South-South Development

Peter Kragelund

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138057739
• eBook ISBN: 9781351675048
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

South-South Development examines the historical background for the current situation: why it suddenly took off again approximately a decade ago; the various vectors of engagement and how they are interrelated; the actors involved; how the revitalisation of South-South development has affected development cooperation 'as it was'; and finally, how it affects the rest of the Global South.

Based on primary research on how Southern actors – via investments, aid, and trade – are changing the face of development both in the Global North and the Global South, this book contextualises the current debates, provides a systematic overview, and brings together the key themes in South-South development. It explains how countries like China, India, and Brazil are influencing domestic politics in other countries of the Global South, how they invest, and how their aid alters power structures between 'new' and 'old' donors locally. It also explains migration patterns, how they use soft power tools, and how the global governance system is changing as a result of this. This comprehensive and student-focused book includes well developed pedagogy such as text boxes, chapter summaries, key questions, bibliography, weblinks, and annotated further reading.

This book offers a unique combination of in-depth insights and secondary data on South-South development, presenting a 'state-of-the-art' account of South-South development aimed at students as well as practitioners in disciplines as diverse as International Development Studies, International Relations, Geography, Anthropology, Global Studies, and International Political Economy.

1
Introduction

The re-emergence of South-South Development

The 3rd FOCAC meeting in Beijing: the wake-up call for the Global North

In the late autumn of 2006 heads of states from 41 African countries and representatives of two dozen international organisations met with their Chinese counterparts for a three-day summit in Beijing to discuss the future of China-Africa relations. This summit, the third so-called Forum on China Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) marked the end of China’s ‘year of Africa’ and as such it was used to mark Beijing’s strategic ties with Africa. More importantly, however, it – intended or unintended – came to mark a new beginning of South-South Collaboration (SSC) as well as a break with North-dominated development.

China, on its part, used the summit to demonstrate its growing international political power, derived from more than two decades of rapid economic growth, to the outside world. Chinese leaders had spent all of 2006 building closer ties to the African continent. At the beginning of the year, then Minister of Foreign Affairs Li Zhaoxing, toured six African countries. In the months that followed both the Chinese President, Hu Jintao, and the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, also visited several African countries. Meanwhile, the Chinese government issued its first ‘Africa Policy’, (Government of China 2006). Importantly, the summit was also perceived as an international ‘pre-release’ for the 2008 Summer Olympics. It was the largest international official gathering in China since 1949 and journalists, representatives, and businesspeople from all over the world were invited to witness China’s ascending power. Therefore, the Chinese government had decorated large parts of the inner city with ‘30 – foot-high posters of giraffes, elephants and African people in traditional dress’ (Alden 2007: 1), billboards saluted ‘Amazing Africa’ (Bräutigam 2009),¹ private traffic was limited in the inner city while public traffic was increased, and the Chinese media was broadcasting in length from the meeting (Large 2008; Naidu and Mbazima 2008).

Plate 1.1 Beijing prepares for FOCAC III, November 2006

FOCAC, however, is much more than a ‘pre-release’ and a summit that takes place every three years. Rather, it is a platform to further economic, political and social engagement between China and the African continent as well as a platform to signal that an alternative exists to the ‘Western’ Washington Consensus. According to Taylor (2011), FOCAC rested in part on a frustration with the unequal benefits of economic globalisation as well as a disagreement with the focus on good governance and human rights pushed by the international financial institutions (IFIs) and countries in the Global North.

Aim of the book

This book is about the tectonic shifts in the in global power relations triggered by the resurgence of SSC. It examines the historical background for the current situation; why SSC suddenly took off again approximately a decade ago; the various vectors of engagement (aid, trade, investments, education, migration, and governance) and how they are interrelated; the actors involved; how the revitalisation of SSC has affected development cooperation ‘as it was’ – a key vector of engagement in North-South relations; and finally how SSC affects the rest of the Global South.

It is based on both primary and secondary research on how Southern actors – via investments, aid, and trade – are changing the face of development both in the Global North and the Global South. It is based on detailed studies of how for instance China, India, and Brazil are influencing domestic politics in African countries, how these countries invest, and how their aid alters power structures between ‘new’ and ‘old’ donors locally. While my own research has focused on the political economy of SSC in an African context, this book is not confined to Africa. In fact, it seeks to bring in examples from all over the Global South to highlight the contextual, spatial, and historical aspects of these relations while simultaneously pointing to the trends that cross these boundaries.

