deterioration of terms of trade and concludes that countries, in order to improve their balance of trade, have to increase their exports to compensate for falling prices. This means a further deterioration of terms of trade. The unchanged structure of supply intensifies the structural dependency and, regardless of growth, there is no development but only ‗immiserizing growth.‘ This situation is especially pertinent for countries with agrarian monoculture. As a consequence, Bhagwati later asked for a speedy industrialisation including heavy industry for larger countries.

3.3.2 Imperialism Theory
The imperialism theory explains the domination of underdeveloped areas by industrialized countries as the consequence of different economic and technological levels and unequal power potential resulting from a different economic growth. The consequence of the development of
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industrial capitalistic societies is a pressure for expansion which may lead to military or political acquisition (colonies) or to maintaining economic dependence (developing countries). Different theories have their own explanation of the reason for the pressure for expansion but it is always seen as the result of the inability to cope internally with the consequences of permanent technological innovation and their effects on the society.
3.3.2.1 Classical Imperialism Theory (Luxemburg, 1913, Lenin, 1966)
The desire for profit maximization causes production beyond the needs of the internal market and leads to the establishment of new markets in underdeveloped areas. Here, the autochthon production and markets are being destroyed and, thus, unemployment is exported to underdeveloped areas. Lenin in addition assumed a decrease of investment possibilities and, therefore, of profit rate in industrialized countries.
Thus, capital is being exported in order to maximize profits. In the underdeveloped areas, this capital is invested, not according to the needs of these countries, but according to the interests of industrial countries. The profit is transferred to the industrial countries whose development is based on the exploitation of underdevelopment areas.
3.3.2.2 Modern Imperialism Theory (Santos, 1972, Galtung, 1972)
The thesis of classical imperialism theory has been disproved empirically. New imperialism theories therefore, postulate the dependency theorem with a new explanation of exploitative relations. The new phase of relation between industrialized and developing countries can be called technological-industrial dependence. Industrial countries invest in the production and export of raw materials in developing countries, influence with their potential of power the terms of trade in their favour, and thus perpetuate the international division of labour. While imperialism is seen as a phenomenon of capitalism and these theories are based on Marxian concepts, the fact remains, nevertheless, that communist countries also participate in the exploitation of developing countries by accepting the advantages of the world market.

3.3.3 Dependencia Theories
The multitude of approaches combined under the heading ‗Dependencia‘ like imperialism theories are based on the assumption of an external dependency of developing countries which makes exploitation possible. However, while imperialism theories hold the dependence relation to be directly responsible for the exploitation of developing countries, the dependencia theories develop this concept further. They postulate that external dependencies lead to an internal structural deformation which perpetuates the external dependency. The process started with the political and military dependency of colonies which have been exploited through the destruction of the indigenous life style and culture, economic extraction, and forced integration into the international division of labour. This asymmetric integration caused structural changes in the peripheral societies: an economy oriented towards the requirements of the industrial countries
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and a functional dependency of the traditional sector on this export-oriented sector. The dynamics of reproduction of the modern sector in developing countries are similar to those of industrialized countries, thus leading to an extreme stratification, i.e., externally oriented elites and marginalized masses. Elites accept the norms and values of the industrialized countries and cooperate in maintaining a status quo.
The deformation of the economic and social system leads to structural heterogeneity: rich elites and marginal masses, the destruction of traditional economy oriented towards fulfilling the internal needs. Thus, the centre-periphery relationship reproduces itself within developing countries. Between metropolis and rural hinterland, relations are similar to those existing between industrial and developing countries.
Underdevelopment, from this point of view, is not a phase on the way to industrialization but rather a consequence of capitalism. In its concentration on external factors, possible internal conditions are neglected or considered irrelevant. Examples of countries with limited external contacts, like Nepal, Thailand, and Ethiopia, cast doubt on the general applicability of this partial explanation. Dependencia theories do not concentrate on strategies for development beyond the demand for structural changes, independence, and participation.
In recent times, however, the strategy of autocentric development has been aiming to overcome this shortage (Senghaas, 1977). Development should take place on the basis of local resources. In order to make this possible, a temporary dissociation from the world market controlled by capitalists is considered necessary. This dissociation should not be understood as autarkic. It allows for a certain degree of cooperation, a selective relation to industrialized countries. The goal is a reformation of the internal social and economic structure and, afterwards, re-entry in the international relations under conditions of equal rights. The way to reach this goal is via a selfreliance policy, i.e., a development according to the felt needs of the population based on local resources, increase of agricultural production to satisfy basic needs, concentration of decentralization with the participation of the masses. While this line of thinking is obviously based on the Chinese and Tanzanian experiences, it is on a high level of abstraction with preconditions which are difficult to fulfill and rather weak for concrete application. It has more the character of a goal vision that of a strategy for implementation.
4.0 Conclusion
All the theories discussed above are only partial theories. They explain certain aspects but do not fully explain the cause of underdevelopment. The explanation is more adequate for certain historical situations and specific conditions of production while they are less relevant for others.
They offer a strategy for overcoming the prevailing situation and initiating development which may be suitable under certain economic and social conditions but are not applicable to others. A general theory of development is still lacking.
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Drawing up such a general theory is indeed a difficult task; it would have to include:
 an explanation of underdevelopment for different countries;
 an explanation of the development process of industrialized countries; and
 a strategy for overcoming underdevelopment in developing countries.
As well, it would have to include:
 all relevant disciplines and their interdependence;
 the different levels at which development takes place, from the local to the international level;  the processes and relations between the different sectors and strata of society and economy; and
 the international dimensions of the development process.
While the system theory opens up the possibility of organising such a vast theoretical body, the activities of different researchers hitherto have not yet been successful.
Even in the absence of a concise theory to guide political activities, decision-makers must have some yardsticks to measure whether their strategies and tools will achieve the goals of the society. Here, goals play an important role. While, in detail, the question of goals in the development process is a political question, and difference of opinion and conflict are possible, at a high level of abstraction, universal agreement seems to be possible.
It is widely agreed that preservation of human dignity and fulfillment of basic needs are the foremost duties of every society. While there is wide agreement on this goal, differences of opinion exist on the question of the degree to which these basics should be supplied and, as well, how they should be supplied. These differences allow for different paths of development.
From the common denominator ―basic needs,‖ one can deduct five basic goals of development:
 Economic growth to secure food and other requirements for the population;
 Social justice to reduce inequality;
 Employment as means of earning an income but, as well, because of its ethical and social value;  Participation as political involvement and social sharing;
 Independence as freedom from external domination.

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While individual societies may have different opinions on the priorities of these goals, in the absence of a general theory of development; one can use the criterion of fulfillment of these goals as a yardstick in development. Development is then understood as a simultaneous progress towards these five goals.
5.0 Summary
Theories of development have been motivated by the need to explain mass poverty. Interest in development issues is of rather recent origin, dating back not much earlier than the nineteen fifties and early sixties. The modernisation school of thought (1950‘s, early 1960‘s) was the first attempt to articulate the problem of development in terms of the need to transform the backward
―traditional‖ nature of third world economies into ―modern‖ economies. The theoretical trust of the dependency perspectives (late 1960‘s, early 1970‘s) was that capitalist penetration leads to and reproduces a combined and unequal development of its constitutive parts. The third school of thought, the world economy school (late 1970‘s, early 1980‘s), poses the problem of development, not in terms of desired self sustained autonomous growth and not in terms of undesired dependency, but in terms of necessary global interdependence. The other school of thought, the basic needs approach (late 1970‘s), shifts development emphasis from a singular concern with restructuring of the world economy to that of restructuring the domestic economy towards a new internal economic order ', primarily aimed at the eradication of mass poverty and social injustices. Counter-poised against the foregoing four schools of thought are the newly emerging Alternative Modes of Production perspective (1980‘s). Under this perspective, contemporary third world societies are seen essentially characterised by the coexistence of sharply contrasting sectors.
Self Assessment Exercise
1. What is the difference between modernisation, socio-psychological and dependence theories? 2. How do we differentiate between the dualism theories and strategy theories?
3. Is Africa‘s development levels as a result of complying with the dependence theories?
6.0 References
Boeke, J.H., (1953) Economics and Economic Policy of Dual Societies. New York: Institute of
Pacific Relations
Bhagwati, J., (1958) Immiserizing Growth: A Geometrical Note, Review of Economic Studies
XXV (3), No. 68, 201-205
Eckaus, R.S. (1955) The Factor Proportion Problems in Underdeveloped Areas, American
Economic Review, 45, 539-565

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Fei, J. and Ranis, G. (1964) Development of the Labour Surplus Economy: Theory and Praxis.
Homewood, Illinois: Richard D. Irwin Inc.
Hagen, E.E. (1962) On the Theory of Social Change - How Economic Growth Begins.
Homewood, Illinois: Richard D. Irwin Inc.
Hirschman, A.O. (1958) The Strategy of Economic Development. New Haven: Homewood,
Illinois: Richard D. Irwin Inc.
Jorgenson, D.W. (1966) Testing Alternative Theories of the Development of a Dual Economy. In
Adelman, I. and Thorbecke, E. (Ed.) The Theory and Design of Economic Development,
Baltimore, 45-66.
Lele, U. (1971) A Note on Dualistic Models, Dept. of Agricultural Economics, Cornell
University Occ. Paper No. 45, Ithaca: Theme Books.
Lewis, W.A. (1965) The Theory of Economic Growth. Homewood, Illinois: Richard D. Irwin
Inc.
Luxemburg, R. (1913) Die Akkumulation des Kapitals, (The Accumulation of Capital).
Homewood, Illinois: Richard D. Irwin Inc.
McClelland, D. C. (1961) The Achieving Society. Homewood, Illinois: Richard D. Irwin Inc.
Mellor, J. (1976) The New Economics of Growth A strategy for India and the Developing World.
Ithaca and London: Richard D. Irwin Inc.
Myint, H. (1954) The Gains from International Trade and the Backward Countries, Review of
Economic Studies XXII, 1954/55,129-142.
Myrdal, G. (1957) Economic Theory and Underdeveloped Regions. London: SAGE Publications
Ltd
Nurkse, R. (1963) Problems of Capital Formation in Underdeveloped Countries. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Parsons, T. (1975) Socieies-An Evolutionary and Comparative Perspective. New York: Barnes &
Noble
Perroux, F. (1957) The Challenge of Development. A Symposium, Jerusalem, 1957.
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Perroux, F. (1964) The 20th Century Economics. Paris: University of France.
Prebisch, R. (1959) The Role of Commercial Policies in Underdeveloped Countries. American
Economic Review 49, 251-273.
Rao, V.K.R.V. (1971) Investment, Income and the Multiplier in an Underdeveloped Country in:
Agarwala, A.N. and Singh, S.P. (Eds). The Economics of Underdevelopment, London: Sage
Publications Inc.
Rosenstein-Rodan, P.N. (1970) The Theory of the ―Big Push‖ in: Meier, G.M., Leading Issues in
Economic Development, Studies in International Poverty. Oxford: Cambridge University Press.
Rostow, W.W. (1960) The Stages of Economic Growth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Santos, T. (1972) About the Structure of the Dependence In: Senghaas, D. (Ed.), Imperialism and structural violence .Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Senghaas, D. (1977) World Economic Order: Plea for Dissociation. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.
Singer, H. (1950) The Distribution of Gains between Investing and Borrowing Countries
American Economic Review 40, 473-485.
Smelser, N. (1963) Theory of Collective Behavior. Glencoe: Cambridge University Press.
Weber, M. (1922) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in: One Essay on Sociology of Religion. Tubingen: Lexington Books.
Wohlke, M., Wogau, P.V., and Martens, W. (1977) The Recent Development of Theoretical
Bibliography (edition of the Ibero-Americana Series II, Bibliographic Row 2). Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp.

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Unit 3 PRACTICES OF DEVELOPMENT
1.0 Introduction
For the most part, the field of Theories and Practices of Development has yet to accomplish two central tasks: (1) an adequate conceptualization of the development process; and (2) the development of tools which practitioners could use for implementation. These are serious deficiencies, but they do not make the field worthless.
2.0 Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
i.
ii. iii. To differentiate between the various forces responsible for underdevelopment and development; Appreciate and explain the situation Africa has found itself in; and
Find solutions to transform the current status quo.

3.0 Main Content
3.1 The Problem
The problem is, the field still hasn‘t stopped ―blaming the victim.‖ Take, for example,
Calderisi‘s book (2007), which blames the problems of Africa on Africans themselves. Calderisi
(2007) says it isn‘t the legacy of colonialism, or the supposed inequities of globalisation and world trade, that are to blame for Africa‘s problems. Africa‘s problems, he says, are largely of its own making, the product of dictatorial, kleptocratic governments; rampant corruption; bad economic choices, discouragement of private investment; strangulation of new business with red tape; and a cultural fatalism that inures Africans to continual misery. It‘s not just Africa. Lots of nations lack capacity for anything other than a drug economy and shooting at ships on the high seas or harming another nation‘s diplomats. The problem is not so much bias toward such countries, but getting over the outrage at the things they do and finding some positive way to harness the power of their inevitable conflicts.
Collier (2007) says that there are about 50 nations (fragile states) in danger of becoming ―failed states‖ whose problems defy traditional approaches to development. They are caught up in endless cycles of civil war, dependence on the extraction and export of natural resources, and bad governance. Aid is often ineffective, and globalisation actually makes matters worse, driving development to more stable nations where there‘s at least a chance of success. If the bottom billion are to be helped, it‘s going to take preferential trade policies on behalf of the developed nations, new international laws against corruption and bad governance, and, yes, even carefully calibrated military interventions.

