TAMPEREEN YLIOPISTO Johtamistieteiden laitos
BUSINESS AND AIDS AID, PARTNERSHIPS AND PROBLEMS
Hallintotiede
Pro gradu -tutkielma Marraskuu 2008 Ohjaaja: Juha Vartola Pasi Rajander
TIIVISTELMÄ
Tampereen yliopisto Johtamistieteiden laitos, Hallintotiede Tekijä: RAJANDER PASI
Tutkielman nimi: Business and Aids Aid, Partnerships and Problems Pro gradu -tutkielma: 88 sivua + 4 liitesivua
Aika: Marraskuu 2008
Avainsanat: Development Aid, Foucault, Cambodia, Private Sector Response
Tämän tutkielman aihe on tarkastella Foucaultlaisesta vallan näkökulmasta, miten yksityissektorin mukaanottoa ja sitouttamista on määritelty yleisesti kehitysyhteistyössä ja erityisesti HIV/AIDS kontekstissa. Tarkastelu on kohdennetu UNAIDS:n virallisisiin julkilausumiin ja dokumentaatioihin yksityissektorin sitouttamiseen liittyen.. Tutkimus hakee vastauksia kysymyksiin, millaisia merkityksiä UNAIDS virallisissa dokumenteissa ja julkilausumissaan liittää yksityissektorin sitouttamiseen HIV/AIDS työhön ja erityisesti kuinka paljon nämä nämä ovat yhtäältä länsimaiseen kulttuuriin sidottuja, ja toisaalta millaisena niiden implementointi näyttäytyy lähtökohdiltaan hyvin erilaisissa, kehitysmaiden, kontekstissa.
Olen analysoinut erityisesti kolmea UNAIDS:in yksityissektorin sitouttamista käsittelevää päädokumenttia: UNAIDS:n teetättämää selvitystä The Business Response to HIV/AIDS: Impact and Lessons Learned; UNAIDS:n itse tuottamaa AIDS is Everybody’s Business. UNAIDS & Business:
Working Together, sekä ILO:n (joka on YK:n johtava organisaatio työkysymyksiin liittyen ja yksi UNAIDS-ohjelman rahoittajista) tuottamaa ILO code of practice on HIV/AIDS and the world of work. Tämän lisäksi olen nostanut esille myös muita UNAIDS:iin liittyviä dokumentteja erityisesti World Bankilta, sekä Yksityissektori-partnereilta. Näiden kautta nousseita analyyseja olen verrannut lopuksi siihen, miten yksityissektorin sitouttaminen ja mukaanotto näyttäytyy Kambodzhassa; mitä siitä on kirjoitettu ja miten sitä on toteutettu.
Tarkastelutapani tutkimuksen kohteeseen on kriittinen. Olen halunnut pureutua em.
tutkimusongelmiin Foucaultlaisesta vallan näkökulmasta ja siitä, millaisten diskurssien ja julkilaasuttujen tai julkilausumattomien olettamusten kautta yksityissektorin sitouttamista näissä dokumenteissa käsitellään. Olen kiinnostunut omaksuttujen käsitteiden historiallisesta kontekstista, toisin sanoen mistä ne ovat tulleet ja miten ne ovat rakentuneet, erityisesti silloin, kun ne ovat tuotu
”itsestäänselvyyksinä, annettuina”, mutta myös siitä, mitä asioita julkituodut määrittelyt sulkevat tai jättäävät ulkopuolelle.
Keskeisiä tutkimuslöydöksiä ovat havainto UNAIDS:n taustasta (yhtäältä ILO:n työokeuksia ja työmarkkinajärjestöjen asemaa ja roolia korostava, ja toisaalta erityisesti World Bankin ja yleisemmin yksityissektorin itsensä tuoma neo-liberalistinen, globaalia taloutta ja yksityissektorin roolia kehitysavun kestävimpänä ja toimivampana järjestelmänä korostava lähestymistapa) kumpuava kaksijakoinen, ja osittain ristiriitainen ja toisiaan poissulkeva malli. Toinen keskeinen löydös liittyy globaalien dokumenttien ja toimintaohjeiden kulttuuriseen sidonnaisuuteen ja siihen, kuinka hyvin – tai huonosti – ne toimivat kehitysmaakontekstissa. Kolmanneksi, aineksia UNAIDS:n lanseeraamista diskursseista ja hyviksi esitetyistä lähestymistavoista on löydettävissä virallisista Kambodzalaisista dokumenteista, mutta käytänteiden tasolla lakien ja toimintatapojen soveltaminen käytäntöön ei ole toteutunut määriteltyjen tavoitteiden mukaisesti.
Acknowledgements
Writing this thesis has been a long walk that began in 2000 with an interest in foreign aid and development issues, the research topic changing from a focus on business development and tourism in Nepal to its present focus on the business sector response to HIV/AIDS in Cambodia (a slight, modest change…)
The finalization of this research would not have been possible without the support of the Professor Juha Vartola nor without the help and encouragement of all staff of Department of Administrative Science. I would also like to thanks Katy Pullen and Silja Rajander for your assistance with checking the language, and for many good discussions on AIDS and aid in Cambodia.
The gist of many of the arguments I put forward have been developed, debated and ‘put under fire’
in after-work discussion and debate with many good friends working in the area of development aid. I would like to thank, in particular, Jyrki Terva for our many discussions over the past twelve years and Jouni Anttonen for the good discussion on the final steps of this work (and thanks for the drinks).
I would also like to thank all those people I have worked with in, outside and alongside aid, who have helped me understand the importance of the journey and been great companions. Thanks especially to Pekka Ylöstalo (who introduced me to research), Pekka Peltola (for kindling an interest in development aid), Asko Luukkainen (for the opportunity to work in Nepal), Tek Nat Dhakal (for mentoring my first attempts at development aid studies), and last, but not least, Jane Batte and Toni Lisle (for introducing me to the work of aid and AIDS).
The final thanks belong to my family. Writing the research would have been a considerably more difficult task without the company – and disruptions - of my family, and for both of these, I would like to thank each of you, Silja, Annina and Mei. I would also like to thank my parents for your unwavering support.
