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Aid Dependence in Cambodia: How Foreign Assistance Undermines Democracy
by Sophal EarInternational intervention liberated Cambodia from pariah state status in the early 1990s and laid the foundations for more peaceful, representative rule. Yet the country's social indicators and the integrity of its political institutions declined rapidly within a few short years, while inequality grew dramatically. Conducting an unflinching investigation into these developments, Sophal Ear reveals the pernicious effects of aid dependence and its perversion of Cambodian democracy.International intervention and foreign aid resulted in higher maternal (and possibly infant and child) mortality rates and unprecedented corruption by the mid-2000s. Similarly, in example after example, Ear finds the more aid dependent a country, the more distorted its incentives to develop sustainably. Contrasting Cambodia's clothing sector with its rice and livestock sectors and internal handling of the avian flu epidemic, he showcases the international community's role in preventing Cambodia from controlling its national development. <P><P>A postconflict state unable to refuse aid, Cambodia is rife with trial-and-error donor experiments and their unintended consequences, such as bad governance and poor domestic and tax revenue performance—a major factor curbing sustainable, nationally owned growth. By outlining the terms through which countries can achieve better ownership of their development, Ear offers alternatives for governments still on the brink of collapse, despite ongoing dependence on foreign intervention and aid.
Aid During Conflict: Interaction Between Military and Civilian Assistance Providers in Afghanistan, September 2001-June 2002
by Olga Oliker Kurt W. Basseuner James Dobbins Donald L. Sampler Richard KauzlarichDescription and evaluation of relief, reconstruction, humanitarian, and humanitarian-type aid efforts in Afghanistan during the most intense phase of military operations, from September 2001 to June 2002. The efforts were generally successful, but there were serious coordination problems among the various civilian and military aid providers. Critical issues, both positive and negative, are identified, and a list of recommendations is provided for policymakers, implementers, and aid providers, based on lessons learned.
Aid for Elites
by Mark MoyarCurrent foreign aid programs are failing because they are based upon flawed assumptions about how countries develop. They attempt to achieve development without first achieving good governance and security, which are essential prerequisites for sustainable development. In focusing on the poorer members of society, they neglect the elites upon whose leadership the quality of governance and security depends. By downplaying the relevance of cultural factors to development, they avoid altering cultural characteristics that account for most of the weaknesses of elites in poor nations. Drawing on a wealth of examples from around the world, the author shows that foreign aid can be made much more effective by focusing it on human capital development. Training, education, and other forms of assistance can confer both skills and cultural attributes on current and future leaders, especially those responsible for security and governance.
Aid from International NGOs: Blind Spots on the AID Allocation Map (Routledge Studies in Development Economics)
by Dirk-Jan KochInternational NGOs are increasingly important players within the new aid architecture but their geographic choices remain uncharted territory. This book focuses on patterns of development assistance, mapping, while analysing and assessing the country choices of the largest international NGOs. Koch's approach is interdisciplinary and uses qualitative, quantitative and experimental methods to provide a clear insight in the determinants of country choices of international NGOs. The book aims to discover the country choices of international NGOs, how they are determined and how they could be improved. This work, which uses a dataset created specifically for the research, comes to the conclusion that international NGOs do not target the poorest and most difficult countries. They are shown to be focussing mostly on those countries where their back donors are active. Additionally, it was discovered that they tend to cluster their activities, for example, international NGOs also have their donor darlings and their donor orphans. Their clustering is explained by adapting theories that explain concentration in for-profit actors to the non-profit context. The book is the first on the geographic choices of international NGOs, and is therefore of considerable academic interest, especially for those focusing on development aid and third sector research. Furthermore, the book provides specific policy suggestions for more thought-out geographic decisions of international NGOs and their back donors.