Importantly, this book questions the novelty of SSC and instead shows how the current era of SSC refers back to the previous era of SSC even if the political and economic context differs a lot. Essentially, this means that the current South-South institutions share many similarities with the institutions of the 1960s and 1970s, i.e. they seek to alter global power relations and give more voice to the countries of the Global South. However, in contrast to the SSC institutions of the past the current institutions do not pursue government intervention and protection but rather more liberalism. The book also explains the overall structures that govern each vector of SSC engagement, explains the magnitude and scope of each of these vectors, and discusses to what extent we can really talk about characteristics of, for instance, aid and trade from the Global South or whether it would be more appropriate to disaggregate the Global South into smaller units of analysis. Related hereto, the book makes an effort to show that all of these vectors are driven by specific actors, be it government actors, private sector actors, or civic sector actors. In contrast to most accounts of SSC, it shows that the lion’s share of SSC activities are performed by private actors – not state actors. These include large-scale multinationals seeking new markets or resources in the Global South as well as a multitude of small- and medium-sized firms either being pushed out of their home economy due to increasing competition and decreasing profit margins or pulled to a new host economy by new business possibilities (often created by state actors or multinational corporations).

The book does not end here. Instead, the description of the historical developments as well as the structures and actors involved in current SSC is used to analyse how SSC affects development institutions in the Global North as well as how it affects the people, firms, and institutions of the Global South. It shows that development ‘as it was’ led by the Global North is rapidly changing: the Global North is mimicking many of the procedures and norms of the Global South focusing more on the ‘productive sector’ (and less on the social sector) and more on mutual benefit. Simultaneously, the Global South is being inspired by the Global North. They now include issues of global governance and global public goods in their approaches. Likewise, they adopt mechanisms to enhance transparency and monitoring of activities. This, of course, has consequences for the peoples of the ‘rest of the Global South’. The book shows how this part of the world is affected economically, socially, and politically.

The rest of this chapter is structured as follows. First, it clarifies what the Global South is and how we can classify emerging donors. Then it picks up from the opening paragraph and describes what FOCAC really is and explains how both the rest of the Global South reacted to this rejuvenation and how the Global North reacted to it. Finally, it provides insights into the growing body of literature on SSC and stresses some of the major weaknesses in it.

The Global South – a heterogeneous unit

According to the United Nations (UN), the ‘Global South’ describes less-developed countries primarily located in the Southern Hemisphere. In fact, the 64 countries with the highest Human Development Index (HDI) are considered part of the Global North, while the remaining 133 countries on the UN’s HDI list are considered part of the Global South.

The Global South is the most recent concept describing materially less rich parts of the world. It is replacing concepts like Third World (vs. First and Second World), Developing World (vs. Industrialising or Developed World), Majority World (vs. Minority World) and Periphery (vs. Centre and Semi-Periphery). While most people would not care whether one term was used rather than another, the choice of concept has political and theoretical connotations. While both Third World and Developing (less-developed) World point towards a hierarchical world where everybody strives towards becoming like the First/Developed World and where implementation of specific policies (designed and enforced by the First/Developed World) is portrayed as being able to gradually transform a society from one category towards the other, the term ‘Global South’ does not have this political connotation. Likewise the ‘Global South’ does not point towards a body of literature that explains the underlying forces of development like for instance ‘Periphery’ that refers to dependency theory.

The ‘Global South’ concept is also replacing ‘the South’ that simply referred to the fact that most of the poor countries of the world were located south of latitude 30 degrees North. The difference is that ‘Global’ points towards some of the underlying forces, i.e. the neoliberalisation and economic integration of the world since the 1980s that has shaped how the world looks today.

The concept of the Global South, however, is no less problematic than all the concepts that it is trying to replace. It is still trying to unify countries as diverse as China, India, Brazil, Naura, and Sao Tome and Principe into one entity. Hence, it does not inform us about the differentiated processes taking place in different parts of the world – despite the integratedness of the world. Moreover, a large part of the Global South is not located in the Southern Hemisphere, and class, social, political, and economic inequalities exist all over the world. In fact, more poor people now live in middle-income countries than in poor ones (Sumner 2012). Importantly, the concept has no explanatory power. But for the link to processes of economic globalisation, it does not tell us why a particular country is poor or experiences social and political challenges. Finally, like all the other concepts it is trying to replace, it only makes sense vis-à-vis its antinomy, the Global North. In essence, then, this entails that the Global South cannot be defined a priori, but only in relation to something else.

Although the term Global South is not widely used in the Global South due to the influence of academia (offering BA and MA degrees in development studies) and development aid (referring explicitly to developing countries), it is widely used by politicians who seek to advance South-South Cooperation; by academics who, despite the concept’s lack of explanatory power, prefer it for e.g. the developing world. The main strength of the concept is that it points to the fact that inequalities and exploitation exist all over the world, i.e. Global South denotes unequal power relations regardless of where they take place. It also hints at some of the underl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: the re-emergence of South-South Development
• 2 South-South Cooperation in historical perspective
• 3 The resurgence of South-South Cooperation
• 4 Vectors of South-South Cooperation
• 5 Actors of South-South Cooperation
• 6 Effects of South-South Cooperation on development ‘as it was’
• 7 Effects of South-South Cooperation on the rest of the Global South
• 8 Conclusion
• References
• Index