Phnom Penh 22nd February 2008 Pasi Rajander
Table of contents
Acronyms ... 7
1. Introduction... 6
2.1. The production of knowledge - a Foucauldian perspective to discourse analysis ... 10
2.2. Research questions, data and analysis... 14
3. Development, aid and business... 17
3.1. The rationale of development aid – developmentalism and development with business ... 17
3.2 Economic globalization and development aid ... 19
3.3. Tracing the history of development aid and its engagement with the business sector ... 23
3.3.1 Early stages: relief and trade... 23
3.3.2. Aftermath of World War II and the Cold War era... 24
3.3.3. Beginnings of ‘rolling back the state’... 27
3.3.4. Neo‐liberal emphases and the 1990s... 28
3.3.5. The New Millenium and its goals... 32
3.4 Conclusions... 36
4. HIV/AIDS and the UN: global discourse of aids and AIDS ... 38
4.1 AIDS and the aid environment... 38
4.2 UNAIDS and different approaches to the private sector response to HIV/AIDS... 42
4.2.1. UNAIDS at a glance... 42
4.2.2 UNAIDS and the rationale of calls for private sector engagement in the HIV/AIDS response... 43
4.2.3 Market oriented approach – AIDS, aid and Business... 48
4.3. Conclusions: Engaging the Private Sector – on whose terms?... 55
5. HIV/AIDS and the private sector response in Cambodia ... 57
5.1 South-East Asia: economic development, business and HIV/AIDS ... 57
5.2 An introduction to Cambodia... 60
5.2.1 A brief portrait of Cambodia... 60
5.2.2 Business and development in Cambodia ... 63
5.2.3 HIV/AIDS in Cambodia...65
5.3 National strategies & policies related to HIV/AIDS and the private sector response ... 67
5.4.1 Authority, leadership and the Cambodian response to HIV/AIDS... 70
5.4.3 Prakas implementation and other private sector policies related to HIV/AIDS ... 72
5.5. Conclusions to Cambodian private sector response: Private Sector and hopes for economic growth: a logic of assistance or a logic of free markets? ... 77
6. Conclusions... 79
BIBLIOGRAPHY... 82
Acronyms
ADB Asian Development Bank
AIDS Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome
ART anti-retroviral therapy
CDHS Cambodian Demographic and Health Survey CHDR Cambodia Human Development Report CIPS Cambodia Inter-Censal Population Survey
DFI Development Finance Institution
EC European Commission
ECOSOC Economic and Social Council of the United Nations
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GIPA Greater Involvement of People Living with and affected by HIV/AIDS
HIV Human Immunodeficiency Virus
M&E Monitoring and Evaluation
NAA National AIDS Authority
NGO Non Governmental Organisation
NIS National Institute of Statistics
NSDP National Strategic Development Plan
NSP II National Strategic Plan for a Comprehensive and Multisectoral Response to HIV/AIDS, 2006-10
PLHIV Person Living with HIV
RGC Royal Government of Cambodia
UNAIDS United Nations Joint Program on AIDS
USAID United States Agency for International Development VCCT Voluntary Confidential Counselling and Testing
1. Introduction
The idea for the topic of my Master’s Thesis can be traced to my work with UNAIDS in Phnom Penh as the focal point for the private sector response to HIV/AIDS in 2007 and 2008. Before then, I had worked with various short-term development assistance projects for the Finnish Foreign Ministry and its implementing partners in Nepal and surrounding countries. Development assistance, and the specific challenges involved in implementing projects in environments where infrastructure is weak, resources scarce and the capacity of governments to effect change is severely affected by years of civil war, were challenges I was, at least to some degree, already familiar with.
In Cambodia, the challenges to development assistance have been related, in particular, to the genocidal regime of the Khmer Rouge, which severely affected the infrastructure and the ability on the long-term of the country to take meaningful steps to improve socioeconomic development and effect societal change. Like many other developing countries, effecting change at the level of particularly marginalized communities and the ‘poorest of the poor’ has been a challenge in Cambodia, and as Ayres (2000) argues, the crisis of the country goes back further than 1975 and the ascendance of Khmer Rouge to power, which wraught large scale “state-sanctioned violence and terror” (p. 95). The crisis, he argues, is located in the continued legacy of those in positions of power to determine the conditions of change.
In 1997, Cambodia was reported as having the highest HIV prevalence, 3.3%, in South East Asia.
Since the first reported incidents of HIV in 1993, considerable effort, financial and technical support, have been put into addressing the epidemic. I argue that the imaginary employed in the context of the business sector response to HIV bears little resemblance to the challenges on ground, for whilst to some extent agreeing with many of the points raised in such discourse (see Chapter 4), I argue that this focus on HIV as a ‘special disease’, deflect from a broader discussion of some of the arguably more crucial issues needing to be addressed: the reluctance of the powerful to address the widening gap between the rich and the poor, as well as the dire state of public health care and education in general.
In the context of developing countries and, specifically, the state building efforts of the United Nations and various bi- and multilateral stakeholders, the modalities of government that have been suggested as a means forward have been charged as often reflecting Western principles and ways of
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thinking that do not sufficiently address local contexts, and therefore fail to initiate equal, sustainable change for all (cf. Zanotti 2008). In my analysis, I examine the political imaginary suggested by UNAIDS discourse on HIV/AIDS, and, specifically, the part the private sector is imagined as playing in national responses to HIV/AIDS. I provide an introduction to the incorporation of business sector as an element of development work and, more specifically, the response to HIV/AIDS. In light of the emergence of demands for a private sector response to HIV at global to local levels, I examine the rationale of demands for the private sector to participate in the response.
Whilst support for HIV has taken place in the context of development assistance, a major challenge of which is recognizable in the discourse of ‘development as dependence’, calls made for the private sector have, I argue, coincided with a ‘discourse of realism’ that acknowledges the challenging social realities of developing countries whilst maintaining the prioritization of HIV as a special epidemic. From the perspective of public institutions and the incorporation of the private sector, I argue that in developing countries such as Cambodia, there is a need for more engagement with questions that acknowledges the complexities of both the development context in general and the HIV epidemic in particular.
I approach my topic from a ‘Foucauldian’ perspective on governmentality, which takes as its point of departure that governing people is not a matter of force or ideology, but is a form of self- government, of acting on the self (cp. Foucault) whereby, as Rose (1999) “[g]overnment works by
‘acting at a distance’ [..] forging a symmetry between the attempts of individuals to make life worthwhile for themselves, and the political values of consumption, profitability, efficiency, and social order” (10 – 11). From this perspective, the ‘state centered’ reform called for by many development assistance frameworks, coupled by the introduction of the principles of marketization and capitalism and the present focus on direct budget (sectoral) support to governments in developing countries, present significant challenges, generalizing findings from the west to the contexts of developing countries without regard to local dynamics, - challenges and – potential, overlooking the unwanted changes and effects introduced by reform. In my analysis, I draw attention to differences, but also links between official guidelines and statements issued by the UN, and local practices and the ways in which the private sector response is figured in official Cambodian documents, including strategic plans, policies and statements.
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The analysis moves on international (global) and national (Cambodian) discourse on the business sector engagement with HIV/AIDS. Of the UN bodies, of particular relevance to the private sector response are UNAIDS, a program supported by 10 UN agencies, responsible for the UN response to HIV/AIDS, and ILO, which has developed various policies and guidelines of particular relevance to HIV/AIDS and the workplace. Thus I begin by examining discourses of HIV in official UNAIDS global documents and statements as well as policies and guidelines developed by ILO, tracing the rationale of these documents, applying a genealogical perspective to analysis.
Before examining various national strategies, reports and guidelines produced in Cambodia, I provide a brief introduction Cambodia and to HIV in Cambodia, as well as a brief sectoral assessment of the economy in Cambodia to provide a background for the analysis that follows. In the last part of my work, drawing from my experience from the past two years working with UNAIDS in Cambodia, I analyze how various key Cambodian government and business people designate the business sector as a national counterpart in the response to HIV/AIDS, and what they identify as problems or challenges that need to be grappled with or overcome.