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Slaughter (2004) and Fukuyama (2006) both note that the problem may not entirely be ―state failure‖ on the part of developing countries, but ―organisational failure‖ on the part of developed countries. There neither exist any international organisation nor American institution which is really set up all that well for democracy promotion. In fact, it may not even be possible to export democracy because there are too many problematic parts in the package that require liberal
―breakthroughs‖ on the part of the receiving culture. Copying superficial aspects of democracy, like election procedures, typically leads to counterproductive results (Zakaria, 2003). In today‘s world, however, regulators have replaced diplomats and statesmen. Bankers, securities commissioners, and insurance supervisors, for example, are all frequent visitors to developing countries. Their interests lie in establishing global financial stability, and as many scholars have pointed out (e.g., Keohane and Nye, 1974), such visitors and the trans-governmental networks they represent do not answer to any treaty, any international law, or any recognition of sovereignty. The closest thing that exists to a new world order is ―cowboy capitalism‖
(Gersemann, 2004) on the loose. Diplomats, Ministers, and Heads of State, for their part, tend to meet together like a club at G8 summits and accomplish little more than photo opportunities.
Starting in the 1950s and for many years thereafter, development economists believed in the
Harrod-Domar growth model, which held that developing countries only need investment capital to succeed. Hence, the American approach to international development mimicked the likes of
Tennessee Valley Authority initiatives which worked so well in the U.S (Read more about the
Tennessee Valley Authority on http://www.tva.com/abouttva/history.htm). Therefore, American and multilateral agencies like the World Bank funded all kinds of ―big projects‖ overseas — e.g., dams, roads, electricity, and other large engineering projects. Private groups like the Ford
Foundation (and Carnegie and Rockefeller) helped out. Some of the developing countries so assisted, paradoxically became dictatorships, Pakistan being a notable example. By the 1970s, there was considerable disillusionment with this model, and the Solow Growth Model became popular, which added a component of labour productivity by educating a workforce to promote steady-state development. One of the axioms of economics is that capital always accumulates faster than people are born, so there needs to be a plan for human resource management
(workers in the pipeline), otherwise, income inequality results from the existing workforce becoming outdated in skills. Often, this kind of planning involves empowerment of women into the workforce, and this represents a significant obstacle to development in many countries, mostly Islamic ones. There is also a need for public health management, as a number of people in developing countries suffer from diseases and/or disabilities that prevent them from being able to work. In fact, the U.N. estimates 80% of all disabled people live in developing countries.
The conservative years of the 1980s, with the Reagan and Thatcher administrations, brought policies of economic orthodoxy and free trade to the agenda. Economic planning fell out of favor, and in its place, Structural Adjustment loans became popular. These are loans to developing countries from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and World Bank (WB).
Conditions are attached so that the money is spent on the right things, such as privatisation of
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industry, devaluation of overvalued currency, and reducing trade barriers. Money for debt relief requires a developing country to file a strategy for poverty reduction. Other conditions sometimes involve austerity measures and the requirement for balanced budgets. Under austerity measures, a nation is forced to cut social services and a short-term standard of living decline takes place until economic conditions improve and fiscal balance is restored. A number of critics have long argued that the Third World‘s dependence upon an endless series of
Structural Adjustment loans amounts to nothing less than blackmail — since poor nations often have no choice but to comply (Chossudovsky, 2003; Stiglitz, 2003). Since 2002, however,
Structural Adjustment policies have been tied to accomplishment of the UN‘s eight Millennium
Goals rather than the ten conditions (or ―right things‖) of the Washington Consensus — a major source of anti-globalisation sentiment in that the IMF and World Bank were seen as ―stooges‖ of an American foreign policy to make the world more profitable for American businesses.
The Millennium Development Goals
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Achieve universal primary education
Promote gender equality and empower women
Reduce child mortality
Improve maternal health
Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, TB, and other diseases
Ensure environmental sustainability
Develop a global partnership for development

By the mid-1990s, new models for thinking about development policies emerged, the most notable ones being part of the so-called ―new institutionalism‖ movement. New institutionalism basically argues that in order for any incorruptible (durable) economic progress to take place, there first of all has to be some credible and legitimate institutions which shape public values.
Some key institutions are property rights, healthcare, mental health clinics, a civil service system, and an effective criminal justice system (aka rule of law), but there are other
―institutions‖ which in a broad sense ought to be construed as those laws, rules, and regulations that shape the behavior of individuals, especially their economic behavior. New institutionalism is associated with the free market philosophy of an economist named Douglass North (1990) as well as Weberian sociologists like Powell and DiMaggio (1991). Such institutions must be in place before a society can move from an amorphous longing for freedom to a well-functioning, consolidated democratic political system with a modern economy (Fukuyama, 2006). A key concept in new institutionalism is path dependency, which holds that every society faces critical junctures where actors make contingent choices that set the society on a specific trajectory of institutional development that is often difficult to reverse.
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Another theoretical centerpiece is the concept of logic, a micro-macro bridging concept defined as those cultural beliefs and rules that structure cognition and decision-making at the individual level, and at the organisation level, focus the attention of decision-makers on a delimited set of issues and solutions, leading to logic-consistent decisions (Hirsch and Lounsbury, 1997).
Scholars from many fields are currently finding new institutionalism a fruitful area in which to develop and test theories. However, it is just as important to not neglect ‗old‘ institutions such as property rights. It is impossible for a country to develop without reliable (and therefore tradeable) definitions of property. Poor people often own property that could support a loan and could support a business, but it is worthless as collateral if they cannot prove they own it and if there are no honest judges to defend the mortgagor from an unscrupulous mortgagee.
In order to facilitate development in the under-developed world, international institutions such as the US AID has come up with Nine Principles of Reconstruction and Development, explained in detail as follows:
1. Ownership — building on the leadership, participation, and commitment of a country and its people. It is essential that the country‘s people view development as belonging to them and not the donor community.
2. Capacity Building — strengthening local institutions, transferring technical skills, and promoting appropriate policies. This means ensuring that the country‘s key government positions are staffed by competent, qualified people. For example, it is not enough to build universities and educate the country‘s population. There must be opportunities for university graduates to become future political and business leaders.
3. Sustainability — designing programs which ensure the impact endures. A good balance should be sought between economic, social, and political development. For example, building electricity or water plants should take into consideration the replenishment of supply, trained maintenance staff, and ecological impact.
4. Selectivity — allocating resources based on need, local commitment, and foreign policy interests. In some select situations, it is best to concentrate resources at the best place and time. 5. Assessment — conducting careful research and adopting best practices. On-ground assessment ought to be made of the country 's absorptive capacity to receive large amounts of assistance. Assessing lawlessness, for example, requires finding out if any warlords or organized crime groups are going to skim the money.
6. Results — achieving defined, measurable goals and strategically focused objectives.
Specific and meaningful benchmarks and metrics of effectiveness should be used.
7. Partnership -- collaborating with regions, communities, donors, non-profit organizations, the private sector, international organizations, and universities. For example, one of the first things which is usually done in a post-conflict stability operation is to set up a public radio station which highlights the various partners.
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8. Flexibility — USAID commanders (called "mission directors") have enormous flexibility to change plans on a moment 's notice, and often do so, in response to changing circumstances and opportunities.
9. Accountability — USAID seldom provides up-front money to untested or unvetted groups or individuals unless there are safeguards against cost overruns, financial abuse, and contractor mismanagement. Other anti-corruption measures are incorporated into procurement guidelines.
In principle, development work seems easy. However, the actual work suffers from serious problems, contradictions, and paradoxes. An example of a contradiction is the Selectivity principle which sometimes justifies ―showcase‖ projects which don‘t do anybody any good. The best statement about problems which can be said is bureaucracies often don‘t work in Third
World countries. The bureaucracy-unfriendly problem occurs whether one is trying to set up an indigenous bureaucracy or importing a bureaucratic model. Regarding the latter, what usually happens when aid bureaucrats are sent in is that built-in incentives force these bureaucrats to satisfy the rich countries doing the funding instead of actually helping the average, poor Jack on the street. Many aid agency workers are hard-working and well-intentioned, but their rewards for good work come from filling out grand, glowing, self-serving reports that feed the egos of superiors back home.
The two major international organisations involved in development work are the World Bank and the IMF. Both are Bretton Woods institutions, which means the idea for them emerged in 1945 at a U.N. conference (i.e., the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference) held at the
Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. 45 different nations attended the conference, and the idea was to speed up post-war reconstruction, aid political stability, and foster peace by establishing programs for global development. Space does not permit an extended discussion of the history or operations of these organizations, so please allow the following brief descriptions to suffice, with the links to each organization 's website being your best bet for information:
The World Bank and IMF
World Bank — www.worldbank.org — 185 nations contribute to it, and it provides low-interest loans, interest-free credit and grants to developing countries for education, health, infrastructure, communications and many other purposes. It is headquartered in Washington DC, and employs about 10,000 people, about 30% of which work in country offices. The Bank also provides analytical and advisory services for understanding the economic situation of each country, identifying a country‘s priorities and tailoring its efforts correspondingly.
International Monetary Fund (IMF) — www.imf.org — 185 nations contribute to it, and it provides interest-only loans to countries to help ease balance of payments adjustments, or the
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system by which countries set their currency exchange rate, which by international agreement requires they not "peg" their currency at rates which cause ―fundamental disequilibrium‖ in the overall balance of payments for the global economy. The IMF also provides technical assistance and training for bank management, tax and customs policies, social safety nets, and management of debt.
The other notable international organisation devoted to development is the UNDP (United
Nations Development Programme). It is best thought of as a network of offices around the world which monitor progress toward the U.N.‘s Millennium Goals, but they are headquartered in New
York and have been publishing analytical reports since 2004, and annually, they rank the world 's nations on the Human Development Index (an authoritative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education, and standard of living) and the world‘s developing nations on the Human Poverty
Index (a measure of infant mortality, illiteracy, long-term unemployment, and disposable income). In recent years, they have taken an interest in gender equity. Their parent organization is the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations which, in a kind of way, monitors and applies sanctions for human rights violations. However, the head of UNDP is the third highest-ranking official at the U.N. UNDP also provides expert advice, training, and grant support to developing countries. The UNDP is funded entirely by voluntary contributions from developed nations, and the U.S. is a large, but not the largest donor (Note: since its creation in
1945, the United States has been the world‘s biggest contributor to the United Nations, but in recent years, the U.S. has only been contributing 22% of the UN 's regular budget). UNDP‘s results-oriented, policy implementation unit is a relatively new organization called the UNDG
(United Nations Development Group) which uses country teams to report on progress made by other U.N. units and programs. One hesitates to mention this, but UNDP has, from time to time, been involved in scandal, the most recent one being the ―dollars-for-dictators‖ scandal of 2007 when it funneled money to North Korea at the same time the international community was putting pressure on that country. UNDP was also involved in the more infamous Iraq ―oil-forfood‖ scandal of 2003, the same year that the U.N. Headquarters in Baghdad was bombed.
3.2 Sustainable Development
In recent years, the concept of sustainable development has become popular. In 1987, a U.N. report (the Brundtland Report) defined it as ―development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.‖
Sustainability means something viable, ongoing, and capable of being maintained indefinitely, and the areas of development that the concept is concerned with include economic, social, political, and environmental. Each of these is conceived as a reinforcing pillar of the other, and explained below:


Economic development — a business is sustainable if its practices call for the use of renewable resources and it holds itself accountable for the environmental and human rights impacts of its activities. Auditing to ISO standards is one way of accomplishing
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





this. Other methods include appropriate waste disposal and corporate social responsibility strategies, a typical strategy being the one called ―triple bottom line‖ which attempts to get businesses to conduct full cost accounting for ―people, planet, and profit.‖ Social development — sustainability at this level involves the use of public management to make policy decisions which improve quality of life and implement progressive elements of a civil society. Cultural diversity is one way of accomplishing this, as are equitable methods of dealing with population problems.
Political development — sustainability at this level involves the use of good governance to create an engaged citizenry and the efficient use of disaster management to protect that citizenry from risk and harm. Compliance with international law is one way of accomplishing this, as are provisions for enhancing information to citizens for decision making and participation.
Environmental development — sustainability at this level involves the use of land management to minimize environmental degradation and to halt and reverse any deterioration processes in the physical environment. Setting up a system of ecosystem metrics is one way of accomplishing this, as are efforts at recycling, halting deforestation, and controlling overexploitation of natural resources.

The way these pillars of sustainable development are implemented is through two types of policy. Vertical policy integration ensures that there is compliance at all levels of government
(e.g., from national to regional to local). Horizontal policy integration ensures that the different agencies or ministries within a country are all integrated, coordinated, or ―on the same page‖ so that no one sector is being over-sustained or under-sustained. In recent years, there has grown an interest in devising various metrics or benchmarks for sustainable development. These metrics range from quantitative equations like the ―Sustainability Index‖ to the more graphical, maporiented ―Sustainability Dashboard.‖ Examples of these and other metrics are available via the
Wikipedia Entry on Sustainability which also explains the conceptual focus on outcomes. Paul
Hawken (1999) has most notably been in the forefront of the outcomes movement as the inventor of such terms as ecological footprint and triple bottom line.
Two Important Standards for Sustainable Development
The measurement of human demand on Earth‘s resources based on the planet‘s ecological capacity to regenerate them. It is simultaneously an estimate of biologically viable land and sea area as well as an estimate how many planet Earths it would take to
Ecological footprint support humanity if everybody lived a given lifestyle. It is measured in global hectares (gha) per capita, and used to argue that many current lifestyles are not sustainable, such as the footprint for a typical United States lifestyle which is 9.6 gha (as opposed to
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Triple bottom line

China 's 1.6 gha). You can find out any nation 's footprint as well as your own at www.footprintstandards.org.
The idea that businesses can do business in a sustainable fashion by focusing upon solid profit, environmental quality, and improved human welfare. It holds that businesses should divest from waste dumping and child labor (money alone not being the driving factor).
It holds that if businesses harm people, they will sue, boycott, make life miserable, and drive away profit. It is part of the official platform of Green Parties who press for legal liability reform such as greater wrongful death awards for victims of corporate crime based on a value of life calculation of 15 to 1; this being the amount that people in developed nations can be said to benefit from the death of every exploited worker in a developing nation.