Aid Imperium: United States Foreign Policy and Human Rights in Post-Cold War Southeast Asia (Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies)
by Salvador RegilmeDoes foreign aid promote human rights? As the world’s largest aid donor, the United States has provided foreign assistance to more than 200 countries. Deploying global numerical data on US foreign aid and comparative historical analysis of America’s post–Cold War foreign policies in Southeast Asia, Aid Imperium provides the most comprehensive explanation that links US strategic assistance to physical integrity rights outcomes in recipient countries, particularly in ways that previous quantitative studies have systematically ignored. The book innovatively highlights the active political agency of Global South states and actors as they negotiate and chart their political trajectories with the United States as the core state of the international system. Drawing from theoretical insights in the humanities and the social sciences as well as a wide range of empirical documents, Aid Imperium is the first multidisciplinary study to explain how US foreign policy affects state repression and physical integrity rights outcomes in Southeast Asia and the rest of the Global South.
Aid in Danger: The Perils and Promise of Humanitarianism (Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights)
by Larissa FastHumanitarian aid workers increasingly remain present in contexts of violence and are injured, kidnapped, and killed as a result. Since 9/11 and in response to these dangers, aid organizations have fortified themselves to shield their staff and programs from outside threats. In Aid in Danger, Larissa Fast critically examines the causes of violence against aid workers and the consequences of the approaches aid agencies use to protect themselves from attack.Based on more than a decade of research, Aid in Danger explores the assumptions underpinning existing explanations of and responses to violence against aid workers. According to Fast, most explanations of attacks locate the causes externally and maintain an image of aid workers as an exceptional category of civilians. The resulting approaches to security rely on separation and fortification and alienate aid workers from those in need, representing both a symptom and a cause of crisis in the humanitarian system. Missing from most analyses are the internal vulnerabilities, exemplified in the everyday decisions and ordinary human frailties and organizational mistakes that sometimes contribute to the conditions leading to violence. This oversight contributes to the normalization of danger in aid work and undermines the humanitarian ethos. As an alternative, Fast proposes a relational framework that captures both external threats and internal vulnerabilities. By uncovering overlooked causes of violence, Aid in Danger offers a unique perspective on the challenges of providing aid in perilous settings and on the prospects of reforming the system in service of core humanitarian values.
Aid, Insurgencies and Conflict Transformation: When Greed is Good (Routledge Studies in Security and Conflict Management)
by Rob KevlihanThis book examines the circumstances under which aid can contribute to the management and transformation of intra-state conflicts. How and when do insurgents govern? How does the presence of aid and social services influence how insurgents govern? Under what circumstances can aid contribute to the management and transformation of civil wars? The established literature in this area argues that aid exacerbates civil wars where resources are scarce as greedy rebels steal resources for themselves. This book, however, argues that under certain conditions such greed can be good. Drawing on primary research from three very different conflicts – Northern Ireland (1969–1998), southern Sudan (1983–2005) and Tajikistan (1992–1997) – and more than 10 years’ experience working in and researching humanitarian crises, this study breaks new ground through its wide-ranging comparison of conflicts. The book argues that insurgent efforts to reap rewards from aid and social services have in turn facilitated organizational changes and that these changes, while they may have had conflict-enhancing effects in the short term, have also contributed to conflict transformation over the long term. This book will be of much interest to students of insurgencies, civil wars, comparative politics, conflict management, humanitarian emergencies, public health and IR/Security Studies in general.
Aid Memoir (International Humanitarian Affairs Ser.)
by Larry HollingworthLarry Hollingworth, current visiting Professor of Humanitarian Studies at Fordham University in New York City, served as head of the UNHCR’s efforts in Bosnia throughout the lengthy conflict that plagued the former Yugoslavia in the early to mid ’90s. Aid Memoir follows Larry and his UN colleagues throughout multiple efforts to provide much-needed relief for besieged, isolated, and desperate communities riddled by senseless killing and aggression. The characters encountered throughout are at times thrilling, at times frightening. Larry spares no details, however troubling, and therefore shines a telling light on the reality of the situation that most will remember to have watched on their television screens.
