Randall Nielsen (L) and Charlotte Jones-Carroll (R)
Esquel’s July 31 session of the Civil Society Task Force took as its premise: Aid has not meant development. This argument holds that that economic development assistance hasn’t really worked. Aid-dependent countries tend to remain as dependent as they were sixty years ago. Evidently, aid has not meant development. In anticipation of more decades of pushing the Sissiphean aid rock up the development mountain, funders, aid agencies, recipient countries and eventual beneficiaries all agree that a “smarter” aid is needed, not just–or even necessarily–a larger amount of conventional aid.
The speakers to this thesis, including contrary views, were
- Randall Nielsen, Program Officer, The Civic-economic Connection Initiative, of The Kettering Foundation; and
- Charlotte Jones Carroll, former officer in the World Bank and US-AID.
- William Reuben, recently retired from World Bank NGO Unit, was unable to participate but Ramon Daubon, President, Esquel Group, spoke for him.
Nielsen accepted the core premise of the session– that economic development assistance hasn’t really worked– but made special note of the Kettering Foundation’s experiences in linking of “development” to “democracy.” The three elements that make democracy work, Nielsen argued, are
- that citizens see themselves as “actors” in their communities
- that the community provides opportunities for action and inter-action, and
- that there are “institutions” that make the actors and the community work well.
In brief, democracy requires associational life that is healthy. In this context, engaged citizens work with and through their organizations to achieve “development.”
In recent years, community based organizations have changed as have the donor organizations. The donors, however, sometimes see CSOs as obstacles to development, not as resources. Other times CSOs self-assign themselves protagonists roles as representatives “of the people” and speak on the people’s behalf, thus reducing the people’s capacity to speak for themselves. So the issue remains: When are outside aid agencies complementary to development, and when are they antagonistic?
Daubon, speaking for Reuben as well as expressing his own views, noted that the concept of “development” that originated with the Marshall Plan and the Bretton Woods institutions, effectively equated “infrastructure” with “development.” This view was best justified in the European context, where core skills and institutions were either in place or could be recovered once the roads, rails, factories and farms were rebuilt. The World Bank later evolved its views to include education and other institutions as critical elements to development.
By the 1970s (and the McNamara regime) the main focus of the Bank was on the developing countries. It became clear that deep changes were needed in both the Bank and in the countries in order to achieve development.
The views of the World Bank have continued to evolve. In the 1980s Bank policy was dominated by the Washington Consensus which limited the power of developing countries to finance social projects. But the increasingly important role of the larger developing countries (Brazil, China, India, etc.) in Bank policy and governance is also impacting Bank action. Much greater “participation” of NGOs in the selection and design of projects and setting of priorities may be found -but this is not universal nor does this result in more “development.” The issue remains “Who is capable of inventing a smarter aid?”
Einstein, Daubon mentioned, mused that the designers of a problem should not be in charge of designing its solution. The sense of the meeting was that given constraints of history, institutional cultures and self-interest, the present donor institutions are incapable of inventing the “smart aid” that every one agrees is needed.
Jones Carroll questioned some of the premises of the session. External assistance has brought substantial improvements in, for example, disease control, improved roads and communications (mobile phones leapfrogging old telephones systems). She also felt that the NGOs have been around longer than the AID agencies, and they too have not been more successful.
On he other hand, Jones Carroll took issue with the World Bank’s assertions that “development” does not necessarily require “democracy” but definitely requires a policy environment favorable for investors. The so-called David Dollar analysis “supports the view that globalization leads to faster growth and poverty reduction in poor countries.”1 Jones Carroll said that critical elements are missing from such an analysis. Specifically, “democratic participation” is not given attention, much less priority.
Her experience with US-AID confirmed that this assistance was often inappropriate and misshapen by emphasis on US national security or commercial interests rather than recipient country development. Motivations of other countries’ assistance programs vary but the national interests of the donors tend to dominate, rather than recognizing that effective development must be endogenous.
She recommended as one of the best analyses of the role of external assistance in fostering development that of Norman Uphoff -what he characterizes as “assisted self-reliance.”2 Jones Carroll agreed with both Uphoff and Thomas Carroll that development above all requires strong emphasis on endogenous capacity building.3
The wide-ranging discussion covered, among other topics, the nature of “development.” One speaker argued that a distinction must be made between economic “growth” and “development.” The first does not imply the latter. In fact, development typically requires a change in the status and power of various individuals in a community such that the former power-holders are replaced or supplemented by others-as when peasants have access to resources after reforms so that the former landlords lose their economic and political control in the community.
Ramon Daubon (L) and Randall Nielsen (R)
Another speaker expressed the view that the World Bank and other aid-agencies should continue to build needed infrastructure, but should separately give equal or greater attention to building the endogenous capacity and the conditions for democratic participation. This argues for expanded role for civil society organizations (CSOs to partner with their governments in the administration of aid programs since the World Bank lacks the institutional wherewithal to manage such programs itself.
Attention was called to the potentials for increased appreciation of civic action created by exchanges among communities in Latin America and the US. Esquel has been involved with promoting such exchanges as have other groups such as the Partners of the Americas and the Inter-American Foundation. US-AID has funded many of these activities in the past.
This roundtable session explored further how ordinary citizens -the presumed beneficiaries of development assistance– in collaboration with their CSOs, could engage in re-thinking development assistance, and how this enhanced deliberative grassroots capacity for public agenda-building might be achieve “smarter aid.”
1 See http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=632684
2 For an extended expression of his thesis, see Norman Uphoff “Assisted Self Reliance” pp. 47-60 in Strengthening the Poor: What Have We Learned, Overseas Development Council, Washington DC, 1988.
3 See also Thomas Carroll, Intermediary NGOs: The Supporting Link in Grassroots Development, Kumarian Presss, 1994