Medidas con ondas transversales

An overview

“Development cooperation today is set in an increasingly complex and fast-changing global context. International balances of power are shifting, economic prospects are highly uncertain, new development actors are coming to the fore, and the developmental challenges are becoming ever more complex” (Vaes & Huyse, 2014, p9).

As suggested by Vaes and Huyse (2014), the contemporary global environment in which development cooperation takes place is considerably different to the post-World War Two environment which saw an initial surge in development cooperation (Aid Effectiveness, 2015). The focus of development interventions during this period was on growth and modernisation, with the objective of restoring European economies damaged by the war and halting the spread of communism (Dabelstein & Patton, 2013; Gubser, 2012). This ideology was soon applied to the Third World, offering Western technical solutions to the perceived ‘backwardness’ and poverty observed there (Gubser, 2012). This approach became criticized for being ‘donorship’ where the West offered money and knowledge and established a pattern of donor-country control across the development sphere (Dabelstein & Patton, 2013; Develtere & De Bruyn, 2009).

According to Gubser (2012), the modernisation ideology described above collapsed in the 1960s. Following this, developing countries, many of whom were newly independent, looked to set their own paths for development which did not emulate the West (Gubser, 2012). Despite this, by the 1980s, development cooperation became formalised into ODA, which continued to dictate practices for donors and recipients according to a particular set of norms up until 2000 (Gore, 2013; Vaes & Huyse, 2014). Many ODA policy initiatives aimed to achieve economic growth in developing countries and were strongly influenced by international financial institutions in line with neoliberal economic reforms led by United States President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (Levitt, 2003). As a result of these reforms, development initiatives tended to be designed to facilitate economic growth and alleviate debt by opening Third World countries to global markets (Conway, 2014). The assumption underpinning this ideology was that economic growth would result in poverty alleviation (Levitt, 2003). Multilateral and bilateral aid under this system were usually conditional: aid would be provided to participating governments if neoliberal economic reforms were implemented. This combination of reforms and initiatives often resulted in high social costs, particularly unemployment, and arguably left the development sector in pressing need of change (Sjostedt, 2013). According to Sjostedt (2013) and Schuurman (2014), the failure of neoliberal economic reforms to enhance development or decrease poverty, the rise of postmodernist critique and discourse on globalisation caused the legitimacy of ODA and traditional approaches to development to be

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questioned. It also triggered a move away from a model of development where donors “use money, conditionality and advice to persuade, buy or force developing countries… to implement policies which the donors know the developing countries need” (Gore, 2013, p773). A new model of development cooperation began to be implemented through three processes: the introduction of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers which were designed to allow for a “country driven approach” to addressing poverty; the formation of the Millennium Development Goals which had a clear focus on poverty alleviation as opposed to economic growth; and the commencement of the OECD High Level Fora on Aid Effectiveness aimed at improving aid effectiveness (Dabelstein & Patton, 2013; Craig & Porter, 2003, p53; Fraser, 2005; Gore, 2013).

As a result of these processes, a new model of development cooperation was articulated. The new approach ensured that donors would “work in partnership with recipients, aligning and harmonizing their financial and technical aid to support the implementation of locally owned country development strategies focused on achieving mutually shared development results” (Gore, 2013, p773). Although many new actors are now active within development cooperation, it should be noted that not all of these actors are completely new: according to Rickey and Ponte (2014), some traditional actors have formed new configurations and are operating in new ways.

Under the new model, development is seen to be wider than achieving economic growth. It “must be regarded as synonymous with enhancing human rights and welfare” (Desai & Potter, 2008, p2). In line with this, development approaches are conscious of inherent power inequalities that occur at local, national and global levels. A wide range of approaches to development have emerged, with emphasis placed on overcoming racial and gender-based inequalities and climate and environmental issues as well as valuing human rights, indigenous knowledge, faith and sustainability (Desai & Potter, 2008; Willis, 2011).

This new approach to development assistance ended the dominance of the traditional approach to ODA, and resulted in continued growth of privately funded development actors (Severino & Ray, 2009). The shift in church mission work overseas, from missionaries to projects observed prior to this research commencing, coupled with the new context of development, marked by new approaches and non- traditional actors, has created the opportunity for CIID to be considered as a new development phenomenon. Therefore, it is important to note that, as this thesis progresses to a point of creating a framework to assess the effectiveness of CIID, it is this context with its new approaches and ideologies that informs the lens through which CIID is assessed.