Aid Performance and Climate Change
by Julian CaldecottThe richer countries spend about US$165 billion yearly on overseas aid, mainly to keep human development going. These efforts are undermined by climate change, water-catchment damage, biodiversity loss, and desertification, and their interactions with social systems at all scales, which few aid designs or evaluations fully address. This must change if aid performance is to be improved. Constraints to be overcome include limited understanding of the very complex systems that aid investments affect, and of the ecology behind climate change adaptation and mitigation. Aid Performance and Climate Change targets these problems and others, by explaining how to use multiple points of view to describe each aid investment as a complex system in its own unique context. With examples throughout, it reviews cases, ideas, and options for mitigation using technology and ecology, and for adaptation by preserving resilience and diversity, while exploring related priorities, treaties, and opportunities. Combining an empirical, eye-witness approach with methodological conclusions, this book is an essential resource for those looking to improve aid design and evaluation, and will be a necessary tool in training the next generation of aid professionals to respond to the causes and consequences of climate change.
Aid Power and Politics (Rethinking Development)
by Iliana Olivié Aitor PérezAid Power and Politics delves into the political roots of aid policy, demonstrating how and why governments across the world use aid for global influence, and exploring the role it plays in present-day global governance and international relations. In reconsidering aid as part of international relations, the book argues that the interplay between domestic and international development policy works in both directions, with individual countries having the capacity to shape global issues, whilst at the same time, global agreements and trends, in turn, shape the political behaviour of individual countries. Starting with the background of aid policy and international relations, the book goes on to explore the behaviour of both traditional and emerging donors (the US, the UK, the Nordic countries, Japan, Spain, Hungary, Brazil, and the European Union), and then finally looks at some big international agendas which have influenced donors, from the liberal consensus on democracy and good governance, to gender equality and global health. Aid Power and Politics will be an important read for international development students, researchers, practitioners and policy makers, and for anyone who has ever wondered why it is that countries spend so much money on the well-being of non-citizens outside their borders.
Aid Relations and State Reforms in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: The Politics of Mutual Accommodation and Administrative Neglect (African Governance)
by Stylianos MoshonasSince 2001 The Democratic Republic of Congo has been engaged in a three-fold transition process towards liberalisation, democratisation, and peace. Throughout this process, external actors (donors, international financial institutions, the UN system, aid agencies) have played a leading role, effectively setting the orientations and modalities of this transition, including their institutional dimension. Congolese actors have not been passively subjected to this process, however, but have potently shaped it in various ways. This book investigates the relationship between international aid partners and various Congolese actors since 2001. It examines this relationship as an aspect of the state reform process, with particular reference to the administration. Stylianos Moshonas argues that the pace and nature of reform has been compromised by the contradictions inherent within the process itself, as advocated by international partners, and by the ability of Congolese power holders to accommodate and co-opt such reforms in line with their own political strategies. Rather than framing aid relations as the outcome of the oppositional points of view of donors and Congolese actors, this book presents a systematic focus on the compromises and accommodative characteristics that aid politics have coalesced around, as well as the contradictory positions donors have found themselves in.
Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti
by Jake JohnstonHaiti’s state is near-collapse: armed groups have overrun the country, many government officials have fled after the 2021 assassination of President Moise and not a single elected leader holds office, refugees desperately set out on boats to reach the US and Latin America, and the economy reels from the after-effects of disasters, both man-made and natural, that destroyed much of Haiti’s infrastructure and institutions. How did a nation founded on liberation—a people that successfully revolted against their colonizers and enslavers—come to such a precipice?In Aid State, Jake Johnston, a researcher and writer at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC, reveals how long-standing US and European capitalist goals ensnared and re-enslaved Haiti under the guise of helping it. To the global West, Haiti has always been a place where labor is cheap, politicians are compliant, and profits are to be made. Over the course of nearly 100 years, the US has sought to control Haiti and its people with occupying police, military, and euphemistically-called peacekeeping forces, as well as hand-picked leaders meant to quell uprisings and protect corporate interests. Earthquakes and hurricanes only further devastated a state already decimated by the aid industrial complex. Based on years of on-the-ground reporting in Haiti and interviews with politicians in the US and Haiti, independent aid contractors, UN officials, and Haitians who struggle for their lives, homes, and families, Aid State is a conscience-searing book of witness.
