Aid

3 Key excerpts on "Aid"

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  eBook - ePub

  Re-Framing Foreign Aid History and Politics

  From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the COVID-19 Outbreak

  • Igor Pellicciari(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In most languages spoken – often in exclamative form – the basic idea of Aid is associated with the instinctive appeal for even the simplest help and reflects the request for intervention in the presence of perceived danger or need, mostly immediate (Van Bilzen, 2015, p. 3). From the time of childhood when asking for the intervention of a parent, the concept of Aid is innate long before even having developed an awareness of other pure universal ideas that are ontological (such as “Life/Death”) or theological (such as “God”). This precocious universality and immediacy of the idea starting from the personal sphere has made it a “super-term” of very wide diffusion, loaded from time to time with different meanings, often bordering on each other (Halloran Lumsdaine, 1993; Morgenthau, 1962, pp. 301–309). It is recalled in different, sometimes contradictory, contexts. For this reason, it is still often used today with surprising approximation, even in its public sphere transposition. The (all in all little) historical research on the subject has contributed to increasing the confusion surrounding the term.

  When dealing with Aid interventions, the social sciences as a whole do so in a prescriptive form, referring to the future. They are more dedicated to assessing the values that inspire them or the best ways to put them into practice and manage them, with respect to the objectives that are formally declared upstream by the Donor. Less importance is granted to descriptive observations, which are inevitably critical when looking for deviations from the original plan, when considering what has already happened and has been concluded in the past. Even when the gaze is turned back in time, attention is more focused on self-standing assistance intervention as such and on its efficiency rather than on the broader key issue of effectiveness and real impact (Van Bilzen, 2015).

  In any case, the dynamic that is established between the actors involved is largely avoided, even more so if they are related to Sovereign States located in the international system. It is this focus on actions rather than on relations related to Aid interventions that contributes in a decisive way to feeding the natural common orientation to associate the term with a generic positive moral significance that is borrowed from the private dimension of Aid among individual persons. Aid is therefore associated with the needs it covers instead of the motivations

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  eBook - ePub

  The Illusion of Progress

  Unsustainable Development in International Law and Policy

  • Alexander Gillespie(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  6 Aid DOI: 10.4324/9781849776226-6

  International Financial Assistance

  Overseas Development Assistance (ODA), or ‘Aid’ as it is commonly known, is the transfer of resources on terms which are more generous or ‘softer’ than loans obtainable on the world's capital markets. This usually involves loans with at least a 25 per cent grant component. ODA may be bilateral (country to country) or multilateral (where one country gives money to an international institution to distribute).

  ODA is typically given from one government (usually a ‘developed’ country) to another (usually a ‘developing’ country). In principle, social ecology disagrees with providing an endless supply of international financial assistance to Southern countries. Many social ecologists are also deeply sceptical of Aid because of its long history of ecologically and socially disruptive results.1 Additionally, the kinds of environmental and social sustainability emphasized by social ecology, such as upholding civil and social rights, decentralized democracy and overall empowerment, typically do not require large infusions of external finance.2

  Nevertheless, this is not to argue against all financial transfers. The social ecology perspective generally recognizes that international financial assistance may be currently necessary to alleviate the socially and environmentally destructive poverty and disenfranchisement that currently engulfs millions of people in Southern (and pockets within Northern) countries. Moreover, it can be accepted as a principle that Aid, when properly conceived, controlled and encased within suitable and supportive foundations (from population control to market structure), can be effective in achieving its goals.3 The task therefore is to apply the correct types of Aid and foundations to help alleviate the crushing burdens and disenfranchisement of millions of people. Such an objective provides a strong argument in favour of financial assistance.4 Indeed, for dependent low-income countries that are already struggling with the debt crisis, stagnant economic growth, increasing poverty, declining private investment, and are already heavily dependent on foreign financial assistance, ‘ODA is a main source of external funding’.5 Without this funding, many countries would lack the resources necessary for the protection of the environment and the reconstruction and improvement of human welfare. Accordingly, the case for such transfers on this ground alone remains ‘compelling’.6

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  eBook - ePub

  Foreign Aid and Foreign Policy

  Lessons for the Next Half-century

  • Louis A. Picard, Robert Groelsema, Terry F. Buss(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The evolution of the notion of economic development from a concept synonymous with GDP growth until the 1980s into a broader choice-centered concept in the 1990s influenced the nature of Aid to developing countries. Investment in human capital (the most important aspects of which are education and health) became an increasingly important component of prescriptions for Aid in development economics. Given that the human development index (HDI), the most widely used metric of development in the choice-centered genre, has as its components health, education, and per capita GDP, and that policymakers increasingly pay attention to the HDI as a measure of development performance, allocated Aid is likely to continue to move away from the traditional growth-centered emphasis in the direction of the more modern and balanced human development or choice-centered emphasis. What makes these changing notions of development problematic for the assessment of the efficacy of Aid in achieving development outcomes is the fact that the Aid may have achieved the goals for which it was originally provided, even though these goals may not be central to the notion of development at a later time. A case in point is Aid that was provided for industrialization in the early postwar era. Because the Aid was intended to foster capital formation and hence, at least in theory, to spur economic growth, its direct impacts on education and health were minimal.

  Conclusion

  In sum, what is the connection between conceptualizations of Aid and the field of development theory and development economics in particular? As has been demonstrated in this chapter, the connections are many. The concept of Aid has often been shaped by an underlying concept of development, and the role of Aid has often been informed by the perceived needs of the development process. The jury is out on the question of whether Aid has, in balance, Aided in the process of development. This is partly because of the changing concept of development since the 1950s, which has led to the allocation of Aid at different times to achieving goals that at one time may be considered to be development oriented and at other times to be ineffectual drivers of development. It is also partly because the process of Aid provision and implementation is fraught with agency problems that can only be mitigated by an agency structure that is centered around the ultimate recipients of the Aid, and is not based on the directionality of resource flows in the system.

  Note

  1. In recent years , the growth of the service sector has become an increasingly important part of the structural change that accompanies development.

  References

  • Easterly, William . 2003. “Can Foreign Aid Buy Growth?” Journal of Economic Perspectives 17: 34–41.
  • Fei, John C.H., and GustavRanis . 1964. Development of the Labor Surplus Economy: Theory and Policy . Homewood, IL: Irwin.
  • Haq, Mahbubul . 1995. Reflections on Human Development . New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Harris, John, and Michael P.Todaro . 1970. “Migration, Unemployment, and Development: A Two-Sector Analysis.” American Economic Review 60: 126–142.
  • Lewis, W. Arthur . 1954. “Economic Development with Unlimited Supplies of Labor.” Manchester School

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