Why we lie about aid development and the messy politics of change

277 Pages·2018·5.434 MB·English

by  Yanguas, Pablo

WHY WE LIE ABOUT AID
About the author
Pablo Yanguas is a research fellow at the Effective States and
Inclusive Development Research Centre and Global Develop-
ment Institute, University of Manchester, as well as an interna-
tional development consultant. He received his PhD in Gov-
ernment from Cornell University after studying History and
Archaeology at the University of Seville. His research centres on
the political economy of foreign aid, the politics of development
policy, and public sector reform, and has appeared in academic
journals such as World Development, Development Policy Review,
Third World Quarterly and Journal of International Develop-
ment. As an advisor, he specialises in politically smart and adap-
tive foreign aid with a focus on anticorruption programming.
WHY WE LIE ABOUT AID
Development and the Messy Politics of Change
PABLO YANGUAS
Why We Lie About Aid: Development and the Messy Politics of Change was
first published in 2018 by Zed Books Ltd, The Foundry, 17 Oval Way,
London SE11 5RR, UK.
www.zedbooks.net
Copyright © Pablo Yanguas 2018
The rights of Pablo Yanguas to be identified as the author of this work
have been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act, 1988.
Typeset in Bulmer by T&T Productions Ltd, London
Index by Rohan Bolton
Cover design by Michael Wallace
Cover photo © Mikkel Ostergaard/Panos
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of
Zed Books Ltd.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78360-934-5 hb
ISBN 978-1-78360-933-8 pb
ISBN 978-1-78360-935-2 pdf
ISBN 978-1-78360-936-9 epub
ISBN 978-1-78360-937-6 mobi
Contents
acknowledgements vii
Introduction 1
one The theatrics of aid debates 19
two The banality of certainty 45
three The ugly politics of change 71
four The limits of donor influence 97
five The paradoxes of development diplomacy 123
six The struggle of thinking politically 153
seven Understanding the messy politics of change 179
Conclusion 203
notes 217
bibliography 241
index 259

Acknowledgements
This book draws upon a decade of study, research, and work, a
time that I have been privileged to share with too many friends
and colleagues to list here.
My first words of appreciation have to be for my mentors: Tom
Callaghy at the University of Pennsylvania, Nic van de Walle at Cor-
nell University, and David Hulme at the University of Manchester.
They are all responsible for turning a hapless history major out of
Seville into a bona fide international development researcher. I
hope that this book can make up for all my stubborn questions, my
obscure obsession with Weber, and my general inability to follow
sound career advice. My best ideas are but echoes of their massive
contributions to the political economy of development.
The research that substantiates this book was made possible
by support from the Einaudi Center and the Peace Studies pro-
gramme at Cornell University, and from the Effective States and
Inclusive Development Research Centre and Global Develop-
ment Institute at the University of Manchester. Of my many good
friends and influences at Cornell, Phil Ayoub, Don Leonard, and
Igor Logvinenko were my closest co-conspirators in this business
of asking tricky questions about international and comparative
politics, while Jaimie Bleck was, from that very first day at the
Ithaca airport, a contagious source of enthusiasm and sheer joy
viii acknowledgements
about Africa and Africans. Over time, I have also benefitted from
the wisdom of teachers and senior colleagues: Peter Katzenstein,
Sam Hickey, Kunal Sen, Richard Batley, Heather Marquette,
Merilee Grindle, Brian Levy, and David Booth will all find traces
of their own work in this manuscript, which is all the better for it.
My editor at Zed Books, Ken Barlow, offered encouragement and
astute guidance in the long journey from inception to submission,
and, together with two anonymous reviewers, provided useful
feedback on the final text. Whatever flaws remain are probably
the result of not listening to them closely enough.
I am continuously amazed at the willingness of practitioners
to talk to junior researchers. Most of my insights into develop-
ment grew out of conversations in Nairobi; Freetown; Monrovia;
Tegucigalpa; Accra; Kampala; Dhaka; Washington, DC; Paris;
Madrid; and London. I especially want to thank Alan Whaites,
Nick Manning, Kathy Bain, Beatriz Novales, Nic Lee, and Isabel
Castle, not just for their trust and inspiration, but also for demon-
strating what aid can be like when smart, capable, and principled
people take the reins. A whole book cannot do enough justice to
their hard work and commitment, or that of their hundreds and
thousands of peers across the development community.
Finally, as is often the case, no one feels the pressure and costs
of writing a book quite as strongly as the author’s family. My wife,
Mar, has always been my biggest supporter, even when work has
taken me far away from her. In the time between conceiving this
book and submitting the final manuscript, our two children, Vic-
tor and Martina, were born. It is to them that I dedicate the book:
may you grow up to see a more internationalist and humane world
than the one captured in these pages.
Manchester, August 2017
Introduction
A scandal in Kampala
There are not many public scandals about foreign aid, but Ireland
was rocked by a particularly big one in 2012, when Irish Aid sus-
pended its entire assistance programme in Uganda. In October of
that year, it was revealed that four million euros destined to help
rebuild the country’s war-torn northern region had been siphoned
out to a personal account by the Office of the Prime Minister1. The
revelation quickly escalated into a full-blown public debate about
the future of development cooperation in Ireland. The Tánaiste
– deputy prime minister and minister for foreign affairs in charge
of Irish Aid – was ‘absolutely disgusted’ about the corrupt misap-
propriation and demanded that all the money be paid back in order
to maintain future aid to Uganda2. Some politicians called for an
investigation by the legislature to ‘get to the bottom’ of the scandal,
while others used the opportunity to call for significant cuts to the
aid budget. Newspapers printed opinion pieces questioning the
logic of foreign aid in a time of financial bailout and fiscal austerity,
and prime-time specials were aired on television detailing the con-
text in which Irish money had been so blatantly stolen.
After a while, inevitably, the scandal subsided. The Ugandan
government repaid the misappropriated funds in January 20133,
and Irish Aid personnel quietly got on with the business of figuring