International Cooperation and Development: Concepts and Historical Implications

Introduction to Development Concepts

What is Development?

The concept of development itself:

• has many different and contested meanings
• it has its own field of study
• involves large economic and political transformations societies
• it involves actions that are progressive
• it is exposed to a variety of social and political interpretations and arguments
• its specific historical, social, philosophical, and political context
• based on the way in which one-person (or set of persons) pictures the ideal conditions of social existence
• enables the dominant group itself to define the characteristics of 'development', and then to identify a series of 'lacks
• human progress of a betterment or improvement

Understanding Underdevelopment

Underdevelopment

• origins in the German economists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, who discussed Adam Smith's ideas
• underdeveloped state: antithesis of a "developed", modern, or industrialized state
• made of two components:
1. a comparative aspect
2. relationship of exploitation: namely, the exploitation of one country by another

Capitalism, Industrialization, and Globalization

The origin of those processes goes back to Britain and the end of the 18th Century. Its effects spread across Western Europe, the United States and Japan in the early 19th Century.

What is Capitalism?

1. a system social relations in which the owners of capital hire labour in return for wages
2. production is for sale
3. we live in an era of free-market capitalism
4. capitalism has become one of the main goals of development
5. "engine of development"

-> Trickle down theory: a neoliberal or liberal economic theory

• context: Reagan Administration
• private property generates wealth, companies should be preserved as this wealth-generating entity

What Involves Industrialization?

1. involves the mechanization of social productive activity
2. changes how labour is organized, mainly through wages in a large scale factory production

-> The six-stage theory: all economies go through six stages of growth, from basics to accumulation. We talk about productivity, and the incorporation of technological processes. It is important to bear in mind what industrialisation's reading of development is.

What is Globalization?

1. increasingly interconnected: a result of massively increased trade and cultural exchange
2. increased the production of goods and services
3. key ideas:
1. Is a spread of products, technology, information, and jobs across nations.
2. Corporations in developed nations can gain a competitive edge through globalization.
3. Developing countries also benefit through globalization as they tend to be more cost effective and therefore attract jobs.
4. The benefits of globalization have been questioned as the positive effects are not necessarily distributed equally.
5. One clear result of globalization is that an economic downturn in one country can create a domino effect through its trade partners.
6. Those processes together imply large-scale changes in the economic patterns and social relationships in societies.

Structural Changes and Capitalism Today

2Structural changes

-> many different patterns of transformation and different levels of development.

a) Non-capitalist roads like the former Soviet Union. b) Mixed approaches like China.

Capitalism Today

1. one of the main goals of many development actors because it is seen as the "engine of development"
2. a sustained increase in productivity and competition,
3. creates innovation and generates large increases in economic growth and wealth
4. improving the standard of living of societies.

Economic Growth vs. Development

1. Economic Growth: measurement of the change in the country's national output

a) GDP looks at the production level of an economy or the total annual value of what is produced in the nation; it measures an economy's size and growth rate. b) GNI is the total dollar value of everything produced by a country and the income its residents receive-whether it is earned at home or abroad (a clear example is remittance, remesas)

2. Development is a measure of welfare in terms of people becoming more educated, healthier living longer, lower infant mortality, protecting the planet .... Development is measured with economic but also with education, health, social and environmental indicators: Human Development Index (HDI): three basic aspects of human development:
1. health
2. knowledge
3. standard of living

-> growth is not a choice but a requirement to promote development. -> just as economic growth is necessary for human development, human development is critical to economic growth

IMP: It is key to have in mind that all massive production necessarily involves destruction, inequality, or social and political conflicts.

Development: A Global and Multidimensional Phenomenon

3Development: a global and multidimensional phenomenon

1. development" is a global and multidimensional phenomenon
2. involves fair trade policies, social policies, environmental policies ... for the present and especially for the future
3. is not a technical project
4. it is a process where people create and recreate themselves and their life circumstances to get higher levels of quality in their lives, according to their own decisions and values
5. is a multidimensional phenomenon because it involves:

a) economic growth b) social welfare c) environmental protection

Development Cooperation

Objective of Development Cooperation

What has been the objective of development cooperation?

