3.3 The Framework as a Methodological Device
3.3.3 International Factors
The International Aid Regime
Krasner (1982, 186) has defined a regime as “sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors' expectations converge in a given area of international relations”. Following Hook’s lead, I embrace Krasner’s definition to conceptualise the international aid regime, understanding it to embody the “broadly accepted standards of international behaviour” (Florini 1996, 363) concerning aid giving86. While scholarship on aid has
shown that international norms can influence aid policy decisionmaking (Lumsdaine 1993), the international aid regime has undeniably evolved and changed over time, with different normative agendas dominating at different times (Thérien 2002b, 462; Hook 2008a, 87)87.
Considering these twin realities, the aid policy decisionmaking framework assumes that the norms prevailing in the international aid regime influence aid policy decisionmaking.
Several scholars have utilised international relations literature on norms to explain evolutions in the international aid regime. Lumsdaine (1993, 24) examined the foreign aid regime from 1949 to 1989 and found that the “[p]ractices and norms of international life… influence states’ international conduct”. More recently, Fukunda-Parr and Hulme employ Finnemore and Sikkink’s (1998) analytical framework to demonstrate how the Millennium Development Goals became “so widely accepted as an international normative framework of development” (Fukuda-Parr and Hulme 2009, 2)88. Since the end of the Cold War, the development purposes
of aid have been emphasised (Lancaster 2007a, chapter 2), with poverty reduction becoming “over-arching objective of the international policy agenda” concern since the late 1990s (Fukuda-Parr 2011, 122). This emphasis was accompanied with a renewed embrace of the international goal of devoting 0.7% of national income to development assistance (Lightfoot and Szent-Iványi 2015, 3; Clemens and Moss 2005), with the ‘0.7% target’ becoming “a cause celebre
86 A consistent focus of Steven Hook’s work has been to examine how the international aid regime functions to
impart systemic pressure on a state’s aid policy choices (Hook 1993; Hook 1995; Schraeder, Hook, and Taylor 1998; Hook and Rumsey 2016). Hook’s understanding of the ‘international aid regime’ is informed by Krasner’s definition.
87 Hook and Rumsey (2016, 61) argue that the international aid regime can be viewed as a procedural regime due to
the fact that the ‘central standards’ of the international aid regime relate to internal outputs of donors, rather than effectiveness in reducing poverty levels. They identify four ‘central standards’ of the ODA regime: “the volume of ODA as a percentage of donor gross national income (GNI), the proportion of aid provided to governments in extreme poverty, the proportion of aid provided as grants rather than concessional (low interest) loans, and the proportion of aid that is tied to the provision of donor goods and services” (Hook and Rumsey 2016, 60–61). As the body responsible for monitoring and reporting on these standards, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC), is often used as a metonym for the aid regime.
Approach and Method
Page75 for aid activists and… politicians” (Clemens and Moss 2005, 3)89. With respect to my cases, the
ongoing aspirational hold of the 0.7% norm was demonstrated in the way in which Australian and Dutch politicians finessed their announcements to cut aid spending so they appear not to be directly contravening or abandoning their international obligations90.
In recent times the international development regime has again come under pressure, as a new ‘development landscape’ emerges (Gore 2013; Kilby 2012; Greenhill, Prizzon, and Rogerson 2013). Ideas about aid, how it should be provided, and who should provide it and where, are changing rapidly, with implications for the politics of aid (Woods 2005)91. Given “[t]here is
general consensus in scholarly and policy circles that the global aid regime is undergoing major changes” (Chin and Quadir 2012)92 it is reasonable to expect decisionmakers to ‘factor them in’
when making aid policy decisions93.
Global Power Dynamics
Substantial changes in the international aid regime and in the trajectory of the aid policy of donors map closely with major historical geopolitical shifts. The modern aid regime was established in the aftermath of the Second World War. Cold War rivalries shaped aid giving for most of the second half of the twentieth century. Aid spending levels contracted sharply following the fall of the Berlin Wall, with many questioning whether aid had an ongoing role (Riddell 2007, 2). Unipolarity brought with it the opportunity to redefine aid’s purposes around promoting development. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, the US-led War on Terror led
89 The defining norm of the international aid regime has been the enshrinement of the 0.7% of ODA to GNI spending
target as an indicator of donor commitment (Hook and Rumsey 2016, 61). This rather arbitrary target has proven remarkably durable considering ongoing constant controversy about its relevance and the considerable gap between those states advocating for (and assenting to) the target and those actually achieving it. Only a handful of states have reached this spending target since it was articulated in the 1960s. This gap between rhetoric and reality is just one example of the common observation that “donor practice is decoupled from the norms of effectiveness they claim to support” (S. Brown and Swiss 2013, 752).
90 In Australia, for example, when the Coalition announced large cuts to aid spending ahead of the 2013 election,
senior politicians insisted the Coalition remained “committed” to a 0.5% spending target, despite not committing to a timeframe (Hockey and Robb 2013b; Liberal Party of Australia and The Nationals 2013). In the Netherlands, the Second Rutte Cabinet, after abandoning the 0.7% spending target, began pushing to reform the way ODA was counted (Ploumen 2014).
91 The drivers of these changes are myriad and multilayered. They include, but are not limited to: geopolitical power
shifts; the dramatic increase in the number of actors involved in global development; the rapid rise of emerging donors, especially China, bringing with them competing notions of how to ‘do’ development (Woods 2008; Bräutigam 2011); the associated break-down in the traditional donor-recipient relationship; the fact that ODA spending comprises an ever-shrinking component of international resources transfers (Development Initiatives 2013); the increasing emphasis being given to the beyond-aid agenda; and the shift in location of the world’s poor (Sumner 2012).
92 According to Mawdsley, Savage, and Kim (2014) a ‘paradigm shift’ is underway in the international development
regime. Zimmerman and Smith (2011, 733), meanwhile, contend that the “established international development co-operation system is in the midst of a legitimacy crisis.”
93 The key aid policy documents published by recent governments in Australia, the Netherlands and the UK each
make specific mention of these changes. Nonetheless, there remains a question as to whether changes in the international aid regime was a key factor influence aid policy decisionmakers, or whether they function more as a means of justifying or explaining a particularly course or action.
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to the re-emergence of aid as an important geopolitical tool (Fleck and Kilby 2010, 185). As Roger Riddell (2007, 2) has observed, “aid has managed, repeatedly, to reinvent and renew itself after repeated bouts of uncertainty, doubt and pessimism.” The historical record of the international aid regime, instructs us to expect, as the framework acknowledges, that global power shifts influence aid policy decisionmaking.
According to Andrew Cooper (Cooper 2013, 963), we are currently experiencing a “moment of transition” in the international system. It follows that states are again redefining the rationale for the aid programs. According to Ablett and Erdmann (2013, 4) “the ten years from 2000 to 2010 saw the fastest-ever shift in the world’s economic center of gravity.” The rapid economic growth of emerging economies is transforming global politics, with power shifting away from the rich, mostly Western states that have traditionally been aid donors. As emerging powers demand roles in global affairs commensurate with their rising economic power, the extant Western-dominated global order is being strained, including the international aid regime (Bisley 2010; Cooper 2013, 964; Golub 2013, 1002; Wesley 2011, 42). In response to these changes, states are reassessing how to best engage with their external environment and re-examining how aid fits into their foreign policy mix. This reassessment process is particularly challenging for states likeAustralia, the Netherlands and the UK, who have acknowledged their declining relative global influence and admitted that they are configuring their aid programs in light of this reality94. These are all reasons to suspect that global power shifts influence aid policy
decisionmaking.
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