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2. Research methodology and research questions
Over the past decades, and with increasing volume, development aid and developmentalism have been criticized for importing institutional practices and standardized technical solutions to questions of governance that are Western-centric and that reinforce external power, conditionality and cycles of dependence. In her analysis of UN state-building and democratization efforts in the context of the Peace-keeping corps in Haiti, Zanotti (2008), for example, argues that the failure of the UN and other development partners to assist in building democratic, well-functioning states – as reflected by disorder and dependence of developing countries - is attributable to an unreflective Eurocentric political imaginary within which these goals are formulated. As Zanotti writes, there is disagreement as to the feasibility of international interventions and their effects in fragile states:
whilst some argue that the effects of importing state institutions to other cultural contexts is a necessary means to effect political reform that has unpredictable consequences, resulting both in hybridization and appropriation, others argue that imported state structures inevitably fail, as they are often both incomprehensible to the local culture, and designed to function in a non-replicable state environment, thus not capable of functioning in other communities. (Ibid., p. 540-541; see also Brigg 2002; Easterly 2007; Engelbert 1997; Windsor 2007.) The former view is taken by Windsor (2007), who writes:
The underlying premise of this external assistance is that while democracy can only ultimately be brought about and secured (and continuously resecured) by internal actors within the country, this support, if properly designed and implemented, can make a difference. (p. 154).
Such a view is broadly that of UN assisted reform in developing countries, and in this study I approach these issues from a Foucauldian perspective on governance and governmentality, power and discourse to examine the underlying rationale of development aid interventions, and more specifically, of UNAIDS and ILO official discourse on the engagement of the business sector in the national HIV response. In my analysis, I draw from Foucault’s genealogical analysis of discourse and, as follows, I briefly introduce some of the key premises of Foucault’s genealogical or historical analysis, before introducing my research questions and data.
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2.1. The production of knowledge - a Foucauldian perspective to discourse analysis
Discourse and discourse analysis have been defined in different ways at different times and by different people. Discourse is connected by some to what sociologists call ’ideology’, and is taken to refer to a group of statements or beliefs that produce knowledge that benefits particular groups in society, and the task of the researcher is thus that of deciphering the rules that connect different statements to each other. Others, importantly conversation analysts, approach discourse as what people say and do, drawing attention to rules governing turn taking in conversation. A Foucauldian approach, on the other hand, is preoccupied with how meaning is construed, with discursive formations or systems of meaning that constitute the identity of things – of social reality, of subjects and objects. (Howarth 2002; see also Jokinen, Juhila & Suoninen 1999; Simola 1995.)
Writing of discourse analysis in general, Jokinen et al. (1999) introduce the category of discursive
‘accounts’, through which people make sense of their understanding of particular issues to others.
‘Accounts’, they write, are embedded in social reality, and participate in maintaining cultural stability. From the perspective of the present research, what is interesting in ‘accounts’ is the way in which they often begin from discursive meanings that are generally accepted, ideologically attractive and seemingly natural. (Ibid., 20 – 22.) However, whilst they often pertain to generally accepted ‘truths’, as Jokinen et al. (ibid.) write, this does not mean that they are unambiguous: “The most common discourses or ’ideologies’ incorporate ambiguous meanings - - Therefore agents have many possibilities of building accounts from conventional materials that support alternative practices” (27.1)
Foucauldian discourse analysis has been described as “concerned with how the social construction process of shaped across different domains of everyday life” (Holstein & Gubrium 2005, 492), as occupied by the “connection between ‘discursive practices’ and wider sets of ‘non-discursive’
activities and institutions” (Howarth 2002, 4), with the production of knowledge through power relations, and the mutual dependence of power and knowledge (Foucault 1979). Relatedly, Foucauldian analysis has been applied as a critical form of qualitative research to interrogate power relationships/the circulation of power. A major theme in Foucault’s work is that of examining how subjects become subjects. This is apparent in the phases that Foucault’s work has been divided into:
1 Tunnetuimmat diskurssit tai ”ideologiat” sisäsltävät ristiriitaisia - - aineksia. Näin ollen toimijoille tarjoutuu mahdollisuuksia yrittää rakentaa konventionaalisistakin aineksista selontekoja, jotka tukevat vaihtoehtoisia käytäntöjä.
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an archeological and genealogical phase, a focus on care of the self and, some add, governmentality (Scheurich & McKenzie 2005; see also Husa 2000, 61-64; Pulkkinen 1998, 92-103; Simola 1995, 23 - 37). The archeological phase focuses on discourse and the constitution of knowledge, whilst the relationship between power and knowledge becomes more focal in his genealogical phase, the concept of geneology deriving from Nietzsche’s work (Pulkkinen 1998, 87 – 103; see also Husa 2000, 61-68). The three main themes of Foucault’s work are those of knowledge, power and the subject, and throughout his work, his interest is in examining historical ‘truths’ (Simola 1995).
Foucault’s understanding of power, a central component that runs through his work, is quite different to the traditional juridico-discursive model of power that assumes that power is repressive, possessed by individuals, and has a centralized force from which it flows from top to bottom.
Foucault suggests power is exercised not possessed, productive not repressive and present at every level of society. The way in which power is exercised, Foucault suggests, is through discourse.
Discursive formation, a concept introduced by Foucault, refers to how statements refer to each other and support each other in discourse. As Foucault (1981, p. 102) writes, “[d]iscourses are tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations; there can run different and even contradictory discourses within the same strategy”. Thus, paradoxically, whilst we may not believe in the superiority of the ‘West’ and the ‘Rest’, for example, to apply Said’s (1992) terms, through the act of referring to such distinctions, we position ourselves as subjects within such discourses.
Foucault takes as his point of interest the ‘planning of planning’, leading him to dispense with the Enlightenment rationality of modernity, including the belief in teleology, reason and the movement towards progress – all foundational assumptions of Western modernity. Relatedly, Foucault suggests that in modern societies, the state operates not through brute force or domination as in previous absolutist monarchies in Europe, but through acting on the wishes and happiness of its citizens, administering progress on the basis of shared conceptions of what is “good, healthy, normal, virtuous, efficient or profitable” to quote Rose and Miller (1992, 3). Thereby, as Rose and Miller (ibid., 3) go on to point out, “government is a domain of cognition, calculation, experimentation and evaluation”.
Like power, knowledge, according to Foucault, is not something that individuals possess; it does not emerge as a product of the thinking of agentic subjects, but is essentially shared. (Husa 2000;
Pulkkinen 1998; Scheurich & McKenzie 2005.) This decentering of the subject, as Scheurich and McKenzie (ibid., p. 848), write, has led some to reject Foucault on the premise that, whilst his 11
problematization of reason has been critical to the identification of covert uses of power, in the process he succeeds in destroying the concept of the agentic subject that has been considered pivotal to any attempt to initiate social change. However, Foucault’s focus is not so much on the subject as it is on processes through which subjects are made or fashioned; nor is he inclined towards a political project as he is towards problematicizing received meanings and assumed origins, which he demonstrates through his genealogical approach are often fabricated. In what could be characterized as a postmodern move, Foucault dispenses with the notion that discourse reflects deeper meanings. (Scheurich & McKenzie 2005; Simola 1995.) Discursive formations, as Foucault claims, form a web of interlinked meanings. Thus Foucault writes in Discipline and Punish (1977) as follows: “- - the sentence, even if it is formulated in terms of legal punishment, implies, more or less obscurely, judgements of normality, attributions of causality, assessments of possible changes, anticipations as to the offender’s future” (p. 20).