What is ―sustainable‖ may vary from country to country, depending upon moral values toward environmental preservation and conservation of natural capital. Different cultures have different attitudes of ―respect‖ or ―disrespect‖ toward the environment (e.g., plants, forests, woods). One person‘s ―weed‖ may be another person‘s ―flower.‖ However, sustainability is not just about ethics, philanthropy, or socially responsible business. Sustainability thinking involves, at base, a desire to achieve human and ecosystem longevity along with a greater sense of well-being and connectedness. The notion of ―well-being‖ is associated with the sociological or criminal justice concept of Quality of Life, which is the idea that not only can people be relatively free from pain and disease, but they can be free from worry, stress, and other negative emotional states. In the criminal justice context, improved quality of life is associated with the community policing concepts of ―disorder‖ and ―incivility‖ which are terms describing how kind and polite people are to one another, as well as with the concept of ―victimless crime‖ which refers to how much people are harming themselves thru drug use, etc. In many ways, sustainability is about becoming more ―civilized‖ and continually improving at it.
3.3 Successes and Disappointments
Development, growth, and modernization have a long way to go, but there have been some dramatic successes, most notably among the so-called ―Asian Tigers‖ of Hong Kong, Singapore,
South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Especially among the first four of these, also known as Asia‘s ―Four Little Dragons,‖ the economies of these societies have sustained durable growth and development for so long now that they are at, or nearly at, the status of fully developed nations. These countries achieved their success primarily by boosting exports to developed countries, but they also boosted investment in education (particularly higher education), improved labor-management relations (the Japan model), improved consumer savings rates, and engaged in responsible land reform so that agricultural workers would not become disgruntled. The Asian Tigers are no longer places of cheap labor; the manufacturing
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giants of India and China are. Success, according to Schoenbaum (2006), comes from the following policies:
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
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Fiscal policy stability — keeping budget deficits low; avoiding inflation; creating stable climate for business
Responsible monetary policy — avoiding the printing of money to fund deficits
Building human capital — through education and health care
Welcoming international investment — through ideas and technology
Decreasing costly subsidy programs — and privatizing public sector enterprises
Reforming tax policies — through streamlined processes
Investing in infrastructure — seaports, transport, communications, and electric power
Encouraging saving — at the personal level
Openness to international markets and trade — developing countries provide about 30% overall Disappointments have included nations like North Korea and Myanmar (Burma), which have been the least dynamic in terms of integrating any free market principles into their economies.
One of the more general disappointments in development studies overall is the phenomena called marginalization, which refers to when increases occur in the size of the middle and upper classes but the poor actually become more poor. The tragedy of this phenomena is that it involves increases in absolute, not relative poverty. This condition seems to occur with some recurrent frequency where there are low school enrollments and high birthrates. In addition to poverty itself, many of the world 's developing nations face a huge debt problem, where they are forced to pay billions of dollars annually. Debt relief is a controversial subject, and one which has implications for developed nations as well (e.g., subprime mortgages, credit card and school loan debt), but there seems to be little hope for any kind of debt forgiveness scheme like the Vatican keeps advocating. In the meantime, it can only be hoped that development experts will eventually hit upon the right mix of principles, policies, and programs that bring some measure of well-being to all the world.
3.4 Interconnected We Prosper
Millions of people are pulled out of poverty every year, and this is cause for global celebration.
At no other time in human history has it ever been more possible to win the war on global poverty, and we owe it all to global inter-connectedness. Not just goods and services cross borders but information and ideas now flow across borders freely and constantly. The Internet was a big, almost magical boost for this, but it is also a big source of misinformation and fearmongering. It cannot be proven, for example, that increased demand among developing nations is the cause of increased (gas and food) prices in developed nations. There is no reason to fear the global rise of living standards. It is not a zero-sum game, and Western civilization will NOT fall. Certainly, there will be increased competition, and there are natural limits to certain
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commodities. But, there are no limits on human ingenuity, and few downsides to an increasingly sophisticated and educated, global middle class. The greatest challenge in the developed world today may very well involve coming to grips with the social justice implications of whether we should deny others a chance at prosperity because it may challenge our own comfort. Incredible opportunities await for creating wealth and to do so in a less harmful and more beneficial fashion. 3.5 Foreign Aid
One of the worst effects of foreign aid in Africa is its tendency to deflect attention away from the disastrous domestic policies of many African governments.
The evidence that foreign aid fuels corruption is well documented, so it does not warrant discussion in this unit.
We prefer to focus on the role of foreign aid in sustaining and reinforcing a mentality of dependence, victimisation, political impotence and economic disempowerment. Decolonisation in Africa began in the 1960s, yet many African politicians continue to invoke colonialism and imperialism to explain away the dire socio-economic circumstances of their fellow citizens. Nowhere is this cry trumpeted more vociferously and persistently than in
Zimbabwe. The same basic sentiment is manifest in calls to bridge the economic gap between the developed countries of the northern hemisphere and the developing countries of the southern hemisphere, the so-called North-South divide. Empirical evidence, though, demonstrates very clearly that it is the erroneous statist and command policies of these politicians, rather than the effects of colonialism, that impoverish their communities.
Outside the African continent there are many successful former colonies, which neither clamoured for nor received substantial foreign aid to boost their economic development. Most
Latin American countries relied instead upon the implementation of market-oriented domestic policies, which made it possible for the spirit of enterprise of their peoples to rise to the fore, thus bringing about remarkable socio-economic development, sometimes within a decade. Africa has a different story.
Aid to the African continent has been at best a futile and at worst counter-productive. This continent remains by far the poorest in the world, despite the foreign aid that has been pumped into it for decades. Africa has received an unprecedented rate of aid compared to other regions that have colonised, and yet it is the only continent that has become poorer over the last twenty five years. Africa‘s share of global trade, has dropped to 2% in 2002 from about 5% in 1980.
Only in recent years can some notable exceptions be mentioned such as Rwanda, Ghana and
Uganda. The 2010 UN Human Development Report, finds that ―in the 31 countries at the bottom of the list, 28 of which are in sub-Saharan Africa.
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To what should we ascribe this state of affairs? The question can be briefly answered by quoting a 2010 statement of President Aboulaye Wade of Senegal:
―I‘ve never seen a country develop through aid or credit. Countries that have developed – in
Europe, America, Japan, Asian countries like Taiwan, Korea and Singapore – have all believed in free markets. There is no mystery there. Africa took the wrong road after independence.‖ Despite the aid they receive, countries located on the African continent, which boasts an abundance of valuable and strategic mineral resources, trail far behind ones located in places which lack them. Countries such as South Korea, Japan and Singapore now number among the world‘s most developed economies despite having started out, like most African nations, as decolonised states or states ravaged by war.
Inter-governmental aid presents opportunities for general corruption, bureaucratic empire building and patronage. It also instils a culture of entitlement on the part of the recipient government. Over the years, successive African governments have tapped into ―colonial guilt‖ in trying to extract aid from foreign countries. They have thus tried to divert attention away from the failure of their own policies and prolong their tenure.
President Robert Mugabe is a master at this game and has played the victim card very effectively. Many in South Africa have swallowed his explanations hook, line and sinker. It is most unfortunate that this same coupling of ‗colonial guilt‘ and African victim-hood is often echoed, within the foreign donor establishment.
The fundamental challenge for Africa is to raise economic productivity and boost economic growth. This, of necessity, requires a radical re-appraisal of existing domestic policies rather than external aid. Fortunately, in the search for the right policies, it is not necessary to reinvent the wheel. There is already a study, based upon data from countries around the world, which identifies successful high growth economic policies. This study, entitled Economic Freedom of the World, spearheaded by the Canada-based Fraser Institute and co-published by liberal thinktanks worldwide, shows that greater economic freedom correlates with improved economic growth per capita, improvements in health and education, low mortality rates and so on. It enables one to contrast the performance of countries ranked highly on a measure of economic freedom, such as Singapore, USA and Switzerland, with the countries ranked lowest, including
Zimbabwe, Myanmar and the Central African Republic. It is very significant that countries that display high levels of economic freedom generally attract greater foreign investment and stimulate greater domestic investment.

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In its relations with the rest of the world, Africa requires free trade, not aid. The best way the rest of the world can help Africa is by removing all protectionist barriers to trade. Embracing economic and political freedom should be the point of departure for the formulation of new policies in Africa.
This means that the principles of the protection of private property, freedom of exchange and personal choice should be enshrined in constitutions or reinforced where they already exist. The rule of law must be entrenched and safeguarded in order to protect these and other complementary principles. Sadly, these principles, which are taken for granted in the developed world, are being eroded in Africa.
4.0 Conclusion
In order to safeguard existing liberties and promote greater freedom, we Africans would be well advised to heed the following words:
―It is seldom that liberty is lost all at once‖ (David Hume, Philosopher, 1711 – 1776)
―Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty‖ (Wendell Phillip 1811 – 1884)
5.0 Summary
For the most part, the field of Theories and Practices of Development has yet to accomplish two central tasks: (1) an adequate conceptualization of the development process; and (2) the development of tools which practitioners could use for implementation. These are serious deficiencies, but they do not make the field worthless.
Self Assessment Exercise
1. Is Africa a decolonised continent? Justify your response.
2. Foreign Aid is necessary to the development of Africa. Critically analyse this statement with reference to an African country of your choice.
3. Is sustainable development feasible? Discuss making reference to Zambia‘s Sixth
National Development Plan.
6.0 References
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Prebisch, R. (1959) ―Commercial policy in the underdeveloped countries.‖ American Economic
Review 49(May): 251-273.
Preston, P. (1996). Development Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell.
Rahnema, M. & Bawtree, V. (Eds.) (1997). The Post-Development Reader. London: Zed Books.
Richardson, J. (2005). Paradise Poisoned: Learning About Conflict, Terrorism and Development from Sri Lanka‘s Civil Wars. Kandy, Sri Lanka: International Centre for Ethnic Studies.
Ritzer, G. (2007) The McDonaldization of Society, 5th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
Rostow, W. (1952). The Process of Development. NY: Norton.
Rostow, W. (1962). The Stages of Growth: A Non-communist Manifesto. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Sachs, W. (Ed.) (1992). The Development Dictionary. NY: St. Martin‘s.
Savitz, A. & Weber, K. (2006). The triple bottom line. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. [Author‘s blog] Schoenbaum, T. (2006) International relations: The path not taken. NY: Cambridge University
Press.
Schuurman, F. (Ed.) (1993) Beyond the impasse: New Directions in Development Theory.
London: Zed Books.
Schuurman, F. (2000). ―Paradigms Lost, Paradigms Regained? Development Studies in the
Twenty-First Century.‖ Third World Quarterly 21(1): 7-20.
Sen, A. (2000) Development as Freedom. NY: Anchor.
Slaughter, A. (2004) A New World Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Stiglitz, J. (2003). Globalization and Its Discontents. NY: Norton.
Wallerstein, I. (1974) The Modern World-System. NY: Academic.
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Zakaria, F. (2003) The Future of Freedom. NY: Norton.

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Unit 4 ETHICS OF DEVELOPMENT
1.0 Introduction
The issue of ethics of development is relatively new in the Social Sciences and has taken centre stage from as early as the late 1960s. Scholars, philanthropists and politicians have taken interest in view of who has the right to define development and how should it be measured. Development ethicists reflect on and assess the ends and means of local, national, regional, and global development. In this unit, we shall discuss the aim, nature, and methods of development ethics and the potential relevance of development ethics so conceived for the work of the International donor community and national governments and states.
National policymakers, project managers, grassroots communities, and international aid donors involved in development in poor countries often confront moral questions in their work
(Crooker, 1978). Many development scholars and practitioners recognize that social-scientific theories of ―development‖ and ―underdevelopment‖ have – often implicit – ethical as well as empirical and policy components. Development philosophers and other ethicists formulate ethical principles relevant to social change in less developed countries; they also analyze and assess the moral dimensions of development theories and seek to resolve—often in dialogue with those most affected—the moral quandaries lurking in development policies and practice
(Crocker, 2001, Goulet, 1995, Gasper, 1997 and 2004, Hamelink, 1997).
2.0 Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
i.
ii. iii. iv.
v.

Understand how ethics of development came about and how it has evolved over time;
Appreciate the sources of ethics of development;
Analyse areas where experts and non-experts alike agree;
Discuss areas where experts and non-experts alike disagree; and
Formulate the way forward.

3.0 Main Content
3.1 Sources of Ethics of Development
One finds several sources for moral assessment of the theory and practice of development. First, activists and social critics, such as Mohandas Gandhi (beginning in the 1890s) (Gandhi, 1927) in
South Africa and India, Raúl Prébisch (1940s and 50s) (Prébisch, 1962) in Latin America, and
Frantz Fanon (in the 1960s) (Fanon, 1961) in Africa criticized colonialism and orthodox economic development and searched for better alternatives. Second, since the early 1960s,
American development scholar and critic Denis Goulet, drawing inspiration from the work of
Louis-Joseph Lebret and Gunner Myrdal, and American sociologist Peter Berger pioneered what
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is now called ―development ethics‖ by arguing that development theory, policy, and practices needs to be subjected to ethical assessment. Both insisted that what was conventionally called development was often bad for human beings and that both ethics and development would benefit from interaction (Goulet, 1971, 1977; Berger, 1974).
Des Gasper (Gasper, 2004) suggests a third, more practical, 1960‘s source of development ethics, namely, practitioners engaged in moral arguments about famine and emergency relief, human rights activists supporting the covenant on social and economic rights, and religious communities influenced by liberation theology.
A fourth stimulus for development ethics was the effort of primarily Anglo-American moral philosophers in the late 1970s and the 1980s to deepen and broaden philosophical debate about famine relief and food aid. Beginning in the early seventies, often in response to Peter Singer 's utilitarian argument for famine relief (Singer, 1972) and Garrett Hardin‘s ―lifeboat ethics‖
(Hardin, 1974), many philosophers debated whether affluent nations (or their citizens) have moral obligations to aid starving people in poor countries and, if they do, what are the nature, bases and extent of those obligations.
The moral problem of world hunger and the ethics of famine relief were among the first practical issues that philosophers tackled after John Rawls‘s pivotal 1971 study, A Theory of Justice,
(Rawls, 1971, 1999, 2001) convinced them that reflection on normative issues was part of the philosopher‘s task. Although Rawls himself limited ethical analysis to abstract principles of distributive justice, a new group of applied philosophers addressed the ethical and conceptual aspects of a variety of practical problems and policies. In the same year that Rawls‘s volume appeared, Peter Singer first wrote about famine in East Bengal (now Bangladesh) (Singer, 1972) and, more generally, about ―the obligations of the affluent to those in danger of starvation‖
(Singer, 1977: 36).
In his 1974 New York Times Magazine article, ―Philosophers are Back on the Job‖ (Singer,
1974), Singer championed the philosophical turn to applied ethics, employing the ethics of famine relief as a leading example.
Philosophers were back on the job because, as John Dewey had urged fifty years earlier:
―philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men‖ (Dewey, 1960). One of these human problems in the mid-seventies was whether or not affluent states and their citizens were in any way morally obligated to send food to famine victims in other countries. Is such aid morally required, admirable but not obligatory, or impermissible? For instance, the editors of an anthology, widely used in university classes, asked, ―What moral responsibility do affluent nations (or those people in them) have to the starving masses?‖ (Aiken and LaFollette, 1977:1). Peter Singer argued that such aid was
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obligatory and rich people commit moral wrong in refusing to aid. For, he asserted, ―suffering and death from lack of food, shelter, and medical care is bad‖ and ―if it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.‖ Finally, claiming that life-saving and sufferingreducing actions are indeed in our power, Singer concluded that famine relief is a moral obligation or duty and not a mere matter of charity (Singer, 1972).
Even though such a duty might be at odds with our moral judgments and complacent consumption practices, we do grievous wrong in not donating to famine relief—even to the point of bringing our standard of living down to that of the world‘s poorest.
Garrett Hardin, writing in 1974 in Psychology Today Magazine, likewise argued against charitable aid (Hardin, 1974a). Unlike Singer, however, Hardin argued that rich nations and individuals (living in lifeboats) have a duty not to help the needy (swimming in the sea). Aid would only worsen the problems of hunger, because it would result in more mouths to feed, and would cause other countries to become dependent on handouts rather than solving their own food and population problems.
Throughout the 70s (and on into the 80s), often in response to Singer, on the one hand, and
Hardin, on the other, many philosophers investigated whether there exists a positive moral obligation to aid distant and hungry people and, if so, what is its nature, foundation, and limits
(Singer, 1972 and Hardin, 1974a; Aiken and La Follette, 1996 and Chatterjee, 2004).
By the early eighties, however, moral philosophers, such as Nigel Dower, Onora O 'Neill and
Jerome M. Segal, had come to agree with those development specialists who for many years had believed that famine relief and food aid were only one part of the solution to the problems of hunger, poverty, underdevelopment and international injustice. What is needed, argued these philosophers, is not merely an ethics of aid but a more comprehensive, empirically informed, and policy relevant ―ethics of Third World development.‖ The kind of assistance and North/South relations that are called for will depend on how (good) development is understood.
A fifth source of development ethics is the work of Paul Streeten and Amartya Sen. Both economists have addressed the causes of global economic inequality, hunger, and underdevelopment and have addressed these problems with, among other things, a conception of development explicitly based on ethical principles. Building on Streeten‘s ―Basic Human Needs‖
Strategy (Streeten, Burki, ul Haq, Hicks, and Stewart, 1981), Sen argues that development should be understood ultimately not as economic growth, industrialization, or modernization, which are at best means for the end of the expansion of people‘s ―valuable capabilities and functionings‖: 60
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The valued functionings can vary from such elementary ones as avoiding mortality or preventable morbidity, or being sheltered, clothed, and nourished, to such complex achievements as taking part in the life of the community, having a joyful and stimulating life, or attaining self-respect and the respect of others (Sen, 1997).
These five sources have been especially influential in the work of Anglo-American development ethicists, such as Sabina Alkire, Nigel Dower, Stephen Esquith, Des Gasper, Denis Goulet,
Daniel Little, Onora O‘Neill, and other authors (Crocker, 2002). When practiced by Latin
Americans, Asians, Africans and non-Anglo Europeans, development ethics also draws on philosophical and moral traditions distinctive of their cultural contexts.
3.2 Areas of Agreements-Questions
Although they differ on a number of matters, development ethicists exhibit a wide consensus about the commitments that inform their practice, the questions they are posing, and the unreasonableness of certain answers. Development ethicists typically ask the following related questions, many of which we relate to issues that have or might surface in most international donor institutions:




What moral issues emerge in development policymaking and practice and how should they be resolved? Should the International donor community‘s efforts at democracy promotion emphasize the Middle East at the expense of Southern or Latin America?
Should an independent judiciary be viewed as part of the democratic ideal or as relative to only specific (Western) cultures? One example of a moral question intrudes in recent donor documents is the following: ―Is it enough, from a donor‘s point of view, that the legal and social instruments for inclusion exist and that there are no barriers to participation: Or should they also be concerned about whether the citizenry—indeed all segments of the citizenry—actually participates? And, if so, are they [sic] coerced to participate? . . . Should donors support programs to improve actual, not just permissive, participation‖ (USAID: Conducting a DGA: A Framework for Strategy Development,
23). Does a preoccupation with anti-corruption strategies crowd out long-term efforts at poverty reduction and participatory democracy? (Naim, 2005). Should donor institution personnel refuse to demote birth control (condoms) to a secondary status compared to policies of abstinence and marital fidelity? (Kristof, 2005)
What should count as (good) development? What are clear examples of ―good‖ development and ―bad‖ development? How well are various regions, societies, and locales doing in achieving ―development‖? Development ethics, as should be clear from our discussion above, emerged due to dissatisfaction with conventional wisdom with respect to ―development‖, and thrives on questioning how should good and better development be conceived.
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












Should we continue using the concept of development instead of, for example,
―progress,‖ ―economic growth,‖ ―transformation,‖ ―liberation,‖ ―sustainable livelihoods,‖(Clugston and Hoyt, 1997) or ―post-development alternatives to development‖(Escobar, 1995)? How, if at all, does (good) development differ from
―modernization,‖
―industrialization,‖
―developmentalism,‖
―transformational development,‖ or the ―Washington Consensus‖?
Are development‘s professed altruistic aims incompatible or coincident with the national interest of donor countries? Is it better for USAID, for example, to emphasize US foreign policy‘s self-interested motives in providing aid rather than altruism? Is professed altruism a rationalization for alleged Northern and Western economic dominance?
If development is defined generically as ―good socio-economic change,‖ what basic economic, political, and cultural goals should a society or political community pursue, and what values or principles should inform their selection?
How should the benefits and harms of development be conceived and distributed? Is the most fundamental category to be used in moral assessment GDP (per capita income), utility, subjective happiness (Graham and Pettinato, 2002), social primary goods
(Rawls), access to resources (Roemer), basic human needs (Galtung, Max-Neef, Streeten, ul Haq), human capabilities and functionings (Sen, Nussbaum), human flourishing, or human rights? Is some aggregate measure of development success basic, such as economic growth or economic efficiency, or does social justice require maximizing the expectations of the least well off, getting all above a threshold, or reducing degrading inequality? Who or what bears (primary) responsibility for bringing about development—a nation‘s government, civil society or the market? What role—if any—do or should more affluent states, international institutions, and nongovernmental associations, and developing countries themselves have in development? Is the Millennium Summit and Declaration correct in focusing donor nation and multilateral institutions responsibilities exclusively related on the ―best performing‖ less developed countries. Who or what is responsible for those nations (and their citizens) that perform less well or abysmally?
Regardless who has them, how should development duties or obligations be understood?
Are duties based solely on divine commands, social pacts, general positive duties of charity (which permit donor discretion with respect to specific beneficiaries), specific duties to aid (any needy rights-bearer), negative duties to dismantle unjust structures or halt injurious action, or duties to make reparation for past wrongs? Is the duty of ―Do no harm‖ enough or should citizens and development agents also consider positive duties to aid; and, if so, how should the duty not to harm be weighed in relation to the duty to do good? What are the virtues and vices of various development agents? How good or obligatory is honesty and how bad or permissible is deception? Should Transparent International,
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




USAID, Oxfam, and similar donor agencies have a code of ethics or conduct for its personnel? What is the evidence with respect to the role of similar professional codes in improving conduct? Is a code likely to do more harm than good? Would the prohibitions of such a code encourage employees to act in questionable ways just up to the threshold so as to encourage problematic conduct? What would a defensible ethical code look like?
Who should decide on such a code and by what process? Should it be imposed from the top or deliberated from the bottom? How should a code be enforced? How does an ethics of professional virtue or conduct relate to an ethics for assessing policy and institutional arrangements? What are the most serious local, national and international impediments to and constraints on good development? How should blame for development failures be apportioned among global, national, and local agents?
To what extent, if any, do moral skepticism, moral relativism, national sovereignty and political realism, religious or political fundamentalism pose a challenge to this boundarycrossing ethical inquiry? To what extent should the aims, for example, of UK foreign
(and domestic) policy constrain or shape Oxfam‘s policies?
Who should decide these questions and by what methods? What are or should be the respective roles of appeal to authority, theoretical and critical reflection, public deliberation, donor deliberation, and ―learning by doing‖?

