Exporting Good Governance: Temptations and Challenges in Canada’s Aid Program (Studies in International Governance)

364 Pages·2007·1.55 MB·English

by  Jennifer Welsh

EXPORTING GOOD GOVERNANCE
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The Centre for International Governance Innovation (cigi) was founded in 2001
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visit www.cigionline.org.
EXPORTING GOOD
GOVERNANCE
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Temptations and Challenges
in Canada’s Aid Program
Jennifer Welsh and Ngaire Woods,
editors
Weacknowledge the financial support ofthe Government ofCanada through the Book Pub-
lishing Industry Development Program for our publishing activities.We acknowledge the
financial support ofthe Centre for International Governance Innovation.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Exporting good governance :temptations and challenges in Canada’s aid program /
edited by Jennifer Welsh and Ngaire Woods.
Co-published with the Centre for International Governance Innovation.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-1-55458-029-3
1.Economic assistance,Canadian—Political aspects—Developing countries.
2.Conditionality (International relations)—Developing countries. 3.Economic
assistance,Canadian—Developing countries. i.Welsh,Jennifer M.(Jennifer Mary),1965–
ii.Woods,Ngaire iii.Centre for International Governance Innovation.
HC60.E98 2007 338.91'7101724 C2007-903512-4
©2007The Centre for International Governance Innovation (cigi) and Wilfrid Laurier Uni-
versity Press
Cover photograph by Alistair Williamson,Ottawa,ON.Cover design by Brian Grebow/BG
Communications.Text design by P.J.Woodland.
Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in
this text,and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately.Any errors and omissions called
to the publisher’s attention will be corrected in future printings.
●(cid:1)
Printed in Canada
Nopart ofthis publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system or transmitted,in
any form or by any means,without the prior written consent ofthe publisher or a licence
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CONTENTS
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Foreword—vii
Maureen O’Neil
Introduction—xi
Jennifer Welsh and Ngaire Woods
i
THE CONTEXT
1—The Changing Politics of Aid—3
Ngaire Woods
2—Focusing Aid on Good Governance:
Can It Work?—21
Sue Unsworth
3—Boy Scouts and Fearful Angels:
The Evolution of Canada’s International
Good Governance Agenda—41
Ian Smillie
ii
CASE STUDIES
4—Supporting the State through Aid?
The Case of Vietnam—75
Nilima Gulrajani
5—Assisting Civil Society through Aid:
The Case of Bangladesh—99
Fahimul Quadir
6—The Benefits of an Indirect Approach:
The Case of Ghana—119
Peter Arthur and David Black
v
vi CONTENTS
7—Defence, Development, and Diplomacy:
The Case of Afghanistan,2001–2005—143
Scott Gilmore and Janan Mosazai
8—The Perils of Changing Donor Priorities in Fragile States:
The Case of Haiti—169
Robert Muggah
9—Astute Governance Promotion versus Historical
Conditions in Explaining Good Governance:
The Case of Mauritius—203
Richard Sandbrook
iii
THE IMPLICATIONS
10—Managing Canada’s Growing Development Cooperation:
Out of the Labyrinth—225
Bernard Wood
11—Donor Coordination and Good Governance:
Donor-Led and Recipient-Led Approaches—253
Paolo de Renzio and Sarah Mulley
12—Conclusion:
Challenges and New Directions for Canada—279
Jennifer Welsh
References—303
Notes on Contributors—325
Index—329
FOREWORD
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Maureen O’Neil
The essays collected in this volume cover a good number ofthe “temptations
and challenges”Canada faces as it attempts to support good governance and
democratic development in developing countries.Against a changing global
politics and development assistance regime,these studies force us to reassess
the goals and aspirations ofaid.
Inhis essay,Ian Smillie reminds us ofthe continuing “bi-polarity”ofCana-
dian foreign policy—the romantic desire to improve the world set against
narrower attention to serving our national interest.
In 2005,when these papers were first being prepared,the political mood in
Canada was experiencing a policy moment when the two were conflating—
especially because more democracy was seen by some as an outlet for the
discontent ofthe “excluded”—the excluded who,it was hypothesized,might
become terrorists ifthey were not included,as full citizens,in the political life
oftheir own countries.
If the trade-off is between romantic aspirations (the search for justice,
equity,and the alleviation ofpoverty) and “realism”(serving “national self-
interest”),Canada’s dilemmas do not set it apart from those ofother Western
countries.The goals ofdevelopment assistance are in themselves quintessen-
tially aspirational,reflecting the belief (as the Gates Foundation says it so
succinctly) that “every life is ofequal value”and that something can be done