From the perspective of development work and the introduction of political imaginaries fabricated in Western countries to other parts of the world, genealogical analysis provides an interesting approach to examining and ‘tracing back’ the political rationale, or the ‘political truths’ of suggested reform, the blueprint of which is often that of Western institutional models (Zanotti 2008). Central to Foucault’s genealogical approach is the contextualization of statements and discursive formations in particular historical time and place, underlining the notion of subjects as produced through knowledge and power that is historically and culturally specific. As Rose (1999/1989) explains, this (historical) approach to inquiry involves:
the attempt to trace, in very concrete and material forms, the actual history of those forms of rationality that comprise our present, the ways of thinking and acting with which they have been caught up, the practices and assemblages which they have animated, and the consequences for our understanding of our present, and of ourselves in that present. (x.)
Foucault does not look to an origin or source of meaning, but to the conditions through which meaning and truths emerge (Scheurich & McKenzie 2005; Simola 1995.) He demonstrates how discursive formations are on the move continually, changing and altering, generating new meanings, some of which may alter earlier meanings. This leads Foucault to also examine forgotten discourses, which also add meaning, in their own way, to dominant discourses. (Pulkkinen 1998;
Scheurich & McKenzie 2005; Simola 1995.) For Foucault, truth claims are object of interrogation, 12
and his interest is in how truth is produced (Ojakangas in Simola 1995, p. 24). As Simola (ibid.) writes, by truth Foucault is not referring to
ways of thinking, ideas, paradigms or premises in the traditional announced, intentional and explicit way. Truths are often confessed unintentionally in clauses, implicitly between the lines, and they are not often explicitly explained. They are often taken for granted, beliefs that are taken as givens, well known but not things that subjects are well aware of, broadly approved but not well recognized building blocks of particular discourses. (24.)2
The ‘truths’ attached to the private sector and its response to HIV, as articulated by global guidelines issued by UNAIDS and other development partners, read as universal in their claims, yet are often very Western and Eurocentric, and they are rarely questioned or challenged on broad front, nor have they been traced back to the Western institutions in which most are produced. The potential of a Foucauldian analysis in the context of international institutions such as the UN, and development aid, that, as Walters says, is that through its contructionist perspective we can:
begin to see the state as an effect of practices rather than a given, self-evident entity.
For instance, rather than focusing on development as either a policy or process, one would see development as a space of practices or as a dispositif – a whole complex of practices and knowledges. One would then ask: how does the emergence of this thing called “development” give rise to particular knowledges of states? How does it give rise to particular accounts of international space? How does it encourage or produce particular ways for states to act, to position themselves, understand themselves and others, advance and contest particular forms of politics. (Tietäväinen, Pyykkönen, Kaisto 2008, p. 64).
As Simola (1995, pp. 24 – 25) argues, for Foucault, ‘truths’ have at least three functions: 1) they function to identify the ‘real’, the ‘good’ and ‘right’ from the ‘non-truth’, ‘not-good’ and the ‘not- right’; 2) they legitimate particular practices by naturalizing decisions and solutions as self-evident
2aatteita, ideoita, paradigmoja tai premissejä perinteisessä julkilausutussa, intentionaalisessa ja eksplisiittisessä mielessä. Totuudet tunnustetaan monesti huomaamatta sivulauseissa, implisiittisesti rivien välissä, eikä niitä useinkaan eksplisiittisesti perustella. Ne ovat usein itsestäänselvyyksiä, annettuna otettuja uskomuksia, hyvin tiedettyjä mutta huonosti tiedostettuja, laajasti tunnustettuja, mutta vähän tunnistettuja tiettyä diskurssia jäsentäviä rakennusosia.
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– failure to recognize dominant, hegemonic discourses is due to the normalizing power of discourse; and 3) they construct or define the identities of the objects to which they are attached.
2.2. Research questions, data and analysis
Language, as Rose (1999) writes, is important for the ways in which it fabricates truths, norms and techniques. In this study I examine how the concept (and definition) of the private sector response to HIV/AIDS as one component of the national response, is understood and implemented in development work, in UNAIDS policies and initiatives for private sector response to HIV, as well as in the official statements and policies of the national (Cambodian) counterparts. I also ask what problems have been encountered in this work to date. The purpose of this exercise is to trace culturally specific problems associated with the private sector response to date, which, in Cambodia is still relatively nascent and thus the literature on HIV/AIDS and business in Cambodia is quite thin. The questions that I ask are as follows:
1. What meaning does UNAIDS, in official documents and statements, attach to the private sector?
a. How are the official documents issued by UNAIDS formulated?
b. What rationale for change do they endorse?
c. How much space for manoeuvring according to local/national circumstances, do they suggest?
2. How do national (Cambodian) counterparts perceive these guidelines?
a. What differences and similarities exist between the priorities defined by official Cambodian documents and those issued by the UN?
b. What local priorities does the Royal Government of Cambodia on one hand, and core businesspeople on the other, construct and what preferences do they articulate in regard to perceived meaningful steps to engaging the private sector?
c. As regards key businesses involved in the private sector response to HIV/AIDS in Cambodia, what intentions do they express and how are these related to ‘the market’?
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My research originally began as a kind of situation and response analysis through which I began to collect commentary, including statements and official documents, issued by UNAIDS and ILO on the private sector response to HIV/AIDS, documenting various discrepancies that I encountered with national counterparts in Cambodia as to the purpose, scope and modalities of business sector engagement with HIV/AIDS. From this ‘mapping exercise’, during which I began the task of sourcing documents and their primary sources, I moved on to the examination of what ‘truth claims’
were being articulated about the private sector in general, and its response to HIV/AIDS in particular within these different sources. Later on, I was involved in the development of the Cambodian Strategic Framework and Operational Plan for the Private Sector response to HIV/AIDS, undergoing another detailed mapping, this time of the Cambodian business sector and the programs and plans of key business stakeholders on the private sector response to HIV/AIDS. In this research, however, I have chosen to restrict my analysis of the Cambodian context and of the ideas put forth by key business spokespeople on the private sector response to HIV/AIDS to various documents and, also, illustrating some of the points raised through data I have generated through participatory observation of a Consultation Day-workshop aimed towards agreeing on the key priorities of the above-mentioned Strategic Framework and Operational Plan, which took place in November 2008. My research data can thus be divided into two groups as follows:
1) Written policies, official guidelines and statements produced by UNAIDS and ILO related to the Private Sector Response;
2) Cambodian policies and official statements and documents related to the Private Sector Response.
