Sovereignty matters: Africa, donors, and the aid relationship

African Affairs

Volumn 112, Issue 447, 2013, Pages 262-282

  Brown, William ^a  

^a OPEN UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AID POLICY; AUTONOMY; DEVELOPMENT AID; INSTITUTIONAL FRAMEWORK; INTERNATIONAL AID; INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS; POLITICAL INTEGRATION; SOVEREIGNTY;

AFRICA;

EID: 84876335482     PISSN: 00019909     EISSN: 14682621     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adt001     Document Type: Article

References (91)

1. The focus of this article is on critiques of Western aid donors and it does not address analyses of relations between African states and emerging non-Western donors.
2. See for example, David N. Plank, 'Aid, debt and the end of sovereignty: Mozambique and its donors', Journal of Modern African Studies 31, 3 (1993), pp. 407-30.
3. David Williams, The World Bank and Social Transformation in International Politics (Routledge, London, 2008).
4. Graham Harrison, The World Bank and Africa: The construction of governance states (Routledge, London, 2004).
5. Lindsay Whitfield and Alastair Fraser, 'Introduction' in Lindsay Whitfield (ed.), The Politics of Aid: African strategies for dealing with donors (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009), pp. 1-26.
6. Plank, 'Aid, debt and the end of sovereignty', pp. 408-9 and 429-30.
7. Williams, The World Bank and Social Transformation, p. 31.
8. David Williams and Tom Young, 'The international politics of social transformation: trusteeship and intervention in historical perspective' in Mark Duffield and Vernon Hewitt (eds), Empire, Development and Colonialism: The past in the present (James Currey, Woodbridge, 2009), pp. 109-10, emphasis added.
9. Williams, The World Bank and Social Transformation, p. 118.
10. Also see Graham Harrison's claim that sovereignty is 'empirically too provisional and theoretically too contested' to be of use in analysing Africa. Harrison, The World Bank and Africa, pp. 24-5.
11. Vernon Hewitt, 'Empire, international development and the concept of good government' in Duffield and Hewitt (eds), Empire Development and Colonialism, pp. 30-44.
12. Williams and Young, 'The international politics of social transformation'.
13. David Williams and Tom Young, 'Governance, the World Bank and liberal theory', Political Studies 42, 1 (1994), pp. 84-100,
14. Williams, The World Bank and Social Transformation.
15. Harrison, The World Bank and Africa.
16. William Brown, 'The Commission for Africa: results and prospects for the West's Africa policy', Journal of Modern African Studies 44, 3 (2006), pp. 349-74.
17. Hewitt, 'Empire, international development'.
18. Williams and Young, 'The international politics of social transformation'.
19. Julian Saurin, 'International Relations as the imperial illusion: or, the need to decolonize IR' in Branwen Gruffyd Jones (ed.), Decolonizing International Relations (Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, MD, 2006), p. 31.
20. April R. Biccum, 'Theorising continuities between empire and IR' in Duffield and Hewitt (eds), Empire, Development and Colonialism, p. 157.
21. Antony Anghie, 'Decolonizing the concept of "good governance"' in Gruffydd Jones (ed.), Decolonizing International Relations, p. 124.
22. Branwen Gruffyd Jones, 'Introduction: International Relations, eurocentrism, and imperialism' in Gruffyd Jones (ed.), Decolonizing International Relations, p. 5.
23. Ole Waever and Arlene B. Tickner, 'Introduction: Geocultural epistemologies' in Arlene B. Tickner and Ole Waever (eds), International Relations Scholarship around the World (Routledge, London, 2009), p. 3.
24. Arlene B. Tickner, 'Seeing IR differently: notes from the third world', Millennium Journal of International Studies 32, 2 (2003), pp. 295-324.
25. Harrison, The World Bank and Africa, p. 25, emphasis added.