Aid to Africa: French and British Policies from the Cold War to the New Millennium
by Gordon CummingThe end of the Cold War forced Western donors to rethink their aid relations with Africa. This book looks at two of these donors, France and Britain, and asks whether the development programmes of these former colonial powers have undergone radical changes since the end of the Old World Order. It focuses on the introduction of a controversial new ’regime’ trend - political conditionality - and uses policy models to illustrate the driving forces behind this new development strategy and explain substantial differences in France and Britain’s practice of political conditionality in Togo and Kenya. Overall, this volume - the first comparative study of French and British aid in the post-Cold War period - offers fresh insights into the evolution of the political assistance agenda and into deeper forces at work within the French and UK policy processes.
Aid, Trade and Development: 50 Years of Globalization
by Constantine MichalopoulosThis enlightening book offers a comprehensive historical analysis of the main development challenges of the last half century and the international community's response through aid and trade. Much has happened: the oil crises of the 1970s, the debt crises of the 1980s, the break-up of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, the Millennium Development Goals, the onslaught of Globalization and the rise of its opponents since the financial crisis of the 2000s. Through it all, development has spread and global poverty declined. The volume assesses the contributions and coherence of developing and developed country policies and the role played by global institutions entrusted with responsibilities to enhance trade and support development. The volume concludes with a focus on the prospects for the future and the changes needed to make globalization more equitable. With 50 years of professional experience in the World Bank, the WTO and bilateral aid agencies, Michalopoulos brings an insider's perspective on the workings of these institutions and what needs to be done to make them more effective and responsive to changing global needs.
Aid, Trade and Development: The Future of Globalization
by Constantine MichalopoulosThis volume presents a broad sweep of modern economic history underpinning aid, trade, development and globalization in the last half century and the salient challenges facing the global community today. The author draws on his long years as an academic and development practitioner to recommend what needs to be done to cope with the backsliding of the fight against global poverty, fractured geopolitics and the threats to the multilateral economic order. The new, revised edition analyses how unilateralism, rising protectionism and the Covid-19 pandemic seriously threaten global sustainable development. It concludes with recommendations on the policy changes needed to make globalization more equitable and development more sustainable. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of economic development and economic history, as well as all those concerned about global inequality and sustainability.
The Aid Trap
by Hubbard R. GlennOver the past twenty years more citizens in China and India have raised themselves out of poverty than anywhere else at any time in history. They accomplished this through the local business sector-the leading source of prosperity for all rich countries. In most of Africa and other poor regions the business sector is weak, but foreign aid continues to fund government and NGOs. Switching aid to the local business sector in order to cultivate a middle class is the oldest, surest, and only way to eliminate poverty in poor countries. A bold fusion of ethics and smart business, The Aid Trap shows how the same energy, goodwill, and money that we devote to charity can help local business thrive. R. Glenn Hubbard and William Duggan, two leading scholars in business and finance, demonstrate that by diverting a major share of charitable aid into the local business sector of poor countries, citizens can take the lead in the growth of their own economies. Although the aid system supports noble goals, a local well-digging company cannot compete with a foreign charity that digs wells for free. By investing in that local company a sustainable system of development can take root.
The Aid Trap: Hard Truths About Ending Poverty (Columbia Business School Publishing Ser.)
by R. Glenn Hubbard William DugganOver the past twenty years more citizens in China and India have raised themselves out of poverty than anywhere else at any time in history. They accomplished this through the local business sector-the leading source of prosperity for all rich countries. In most of Africa and other poor regions the business sector is weak, but foreign aid continues to fund government and NGOs. Switching aid to the local business sector in order to cultivate a middle class is the oldest, surest, and only way to eliminate poverty in poor countries.A bold fusion of ethics and smart business, The Aid Trap shows how the same energy, goodwill, and money that we devote to charity can help local business thrive. R. Glenn Hubbard and William Duggan, two leading scholars in business and finance, demonstrate that by diverting a major share of charitable aid into the local business sector of poor countries, citizens can take the lead in the growth of their own economies. Although the aid system supports noble goals, a local well-digging company cannot compete with a foreign charity that digs wells for free. By investing in that local company a sustainable system of development can take root.