I am interested in what the different ‘stakeholders’, in particular, UNAIDS and national counterparts, say and what they do not say. Similarly I am interested in whether the views and sets of ideas pertaining to the private sector response as proposed by UNAIDS are being resisted, challenged and reconstituted in the local context, and if so, how. Drawing from a Foucauldian sensibility, a movement between different levels of analysis, the macro- and the microcosmos, in my study I move from a focus on development aid to AIDS aid, and within the latter, I move from an analysis of an international (UNAIDS), to regional (Southeast Asia), then national (Cambodian) context, reflecting the different kinds of data introduced above. I examine the mainly literary sources, identifying repeated ways of talking about the private sector response to HIV, tracing, where available, their source materials and the ‘truths’ these, in turn, claim, to capture some of the ways in which discursive formations gain meaning in the local context, in Cambodia.
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In the analysis, to foreground interconnections between the different levels of analysis, I include secondary data in the form of maps and figures, as well as quotations from qualitative research and quantitative data in the form of statistics, to illustrate some of the points raised in the text and
provide a context for the ideas and arguments.
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3. Development, aid and business
The private sector response and the active participation of the private sector in fields that, to date, have been considered public rather than private fields, is very much a phenomenon that originated in the western world, reflecting changes in discourses on state reform in many liberal countries in the west that took place in the 1990s. However, private sector involvement in national development, whilst having gained momentum since the 1990s across the world, has been a feature of modern state-building endeavours throughout their history. Business and commerce, ranging from outright exploitation to more conscience-driven bilateral business partnerships, likewise, have a long history.
To understand private sector engagement in development aid, I examine the rationale of development aid, which is sometimes identified as propagating an ideology of ‘Developmentalism’, and trace the recent history (from the constitution of the UN in 1942/19453 onwards) of development aid and private sector engagement.
3.1. The rationale of development aid – developmentalism and development with business Whilst development aid, in its present form, originated in the mid 20th century, the predecessors of western engagement with developing countries can be said to date back to the early missionaries and colonial modernizing efforts that began in the 16th century (Ulvila, 2000, 7). The period of colonial expansion was marked by a transition from an externally dictated, godly order towards an order in which rationality was posed as a property of individuals rather than God, from a rationale of ‘what’s right’ to a rationale of ‘what’s natural’. The Enlightenment marked a transition towards modernism, its belief in progress (and development) and an understanding, to quote Wicker (1997, p. 37) of “the universalist-rationalist ideologies of Enlightenment and the victories of the capitalist system”.
Liberalism and Marxism share in common a notion of progress or Developmentalism and its universalizing tendencies. Thus, for example, in the context of the Soviet-centered international socialist revolution, and more specifically the Vietnamese occupation of Cambodia (1979 – 1989), Clayton (2000) claims, the main task of education as an institution of the state was that of promoting a socialist ideology, with the Decision No. 129 issued by the Ministry of Education of the time on political training for tertiary students as follows:
3 The United Nations was formed in 1942, but formally came into being in 1945.
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[Tertiary education] should demonstrate an ideology concerned with serving and protecting the nation leading to a socialist way and following the objectives of socialism. [..] It should reflect a scientific manner of thinking based on Marxist- Leninist philosophy, and it should link with behaviour appropriate to the party. (Ibid., 136.)
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall which crumbled the Marxist doxa of world revolution and emancipation, increased hopes have been placed on Developmentalism as a means to resolve the ongoing, acute problems of the world, such as poverty, transplanting, as Easterly (2007) claims, technical solutions developed in the Western world to all societies. The aid provided by western countries has, relatedly, been identified as drawing from modernist development thinking and its idealized notions of the societal state which, as Hjertholm and White (2004, 15) point out, is
“basically Western liberal democracy, though the conception of this has changed over time”.
Easterly (ibid.) identifies two characteristics which Developmentalism shares in common with Marxism: 1) it prioritizes goals formulated at higher, international levels over the autonomy and ability of societies to identify their own means of resolving problems; and 2) it aims at correct, scientific solutions, in the singular, that are devised by experts. The trichotomy of state, economy and civil society which is assumed in such solutions, implies a simplified model which, when placed under scrutiny, does not hold well as it fails to account for diversity and complexity (Rose &
Miller 1992, 2; Tietäväinen et al. 2008, 65). An interesting case-in-point is that of the increasing emphasis that has recently been placed on ensuring the ‘evidence base’ of programs and individual projects funded, in part or in totality, through development aid. This has entailed the development of indicators and the strengthening of capacity to monitor progress against these indicators. The rationale of such models is a mathematical model, as reflected by Keskinen’s (2003) description of a survey that took place in conjunction with a development project in Cambodia as follows:
[..] in different modelling projects where mathematical models are created and used as a tool to understand the reality and, consequently, to support management and decision making. While the model is founded on quantitative data, the analysis of socioeconomic issues is usually based on both quantitative and qualitative data. This makes the linking between the socio-economy and the model even more challenging.
(p. 15)
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One problem of such models, when efforts are made into translating these into the context of the business sector, is that Keynesian state interventions in economics withstanding, the markets are unpredictable, and whilst there are opportunities for increasing the well-being of individual citizens through the markets, they are not merely “engines of profit” (Barry 2002, 48). Further, as Hjertholm and White (2004) point out, the development model applied by donors is rarely questioned for its specificity/origin in a profoundly western conception of the liberal democracy.
Historically, aid has served a multitude of objectives for major international donors such as the EC, DFID, the Global Fund, JICA and USAID, to mention but a few, and it is fair to say that there are different kind of interests towards development aid among donors. For some donors, the allocation and quality of aid have been largely shaped by concern for the development needs of recipients. By contrast, the foreign aid of other major donors has often been used as a foreign- and commercial policy tool. Relatedly, development aid is sometimes charged as being about business and donor competition for political and commercial advantage, not genuine care for the benefits of aid to recipient countries.
Development aid is involved in business in at least three ways: 1) one of its purposes has often been seen as that of enhancing foreign trade; 2) it can be claimed to function as a business in itself today, for as Hjertholm and White (2004, p. 4) write, it “is an international operation through which tens of billions of dollars are channelled to developing countries each year and employing hundreds of thousands of people in a multitude of organisations”, and with such figures, the pressure of disbursement is inevitable; and 3) increasing attention has been applied to incorporating the business sector as an essential element of national development.
3.2 Economic globalization and development aid
Globalisation has been defined in many different ways. According to Kotilainen & Kaitila, 2004, 5) globalisation, usually;
is regarded as a phenomenon that has developed when modern nation states no longer provided a sufficient environment for the desired level of economic, social, political, cultural and other activity… being fundamentally an economic phenomenon, but having implications for almost all fields of human life.
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Giddens (1991; 1998) has written much of the pitfalls of globalization, of the ‘risk society’ and of experiences of personal meaningless. As Giddens (1998, 29-31) writes, globalization is usually understood as economic and as involving connections that span the world. Globalization, however, is not only, or even primarily about economic interdependence, but about the transformations of time and space in our lives. Distant events, whether economic or not, affect us more directly and immediately than ever before. Conversely, decisions we take as individuals are often global in their implications. (Ibid...)
