The Politics of Aid The Global Economic Governance Programme was established at University College in 2003 to foster research and debate into how global markets and institutions can better serve the needs of people in developing countries.ThethreecoreobjectivesoftheProgrammeare: (cid:1) toconductandfosterresearchintointernationalorganizationsandmar- ketsaswellasnewpublic–privategovernanceregimes; (cid:1) to create and maintain a network of scholars and policymakers working ontheseissues;and (cid:1) to influence debate and policy in both the public and the private sector indevelopedanddevelopingcountries. The Programme is directly linked to Oxford University’s Department of Pol- itics and International Relations and Centre for International Studies. It serves as an interdisciplinary umbrella within Oxford drawing together members of the Departments of Economics, Law, and Development Studies working on these issues and linking them to an international research network. The Programme has been made possible through the generous support of Old Members of University College. Its research projects are principally funded bytheMacArthurFoundation(Chicago)andtheInternationalDevelopment ResearchCentre(Ottawa). The Politics of Aid African Strategies for Dealing with Donors Editedby Lindsay Whitfield 1 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxfordox26DP OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwidein OxfordNewYork Auckland CapeTown DaresSalaam HongKong Karachi KualaLumpur Madrid Melbourne MexicoCity Nairobi NewDelhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto Withofficesin Argentina Austria Brazil Chile CzechRepublic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore SouthKorea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam OxfordisaregisteredtrademarkofOxfordUniversityPress intheUKandincertainothercountries PublishedintheUnitedStates byOxfordUniversityPressInc.,NewYork ©TheSeveralContributors2009 Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted DatabaserightOxfordUniversityPress(maker) Firstpublished2009 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced, storedinaretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans, withoutthepriorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress, orasexpresslypermittedbylaw,orundertermsagreedwiththeappropriate reprographicsrightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproduction outsidethescopeoftheaboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment, OxfordUniversityPress,attheaddressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisbookinanyotherbindingorcover andyoumustimposethesameconditiononanyacquirer BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData Dataavailable TypesetbySPIPublisherServices,Pondicherry,India PrintedinGreatBritain onacid-freepaperby CPIAntonyRowe,Chippenham,Wiltshire ISBN 978–0–19–956017–2 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 ‘“Paternalism is the greatest despotism imaginable.” This is so because it is to treat men as if they were not free, but human material for me, the benevolent reformer, to mould in accor- dancewithmyown,nottheir,freelyadoptedpurpose.’ IsaiahBerlin,TwoConceptsofLiberty(1958),Oxford:Clarendon Press,p.22,quotingImmanuelKant This page intentionally left blank Contents Foreword ix Preface xi ListofAbbreviations xv NotesonContributors xviii Introduction:AidandSovereignty 1 LindsayWhitfieldandAlastairFraser 1. NegotiatingAid 27 LindsayWhitfieldandAlastairFraser 2. Aid-RecipientSovereigntyinHistoricalContext 45 AlastairFraser 3. UnderstandingContemporaryAidRelationships 74 AlastairFraserandLindsayWhitfield 4. Botswana:TheAfricanSuccessStory 108 GervaseMaipose 5. Ethiopia:RetainingSovereigntyinAidRelations 131 XavierFurtadoandW.JamesSmith 6. Rwanda:MilkingtheCow.CreatingPolicySpaceinSpite ofAidDependence 156 RachelHayman 7. Ghana:BreakingOutofAidDependence?Economicand PoliticalBarrierstoOwnership 185 LindsayWhitfieldandEmilyJones 8. Mali:PatternsandLimitsofDonor-DrivenOwnership 217 IsalineBergamaschi vii Contents 9. Mozambique:ContestedSovereignty?TheDilemmas ofAidDependence 246 PaolodeRenzioandJosephHanlon 10. Tanzania:AGenuineCaseofRecipientLeadership intheAidSystem? 271 GrahamHarrisonandSarahMulleywithDuncanHoltom 11. Zambia:BacktotheFuture? 299 AlastairFraser 12. AidandPower:AComparativeAnalysisofthe CountryStudies 329 LindsayWhitfield Conclusion:ChangingConditions? 361 LindsayWhitfield Index 380 viii Foreword At the same time as the Global Economic Governance Programme was foundedin2003,aseriousdebatewastakingplaceamongaidagenciesabout ‘reformingtheinternationalaidarchitecture’.IntheDevelopmentAssistance Committee (of the OECD) donors were discussing how they should better coordinate their aid efforts. International agencies were taking seriously the suggestionthattheyshouldbetterdefinetheirrespectiverolesandfindmore ways to work together. Donors across the world were focused on how to improve the quality of their aid. Having established the Global Economic Governance Programme to focus research on how international institutions couldbettermeettheneedsofpeopleindevelopingcountries,theaiddebate wasnotonewecouldavoid.Thatsaid,itprovokedustothinkhardabouthow university-basedresearchmightcontributetoshiftingareasofpolicysuchas this. Itsoonstruckusthatbeyondtheimmediateday-to-dayconcernsofpolicy- makers and commentators lay a more fundamental question about the way the debate was being framed. If coordination was so obviously beneficial for donors and their development partners, why was it not already occurring? What were the deeper incentives which kept aid uncoordinated? A close look at the political economy of aid led us to the view that focusing on greater coordination among donors as envisaged in the OECD DAC process was unlikely to lead to a rapid improvement in the quality of aid. We chose instead to focus on the role that aid-receiving countries can or might play in improving the quality of aid. In our early discussions about the project, SarahMulleycoinedtheterm‘reverseconditionality’todescribeanapproach whichwouldturntheaiddebateupsidedown,examiningwhetherthequality of aid could be improved by aid-receiving countries setting aid-enhancing conditions on donors – a focus on the demand-side rather than the supply- side of aid. It is this focus which Lindsay Whitfield has amplified, using her own extraordinary skills and background in African politics successfully to bringtogetheranambitious,highlysuccessfulproject. At the Global Economic Governance Programme, we are hugely fortunate to have research funders who support this type of research and understand the importance of approaching international arrangements with a close ear ix