26. Williams, The World Bank and Social Transformation, p. 36.
27. Whitfield and Fraser, 'Introduction', p. 7.
28. Stephen Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized hypocrisy (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1999).
29. Janice Thomson, 'State sovereignty in International Relations: bridging the gap between theory and empirical research', International Studies Quarterly 39, 2 (1995), pp. 213-33.
30. Robert H. Jackson, Sovereignty: Evolution of an idea (Polity, Cambridge, 2007), p. 16.
31. For example, see the above definitions from Harrison, Williams, and Whitfield and Fraser.
32. Krasner, Sovereignty.
33. As Justin Rosenberg has noted, 'the conditions of reproduction which define the concrete existence of any given society. . .always include, by virtue of the bare fact of inter-societal coexistence, those external conditions which are the object of diplomatic management'.
34. Justin Rosenberg, 'Why is there no international historical sociology?', European Journal of International Relations 12, 3 (2006), pp. 307-420.
35. Barry Buzan and Richard Little, International Systems in World History: Remaking the study of international relations (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000).
36. The exceptional restrictions on the choices facing the Greek government in 2012 and the 'penetrated hegemony' of the USA being non-African examples.
37. Daniel Deudey and G. John Ikenberry, 'The nature and sources of liberal international order', Review of International Studies 25, 2 (1999) pp. 179-96.
38. David Williams, 'State agency and state formation in Africa' in William Brown and Sophie Harman (eds), African Agency in International Politics (Routledge, London, forthcoming 2013).
39. See the discussion of the English School in Buzan and Little, International Systems in World History, pp. 104-7, which suggests that 'Sovereignty only works if it is recognized by other units', p. 107.
40. Representation defined here in its general political, not necessarily democratic, sense.
41. See Andrew Rehfeld, 'Towards a general theory of political representation', The Journal of Politics 68, 1 (2006), pp. 1-21.
42. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Development Assistance Committee, 'Is it ODA?' (Factsheet, OECD, Paris, November 2008) p. 1, (1 December 2012).
43. Article 35 and Article 4 of the EU-ACP Cotonou Agreement, respectively.
44. ACP-EU, 'The Cotonou Agreement, 2005', 2005, (9 May 2011).
45. Hewitt, 'Empire, international development', p. 40.
46. World Bank (International Development Association) 'Articles of Agreement' Article V Operations, Section 1(e), (2 February 2012).
47. Here aid interventions are distinct from military peacekeeping/peacemaking interventions, where territorial control is an issue, but even in these cases, the goal of intervention is nearly always the reconstruction of state authority and a fast exit.
48. Government of Rwanda, 'Aid Policy' (Government of Rwanda, Kigali, 2006) p. 10.
49. Xavier Furtado and W. James Smith, 'Ethiopia: retaining sovereignty in aid relations' in Whitfield (ed.), The Politics of Aid, pp. 131-55, p. 145.
50. For Rwanda, see Sven Grimm et al. (eds), Coordinating China and DAC Development Partners: Challenges to the aid architecture in Rwanda (German Development Institute, Bonn, 2010).
51. For Ethiopia, see Furtado and Smith, 'Ethiopia'.
52. Reuters, 'Sudan says to never reverse decision to expel NGOs', 20 March 2009, (2 February 2012).
53. Government of Rwanda, 'Aid Policy', p. 9.
54. Williams and Young, 'The international politics of social transformation', p. 108.
55. Of these studies, notwithstanding other criticisms made, Whitfield's collection is most impressive.
56. Lindsay Whitfield and Alastair Fraser, 'Negotiating aid', in Whitfield (ed.), The Politics of Aid, pp. 27-44, p. 28.