A central tenet of different theories of globalization is the assumption of rapid social change, and as Väyrynen (1998, 64)4 writes: “There is no simple definition for globalization. The predominate interpretation of globalization in social science is anchored to theory on modernization. According to this theory, globalization is merely a part of a broader social movement, which moves from modern to a postmodern society”. Väyrynen propagates the view that globalization is marked by a move toward a postmodern, globalizing, more fluid society, where transnational agents are able to exercise more autonomy in relation to states, creating more transnational, liquid spaces. The markets, he writes, are central to globalization, as the markets transmit goods, information and values that are valued in different ways by supply and demand mechanisms. According to this view on globalization, it is taken to mean the dual movement of compression and of intensification, to an increasingly rapid pace at which changes have taken pace in recent years and the far-reaching nature of recent changes. (Ibid., 67 – 68.)
Over the past decades, economic globalisation has been given – and has taken – many of the roles that development aid in general, and the private sector more precisely, has traditionally played, and in this process, both the IMF and World Bank have both played an important part in the increasing role of economic globalisation. Economic globalisation takes many forms in developing countries.
Kotilainen & Kaitila (2002), for example, have identified the following forms: 1) foreign trade of goods and services; 2) foreign direct investments; 3) other forms of co-operation between firms; 4) international migration; 5) foreign borrowing and lending; and 7) integration of macroeconomic policies.,
For the perspective of development partners, as they are called today, including the UN and others such as the EC, USAID, DFID, idealisms of globalization are often inbuilt into the starting points
4 Globalisaatiolle ei ole mitään yksiselitteistä määritelmää. Yhteiskuntatieteissä vallitseva tulkinta globalisaatiosta on ankkuroitu modernisaatioteoriaan Sen mukaan globalisaatio on vain osa laajempaa yhteiskunnalista liikettä, joka lopulta vie modernista jälkimoderniin yhteiskuntaan.
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and assumptions of their approach to development and to development aid, although globalization rarely explicitly appears in official discourse on aid – in fact, it is probably more common to question the characteristics and manifestations of globalization, which is approached as cultural homogenization. For developing countries, the focus is often on the promises of economic globalization, for as Kotilainen and Kaitila (2004,2) note:
Most development countries want to globalise. They want to increase their foreign trade, be members of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and receive more foreign direct investment. These developments are related to the processes of democratisation, liberisation and privatisation of national economics that started after the late 1980s and which continued at a rapid pace during 1990s. The collapse of Soviet Union and socialism in many parts of the world accelerated this process.
Economic globalisation is often presented as dividing countries into two parties: the appropriated and the appropriators. Yet national policy makers in developing countries have not been mere submissive undertakers of reform, but have had their own agenda, as witnessed by the current scandals of domestic politics in Thailand, for example. Globalisation has not occurred without some kind of acceptance of national policy makers.
Foreign direct investment (FDI) has become an important form of global business practice today. It has grown four times faster than foreign trade (Kotilainen and Kaitila ,2004). The current upswing in foreign direct investment is a response to the liberalisation of capital restrictions. However, it has also its limitations which place developing countries with fragile economies at particular risks. For instance the global financial crisis has heavily affected many developing countries, especially countries such as Bangladesh and Cambodia that are heavily dependent on foreign investments and, in many cases, are narrowly focused on one sector, such as the garment industry in Cambodia.
Therefore even if FDI is an effective way to mobilise domestic resources more efficiently and more quickly than what would be possible through domestic resources where domestic savings are small, it has clear limitations as a mechanism through which to engage the private sector in more long- term investment in developing countries, such as those made through calls for Corporate Social Responsibility, as it is volatile to market fluctuation.
Through globalisation, the number of multinational companies has grown rapidly in developing countries (Goldin & Reinert 2007, 33), and as witnessed by China and India, for example, an
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increasing number of multinational companies today originate from developing countries.
Multinational companies, by definition, operate within a global framework and have an international ownership structure, which can be assumed to limit the amount of purely national decision making, but also on the other hand, international ownership can be assumed to introduce new, global policies and guidelines to national contexts. Multinational companies often carry a lot of weight in the countries where they operate, particularly in smaller developing countries. Their sales far surpass the domestic GDP in many developing countries, and thus they are often able to possess a lot of influence in developing countries in which they choose to locate their production.
(Goldin & Reinert 2007.) As Giddens (1998, 31) observes: “Globalization ‘pulls away’ from the nation-state in the sense that some powers nations used to possess have been weakened. However, globalization also ‘pushes down’ – it creates new demands and also new possibilities for regenerating local identities.”
As part of the transnational development, regional and global perspectives have achieved a more visible role, and have been conveyed through bodies such as the Global Business Forum and the Asia-Pacific Business Association to HIV/AIDS, for example, which have played an active role in many of the areas that have traditionally belonged to the public sector and third- sector stakeholders, issuing various global and regional guidelines on matters of public concern, such as HIV/AIDS (Ashbourne 2004; Inderjit 2008; Turnbull, Parry, Gravestock, Julford, Clayton, Bery, Gorra, Lee, Mistry, & Tanguy 2006).
The macroeconomic policies of individual countries have become more integrated as a result of economic globalisation (Golding & Reinert 2007; Kotilainen & Kaitila 2004). This integration itself has been a form of globalisation and has strengthened the globalisation process. As Kotilainen &
Kaitila, 2004, 14 write: “Sometimes macroeconomic integration itself reinforces the integration and the globalisation process.” The role of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) has also gained in strength versus the role of public institutions as a part of the globalisation process (Hjertholm &
White 2004). This, as Vartola, (2000, 3) argues, follows a practice originating in Western (donor) countries which has downsized national public administration since the end of the 1980s. Whilst there is some dispute in views as to whether the role of the nation state is, in fact, declining or merely transforming, as Giddens (1998) claims, a general move can be observed from government to governance, demonstrating the effects of globalization on the role of the nation state:
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[Governance] becomes a more relevant concept to refer to some forms of administrative or regulatory capacities. Agencies which either are not part of any government – such us non- governmental organizations (NGO’s) – or are transnational in character contribute to governance. (33.)
Walter (2004, 2005), similarly, places emphasis on governmentality as a central tenet of the globalizing world (see Tietäväinen, Pyykkönen & Kaisto (2008, 63). He draws attention to different forms and rationalities of international governance, refusing to take international institutions and forms of power as given, but carefully follow the development the development of different genealogical processes. Governmentality, he underlines, is not exercised in the same ways across different contexts, but occurs differently in different contexts. (Ibids.)
Development aid takes part in globalization in its own ways, and is interconnected to economic and cultural globalization (cf. Law 2000; Owen et al. 2005). Multicultural communities, of which the UN is a good example, thus take part in a playing field that is, in part, determined through global business relations on the one hand, and through the will to carry forward particular values and goals that take on seemingly universal appearance on the other.
3.3. Tracing the history of development aid and its engagement with the business sector
As follows, I introduce briefly various stages of development aid, discussing aid programme priorities and flows of funding at a global level to provide a context for the analysis of calls for private sector engagement in the HIV/AIDS response in UNAIDS and in the Southeast Asian region. I examine how business interests and the private sector have been articulated in the identification of the goals of development aid.