3.3 Areas of Agreements-Answers
In addition to accepting the importance of these questions, most development ethicists share many beliefs or commitments about their field and the general parameters for ethically-based development. First, development ethicists typically agree that – in spite of global progress with respect to achieving higher living standards for many – there are still grave deprivations for many in contrast to the elevated affluence of a few. Development ethicists start from judgments about what Dewey would call a ―problematic situation‖: many people throughout the world undeservedly and needlessly suffer or die.
These deaths may be either agonizing slow, due to poverty of various sorts, or rapid but brutal due to ethnic and military conflict, repressive governments, or fragile states. In our affluent world, these unacceptable sufferings and deprivations need not continue, should be halted, and people everywhere should have a chance for a decent life. Pogge‘s cool expression of moral outrage is typical of many who share his sentiments:
How well are the weak and vulnerable faring today? Some 2,800 million or 46 percent of humankind live below the World Bank‘s $2/day poverty line – precisely: in households whose income per person per day has less purchasing power than in $2.15 had in the US in 1993. On average, the people living below this line fall 44.4 percent below it. Over 1,200 million of them live on less than half, below the World Bank‘s better-known $1/day poverty line. People so incredibly poor are extremely vulnerable
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to even minor changes in natural and social conditions as well as to many forms of exploitation and abuse. Each year, some 18 million of them die prematurely from poverty-related causes.
This is one-third of all human deaths—50,000 every day, including 34,000 children under age five. Such severe and extensive poverty persists while there is great and rising affluence elsewhere. The average income of the citizens of the affluent countries is about 50 times greater in purchasing power and about 200 times greater in terms of market exchange rates than that of the global poor (Pogge, 2002:2; Little, 2003, and
Gasper, 2004:2-3).
Moreover, development ethicists contend that development practices and theories have ethical and value dimensions and can benefit from explicit ethical analysis and appraisal. Although important, ascertaining the facts and their likely causes and effects cannot take the place of morally assessing what has been, is, and could be. Ethics or value commitments are lenses that reveal or highlight the valuational or moral dimension of human actions, institutions, and their consequences. It is important to know the causes and consequences of such things as poverty, corruption, repressive governments, and state fragility. It is another thing to evaluate the morally salient features of those actions and decide whether alternatives would be morally better. For example, does the economic growth supposedly generated by a given development strategy get translated to expanding valuable freedoms of a nation‘s most vulnerable citizens? Ethical assessment of past policies and present options enables people who are active in development to keep their eyes on the ball of reducing remediable and undeserved human death and suffering.
Many people work in development in order to make the world better, but the conceptual frameworks that guide them are largely concerned with technical means rather than morally urgent ends.
Development ethics is a way of thinking that puts moral questions and answers in the center of thought and action.
In addition, development ethicists agree that development is a multidisciplinary field that has both theoretical and practical components and that it should include both academicians and practitioners. Development ethicists aim not merely to understand the nature, causes and consequences of development – conceived generally as desirable social change – but also to argue for and promote specific conceptions of such change. In backing certain changes, development ethicists assume that choice among alternatives is real and some are ethically better than others. The choices are not merely choices of strategies (goals plus general means) or tactics (specific means). Rather, choices concern or are informed by ethical principles with respect to basic goals
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and morally permissible means. ―Know-why‖ and ―know-how‖ — whether economic or political—are important but cannot replace ―know-whether.‖
It is best, at least in our present age of disciplinary and institutional divisions, that development ethics involve the work of many hands. Development ethics should include many voices. It ought to be multidisciplinary to ensure the presence of various theoretical elements – economics, but also sociology, political science, history, ecology, agronomy, law, theology, and philosophy. It ought to transcend the distinction between the pure and applied sciences and therefore include such fields as agricultural economics, education, engineering, nutrition, and social work. The moral dialogue ought to include theological ethics, so as not to neglect the resources of the religious communities, as well as secular ethics, in order to forge an improved global and public moral consensus that builds on and extends global commitments to common values and human rights. Development ethics ought to go beyond theoreticians and include development policy makers, politicians, activists, journalists, and citizens. It ought to involve rural as well as urban participants if urban bias is to be corrected without neglecting crucial rural/urban linkages and the serious challenges confronting a rapidly urbanizing world. Public discussion must involve both women and men in order to eliminate sexism. Members of various groups must participate to extinguish racism, class bias, and an academic prejudice against traditional practices and popular wisdom. The participants should come from the South as well as the North to avoid ethnocentric imperialism. We need participants from the Middle East and East as well as the
West so that the issues of religious and cultural conflict can be addressed and non-Western resources can contribute to a global vision. As it did in the days of the Marshall Plan, the US has the opportunity to overcome global fears of US domination and replace them with a recognition that the US stands for global justice and opportunity for all. Deliberative dialogue and democratic decision-making must be institutionalized on various levels and venues. It must involve citizens as well as governmental experts and private consultants if citizens are to have a real opportunity and encouraged to exercise their right to effective participation.
Furthermore, although they may understand the terms in somewhat different ways, development ethicists are generally committed to understanding and reducing human deprivation and misery in poor countries and poor regions of rich countries. Development ethicists persistently remind development agencies that development is for a better life for human beings rather than humans being an instrument of development. Assessment of development policies and projects should emphasize their impacts on preventing death as well as relieving suffering and loss of meaning.
A consensus increasingly exists that development institutions, projects, and aid givers should seek strategies in which both human well-being and a healthy environment jointly exist and are mutually reinforcing (Engel and Engel, 1990; Rolston, 1996; Clugston and Hoyt, 1997; Attfield,
1999; Lee, Holland, and McNeill 2000; Balint, 2000; Dasgupta, 2001; Sen, 2002; and Dower,
2003).
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Another source of agreement is that most development ethicists are convinced that what is frequently called ―development‖ – for instance, economic growth – has created as many problems as it has solved. The term ―development‖ can be used both descriptively and normatively. In the descriptive sense, ―development‖ is often identified as the processes of economic growth and modernization that result in a society‘s achievement of a high or improving (per capita) Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or Gross National Product (GNP). So conceived, a ―developed‖ society may be either celebrated or criticized. In the normative sense, a developed society—ranging from villages to national and regional communities as well as the global order—is one whose established institutions realize or approximate (what the proponent believes to be) worthwhile goals. Most centrally, development ethicists contend that these goals include the overcoming of economic and social deprivation. In order to avoid confusion, when a normative sense of ―development‖ is meant, the noun is often preceded by a positive adjective such as ―good,‖ ―authentic,‖ ―humane,‖ ―just,‖ or ―ethically justified.‖
Development ethicists also agree that development ethics must be conducted at various levels of generality and specificity. Just as development debates occur at various levels of abstraction, so development ethics should assess (1) basic ethical principles or ideals, such as justice, compassion, liberty, autonomy, solidarity, and democracy; (2) development goals and models, such as ―economic growth,‖ ―growth with equity,‖ ―a new international economic order,‖ ―basic needs,‖ and, most recently, ―sustainable development,‖ ―structural adjustment,‖ ―human development‖ (United Nations Development Programme) (Fakuda-Parr and Shiva, 2003; St.
Clair, 2004 and 2005), ―transformational development;‖ and (3) specific institutions, projects, and strategies.
Applied to the donor institutions, this commitment implies that venues for ethical assessment, deliberation, and decision-making should exist at all levels of donor institutions activity—from the highest policy levels to countrywide programs and local projects.
Most development ethicists also contend that their enterprise should be international or global in the triple sense that the ethicists engaged in this activity come from many societies, including developing ones; that they are seeking to forge a cross-cultural consensus; and that this consensus emphasizes a commitment to alleviating worldwide deprivation. This agreement implies that donor institutions should maintain and deepen critical dialogue about the ends and means of good development with representatives of a variety of governments and nongovernmental organizations.
Although many development ethicists argue that at least some development principles or procedures are relevant for any impoverished community or polity, most agree that development strategies must be contextually sensitive. What constitutes the best means – for instance, state
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provisioning, market mechanisms, civil society and their hybrids – will depend on a political community‘s history and stage of social change as well as on regional and global forces, such as globalization and international institutions.
Development ethics is a way of thought and practice that emphasizes the importance of often distinctive local problems and solutions rather than a cookbook with a single fitting approach.
Finally, this flexibility concerning development models and strategies is compatible with the uniform rejection of certain extremes. Ethically-based development is, ―inclusive‖: it offers and protects development benefits for everyone in a society — regardless of their religion, gender, ethnicity, economic status, or age. Moreover, most development ethicists would repudiate two models: (1) the maximization of economic growth in a society without paying any direct attention to converting greater opulence into better human living conditions for its members, what Amartya Sen and Jean Drèze call ―unaimed opulence‖ (Drèze and Sen, 1989) and (2) an authoritarian egalitarianism in which physical needs are satisfied at the expense of political liberties and citizen agency. Development ethicists would applaud the Democracy and
Governance Assessment (DGA) Framework‘s repudiation of ―totalitarian‖ and ―authoritarian regimes‖ but would have two worries. First, for example, US foreign policy goals, especially antiterrorism strategies, still permit excessive reliance on authoritarian allies. US arrangements with certain repressive regimes include the regimes supplying data on terrorist threats in exchange for US/USAID agreement to refrain from aggressively pushing ―democracy and good governance.‖ Ways exist to keep the pressure on for deepening democracy without abandoning security goals (Carothers, 2004; Carothers and Ottaway, 2005). Second, USAID‘s reforming of development assistance so as to reward good governance and democratic transition needs to be supplemented with finding significant (high impact) ways to benefit and empower the poor in repressive societies.
3.4 Disagreements
In addition to these points of agreement, one also finds several divisions and unsettled issues.
One unresolved issue concerns the scope of development ethics. Development ethics originated as the ―ethics of Third World Development.‖ There are good reasons to drop – as a Cold War relic – the ―First-Second- Third World‖ trichotomy. However, no consensus exists on whether or how development ethics should extend beyond its central concern of assessing the development ends and means of developing or traditional societies and in ―fragile‖ states. Some argue that development ethicists should criticize human deprivation wherever it exists, including in rich countries and regions since they too have problems of poverty, powerlessness, and alienation and so properly fall within the scope of development ethics. Some argue that perhaps the socioeconomic model that the North has been exporting to the South results in the underdevelopment of both. Moreover, just as the (affluent) North exists in the (geographic) South, so the (poor)
South exists in the (geographic) North. Yet others restrict development ethics to poor countries by arguing that attention to Northern deprivation diverts development ethicists and agents from
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the world‘s most serious destitution (in poor countries) and the ways in which rich countries benefit from the current global order.
Our own view is that restricting development ethics to ―developing‖ countries is defective in three ways. It falsely assumes that the most severe deprivation occurs in poor countries when in fact, as Sen points out, ―the extent of deprivation for particular groups in very rich countries can be comparable to that in the so-called Third World‖ (Sen, 1999: 21). Further, Northern and
Southern poverty reduction are linked; migrants from the South making money in the North send valuable remittances to their families back home but may also drain the South of able workers and displace workers in the North. Finally, there is the increasing prevalence of applying ―best practices‖ learned from development in the South to destitution in the North (as well as vice versa). For example, USAID applied – through its Lessons without Borders program – lessons learned abroad to destitute US cities. Development agents in different societies often face similar problems – such as unemployment, racism, violence, and powerlessness – and benefit from innovative ways of solving them.
A second question with respect to the scope of development ethics concerns how wide a net development ethics should cast with respect to the topics it addresses. It is controversial whether development ethicists, concerned with rich country responsibility and global distributive justice, should restrict themselves to official development assistance – traditionally conceived – or whether they also should treat such topics as international trade, capital flows, migration, environmental pacts, terrorism, civil conflict, state fragility, military intervention, humanitarian intervention, and responses to human rights violations committed by prior regimes. The chief argument against extending its boundaries in these ways is that development ethics would thereby become too ambitious and diffuse. If development ethics grew to be identical with all international ethics or even all social ethics, the result might be that insufficient attention would be paid to alleviating extreme poverty and powerlessness in various communities. Both sides agree that development ethicists should assess various kinds of North-South (and South-South) relations and the numerous global forces, such as globalization, that influence poverty as well as economic and political inequality in poor countries. What is unresolved, however, is whether development ethics also should address such topics as trade, security, the internet, drug trafficking, military intervention, the conduct of war, peace keeping, and the proposed international criminal court when – or to the extent to which – these topics have no causal relationship to absolute or relative poverty or powerlessness.
Some donor institutions such as USAID claims global leadership in including humanitarian relief, anti-corruption, attention to fragile states, and democracy promotion as components of good development and development assistance – all these activities argue for an enlarged conception of development on the part of both donor and recipient countries.
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Development ethicists also are divided on the status of the moral norms that they seek to justify and apply. Three positions have emerged. Universalists, such as utilitarians and Kantians, argue that development goals and principles are valid for all societies. Particularists, especially communitarians and postmodern relativists, reply that universalism masks ethnocentrism and
(Northern or Western) cultural imperialism. (Pro-development particularists either reject the existence of universal principles or affirm only the procedural principle that each nation or society should draw only on its own traditions and decide its own development ethic and path).
A third approach – advanced, for example, by Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum, Jonathan
Glover, as well as others (Nussbaum and Glover, 1995) – tries to avoid the standoff between the first two positions. Proponents of this view insist that development ethics should forge a crosscultural consensus in which a political community‘s own freedom to make development choices is one among a plurality of fundamental norms. Further, these norms are sufficiently general to permit and also require sensitivity to societal differences. This mediating view is also expressed at various places in the DGA Framework (e.g. DGA Framework, 13).
One must also ask a further question related to the universalism/particularism debate: to what extent, if any, should development ethicists propose visions committed to a certain conception of human well-being or flourishing, and how ―thick‖ or extensive should this vision be? There is a continuum here: at one end of the range, one finds a commitment to the values of individual choice, tolerance of differences, and public deliberation about societal ends and means; on the other end, one finds normative guidance and institutional guarantees with respect to the good or full human life but less tolerance for individual and social choice. We are attracted to a threshold view that identifies a minimal level of agency (Sen defines agency as when ―someone who acts and brings about change, and whose achievements can be judged in terms of her own values and objectives, whether or not we assess them in terms of some external criteria as well.‖ (Sen, 1999) and wellbeing that should be open to everyone, regardless of their citizenship, and is the
―platform‖ for individuals and communities freely to decide their own conception of the fully good or flourishing human life. One reason for this approach is that it will be easier to get crosscultural consensus for a ―moral minimum‖ than for a robust conception of the good life. Another reason is that such minimalism respects the rights of individuals and communities to determine
(within limits set by their respect for the similar freedom of others) their own conception of the good). Even supposing that development principles have some substantive content (beyond the procedural principle of self-determination, that each society or person should decide for itself), there remain disagreements about the substantive content of a development ethics. If one accepts that societal development ultimately concerns human development, one still must explore the moral categories crucial to human well-being and development. Development ethicists, as we have seen, have offered various candidates for such fundamental moral notions, such as utility
(preference satisfaction); subjective happiness (Graham and Pettinato); social primary goods
(Rawls), such as political liberty, income, wealth, and self-respect; negative liberty (Bauer, 1971,
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Nozick, 1974); basic human needs (Galtung 1978/9 and 1980; Streeten, 1981; Doyal, 1991 and
Gasper, 2004) autonomy or agency (O‘Neill; Sen, 1999); human dignity and worth (Kantian ethics and Nussbaum), valuable capabilities and functionings (Sen, 2002; Nussbaum, 2003;
Little, 2002; United Nations Development Programme, 2002); human or moral rights (Pogge,
2002; Sen, 1999), civic leadership and duty (virtue ethics), and compassion or care (feminist ethics), among others.
Although many think that a development ethic ought to include more than one of these moral concepts, development ethicists differ about which among these values ought to be given priority. The alternative that we favor endorses the development of an understanding of minimal human well-being (not flourishing) that combines, on the one hand, a neo-Kantian commitment to autonomy and human dignity, critical dialogue and public deliberation with, on the other hand, neo-Aristotelian beliefs in the importance of physical health, happiness, and social participation.
Development duties might then flow from the idea that all humans have the right to a minimal level of well-being, and various institutions have the duty to secure and protect this well-being as well as restore it when lost. USAID, for example, like the World Bank, should consider the merits of a rights-based approach to development. It is striking that moral considerations such as moral rights, which are not the same as legal rights, surface all too infrequently in USAID documents (For exceptions, see DGA Framework 14, 16, and 22).
Each of these moral theories, and others like them, offers insights at both the broad policy level and at the level of specific interventions. Although these moral frameworks seldom provide definitive or specific answers, they do call attention to candidates for fundamental ends in the light of which many current strategies and tactics might turn out to be morally questionable or even morally impermissible. The moral theories provide lenses that enable us to see ourselves, our duties, and others in new and compelling ways.
They can reinforce moral motivations and thereby shape both citizen and professional conduct.
One also finds an ongoing debate about how development‘s benefits, burdens, and responsibilities should be distributed within developing countries and between rich and poor countries. Utilitarianism, assumed in most neo-classical economics, prescribes simple aggregation and maximization of individual utilities.
This solution to the problem of distribution puts economic growth as the basic end (and means) of development and assumes that such growth will benefit everyone. Rawlsians advocate that income and wealth be maximized for the least well-off (individuals or nations). Libertarians contend that a society should guarantee no form of equality apart from equal freedom from the interference of government and other people. Pogge broadens the libertarian notion of harm (and moral rights) and argues that rich elites and nations have a duty to refrain from harming the vulnerable and thereby violating their rights. Singer, as we saw above, continues to challenge
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development ethicists and citizens everywhere with his argument that if affluent nations and individuals can relieve suffering and death without sacrificing anything of comparable moral worth, they are morally obliged to do so. Capability ethicists defend governmental and civil responsibility to enable everyone to advance to a level of sufficiency (Sen, 2002; Crocker, 1999), dignity (Nussbaum) or flourishing (Little) with respect to the valuable functionings.
Unfortunately, distributional questions are conspicuous by their absence from much development policymaking. Development ethics challenges this silence by asking not only who in fact gains and loses but which distribution of burdens and benefits is most justified morally.
Development ethicists also differ about whether (good) societal development should have – as an ultimate goal – the promotion of values other than the present and future human good. Some development ethicists ascribe intrinsic value – equal or even superior to the good of individual human beings – to such human communities as family, nation, or cultural group. Others argue that non-human individuals and species, as well as ecological communities, have equal and even superior value to human individuals. Those committed to ―eco-development‖ or ―sustainable development‖ often fail to agree on what should be sustained as an end in itself and what should be maintained as an indispensable or merely helpful means. Nor do they agree on how to surmount conflicts among environmental and other competing values.
Stiglitz clearly recognizes that these and other value disagreements are sometimes implicit in what seem to be factual or value neutral policy disagreements:
There are important disagreements about economic and social policy in our democracies. Some of these disagreements are about values—how concerned should we be about our environment (how much environmental degradation should we tolerate, if it allows us to have a higher GDP); how concerned should we be about the poor (how much sacrifice in our total income should we be willing to make, it if [sic] allows some of the poor to move out of poverty, or to be slightly better off); or how concerned should we be about democracy (are we willing to compromise on basic rights, such as the rights to association, if we believe that as a result, the economy will grow faster) (Stiglitz, 2002: 218-19).
An increasingly important disagreement that concerns the resolution of the above disagreement is related to the roles of various experts (judges, political leaders, donors and their technical experts, development agents, philosophers), on the one hand, and popular agency, on the other, in resolving moral conflicts. On the one hand, popular participation and democracy often are suspect insofar as majorities (or minorities) may dominate others and insofar as people‘s beliefs and preferences are deformed by tradition, adapted to cope with deprivation, and subject to demagogic manipulation. Moreover, experts often excel at ―know how‖ if not ―know why.‖ On the other hand, rule by experts or guardians can lead to new tyrannies, and many experts themselves affirm Sen‘s ―agent-oriented view‖ of development:
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With adequate social opportunities, individuals can effectively shape their own destiny and help each other. They need not be seen primarily as passive recipients of the benefits of cunning development programs. There is indeed a rationale for recognizing the positive role of free and sustainable agency – and even of constructive impatience
(Sen, 1999: 11).
Sen rightly, or so it seems to us, calls for development institutions to reorient their approach from one of providing goods and services to passive recipients to one of enabling countries and their citizens genuine opportunities to be authors of their own lives and development path. Such an
―agency-centered‖ development perspective implies a deepening and broadening of democracy that includes but goes well beyond a universal franchise coupled with free and competitive elections. Crucially important is the engendering of venues – within both government and civil society – in which citizens and their representatives can engage in deliberative give and take to solve common problems.
The theory and practice of deliberative democracy, we contend, has much to offer development ethics and practice in donor institutions. Rather than focusing exclusively on free and fair elections, as important as they are, the theory and practice of deliberative democracy emphasize social choice though public discussion that aims at solutions – solutions that nearly everyone can accept – to common problems. Not only a philosophical normative theory, deliberative democracy is informed by and informs promising experiments in deliberative democracy occurring in Porto Alegre and almost 200 other cities in Brazil, Kerala, India (an Indian state of
40 million inhabitants), and Chicago, Illinois, among other places.
Finally, controversy also exists with respect to which agents and structures are largely if not exclusively to blame for the present state of global destitution and unequal opportunity. Charles
Beitz states the empirical aspects of the issue well: ―There is a large, complex, and unresolved empirical question about the relative contributions of local and global factors to the wealth and poverty of societies‖ (Beitz, 2001: 113). Some development ethicists, such as Pogge, assert that the global order is both dominated by affluent countries and unjustly tilted against poor countries.34 This global order and the process of globalization amounts, claims Pogge, to a
―strong headwind‖ against which any poor community must struggle and which is largely responsible for development failures: ―national policies and institutions are indeed often quite bad; but the fact that they are can be traced to global policies and institutions‖ (Pogge, 2002: 43).
Other development ethicists and policymakers tend to ascribe development failure much less to global and foreign sources and much more to national and local causes – such as elite capture of power, widespread corruption, and the lack of democratic values.

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We appropriate but develop Pogge‘s ―headwind‖ metaphor in a way that captures a view more balanced and flexible (than the one Pogge usually expresses) about the relative and changing weight of external (global structure, rich country role) and internal (developing country role) factors in causing global poverty. Sailors know that the headwind against which they sail is an important but constantly changing and sometimes ambiguous factor and that getting to their destination requires skill and good judgment as well. The headwind is not always steady.
Sometimes it gusts and sometimes it lulls (depending on the wind and whether their boat goes behind an island and is temporarily protected from the wind). Likewise, the impact of the global order (and rich country impact) increases and decreases from time to time and place to place.
Moreover, sometimes there are crosswinds, some of which aid the helmsman and some of which impede progress, and a good sailor must take advantage of the former and adjust to the latter.
Likewise, the global order opens up opportunities for poverty reduction and democratization as well as impedes them, and wise leaders/peoples discern the difference. Furthermore, the good sailor tacks back and forth in the face of the wind, taking advantage of it for forward progress and not bucking it directly. Likewise, a developing country can find ways to take advantage of normally adverse global factors. For instance, a cutback on US aid in Costa Rica enabled Costa
Rica to be less dependent on the US. Additionally, sometimes a headwind changes and becomes a tail wind. Then the global forces and rich country impacts coincide with and supplement internal development efforts. Finally, just as some boats are better than others with respect to resourcefulness, navigability, and stability, so some countries, owing to such things as natural endowments, democratic governance, and human and social ―capital,‖ develop further and faster than others.
The moral of this nautical story is clear: Just as the national development efforts vary and from time to time and place to place, so do the impacts of the global order and the rich countries that dominate this order. Donor institutions/organizations, of course, are situated in a political context in which it must sail, and its policies often may reinforce – unintentionally – global inequalities and well as sometimes purposively reduce them. While the wind is always a factor in sailing
(sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes good, sometimes bad, often both), so is the skill of the captain and crew (and their ability to work together). Empirical investigation is important to determine which way and how hard the wind is blowing and how best to use national skills and resources to reach a society‘s destination. Pogge recognizes the variability of internal factors; in his less careful formulations, he fails to recognize the variability and complexity of external factors, the changing balance between external and internal factors, and the always important and sometimes crucial role of internal factors.
Is it up to developing national and local communities to seize the good and avoid the bad of a globalizing world? Or should the main ―agents of justice‖ be the rich nations, transnational corporations, and global institutions? We agree with Stiglitz and contend that ―today, the challenge is to get the balance right . . .between collective action at the local, national, and global
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levels‖ (Stiglitz, 2003). The donor institutions can and should reduce the negative effects of its initiatives on developing countries; they also can and should increase their positive actions and their beneficial consequences for the lives of human beings. One way it can do so is to promote – more robustly than it does at present – ―free and sustainable agency‖ (Sen, 1999: 11) in developing countries and their citizens. Another way is to deploy development ethics in continually assessing and reassessing development principles, objectives, processes, and tactics.
4.0 Conclusion
The issue of ethics of development is relatively new in the Social Sciences and has taken centre stage from as early as the late 1960s. Scholars, philanthropists and politicians have taken interest in view of who has the right to define development and how should it be measured. Development ethicists reflect on and assess the ends and means of local, national, regional, and global development. Self Assessment Exercise
1. How relevant is development ethics to social justice? Is there a better alternative to deliver development aid to poorer countries?
2. Is Development ethics relevant to improving the quantity as well as the quality of aid to
Africa? Justify your response.
3. Discuss the areas of agreement, disagreement, and compromise for the practice of development ethics by both the critics and proponents of development ethics.
5.0 Summary
This unit discussed the aim, nature, and methods of development ethics and the potential relevance of development ethics so conceived for the work of the International donor community and national governments and states.
6.0 References
Aiken, W. and LaFollette, H. (eds) (1976) World Hunger and Morality. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
Aman, K. (ed.) (1991) Ethical Principles for Development: Needs, Capacities or Rights?. Upper
Montclair, NJ: Institute for Critical Thinking.
Attfield, R. and Wilkins, B. (eds) (1992) International Justice and the Third World. London:
Routledge.