to improve the lives ofthose living in misery.More particularly,aid proceeds
from the beliefthat something can be done from outside the political and geo-
graphic boundaries within which the miserable are living.
vii
viii FOREWORD
The interplay ofaltruism and self-interest has played out for halfa century
in the transfer oftaxpayers’dollars from rich countries to the rest.Alongside
the aid has been an internationalization ofthe concepts underpinning devel-
oped countries’national experiences ofredistribution,economic development,
and law-making—the whole panoply ofpolicy instruments that established
democracies used to create fairer societies.As a result,the thinking that has
underpinned development programs has relied from the beginning on the
policy experiences of quite different polities and economies.That said,the
growth ofa cadre ofdevelopment professionals in oecdcountries who worked
almost exclusively on “development”in poor countries has sometimes been
such that the professionals have not actually been that familiar with the ways
in which their own countries accomplished policy change domestically—the
interplay ofinterests,ideas,and politics that results in changed policies and
programs.
There has been very little reflection on the impact ofdevelopment trans-
fers of one kind or another on the political development of ex-colonies or
other poor countries.As we know well,one ofthe reasons why the develop-
ment aid kept flowing was the cold war.One might say that the “truth telling”
about politics in developing countries didn’t start seriously until the late 1980s,
with much greater vigour after the fall ofthe Berlin Wall in 1989.
InCanada little attention was paid to democracy and human rights within
development programming until the mid-1980s,when two reports were is-
sued:the report of the 1986Special Joint (Hockin-Simard) Committee of
Parliament,Independence and Internationalism,and the 1987review ofCana-
dian aid policy and programmes by Gisèle Côté-Harper and John C.Courtney.
These studies—which promoted a holistic conception ofhuman rights that
included political,social,and economic dimensions—laid the groundwork for
the subsequent creation ofthe International Centre for Human Rights and
Democratic Development (Rights & Democracy).Rights & Democracy,cre-
ated as a Crown corporation with an international Board,is one ofthe “might
have beens”of Canadian foreign and development policy,given only small
budgets and largely ignored by governments ofall political stripes for the last
two decades.1
Inmany ways,concerns for democracy and human rights were overtaken
bythe growing concerns ofdevelopment agencies about the importance of
public sector and political reforms needed in aid-receiving countries.cidawas
soon spending annually hundreds oftimes the budget ofRights & Democracy
on good governance and democratic development.All oecdcountries resolved
tohelp developing countries improve their public sector management,their
“rule oflaw,”their policy decision-making processes,their election manage-
ment,and so forth.
FOREWORD ix
Where does Canada sit within this? Canadian prime ministers have re-
sponded to the rock star flattery of Bono:“the world needs more Canada.”
Does it really? What can Canada usefully do as a global actor through all the
policy levers at its disposal to support democratic development and human
rights—whether expenditures,foreign policy decisions,multilateral support,
military engagement,debt relief,trade decisions?
These essays explore this complex,highly charged question.They also ap-
pear in the wake ofthe July 2007report ofthe House ofCommons Standing
Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development,“Advancing
Canada’s Role in International Support for Democratic Development,”which
argues that new policy directions and new instruments are needed ifCanada
is to “make a difference.”But too often,we do not know what we are talking
about when we set offdown the democratic assistance path.Our aspirations
blind us to lessons ofexperience or to seeking out what those lessons are.We
certainly have not systematically assembled or assimilated thoughtful analy-
sis ofour experience (and expenditures) to date.We have more hypotheses
about external intervention in other people’s politics than conclusions.
Nonetheless,we must continue trying to help.These essays are a beginning.
They probe the aspirations of aid for “good governance”and evaluate how
these have been implemented in practice in several countries.They remind us
that before leaping in with good intentions,a considerable task ofanalysis and
reflection needs to be done.
—Maureen O’Neil
President,International Development Research Centre
Note
1 Declaration ofinterest:Maureen O’Neil served as Chair ofthe Board ofthe Inter-
national Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development from 1996to
1997.
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