Aiding and Abetting: U.S. Foreign Assistance and State Violence
by Jessica Trisko DardenThe United States is the world's leading foreign aid donor. Yet there has been little inquiry into how such assistance affects the politics and societies of recipient nations. Drawing on four decades of data on U.S. economic and military aid, Aiding and Abetting explores whether foreign aid does more harm than good. Jessica Trisko Darden challenges long-standing ideas about aid and its consequences, and highlights key patterns in the relationship between assistance and violence. She persuasively demonstrates that many of the foreign aid policy challenges the U.S. faced in the Cold War era, such as the propping up of dictators friendly to U.S. interests, remain salient today. Historical case studies of Indonesia, El Salvador, and South Korea illustrate how aid can uphold human freedoms or propagate human rights abuses. Aiding and Abetting encourages both advocates and critics of foreign assistance to reconsider its political and social consequences by focusing international aid efforts on the expansion of human freedom.
Aiding Migration: The Impact Of International Development Assistance On Haiti
by Josh DeWindThis book examines the political and economic legacy of the Duvalier regime with the intention of clarifying its implications for Haiti's development. It states that reforming the nation's economic development strategy to address the needs of the poor is one of the political task of Haitians.
AIDS Activist: Michael Lynch and the Politics of Community
by Ann SilversidesMichael Lynch, the central figure of this book, was a long-time gay activist and a dynamic force in organizing an early response to the AIDS epidemic. Lynch’s prescient articles in The Body Politic spoke to the gay communities of Toronto, New York, and San Francisco. His organizing efforts meant change and hope. AIDS Activist is a crisp and passionate introduction to a wide range of issues. Focusing on personal stories Silversides furnishes a snap-shot history of how the AIDS crisis unfolded and some of the heroic responses to it. Her emphasis on the politics of the gay community response makes this book unique.
Aids And STDs In Africa: Bridging The Gap Between Traditional Healing And Modern Medicine
by Edward C GreenThis book emphasizes the factors in the spread and control of AIDS that have received less attention in the literature. It suggests that a collaborative action program involving traditional healers is necessary if we wish to impact the spread of AIDS and other STDs in Africa.
AIDS as an International Political Issue: A Selection from AIDS Between Science and Politics (To the Point)
by Peter PiotPeter Piot, founding executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), reports on the influence of civil society in international relations and traditional partisan divides. AIDS thrust health into national and international politics where, he argues, it rightly belongs. The global reaction to AIDS over the past decade is the positive result of this partnership, showing what can be acheved when science, politics, and policy converge on the ground. Piot describes funding mechanisms for AIDS, the first international declarations, the response of the UN system, the establishment of UNAIDS, the response of high income countries to AIDS, The Global Fund and PEPFAR as game-changers, and lessons for other health problems.
AIDS Between Science and Politics: A Selection From Aids Between Science And Politics (To The Point Ser.)
by Peter PiotPeter Piot, founding executive director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), recounts his experience as a clinician, scientist, and activist fighting the disease from its earliest manifestation to today. The AIDS pandemic was not only catastrophic to the health of millions worldwide but also fractured international relations, global access to new technologies, and public health policies in nations across the globe. As he struggled to get ahead of the disease, Piot found science does little good when it operates independently of politics and economics, and politics is worthless if it rejects scientific evidence and respect for human rights. <P><P>Piot describes how the epidemic altered global attitudes toward sexuality, the character of the doctor-patient relationship, the influence of civil society in international relations, and traditional partisan divides. AIDS thrust health into national and international politics where, he argues, it rightly belongs. The global reaction to AIDS over the past decade is the positive result of this partnership, showing what can be achieved when science, politics, and policy converge on the ground. Yet it remains a fragile achievement, and Piot warns against complacency and the consequences of reduced investments. He refuses to accept a world in which high levels of HIV infection are the norm. Instead, he explains how to continue to reduce the incidence of the disease to minute levels through both prevention and treatment, until a vaccine is discovered.