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Berger, P. (1974) Pyramids of Sacrifice: Political Ethics and Social Change. New York: Basic
Books.
Crocker, D.A. (1991) ‗Toward Development Ethics‘. World Development 19: 457-83.
Escobar, A. (1995) ―The Problematization of Poverty‖. In A.Escobar The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Escobar, A. (1995) ―Conclusion: Imagining a Postdevelopment Era‖. In A. Escobar The Making and Unmaking of the Third World. Princeton University Press.
Ferguson, A. (1998) ―Resisting the Veil of Privilege: Building Bridge Identities as an
Ethicopolitics of Global Feminisms‖. Hypatia. Special Issue: Border Crossings: Multi – Cultural and Post-Colonial Feminist Challenges to Philosophy, Part 2, 13 (13).
Gasper, Des, (1999) ‗Drawing a Line — Ethical and Political Strategies in Complex Emergency
Assistance‘, European Journal of Development Research, Vol.11, No.2, pp.87–114.
Gasper, Des, (2002) ‗Is Sen‘s Capability Approach an Adequate Basis for a Theory of Human
Development?‘, Review of Political Economy, Vol.14, No.4, pp.435–61.
Gasper, Des, (2003) ‗Nussbaum‘s Capabilities Approach in Perspective‘, Working Paper 379,
Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, http://www.iss.nl [Accessed 12/06/12]
Gasper, Des, (2004) The Ethics of Development – From Economism to Human Development.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Gasper, Des, (2005) ‗Securing Humanity: Situating ‗‗Human Security‘‘ as Concept and
Discourse‘, Journal of Human Development, Vol.6, No.2, pp.221–45.
Gasper, Des and Irene van Staveren, 2003, ‗Development as Freedom - and as what else?‘
Feminist Economics, Vol.9, Nos.2–3, pp.137–61.
Gasper, Des and Thanh-Dam Truong, (2005) ‗Deepening Development Ethics through the
Lenses of Caring, Gender and Human Security‘, Paper to Ethics and Development Conference
Michigan State University.
Dower, N. (1988) ‗What is Development? A Philosopher‘s Answer‘, Centre for Development
Studies Occasiona Paper Series 3. Glasgow: University of Glasgow.

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Engel, J.R. and. Engel, J.G. (eds) (1990) Ethics of Environment and Development: Global
Challenge, International Response. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.
Escobar, A. (1995) Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Gasper, D. (1994) ‗Development Ethics - An Emergent Field? A Look at Scope and Structure, with Special Reference to the Ethics of Aid‘, in R. Prendergast and F. Stewart (eds) Market
Forces and World Development. London: Macmillan, New York: St Martin‘s Press.
Goulet, D. (1971) The Cruel Choice: A New Concept in the Theory of Development. New York:
Athenaeum.
Goulet, D. (1977) The Uncertain Promise: Value Conflicts in Technology Transfer. New York:
IDOC/North America.
Gunatilleke, G., Tiruchelvam, N. and Coomaraswamy, R. (eds) (1988) Ethical Dilemmas of
Development in Asia. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
Hardin, G. (1974) ‗Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping the Poor‘, Psychology Today 8:
38-43, 123-6.
Mohanty,C.T. (1991) ―Under Western eyes: feminist scholarship and colonial discourses‖. In
C.T. Mohanty, A.Russo, and L.Torres (eds) Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Nussbaum, M., (2003) ‗Capabilities as Fundamental Entitlements: Sen and Social Justice‘,
Feminist Economics, Vol.9, Nos.2–3, pp.33–60.
Nussbaum, M. and Glover, J. (eds) (1995) Women, Culture and Development. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Nussbaum, M.(1998) ―Public Philosophy and International Feminism‖ Ethics.108:4 762-796.
Nussbaum, M. and Sen, A. (eds) (1993) The Quality of Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
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Nussbaum, M., (1999) Sex and Social Justice. New York: Oxford University Press.
Nussbaum, M., (2001) Upheavals of Thought – The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
O‘Neill, O. (1980) ‗The Moral Perplexities of Famine Relief‘, in T. Regan (ed.) Matters of Life and Death: New Introductory Essays in Moral Philosophy. New York: Random House.
O‘Neill, O., (1996) Towards Justice and Virtue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Penz, P., (1986) Consumer Sovereignty and Human Interests. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Penz, P., (2001) ‗The Ethics of Development Assistance and Human Security‘, in R. Irwin (ed.),
Ethics and Security in Canadian Foreign Policy. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press.
Segal, J.M. (1991) ‗What is Development?‘, in C.V. Blatz (ed.) Ethics and Agriculture: An
Anthology on Current Issues in World Context. Moscow, ID: University of Idaho Press.
Sen, A. (1984) Resources, Values and Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Singer, P. (1972) ‗Famine, Affluence and Morality‘, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1: 229-43.
Streeten, P. with Burki, S.J., Haq, M., Hicks, N., and Stewart, F. (1981) First Things First:
Meeting Basic Needs in Developing Countries, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Unit 5 PRACTICES OF DEVELOPMENT
1.0 Introduction
2.0 Objectives
3.0 Main Content
3.1 The New Security Imperatives and the Risks to Foreign Aid
3.2 The United States
3.3 The United Kingdom
3.4 Japan
3.5 The European Union
4.0 Conclusion
5.0 Summary
6.0 References
1.0 Introduction
Aid for good governance is much in the news. Wealthy countries promised dramatically to increase aid to the world‘s poorest countries at the G8 meeting in Gleneagles in 2005, agreeing to double aid for Africa by 2010 and noted that according to the OECD, aid for all developing countries would increase by around $50 billion per year by 2010 (Gleneagles G8 Communique,
8 July 2005 at www.g8.gov.uk). Promoting good governance is at the heart of these new commitments. To quote the G8 in 2007: ―Good governance in Africa is vital to peace, stability, sustainable development, and growth. Without good governance, all other reforms will have limited impacts‖ (Heiligendamm G8 Communique, 8 June 2007 at www.g7.utoronto.ca).
The promises being made by wealthy countries need to be set in a broader context. After 9/11 the global security agenda shifted. Suddenly the top priority was the War on Terror in Afghanistan and Pakistan – in fact, anywhere, where extremists might be contributing to international terrorist activities. Soon after, the invasion of Iraq signalled a new approach to containing and disarming states thought to have weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
Inevitably demoted were efforts to prevent or resolve conflicts within poorer states, such as the one currently raging in the Darfur region of Sudan. These developments magnified three existing challenges to foreign aid.
First, donors may hijack foreign aid to pursue their own security goals instead of helping the world‘s poor.
Second, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the broader War on Terror have been extremely costly, diverting aid and reducing other aid budgets. Generous promises of increased aid have not translated into real new flows. ―Aid to Sub-Saharan Africa has stalled‘ concluded the OECD
DAC in 2006 (OECD DAC, 2006) while the World Bank report that net ODA disbursements in
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Author: Francis Lungo [e-mail] fact declined by US$3 billion in 2006 (World Bank, 2007:55). The third challenge to aid is that major donors are failing to coordinate aid through existing multilateral institutions, choosing instead to create their own new mechanisms and pursue their own priorities. The result is competition and clashes among priorities, creating aid chaos in many of the poorest recipient countries with regard to how aid is being delivered. This unit assesses the scope for more aid and good governance promotion in the context of the emerging aid policies of the United States,
Japan, the United Kingdom and the European Union.
2.0 Objectives
By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
i.
ii. iii. Analyse the conditions attached to aid provision to developing countries;
Understand why aid is not a panacea to development; and
Elaborate how provision of aid can be coordinated so as to bring the much needed development to poorer countries.

3.0 Main Content
3.1 The New Security Imperatives and the Risks to Foreign Aid
New security concerns rapidly came to dominate foreign policy after 9/11. Inevitably those concerns spilled over into aid policy. Foreign aid has always been influenced by donors‘ geostrategic interests. Once a government allocates money to foreign aid, a range of national and commercial interests heavily influence how much aid is given and how it is disbursed (Alesina and Dollar, 1990). Even so, researchers have found that a genuine moral vision underpins development assistance. However, scholars have proved that there is a genuine moral vision which underpins development assistance (Lumsdaine, 1993). Furthermore, efforts to improve aid policies were already underway in the 1990s.
The end of the Cold War inspired a lively debate about how to make aid more effective
(Burnside and Dollar, 1997; Hansen and Tarp, 2000; Easterly, Levine, and Roodman, 2003).
This dovetailed with a resolve among donor governments to ensure that the aid they were giving was put to better use. A consensus emerged that aid would be most effective if donors forged better partnerships with recipient governments, and if those governments in turn had greater
―ownership‖ of policies. The new shared goals of development assistance were formally expressed as the Millennium Development Goals. At a global summit on financing for development in Monterrey in 2002, governments pledged to reduce poverty, disease, illiteracy and human insecurity throughout the world.
Security concerns were always part of the rethinking of development assistance even in the
1990s. Countries‘ internal conflicts were ruining the lives of the most vulnerable people and destroying hope for human development. The Cold War had distorted foreign aid by channelling
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it toward geostrategic goals. In the 1990s, concerted efforts were made to refocus on human security (UNDP, 2002). The links between poverty and security were widely recognized: as expressed by Britain‘s development minister, ―poverty is both a cause and an effect of human insecurity in developing countries‖ (Benn, 2004). The lesson of the 1990s was that tackling poverty and insecurity together would require aid that fosters sound and effective governance within countries. But that is no easy task.
Civil wars and post-conflict reconstruction programs pose a serious challenge to donors.
Typically, these situations require emergency relief. Donors act as quickly as they can to get food, peacekeepers and/or medical supplies directly to people on the ground. In so doing, they often override local institutions. The risk is that emergency relief efforts of this sort can establish patterns of assistance that keep local officials dependent on donors. When this happens, they will not grow their own institutions. Exacerbating the problem, emergency assistance often dries up quickly, leaving governments on the ground with neither the resources nor the legitimacy to begin governing. Here interventions in Afghanistan are instructive.
A large part of the assistance sent to Afghanistan was for emergency relief. Beyond that, donors did not pledge enough for reconstruction, nor have they disbursed what they pledged. By March
2003, Afghanistan had received the lowest per capita aid for post-conflict reconstruction (less than Kosovo, East Timor, Bosnia, Palestine, Rwanda, and Haiti had received), and a large proportion of that aid had been emergency assistance (McKechnie, 2003). Of the total amount disbursed between January 2002 and February 2004, at least one-third went to emergency relief rather than reconstruction (Rubin et al., 2003). Of some US$1,352 million committed to that country for March 2003 to March 2004, only $536 million was actually disbursed.
Equally problematic in Afghanistan was the lack of coordination among donors. In November
2001 the Afghanistan Reconstruction Steering Group (ARSG), chaired jointly by the United
States, the European Union, Japan and Saudi Arabia, was established to give overall direction to reconstruction. The Afghanistan Reconstruction Implementation Group (ARIG) was intended to be a forum for implementing projects through the Asian Development Bank, the Islamic
Development Bank, the UN, the World Bank and the Afghan Support Group (ASG).
Over time the ARIG and the ASG developed a consultative role; the ARSG, however, was unable to raise sufficient donor funds. In 2002 the Afghan government founded its own
Afghanistan Assistance Coordination Authority, which subsequently ran into resistance from specific ministries. Also, in May 2002 the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund was founded, and many donors began channelling non-humanitarian assistance through it. The result was problems of coordination among donors – problems that are certainly not unprecedented. Indeed, a scholarly account of the similar lack of donor coordination in Bosnia-Herzegovina raises the same issues (Cousens, 2002).
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Donors have long recognized that multiple countries and agencies often pursue similar goals in a country and trip over one another. The result is duplication, waste, and overwhelming red tape in terms of reporting requirements and loan negotiations. The problem is now being documented by the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC), including in a set of studies on the lack of coordination among donors.
When individual donor countries insist on doing things their own way, the consequences are wasted results. In this regard, it is worth noting that donor governments have already created multilateral mechanisms for disbursing aid. These include organizations such as the World Bank and its concessional arm the International Development Association, the United Nations
Development Programme, the World Health Organization, and the Food and Agriculture
Organization. These specialized agencies combine technical expertise with the pooled resources of states; their purpose is to facilitate cooperation. Yet the multilateral aid agencies risk becoming even more marginalized as larger proportions of donor aid budgets are spent by national agencies (or ―bilaterally‖ in the aid jargon) rather than through multilaterals.
Adding to the mess, donors‘ goals are often at odds. Some examples: the fiscal rectitude promoted by one agency is achieved at the expense of the poverty reduction sought by another; the national security sought by one branch of a donor government is at odds with the human rights and development projects promoted by another. The lack of coherence in priorities is not the result of a lack of understanding or knowledge; what drives these seemingly perverse and counterproductive actions are competing objectives, as well as the competing incentives faced by each national and multilateral agency involved in disbursing aid.
Donors have begun to recognize that incoherence is a problem. The World Bank, the IMF, and a few donors using sector-wide approaches (SWAPs) have been attempting to enhance coordination and coherence. In Canada, the Netherlands, Australia, the United Kingdom and the
United States, efforts have been underway to weave the various diplomatic, military and development initiatives into a more coherent and effective response to failing states (Harmer and
Macrae, 2004). What donors are failing to do is allow space for recipient governments to define their own priorities and set down frameworks that would compel donors to act better.
Paradoxically, to the extent that real coherence is in fact emerging, it is focused not on a development agenda, but rather on addressing global and regional security imperatives – imperatives that often run counter to the pursuit of human security and development.
In the following sections, we analyze the shifting priorities of major donors, their approaches to funding those new priorities, and the mechanisms they are applying to deliver aid.