57. Rita Abrahamsen, 'The power of partnerships in global governance', Third World Quarterly 25, 8 (2004), pp. 1453-67.
58. Department for International Development (DfID), 'Partnerships for poverty reduction: rethinking conditionality. A UK policy paper' (DfID, London, March 2005), (28 January 2010).
59. Harrison, The World Bank and Africa.
60. Gerry K. Helleiner, Tony Killick, Nguyuru Lipumba, Benno J. Nudulu, and Knud Erik Svendson, 'Development cooperation issues between Tanzania and its donors' (Report of the Group of Independent Advisers, 1995), (2 February 2012).
61. Graham Harrison and Sarah Mulley, with Duncan Holtom, 'Tanzania: a genuine case of recipient leadership in the aid system?' in Whitfield (ed.), The Politics of Aid, pp. 271-98.
62. Cited in Gerry K. Helleiner, 'The legacies of Julius Nyerere: an economist's reflections' in Godfrey Mwakikagile (ed.), Tanzania under Mwalimu Nyerere: Reflections on an African statesman (New Africa Press, Dar es Salaam, 2006), p. 200.
63. Helleiner et al., 'Development cooperation issues'.
64. Wangwe, 'The politics of autonomy and sovereignty'.
65. Harrison et al., 'Tanzania'.
66. Harrison et al., 'Tanzania'.
67. Lindsay Whitfield and Alastair Fraser, 'Understanding contemporary aid relationships' in Whitfield (ed.), The Politics of Aid, pp. 74-107.
68. Harrison et al., 'Tanzania'.
69. Wangwe, 'The politics of autonomy and sovereignty', p. 386.
70. For an account of this by a participant, and of the different options being debated, see Wangwe, 'The politics of autonomy and sovereignty'.
71. Harrison et al., 'Tanzania', p. 289.
72. Rachel Hayman, 'Rwanda: milking the cow: creating policy space in spite of aid dependence' in Whitfield (ed.), The Politics of Aid, pp. 156-84.
73. Grimm et al., Coordinating China and DAC Development Partners.
74. Hayman, 'Rwanda: milking the cow'.
75. Grimm et al., Coordinating China and DAC Development Partners.
76. Government of Rwanda, 'Aid Policy'.
77. Grimm et al., Coordinating China and DAC Development Partners.
78. Hayman, 'Rwanda: milking the cow', p. 173.
79. Paul Kagame, quoted in Grimm et al. Coordinating China and DAC Development Partners, p. 35.
80. Simon Bromley, 'On liberal sovereignty' (Unpublished paper), p. 6.
81. Richard Sandbrook, 'Africa's great transformation', Journal of Development Studies 41, 6 (2005), pp. 1118-25.
82. Harrison's critique of Williams's 'over dualized image' has some force in this respect.
83. Harrison, The World Bank and Africa, p. 47. We should distinguish between donors' stated policies, actual donor practice and the character of donor states themselves.
84. Eboe Hutchful, 'The fall and rise of the state in Ghana', in Abdi I. Samatar and Ahmed. I. Samatar (eds), The African State: Reconsiderations (Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH, 2002), pp. 101-30.
85. Mahmood Mamdani, 'Contradictory class perspectives on the question of democracy: the case of Uganda', in Peter Anyang' Nyong'o (ed.), Popular Struggles for Democracy in Africa (Zed Books, London, 1987), p. 83.
86. Pablo L. E. Idahosa and Bob Shenton, 'The Africanist's "new" clothes', Historical Materialism 12, 4 (2004), pp. 67-113.
87. For a recent study of patrimonialism in Rwanda, see David Booth and Frederick Golloba-Mutebi, 'Developmental patrimonialism? the case of Rwanda', African Affairs 111, 444 (2012), pp. 379-403.
88. See Ian Taylor, The International Relations of Sub-Saharan Africa (Continuum, London, 2009).
89. Naeem Inayatullah, 'Beyond the sovereignty dilemma: quasi states as social construct' in Thomas J. Biersteker and Cynthia Weber (eds), State Sovereignty as Social Construct (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996), pp. 50-80.
90. Naeem Inayatullah and David L. Blaney, 'Realizing sovereignty', Review of International Affairs 21, 1 (1995), pp. 3-20.
91. Robert H. Jackson, 'Introduction: sovereignty at the millennium', Political Studies 47, 3 (1999), pp. 423-30.