3.3.1 Early stages: relief and trade
The early stages of modern development aid, Hjertholm and White (2004) claim, can be traced back to the 19th century, a stage, they write, that was marked by tensions between relief and assistance in aid programmes, which were tied to demands for free trade. For example, the purpose of development assistance, as exemplified by the 1896 use of US food surplus as a means to develop 23
new markets, and the 1929 UK Colonial Development and Welfare Act that traded loans and grants for infrastructure development in exchange for products for UK manufacturing, for example, was that of serving the vested national interests of donor countries. It was not until the early 20th century that the colonial powers began to think about development beyond mere extraction and exploitation of colonized countries, and even then, the focus of this development assistance was focused on infrastructure development rather than, for example, education – thus aid was still connected to the national interests of the colonial powers. (Ayres 2000; Goldin & Reinert 2006; Hjertholm & White 2004; Owen et al. 2005, 93 – 105.) Whilst Ayres (ibid.), for example, writes of the French colonial presence in Cambodia as follows:
The overriding theme of the French presence in Cambodia is neglect. The colonial period represents a litany of half-hearted and rarely completed policies and plans that were immediately disbanded upon the realization of their costs, or the effort required to implement them, would outweigh those originally envisaged (30).
Colonial rule and related development projects did not seek to simply displace local cultural traditions, but was aimed towards introducing changes that would not disturb the divide between the colonizers and the colonized, the pure and the hybrid, privileging, as Papastergiadis (1997, 266) writes, “components that were previously subordinant or recessive in these cultures.” Thus development aid of this period is marked by efforts to maintain global harmony, which took place often at the expense of the right to autonomy of colonized/developing countries.
3.3.2. Aftermath of World War II and the Cold War era
International relief efforts expanded rapidly in the early 20th century, with World War I &II marking a shift towards more organized, large scale relief efforts. Thus in 1918, for example, US warships shipped 6.23 million tonnes of food aid to Europe (Hjertholm & White 2004, 5). World War II provided the basis for the further acceleration of international aid, as various organizations, such as Oxfam and CARE5, which originally catered for refugees of war and American relief efforts in Europe respectively; as well as the Marshall Plan through which the US provided bilateral assistance to Europe. The creation of multilateral organizations to “facilitate increased international assistance and cooperation” (Goldin & Reinert 2007, 115) and the work of the UN also
5 Centre for American Relief in Europe – later, Everywhere
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date back to this period and to the founding of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA) in 1943, and of the World Bank, (otherwise known as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development), which provided its first loan to a developing country, Colombia, in 1950. (Goldin & Reinert 2007; Hjertholm & White 2004.)
During the Cold War period which began after World War II, much of bilateral development took place in the form of ‘tied assistance’, that is, aid was “restricted to importing from the donor country” (Goldin & Reinert 2007, 115), and a main focus of development aid were those of state building, economic development and alleviating poverty, and, towards the end of the 1960s, social development (Goldin & Renert 2007; Hjertholm & White 2004). The basis of Western state- building efforts was that of modernization theory, which as Simensen (2007, 173) notes, was premised on the model of modern Western societies. A connected theory to modernization theory was the dependency theory put forth in the 1950s by the UN Economic Commission for Latin America, according to which the underdevelopment of the southern hemisphere was due to the modern world economy being structured in such a way that resources flowed towards the center, the northern hemisphere, through unequal trade and capital gains. Both theories implied a structure, which in practice was taken to mean that by making structural adjustments, it would be possible to change the whole system. (Ibid., 173.)
As the world was divided along a socialist and anti-socialist divide, much of development aid, likewise, actively propagated either a socialist or anti-socialist ideological imperative, and like the anti-socialists, the socialists also propagated their own model of structural change. This was also a period when many colonized countries fought for and gained independence, and the communist movement and the turn to international socialist revolution in many colonized countries grew out of opposition to colonial rule. The relationship, as identified by a respondent in Kiernan’s study (quoted in Clayton 2000, 63), was not as strictly hierarchial as in the centre-periphery model applied by Western countries, but one of apprenticeship: “ I was happy [the Viet Minh] had come to help. [They] talked of international consciousness [and specifically] about Khmer-Vietnamese consciousness, and I considered it reasonable.”
As compared to the development aid of western countries, that provided by the Soviet and China to communist countries was more focused on secular issues and demonstrated more sensitivity towards colonized countries seeking independence from colonial rule, and was more reflective of the situation of colonized people, translating into regional and national local/national apparatuses 25
and systems of governance that were more culturally relevant and that reflected the aims of independence from colonial rule. Thus Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam, for example, having first petitioned for autonomy from the allied forces, then turned to Soviet Union, where the response was more in line with the political sentiment for autonomy and independence:
An obscure Paris photo shop worker, Ho made his debut in world politics in 1919 by petitioning Allied powers at the Versailles peace conference to grant Vietnam autonomy. They ignored him. This left him open to the 1920 appeal of Lenin, the leader of the newly created Soviet Union, for an alliance between the European
“communist proletariat” and the Asian “revolutionary peasant movement directed against the established Western powers. (Owen et al., 2005, 340.)
Following World War II, colonial powers such as Britain and France, continued support to colonized countries. However, as described by Hjertholm and White (2004, 11), “the 1950s may be described as a decade of US hegemony, as it alone accounted for 2/3 of total aid in that decade”, and aids programmes, as they write, were used as a strategic means to “stop “countries going communist””. As the 50s wore on and in the 1960s, calls were made for other US-aligned bilaterals to participate in the burden of costs of development aid projects, marking the beginning of increased bilateral assistance to development aid. Various bilateral programs were started, with the aim of supporting the state through technical assistance which came from donor countries, and budget support, whilst multilaterals focused mainly on individual (as opposed to sector-wide) development projects. A main focus of development aid was poverty alleviation, with the 1975 US International Development and Food Assistance Act, for example, stipulating that 75% of aid should be channelled to countries where per capita income was less than 300 USD (Hjertholm & White 2004, 12; see also Goldin & Reinert 2007; Owen et al. 2005.)
In the 60’s, the non-governmental organisations of the time performed also some advisory functions related to business entrepreneurs in developing countries, and bilateral donors provided some funding for development finance institutions (DFIs) in developing countries. These were usually public agencies that provided loans – often at subsidized rates – to private enterprises. This initiative is broadly considered to have been failure, as DFI loans commonly failed to reach those that were their intended beneficiaries, and thus had little impact on the development of financial markets. Instead, the loans wound up in the hands of large enterprises and powerful individuals, and
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few DFI’s achieved financial sustainability as they failed to mobilize local savings and their borrowers often did not repay the loans. (Hjertholm & White 2004; Leaong, (Ed.) 2005.)
The ambition of aid provided by communist super powers, the Soviet Union and China, likewise had an ideological agenda, that of transforming society in its entirety, not through replacing, but through re-educating the entire population. This was a considerably operation, which is often overlooked in analyses of development aid that have the tendency to focus on the aid of western, liberal democracies. The results, approached from a numerical level, were, in part, impressive, with illiteracy rates, for example, dropping significantly (Clayton 2000; Owen et al. 2005).