AIDS, Communication, and Empowerment: Gay Male Identity and the Politics of Public Health Messages
by Roger MyrickAIDS, Communication, and Empowerment examines the cultural construction of gay men in light of discourse used in the media’s messages about HIV/AIDS--messages often represented as educational, scientific, and informational but which are, in fact, politically charged. The book offers a compelling and substantive look at the social consequences of communication about HIV/AIDS and the reasons for the successes and failures of contemporary health communication. This analysis is important because it provides a reading of health communication from a marginal perspective, one that has often been kept silent in mainstream academic research. AIDS, Communication, and Empowerment offers a critical, historical analysis of public health communication about HIV/AIDS; the ways this communication makes sense historically and culturally; and the implications such messages have for the marginal group which has been most stigmatized as a consequence of these messages. It covers such topics as: the relationship among gay identity, language, and power cultural studies of the historical development of gay identity studies in health communication about HIV/AIDS and health risk communication the political consequences of public health education about HIV/AIDS on gay men the political consequences of media representations of gay identity and its relationship to disease Based primarily on the French scholar Michel Foucault’s critical, historical analysis of discourse and sexuality, this book takes a timely and original approach which differs from traditional, quantitative communication studies. It examines the relationship between language and culture using a qualitative, cultural studies approach which places medicalization theories in the broader context of histories of sexuality, the discursive development of contemporary gay identity, and recent public health communication.Author Roger Myrick explains how mainstream communication about HIV/AIDS relentlessly stigmatizes and further marginalizes gay identity. He describes how national health education stigmatizes groups by associating them with images of disease and “otherness.” Even communication which originates from marginal groups, particularly those relying on federal funds, often participates in linking gay identities with disease. According to Myrick, government funding, while often necessary for the continuation of community-based health campaigns, poses obvious and direct restrictions on effective marginal education. AIDS, Communication, and Empowerment allows for a rethinking of ways marginal groups can take control of their own education on public health issues. As HIV/AIDS cases continue to rise dramatically among marginalized and disenfranchised groups, analysis of health communication directed toward them becomes crucial to their survival. This book provides valuable insights and information for scholars, professionals, readers interested in the relationship among language, power and marginal identity, and for classes in gay and lesbian studies, health communication, or political communication.
The AIDS Conspiracy: Science Fights Back
by Nicoli NattrassSince the early days of the AIDS epidemic, many bizarre and dangerous hypotheses have been advanced to explain the origins of the disease. In this compelling book, Nicoli Nattrass explores the social and political factors prolonging the erroneous belief that the American government manufactured the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to be used as a biological weapon, as well as the myth's consequences for behavior, especially within African American and black South African communities.Contemporary AIDS denialism, the belief that HIV is harmless and that antiretroviral drugs are the true cause of AIDS, is a more insidious AIDS conspiracy theory. Advocates of this position make a "conspiratorial move" against HIV science by implying its methods cannot be trusted and that untested, alternative therapies are safer than antiretrovirals. These claims are genuinely life-threatening, as tragically demonstrated in South Africa when the delay of antiretroviral treatment resulted in nearly 333,000 AIDS deaths and 180,000 HIV infections—a tragedy of stunning proportions.Nattrass identifies four symbolically powerful figures ensuring the lifespan of AIDS denialism: the hero scientist (dissident scientists who lend credibility to the movement); the cultropreneur (alternative therapists who exploit the conspiratorial move as a marketing mechanism); the living icon (individuals who claim to be living proof of AIDS denialism's legitimacy); and the praise-singer (journalists who broadcast movement messages to the public). Nattrass also describes how pro-science activists have fought back by deploying empirical evidence and political credibility to resist AIDS conspiracy theories, which is part of the crucial project to defend evidence-based medicine.