1. reduce economic gap: narrowing the economic gap between and within countries
2. remove social inequalities
3. make countries achieve industrial and technological advancements (Pearsons, 1969)
4. achieve sustainable development around the world, not only in poor countries

Foreign Aid

Foreign aid (term used in the US)

1. international transfer of capital, goods, or services from a country or international organization for the benefit of the other, call "recipient"
2. the direction of foreign aid is oriented as much by political and strategic considerations of the donor, as by the economic needs and policy performance of the recipients.
3. colonial past and political alliances are major determinants of foreign aid.
4. history of foreign aid started post II World War
5. with the hopes of spreading the Western model of democracy and market based economies, the United States and Western European powers encouraged foreign aid to smaller and poorer countries

Humanitarian and Development Aid

4Humanitarian aid

1. primary objective is to overcome a crisis (purpose is not long-term)
2. it should be disinterested aid, it is a moral commitment
3. responds to a universal value of solidarity between people and a moral imperative

Development Aid

Development Aid

1. focusing on alleviating poverty in the long term, rather than a short term response.
2. it is part of foreign aid whose purpose is to contribute to human welfare and development
3. different types of development aid:

a) tied aid b) untied aid: given without any intention of financial gain, without any strings attached

Development Cooperation Defined

Development cooperation

1. express the idea that a partnership should exist between donor and recipient
2. collaborative relationship: both donor and recipient have a benefit
3. discriminates in favor of developing countries
4. based on cooperative relationships that seek to enhance developing country ownership

Official Development Assistance (ODA)

"Official" Development Assistance/Overseas Development Aid (term used in the UK)

1. flows of official concessional (maximum of 25%) or non-concessional financing with the aim of promoting the economic development and welfare of poor countries
2. served different purposes: promoting basic needs, fostering economic growth, and supporting the provision of effective, democratic institutions

- Loans and credits for military purposes are excluded

Challenges in Development Cooperation

Why does development cooperation/aid not work?

1. Poverty is the result of government mismanagement
2. The concept of "aid fungibility" means that aid to poor countries does not necessarily go to poor people
3. The political or economic interest of donors

Nature of Development Cooperation

5What is development cooperation?

• a key component of International Relations
• an instrument to improve lives
• implies relations of power, and thus forms of domination
• it is an evolving concept and in a constant transformation that depends on the context in which it is applied

** Development policy is still a work in progress

• aid has been targeted at countries with strong democracies, those with strong economic policies, or sometimes simply those that donors hope to court politically
• it has been provided through a mixture of money, technical assistance, and knowledge sharing
• it has focused on agriculture, heavy industry, infrastructure, human capital, women's empowerment, and the removal of trade barriers.

Historical Overview of Development Cooperation

Antecedents of Development

TOPIC 2: HISTORICAL OVERVIEW AND DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION

ANTECEDENTS (preceding years)

• the hypothesis of an autonomous dynamism is characteristic of capitalism.
• a totalizing discourse can be constructed
• Adam Smith provides a detailed discussion on the "causes of the prosperity"process of accumulation of wealth, under the parameters of a capitalist society
• progress cannot be stopped: 'development' is not a choice but the finality of history-> all countries aspire to such a model, it is natural

Imperialism and Colonialism

Imperialism and colonialism

1. all nations travel the same road; but not all advance at the same speed as Western society
2. Western was the model of progress
3. a linear model, natural and desirable for all
4. West is the representation of this desirable society
5. "dual mandate": empires had the duty to contribute to the improvement of their colonies, while making profit, from their colonies.
6. European powers considered they had the mandate to help these territories develop

67. European Colonization was the expression of the growing solidarity, the community of feelings and interests that unites the metropolis to its overseas possessions 8. through the idea of "development" one society (which is Western society) extends to all others the values in which it believes-> 'development' is becoming universal, but not transcultural

• not transcultural: not all societies have the same values and beliefs

The League of Nations and Development

League of Nations

• 1919: The Treaty of Versailles - adoption of the League of Nations, the first permanent international political institution "to promote international cooperation and to achieve peace and security"
• legitimized the internationalization of Europeans intervention

** Here it is important to identify three aspects:

1. the concept of 'stage of development' (Rostow Model): is a legitimized model, consisting of six phases that must be completed in order to achieve development.
2. a humanitarian-religious language that suggested a 'sacred trust of civilization' for the colonial power
3. this idea was supported by an international authority: League of Nations that played the role of a kind of "family counselor", mediating between a 'minor' native population and the 'adult' mandatory power.

By the 1920s and '30s countries like Germany, France and Britain were providing regular aid to their colonies in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

• closely allied with the idea of modernization
• League of Nations now seemed to embrace all the peoples of the world
• fails when the Second World War breaks out
• one actor missing from it all: the United States (World War II)
• two concepts still needed to be invented and applied in the narrative: "development" and "underdevelopment".

We are moving into an era of bipolarity between the US and the Soviet Union.

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