Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the relationship between a country's foreign aid and development assistance programmes and the communication of a positive image to both domestic and international audiences by using soft power analysis as its framework.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the relationship between a country's foreign aid and development assistance programmes and the communication of a positive image to both domestic and international audiences. The author argues that political communications analysis can provide useful critical understanding of the aid and development industries beyond the more traditional approaches of political economy and postcolonial studies. To this end, the paper frames foreign aid and development assistance through the political theory of soft power, arguing that these activities ought to be thought of as acts of public diplomacy and thereby conducive with the source government's power accumulation strategy rather than any act of international philanthropy. Moreover, the analysis of explicit and implicit political communications from a number of governments historical programmes reveals the multitude of audiences that these activities engage with beyond the direct recipients of assistance.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the development of Western and Chinese foreign aid since the 1950s and the paradigms that guide each; how the aid has contributed to shaping North-South and South-South relations; and finally, the implications of a more nationalist US foreign aid policy.

Paper long abstract:

The Bandung conference in April 1955, while largely ignored in the West, was important in that it was the first meeting of Southern countries from both Western and Soviet alliances, and those who were 'non-aligned', ot discuss what development meant for them and putting forward the idea of Southern led development. Out of this conference emerged the first tentative steps in South-South cooperation with China's nascent engagement with Africa, which was to grow over the next 60 years.

What I argue in the paper is that the South-South cooperation continues to be driven by a different development paradigm to challenge ideas of Western hegemony and neo-colonialism. Chinese Premier Zou Enlai's emphases on solidarity and mutuality in China's foreign aid relations through his Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence (finalised at Bandung in 1955) and the Eight Principles for Economic Aid and Technical Assistance to Other Countries (1964) which are still referred to, has been analysed by Mawdsely (2011) and others using gift theory, in contrast to Western foreign aid theorised as 'symbolic domination' (Hattori 2001).

This paper explores the parallel development of Western and Chinese aid since the 1950s and how they contribute to shaping North-South and South-South development relations. It will conclude with an examination of current aid paradigms in era of the post-Washington consensus and 'Beijing consensus', and the implications of a more nationalist US foreign aid policy under the Trump administration. This paper is a product of an East West Center in Washington Asia fellowship in 2017.

Paper short abstract:

Over the past three decades, there has been a shift in dominant models of aid intervention and evidence. The study explores the evolution of aid in three phases: sectoral, entrepreneurial and technological, and critically accounts for particular ways of providing evidence.

Paper long abstract:

Genuine learning to make a difference can be achieved by applying a historical lens to reflect methodological approaches that may have offered or obscured broader lessons. The study draws attention to the fact that there are models that specify prevailing forms of evidence, and it is critical to recognize weaknesses as well as strengthens of particular models. On this aim, the study explores the evolution of aid intervention and evidence in three periods: sectoral period (1985-2000), entrepreneurial period (2000-2015), and technological period (2016-).

In the sectoral aid period, important aid reform agenda driven by donor countries was, at a minimum, to make aid allocation correspond to the development priorities of the recipient country. This paper analyzes that a disproportionate share of aid is allocated to sectors where it is simple to match demand and supply.

The second phase marked by a shift in focus from the need-intervention tie to the intervention-impact tie, placing greater emphasis on credible means of measuring actual outcomes. The accumulation of impact evaluations has also contributed to burgeoning of cash-oriented interventions towards individual entrepreneurs. The paper discusses the necessity of identifying theoretical framework to unpack the black box of impact evaluations of cash-based projects.

The third phase concerns the last piece of the puzzle - that is evaluation uptake into policy (scaling) in multi-stakeholder contexts. The paper identifies evaluation continuum that data-intensive projects tend to inform and some barriers that affect translation of digital data into production of high quality evidence.

Paper short abstract:

What is the history of international development? How has this history been portrayed? Furthermore, what are the practical consequences? This paper presents a review of historical texts to highlight a number of historical narratives since the 1980s and their ensuing controversies.

Paper long abstract:

What is the history of international development? How does the development discourse perceive its own past? Further, what are the consequences for development theory and practice?

This paper provides a review of the historiography on development thought. It highlights a number of prevailing historical narratives since the 1980s and their ensuing controversies. In particular, it considers how ways of framing development's past directly affect perceptions of its future. Thus, the history of development thought is then linked to the politics of development knowledge. A number of key historical and historiographical lessons are then derived from the review. Pointing out that history, too, is political, potential directions in development history and the history of development thought are highlighted for future work.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper evaluates the uses of colonial history in new institutional economics of Douglass North, Acemoglu, Robinson etc. The paper argues that colonial history is misrepresented and this has significant implications for understanding the role of violence in development.

Paper long abstract:

The objective of this paper is to explore the different ways colonial history has been interpreted by New Institutional Economics (NIE). NIE has been very influential in shaping understanding of contemporary development across a range of disciplines and policy spheres. NIE originates from the work of Douglass North and more recently has been popularized by Acemoglu, Robinson, Johnston and others. While the original NIE models focussed on individual bargaining as the driving force behind institutional change, recent models engage more explicitly with violence and power. Despite placing history at the heart of their theoretical model, these approaches have a problematic engagement with colonial history. North's last work on Access Orders frames development as a process of moving from limited access to open access orders as institutions emerge to control violence. However the framework ignores colonial violence and the interaction between open and limited access orders. In contrast, Acemoglu et al place colonialism as central to understanding development. However, their approach is also unsatisfactory. Once again, the role of colonial violence in establishing institutions is underplayed. The paper argues that this leads to misinterpretation of the contemporary relationship between institutional and economic change. This is demonstrated in the paper though an exploration of the interpretation of a number of case studies in the literature.