In summary, a common feature of economic development strategies of both anti-communist and communist regimes that was adopted in the majority of developing countries following the Second World War, in addition to the use of aid “as a means to support friendly states” (Goldin & Reinert 2007, 119) was that these focused on the central role of the state in planning and administering reform. As the Cold War continued, development aid maintained a sharp division, with the
‘Western bloc’ maintaining an anti-communist agenda, and the ‘Eastern bloc’ aligning itself with the global expansionist ideology of the socialist regime. (Acharya 2000; Goldin & Reinert 2007;
Hjertholm & White 2004.)
3.3.3. Beginnings of ‘rolling back the state’
In the 1980s, development aid began to increasingly pull out of the productive sectors, such as agriculture and industry, reflective of, as Hjertholm and White (2004, 25 – 26 ) write, “an ideological bias against direct support to the productive sector”. With time, increasing attention was given by the western bloc to the markets, which were seen as providing greater efficiency, productivity and economic dynamism through competition and private initiative. Managing economic development was increasingly viewed as pivotal to overall development, and its role in allocating resources and in producing goods and services for public and private consumption became broadly recognized as an important indicator of development. Thus towards the end of the 1970s, and with increasing volume in the 1980s, development aid began to focus to a lesser extent on state activities and a focus on poverty and meeting basic needs (such as for nutrition) in developing countries to a focus on macroeconomic reform and market-based adjustments. Calls made for reducing poverty, as compared to the rhetoric of earlier emphasis on the connection
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between poverty alleviation and solidarity, now placed emphasis, however, on poverty reduction as a means to ensure security. On these lines, Brainard et al. (2007, 1) write:
In a world where boundaries and borders have blurred, and where seemingly distant threats can metasize into immediate problems, the fight against global poverty has become a fight of necessity – not simply because personal morality demands it, but because global security does as well.
Economic growth became envisioned not merely as a means to alleviate poverty, but, importantly, as promoting greater equality in richer and poorer countries alike through the expansion of global markets and commerce. The mid-1980s also witnessed the emergence of non-governmental organizations and increasing civil society engagement in development (cp. p. 24). (Acharya 2000;
Goldin & Reinert 2007; Hjertholm & White 2004, Vartola et al., 2000.)
The early 1980s witnessed an expanding interest in the ‘western world’ in emerging markets, as well as the growing importance of banks, including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and Asian Development Bank, for example, but also of commercial banks. The first structural adjustment loans were provided by the World Bank in 1980. These loans, as Simensen (2007, 174) writes, also came with strings attached, with “demands for budget reduction to match income, a more open economy and privatization of defunct state enterprises”. (Golding & Reinert 2007;
Hjertholm & White 2004.)
The challenge of economic transitions in former socialist countries also stimulated an expansion in aid funding for technical assistance for business. Such funding went to establish business centers to support information sharing, for example, and to provide advice to enterprises in transition and developing countries. The number of aid-supported NGO’s involved in providing assistance to businesses also increased. (Golding & Reinert 2007; Hjertholm & White 2004.)
3.3.4. Neo‐liberal emphases and the 1990s
In the 1990s, questions as to how to increase the effectivity of development aid were reposed, and new solutions were suggested to solve social and economic problems. Some donors, such as the EC, a new player on the ground, began to provide support mainly through direct budgetary support, non- 28
earmarked funds paid directly into the state budget, as a means to address the ills of what was seen as donor dependency. Incentive schemes were introduced to solve what was seen as a lack of proper motivation among key government staff. Whilst reporting on programming was not a new element of development projects and programs, increasing emphasis was placed on monitoring progress against a common set of indicators. Following 9/11, US foreign aid began to increasingly promote its ‘freedom agenda’ to address development which was conjoined with democratization (Dallmayr 2005).
Neo-liberalism, as Bose and Jalal (1997) write, was endorsed in the 1990s by the IMF and the World Bank, inspiring various structural adjustment programs in developing countries to resolve the perceived ills of their economic situations. The rationale of neo-liberal state organization followed a pattern, described by Rose and Miller (1992, 31) as follows:
Against the assumption that the ills of social and economic life are to be addressed by the activities of government, it warns against the arrogance of government overreach and overload. It counter-poses the inefficiencies of planned economies to the strength of the market in picking winners.
In developing countries, the incorporation of a neo-liberal rationale in planning and implementing societal change, in efforts to reform governance, signified a shift towards the inclusion of the private sector as a partner in national development plans and an emphasis on the markets as a principle means of achieving development; from a state-led approach in reform to a pro-market approach. This stance is exemplified by the work of Nobel prize winner Amartya Sen (1999) whose central argument is that development should be approached as a means to increase individual freedom (ensuring individuals political-, economic- and social rights as well as transparency guarantees and protective security) and that a central means to do so, is that of ableviating economic unfreedom and ensuring individual agency.
Argyriades (2006, 156) claims that this period was marked by ‘entrepreneurial management’ and
‘imperial executive’, a shift government to governance, “offering visions of largely decentralized, cooperative ventures in which the public service and private enterprise, together with civil society, partake in power-sharing” (157). The term ‘governance’, Argyriades (ibid.) argues, was first introduced by World Bank in 1989. It is thus worth quoting at length one of the initial definitions
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offered by World Bank, in its book first published in 1992, Governance, The World Bank’s Experience, quoted in Argyriades (ibid., 158):
Good governance is epitomized by predictable and enlightened policy making (that is, transparent processes); a bureaucracy imbued with professional ethos; an executive arm of government accountable for its actions; and a strong civil society participating in public affairs and all behaving under the rule of law.
In place of the economic conditionality introduced by the World Bank at the end of the 1980s, focus now shifted to political conditionality, to a focus on democratization and human rights, and related sanctions (Simensen 2007), which was perhaps most aggressively pursued through the Bush administration’s ‘transformational diplomacy’ approach with its ‘freedom agenda’ (see Brainard, Chollet & LaFleur 2007, 23 – 28). Political conditionality was not without effect: for example Simensen (ibid., 175) writes, “[i]n general it seems clear that the threat of aid sanctions played a considerable role in the transition to multi-party democracy world wide during this period.” The multi-party democracies that were established during this point in time were, however, often weak.
Governance needed to monitored to prove the efficacy of donor support, and relatedly, the 1990s witnessed the emergence of UNDP’s Human Development Reports, which identified development in political and social freedoms against measurable indicators of ‘human development’, defined by UNDP (2007, 14) as the “satisfaction of people’s basic needs, placing emphasis on widespread human development rather than on the simple pursuit of economic growth”. In line with Sen’s approach, human development, according to UNDP (ibid.),
embraces issues of democratic decentralization, human rights and freedom from fear. The essence of human development is to strengthen people’s capacities and opportunities to build an enabling environment to improve everyone’s human development potential, in all of its fields (14).
Reflecting this turn towards an emphasis on human development, in the early 1990s development aid switched to a focus on infrastructure and services (including education, health, water, sanitation), and towards the end of the 1990s, development aid increasingly focused on sector support, the rationale being that such multiyear support was more predictable, and would thus enable governments to implement more sustainable change. As Simensen (2007, 177) argues, both the political left and the
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