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3.2 The United States
The United States is the world‘s largest provider of global development aid. In 2004-5 it accounted for 25.4 percent of official development aid, having more than doubled aid since 2002
(OECD DAC, 2006). The top seven recipients of US official development aid in 2004-5 were
Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Jordan, and Colombia (OECD DAC, 2006). This compares with the top seven of 1994-5: Israel, Egypt, Haiti, Jordan, Somalia, Palau, and
Rwanda.
The new security imperatives figure strongly in US official development assistance. Yet more strongly, the new security imperatives dominate other kinds of US aid which do not qualify as development assistance, such as: the Economic Support Fund which permits the US to give assistance for priorities the first among which is ―assistance to allies in the global war on terror‖; and Foreign Military Spending where the US provides ―articles and services to support coalitions partners and states critical to the Global War on Terror‖ (USAID, 2007).
For example, in 2006 actual development assistance to the Near East (which includes Lebanon,
Morocco and Middle East Regional) was just over US$10 million, as compared to more than
US$6 billion disbursed through the economic support fund (US$2.881 billion) and foreign military spending (US$3.814 billion) (USAID, 2007: 92-99). In South and Central Asia (which includes Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and South Asia Regional) development assistance spending in 2006 was US$259 million as compared with over a billion on economic support (US$831 million) and foreign military spending (US$305 million)
(USAID, 2007: 92-99).
Much of the US War on Terror has been funded through supplemental appropriations requested by the President outside of the annual appropriations act. For example, in September 2003 the
President requested US$87 billion as a supplemental appropriation to fund ongoing military operations in
Iraq
and
Afghanistan
(www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/amendments/supplemental_9_17_03.pdf). Even once flows to Iraq had been dramatically increased, in 2007 a further US$2 billion was being requested as a supplemental to the Economic Support Fund, and a further US$770 million as an emergency fund for 2008. It remains the case that extraordinary expenditures in Iraq place pressure on all foreign assistance spending by the United States.
Contemporaneously with the war in Iraq, in 2004 the United States launched a bold new initiative – the Millennnium Challenge Account (MCA) – that promised to safeguard at least some U.S. aid from geostrategic goals. The new foreign aid program was designed to help lowincome countries who are ―ruling justly, investing in their people, and encouraging economic freedom‖. 82
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Fenced off from other sources of U.S. aid, the MCA would give grants according to the results achieved by the governments of those countries rather than promises made by them. The criteria for grants would be objective and development-based. The MCA also promised recipients substantial control over the projects so financed instead of offering them money to meet donor priorities (Radelet and Herrling, 2003).
Countries are eligible after the Millennium Challenge Corporation Board applies sixteen indicators to assess the policy performance of individual countries. The early list of MCA eligible countries included Armenia, Benin, Bolivia, Cape Verde, Georgia, Ghana, Honduras,
Lesotho, the Malagasy Republic, Mali, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Senegal,
Sri Lanka and Vanuatu.
It was interesting because most of the countries declared eligible had not been major recipients of U.S. funding in the past. For Benin, the Malagasy Republic, Mozambique, and Senegal,
France has traditionally been the largest donor. Indeed, the early list roughly approximated the set of countries currently being funded by major European donors, including Denmark,
Luxembourg, Norway and the Netherlands, which had already committed themselves to directing significant amounts of aid to countries with better policies and institutions.
Practically, the MCA is not affecting aid or aid flows. Two years after its creation, no disbursements have been made. Insiders say that the promised US$2.5 billion for 2005 is unlikely to survive the appropriations process since the MCC is unlikely to come close to spending its 2004 appropriation. More significantly, the full amounts promised are dwarfed by the sums currently being mobilized for security imperatives. The promised US$2.5 billion is only slightly more than the US$2 billion estimated cost of hiring private security contractors to protect
US contractors working on projects being financed by the US$18.6 billion 2004 aid package for
Iraq, or to the US$2.5 billion in windfall Iraqi oil revenues that the US military was spending on quick-hitting development projects in Iraq in early 2004.
A further problem with the MCA is that it has added yet another institution to an already crowded arena. The MCA may not have much development assistance; it did, however, send a strong signal that the United States intended to channel development assistance through its own newly created, unilaterally controlled institution; this even though the field was already crowded by USAID, the World Bank Group, the UN special agencies, the regional development banks, and the other institutions mentioned above. A new agency was sure to result in duplication of programs and increased program costs.
The MCA is not the only new mechanism for U.S. aid delivery. The United States has also channelled its assistance to Iraq and the fight against HIV/AIDS through new mechanisms that eschew multilateral cooperation and the technical expertise and experience concentrated in existing aid-directing institutions.
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Most U.S. aid to Iraq has not been managed by USAID, the federal agency responsible for foreign aid. Initially a special Program Management Office was created to manage assistance aimed at reconstructing Iraq‘s infrastructure. This became the Project and Contracting Office
(PCO) attached to the Coalition Provisional Authority and subsequently migrated to the new
U.S. embassy in Baghdad. The result of this new set of arrangements was that an institution that did not exist in 2002 was by 2004 managing more U.S. aid than USAID.
The creation of a new institution to manage aid to Iraq did not address a number of key problems in delivering aid (leaving aside the intense debate about Halliburton‘s role in Iraq‘s reconstruction; go to: www.publicintegrity.org/wow). The PCO was not able to spend quickly; as of January 2005 only $1.48 billion had been spent on work in place. The U.S. aid package almost certainly devoted too many resources to capital-intensive projects managed by foreign contractors and too little labour-intensive projects that would have created jobs for Iraqis.
Indeed, it was reported in June 2004 that the United States was using $2.5 billion in windfall gains from higher than expected revenues from the sale of Iraqi oil to provide fast disbursing
―walk-around money‖ for U.S. commanders to spend on ―quick-hitting‖ projects of the sort that would deliver a bigger impact on the ground. Using Iraqi oil revenues in this way avoided the restrictions intrinsic in the budget process and implicitly recognized the difficulties encountered in the formal reconstruction effort.
In the global battle against HIV/AIDS, the United States has increased its total funding more rapidly than other industrialized countries. By 2006, the United States had committed US $2.6 billion and disbursed US 1.6 billion, a small part of which was channelled through multilaterals
(Kates et al., 2007).
In governing the aid, the U.S. administration has made it clear that it prefers its own program to existing multilateral ones. Overall AIDS funding is being coordinated by a committee chaired by the State Department rather than by the Global Fund. The administration consistently requested only $100 million a year for the Global Fund through the foreign aid budget (and another $100 million from the health and human services budget)–a figure that Congress raised to around $250 million in 2003 and $400 million in 2004 (with an additional $100 to $150 million in the health and human services budget). In announcing his Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in January
2003, the president pledged $15 billion for a new initiative – just $1 billion of which would go to the Global Fund, and even that conditional on the fund showing results.
Bush‘s special initiative for fighting HIV/AIDS followed rapidly on that of his predecessor,
President William Clinton, whose administration created the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS,
Tuberculosis, and Malaria. This fund augmented work being done on the same issue by the
World Bank, the World Health Organization, and several private organizations. Indeed, when the
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Global Fund was created, its founders were well aware that health program duplication was a problem. For this reason, the Global Fund was set up purely to disburse funds. Country
Coordinating Mechanisms (CCMs) were established in each recipient country whose purpose was to formulate and administer proposals. However, these CCMs often do not work well.
The Global Fund and other highly worthy initiatives all suffer from the proliferation of competing rather than cooperating or coordinated agencies and programs.
Overall, U.S. aid is marked by two trends. First, new security imperatives have increased flows of U.S. ―development assistance‖ and other external assistance to countries of geostrategic importance. On a smaller scale, the United States has also increased funding for the fight against
HIV/AIDS and pledged a total of $6 billion to the Millennium Challenge Account. These increases will be difficult to sustain, given the ballooning budget deficit of the United States and constant increases for many budget items. The second trend in U.S. aid is toward even greater national control of aid and the potentially costly creation of new mechanisms for its disbursing and delivering it.
3.3 Japan
Unlike the United States and the United Kingdom, Japan has absorbed the new security imperatives in the context of a shrinking rather than an increasing external assistance budget.
From 1991 to 2002, Japan was the world‘s largest single provider of official development assistance (ODA). In 1997 the government began to reduce its ODA budget, which fell by 27 percent between 1997 and 2003. The large cuts were driven in part by a fiscal crisis in Japan that led to across-the-board reductions in government spending. They have also reflected a degree of
―aid fatigue‖ and a perception that the public was disaffected with the government‘s development assistance programme. The Japanese government amended its Development
Assistance Charter in 2003 so that it focused more strongly on its foreign policy priorities: poverty reduction, sustainable growth, peace building, and what is vaguely called ―global issues‖
(which include terrorism and epidemics).
The recipients of Japanese aid tend to be in Asia: between 1998 and 2002 almost three-quarters of Japanese ODA went to Asian recipients (Japan, Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2001).
By the beginning of the new millennium, China and India had displaced Indonesia and Thailand as the top recipients of Japanese aid. In part, this reflected the receding impact of the Asian financial crisis in the latter two countries. Since then, aid to China has been sharply cut–by some
20 percent in 2003. Meanwhile, India has continued to gain: recently it has become the top recipient of Japanese aid, much of it in the form of infrastructure loans. Japan also continues to provide the financial muscle behind the Asian Development Bank, contributing half its US$20 billion in Asian Development Fund resources. This is part of the 28 percent or so of Japan‘s
ODA that it channels through multilateral institutions.
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Japan‘s ODA budget allocations have continued to decline (they fell again in 2004, by almost 5 percent). Even so, it has made extensive commitments to help with postwar reconstruction in
Afghanistan and in Iraq (ibid. chap 2). In January 2002 Japan pledged ¥6.5 billion in aid to
Afghanistan over two-and-a-half years, following the U.S.-led military operations in the country.
In 2003 Japan pledged $1.5 billion in grants to help rebuild Iraq and a further $3.5 billion in loans. To meet some of these commitments, the Diet increased Emergency Grant Aid funds from
¥22.2 billion to ¥31.7 billion (an increase of about $100 million) for 2004 — an increase significantly less than the allocation requested by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Where will other funds for reconstruction come from? One source will be the Japan Fund for
Poverty Reduction established in the Asian Development Bank in 2003: some $27 million of the
$35 million fund administered by the bank will go to aid for Afghan reconstruction. At least some aid to Iraq has been in the form of new lending from the Japan Bank for international
Cooperation (JBIC). Regarding the balance of Japan‘s pledges, they may either not be met (in view of the politics of Japan‘s aid cuts) or come out of other elements of Japan‘s aid budget, involving a further redistribution among recipients. This is presaged by the 2001 White Paper on
Japanese ODA, the second chapter of which outlines Japan‘s intention to use its aid more strategically to promote peace and prosperity and to further Japan‘s broader foreign policy interests. What mechanisms is Japan using to channel aid? It is often asserted that as the United States becomes more unilateral, Japan becomes more multilateral. Yet the available evidence does not bear this out. The Japanese government has long underscored its commitment to multilateralism and its desire to see foreign aid undertaken in a more coherent fashion around the globe.
However, not unlike the United States, Japan‘s subsequent actions have revealed a strong and persistent impulse to retain control over this assistance.
As chair of the G8 in 2000, Japan announced the ―Okinawa Infectious Diseases Initiative‖ and its intention to provide assistance of approximately $3 billion toward combating infectious diseases over five years. How has this been spent? A large proportion of Japan‘s aid in respect of
HIV/AIDS has been spent on bilateral programs to combat the disease in countries such as
Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Congo, Haiti and Zambia. Japan also began in 2001 to investigate joint projects with the United States in Tanzania, Zambia, Bangladesh and Cambodia.
Japan is contributing directly to multilateral organizations such as the UN Population Fund, the
International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), and UNAIDS. At the same time, though, it has found ways to retain control over programs funded through such organizations. For example, it contributes to special trust funds such as the Japan Trust Fund for HIV/AIDS established in the
IPPF, and to the Japan Special Fund in the Asian Development Bank. Japan has also undertaken
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‗multi-bi‘ cooperation, whereby it acts jointly with international organizations such as the WHO,
UNICEF and UNFPA.
In sum, in response to the war on terror, Japan, like the United States, is using supplementary appropriations to deliver contributions to the war in Afghanistan and the reconstruction of Iraq. It has also moved to recognize a broader range of security goals as a legitimate part of its aid mission. The risk is that Japan, like the United States, may increasingly use aid to serve its own security aims. Although Japan is an active ―multilateralist‖, it continues to participate in multilateral aid on its own terms, using special arrangements to retain some degree of national control. 3.4 The United Kingdom
Like the United States and Japan, the United Kingdom is among the world‘s largest development assistance donors. Since 1997, it has significantly increased its development assistance, casting its priorities in stone in 1997 with the creation of a full Department of International Development
(DFID). The DFID has a Cabinet-level secretary of state, who is prohibited from directing assistance to any person or body unless ―he is satisfied that the provision of the assistance is likely to contribute to a reduction in poverty.‖ In addition, British aid is governed by a public service agreement with the Treasury, which for the period 2005–8 set out goals that include the following: to ensure that the proportion of DFID‘s bilateral programme going to Low-Income
Countries (LICs) is at least 90 percent; to achieve a greater impact of EC external programs on poverty reduction; and to work for agreement to increase the proportion of EC official development assistance (ODA) to low-income countries from its 2000 baseline figure of 38 percent to 70 percent by 2008.
Since its creation the DFID has been assigned a rising share of government expenditures. Its budget had grown to £3.8 billion by the fiscal year 2004-5, with the 2004 Spending Review confirming annual increases of 9.2 percent (the highest of any government department) through to 2007-8. UK official development assistance rose from £5.9 billion in 2005 to £6.8 billion in
2006 (DFID 2007 at www.dfid.gov.uk).
At the same time, the United Kingdom has rapidly expanded its security commitments, stepping in behind the United States as that country‘s most visible ally in both the War on Terror and the occupation of Iraq. The costs of the occupation of Iraq have been very significant. The Ministry of Defence spent £1 billion on additional costs of operations in Iraq in the year 2005-6. A further
£200 million was spent on the additional costs of operations in Afghanistan (Ministry of
Defence, 2006: 201).
DFID‘s direct expenditure in Afghanistan has risen from a negligible baseline to £35 million in
2002/3 and £72 million in 2003/4, and is forecast to be £75 million in 2004/5. Iraq received £207 million in 2003/4 and is forecast to receive £91 million in 2004/5. As yet, this represents a small
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share of what the UK is spending in each country.27 At the same time, there is evidence from elsewhere in the DFID budget that development resources have been allocated towards other states perceived to be allies in the ‗war on terror‘. Hence, for example, Pakistan has seen its aid allocation from the UK multiply fivefold from a low of £12.6 million in 2000/1 (the year after
Musharraf‘s coup) to £64 million in 2003/4, with a further projected increase in 2004/5.
The DFID‘s direct expenditure in Iraq has risen dramatically. In 2002 it was 0.39 percent of the total net UK bilateral official development assistance. By 2005, Iraq was receiving 16.14 percent of total net UK bilateral ODA (DFID, 2007: 242). Iraq has also consumed a large share of multilateral net official development assistance. The inputted UK share of multilateral net official development assistance to Iraq rose from 1.9 percent in 2002 to 13.6 percent in 2004, dropping to 4.5 percent in 2005 (DFID, 2007: 263).
The strain on the DFID‘s resources and mandate to reduce poverty generated by the War on
Terror and the war in Iraq had immediate effect even before the increments described above.
Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan shot to the top of the department‘s list of bilateral recipients by
2004. Commitments to Iraq made it harder in 2003-4 to pursue the pledge that 90 percent of country program resources, excluding humanitarian assistance, would be provided to LICs by
2005-6 (ibid.). To address this, spending in middle-income countries was reduced by around
£100 million in 2004-5 and 2005-6.
Through what institutions does the United Kingdom deliver aid? It has retained a large bilateral aid program but has also long been committed to delivering a large portion of its aid budget through multilateral mechanisms. Between 1990 and 2001 over 40 percent of British ODA was channelled through multilateral institutions. This had declined to 28.8 percent by 2002 but rose again to 37.7 percent in 2003. In 2004 the DFID reported that 45 percent of its programme expenditure were being channelled through multilateral organizations (DFID, 2007: 140). By
2006 this had dropped back to 38 percent (DFID, 2007: 140). The British also works closely with
European aid agencies, channelling a significant proportion of their aid through the EC. Finally, the DFID has increased the degree to which it channels aid to partner governments for them to spend using their own management, procurement and accountability systems. Since 2000 budget support and other forms of program aid have accounted for about 15 percent of the DFID‘s bilateral aid program (DFID, 2004a).
The British have also tried to make their aid policy more coherent throughout the government.
Since 2000, the DFID has operated, jointly with the MOD and the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office (FCO), two conflict prevention pools (CPPs): one for Africa, the other for the rest of the world. Continuing allocations to these were confirmed in the 2004 Spending Review; the budget for the Africa CPP rose modestly to £60 million per annum and remained stable at £74 million for the global CPP. While it is generally agreed that conflict prevention is vital to creating the
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conditions for development in fragile states, the nexus of conflict/security/development issues is a highly sensitive one, as demonstrated by the concern among development NGOs over recent proposals to review the definitions of ODA in the DAC.
In sum, British aid and the government‘s focus on poverty reduction, including in middle income countries, is undoubtedly being diverted by the new security imperatives. However, this effect is being mitigated by a rising overall aid budget and by multilateral lending to middle-income countries. Conversely, the high share of British aid channelled through the EU is increasingly being used to meet new security imperatives.
3.5 The EU
The EU and its member states together provide the world‘s single largest bloc of bilateral and multilateral aid amounting to 52.32 percent of worldwide official development assistance
(European Commission 2006). Individually and collectively, its member states have committed themselves to the Millennium Development Goals declared at Monterrey in 2002.
In 2004, the EU declared that it was ―firmly on target‖; but emphasized the need for greater coordination and harmonization among European donors in order to make aid more effective.
These goals were reaffirmed in the EU Development Policy Statement signed on 20 th December
2005 (European Commission, 2006).
Coordination is a crucial issue within the EU, which presents a golden opportunity for aid policies to be coordinated at least among its members. Coordination has already succeeded in the areas of trade and political partnerships. The common External Trade Policy and single seat in the WTO work to pull European countries into the same positions alongside their EU political partnerships (Grimm and Woll, 2004). However, on aid more generally the story is a different one. Each of the fifteen older 15 members of the EU has its own large bilateral program as well as its own position on multilateral agencies. In the past, members‘ aid together with the EU budget, priorities and policies was diluted by trade-offs among competing priorities.
Typically, the Nordic states, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom argued for a focus on poverty in overall allocations and within programs (in other words, they see the budget primarily as a development assistance budget). Southern EU member states tended to argue for allocations on more political grounds, either to address domestic political concerns (e.g., migration from northern African states) or to pursue external political goals (e.g., strong relations with Latin
America). The 2005 Policy Statement reflects greater coherence and commitment to the
Millennium Development Goal Targets. This reflects in the regional distribution of EU official development assistance in 2005: 44 percent went to Africa and 18 percent to Asia (European
Commission, 2006: 154).
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The new security imperatives have reshaped EU patterns of action beyond its borders.
Traditionally, the EU‘s security policy has been separate from its development assistance.
Security policy has been pursued by individual member states, with the costs even of shared actions such as the recent joint military interventions in Macedonia (Operation Concordia) and in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Operation Artemis) being borne mainly by individual participating states. Development assistance, by contrast, has always been to some degree administered by the EU as a whole—mainly through the External Action budget, which amounted to some €5.18 billion (out of a total annual EU budget of €111.30 billion) in 2004.
In June 2003, significant changes became noticeable when a new EU security framework was adopted (General Affairs and External Relations Council, 2003). The 2003 framework declared security as a ―first condition for development‖—although it did not mention the reverse possibility, that development may sometimes be a first condition for security. It proposed that the
EU‘s security strategy pay heed to programs aimed at strengthening governance through conditionality, trade measures, and technical assistance. It emphasized the need to create synergy between security and development goals through a more coherent and comprehensive approach.
The 2003 EU strategy fits with a broader shift among donors toward the use of aid for security purposes. The guardian of what constitutes ―official development assistance‖ (ODA) is the
OECD DAC. This body generally restrains efforts by donor governments to broaden the definition of ODA. However, in April 2004 the DAC announced that it was adjusting and clarifying the definition of ODA as it related to preventing the recruitment of child soldiers, enhancing civil society‘s role in security, and promoting civilian oversight and democratic control of security expenditure (OECD DAC, 2004). The result was to widen the categories of assistance that DAC counts as ODA.
Is EU aid becoming more subservient to security goals? The EU‘s efforts to enhance coherence in external relations have provoked concern among development agencies (both governmental and non-governmental) that this will happen. The European Commission sought early on to allay this fear. Several factors need to be assessed in analyzing the current trend.
The EU has been streamlining the governance of its External Relations aid budget. In 2001, it began channelling its aid through one agency – EuropeAid – rather than through four different directorates as previously. Broader constitutional changes are afoot. A high representative of the
EU for foreign affairs and security policy–some would say a European foreign minister – is being created and will sit on both the Council and the Commission. It has been proposed that aid all other external action items be brought under the heading ―The EU as a Global Partner‖ with
―economic cooperation and development‖ and ―security‖ instruments brought closer together within the Common Foreign and Security Policy funding (Mackie and Rossini, 2004).
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Put simply, development assistance could soon find itself squarely under foreign policy leadership. Greater policy coherence has been sought since 2001 culminating in a commitment in the 2005 Development Policy Statement to ―Policy Coherence for Development‖ which calls for agricultural policy, trade policy, research and development policies and other policies all to be deployed coherently to contribute to the Millennium Development Goals objectives.
The EU has devoted significant resources to reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq efforts have focused on provided humanitarian relief and political and financial support to launch the reconstruction process. Since 2003, in addition to individual members‘ assistance, the
European Commission has provided assistance to Iraq for an amount of EURO 518.5 million
(http://ec.europa.eu/external_relations/iraq/intro/index.htm). In Afghanistan, for the period 20022006, the European Commission has delivered more than EURO 1 billion in reconstruction aid
(http://ec.europa.eu/external_relations/afghanistan/intro/index.htm).
The EU funded most of its initial contributions to the War on Terror through additional appropriations. It has also begun to debate security and to broaden the types of security goals in the service of which it is prepared to deploy development assistance. It has also begun to consider institutional reforms that would pull development and security — possibly under a
European foreign minister. For some, this indicates a positive shift towards greater policy coherence; for others it raises the risk that development goals will become subservient to overarching strategic security concerns.
4.0 Conclusions
Development assistance that prioritizes the achievement of human development goals is at risk.
A rapid increase in aid has been channelled to new security imperatives. But with acute budgetary pressures besetting Japan, France, Germany and the United States (among others), it is a virtual certainty that much of the new aid flow (generated largely to fund the War on Terror as defined by the United States) will dry up. Development agencies, with their more stable budgets, will then be urged to give priority to the development needs of countries at the front lines of the
‗war on terror‘.
Paradoxically, previously rational efforts to enhance coordination and coherence among donors may now in some instances be counterproductive. The case of the EU highlights the possibility that while greater European coordination and coherence could in theory direct very significant aid flows toward the shared commitments of the Millennium Development Goals, in practice, current institutional shifts and political pressures suggest that the common European agenda will instead be driven by foreign policy concerns. This is but one case where, in the name of coherence, a greater diversion of aid flows for geostrategic purposes may take place, and increased coordination would magnify that effect. This is the global security scenario for foreign aid. 91
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An alternative scenario is one in which development agencies continue to prioritize human development and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, which include human security, leaving to other agencies preoccupations with counterterrorism and WMD.
Instead of attempting greater ―coordination and coherence‖ of foreign, aid and security policies in general, this scenario calls for a stronger differentiation and allocation of goals at the global level. This would require a commitment by donors to use existing multilateral institutions instead of perpetuating the erosion of multilateralism evident at present in increasing bilateral aid budgets. It would also require some protection within donor governments of the development assistance remit, to prevent a return to the Cold War patterns of almost purely geostrategically led aid that so obstructed rather than facilitated human development.
The development-led scenario requires two further things from donors. First, the development assistance commonly must address the timescale and predictability of aid flows. Donors need to join together and develop a long-term financial compact between themselves and recipients.
Volatile or unpredictable aid flows do little to bolster good governance, coherent government budgets, or the development of sound institutions of accountability in recipient countries. Yet in most developing countries aid is proving to be even more volatile than fiscal revenues (Bulir and
Hamann, 2003) despite evidence that shortfalls in aid produce poor policies (Gemmell and
McGillivray, 1998). The new security-driven aid flows are already proving to be volatile and short term. But in other sectors as well where new resources are being promised — such as the global fight against HIV/AIDs — there is little guarantee that new flows will be sustained in the long term, or that the multiplicity of donor institutions that are supposed to disburse the assistance will not change priorities. What is needed is specific donor coordination with a view to committing long-term, predictable flows of resources.
Second, donors must rationalize the demands they place on recipient governments. A recent study by major donors details the duplication and gaps that result when donors impose a plethora of different financial audits on recipients. Most damningly, it concludes that though the ―World
Bank and IMF would continue to take the lead in conducting most assessments of public expenditure management‖, all other parties should have access to information and that ―the views of governments (and other local stakeholders)‖ should be taken into account (Allen,
Schiavo-Campo, and Garrity, 2004). That finding highlights the extent to which donors‘ efforts have enhanced auditing of their own loans, but failed to build capacity and accountability in public finances within recipient countries. The broader aid picture reveals a multiplicity of donors whose demands not only failing to strengthen governmental processes within countries, but also probably even hindering their development. Amid a growing cacophony of donors, very little space is left for local agencies to build, coordinate among themselves and strengthen local governance. Scarce resources are used up strengthening and maintaining external relations with donors and undertaking externally demanded actions, some of which are contradictory. The
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problem is likely to grow as the number of goals and institutions involved in development assistance increases. At the very least what is needed here is a sharply focused form of coordination among groups of donors — such as shared, streamlined reporting requirements, so as to lessen diversion of local resources to the management of donors (OECD DAC, 2003a).
These conclusions highlight serious challenges for donors attempting to export good governance.
5.0 Summary
The timing could not have been more pointed. As millions flocked to the Live 8 concerts urging world leaders to lift aid to Africa, the International Monetary Fund published two research papers that said, summed up brutally: there is little evidence that aid boosts growth.
In the face of a global outpouring of altruism to help the poor of the world - with demands for more aid, more trade and less debt that match the IMF 's own official views - it was, let 's say, an interesting move.
If there were little evidence that aid boosts growth, after all, there would be little point in the G8 leaders this week agreeing to increase their aid, as they will, let alone double it, as the IMF has urged them to do.
Self Assessment Exercise
1. Is International Aid government by the policies of the donor countries? How effective is the recipient governments in shaping donor aid? Give examples.
2. Differentiate between any of the two of following in terms of helping the poorer nations develop. i.
United Kingdom ii. United States of America iii. Japan iv. China
v.
European Union
6.0 References
Alesina, A., and Dollar, D (2000) ‗Who gives foreign aid to whom and why?‘, Journal of
Economic Growth 5, March 2000, pp. 33–63.
Allen, R., Schiavo-Campo, S., and Garrity, T.C.,(2004) Assessing and Reforming Public
Financial Management: A New Approach. Washington DC: World Bank.
Bauer, P., (1994) Reality and Rhetoric: Studies in the Economics of Development. London:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

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5.0 Summary

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KABWE

Benn, H., (2004) Secretary of State for International Development, Speech at the Centre for
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50: 1, 2003, pp. 64–89.
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Cousens, E.C., (2002) ‗From missed opportunities to overcompensation: implementing the
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References: Alesina, A., and Dollar, D (2000) ‗Who gives foreign aid to whom and why?‘, Journal of Economic Growth 5, March 2000, pp Allen, R., Schiavo-Campo, S., and Garrity, T.C.,(2004) Assessing and Reforming Public Financial Management: A New Approach Bauer, P., (1994) Reality and Rhetoric: Studies in the Economics of Development. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. KABWE Benn, H., (2004) Secretary of State for International Development, Speech at the Centre for Bulir, A., and Hamann, A.J., (2003) ‗Aid volatility: an empirical assessment‘, IMF Staff Papers 50: 1, 2003, pp Burnside, C., and Dollar,D., (1997) Aid, policies and growth, Policy Research Working Papers no Cousens, E.C., (2002) ‗From missed opportunities to overcompensation: implementing the Dayton Agreement on Bosnia‘, in Stephen John Stedman, Donald Rothchild, and Elizabeth M. European Commission (2006) Annual Report on the European Community‘s Development Policy and the Implementation of External Assistance in 2005 Easterly, W., Levine, R., and Roodman, R., (2003) New Data, New Doubts: Revisiting ‗Aid, Policies and Growth‘, Working Paper no Gemmell, N., and McGillivray, M., (1998) Aid and Tax Instability and the Budget Constraint in Developing Countries, Research Paper 98/1 Grimm, S., with Woll, B., (2004) ‗Political Partnership with the South‘, European Development Cooperation to 2010: ODI/EDC Briefing, May 2004. Hansen, H., and Tarp, F., (2000) ‗Aid Effectiveness disputed‘, Journal of International Development 12, (2000) pp Harmer, A., and Macrae, J., (2004) Beyond the Continuum: The Changing Role of Aid Policy in Protracted Crises Hayter, T., (1971) Aid as Imperialism. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Bureau, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2001. Kates, J., (Kaiser Family Foundation), José-Antonio Izazola (UNAIDS), Lief, E., (CSIS) (2006) Financing the Response to AIDS in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: International Lumsdaine, D., (1993) Moral Vision in International Politics. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Mackie, J., and Rossini, C., (2004) ‗A changing EU: What are the Development Implications?‘, European Centre for Development Policy Management, In Brief, no McKechnie, A.J., (2003) ‗Humanitarian assistance, reconstruction and development in Afghanistan: a practitioner‘s view‘, World Bank CPR Working Paper no Ministry of Defence (2006) Ministry of Defence Annual Report and Accounts 2005-6, www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/AboutDefence/CorporatePublications/AnnualReports/MODAnnu alReport0506/ [Accessed on 13/10/2009] OECD DAC, (2007) 2006 Development Co-operation Report, Volume 8, Number 1 OECD DAC (2003) OECD Development Cooperation Report 2003. Paris: OECD. Radelet, S., and Herrling, S., (2003) ‗The Millennium Challenge Account: Soft Power or Collateral Damage?‘ Center for Global Development Brief 2: 2, 2003, pp Rubin, B.R., Stoddard, A., Hamidzada, H., and Farhadi, A., (2004) Building a New Afghanistan: The Value of Success, the Cost of Failure USAID (2007) Fiscal Year 2008 Budget Request [Accessed 20/07/2012] www.usaid.gov/policy/budget/cbj2008/ World Bank (2007) Global Development Finance 2007