Partnering development

Dec 05, 2012 Editorial

The evident abandonment by the World Trade Organization (WTO) of the Doha Development Round of negotiations highlights importance of the last Millennium Goal: for countries to enter into global partnerships for development. This imperative converges with the notion of complex interdependence adopted by the UN itself, which states that any actor’s action has reciprocal, consequential effects in the international system.
For instance, if one country like Guyana remains very poor, it affects not only its own population but also the international community, mostly in negative ways. Therefore, it makes sense that all countries should help each other to develop. However, most aid given to developing countries obeys the political priorities of the donors. In other words, the aid given follows the donor’s agenda.
In our country, for example, Chinese aid and concessional loans have been accompanied by a flood of Chinese traders. Another example is that most environmental aid goes to our forested areas, even though there are other ecosystems in more need, such as our Atlantic coast. Donors often assume that their development processes and social realities are good and should be replicated elsewhere. It is common for Western donors to only fund organizations that fit Western models, which, frequently, do not take into account the local realities.
This occurs largely because the current model of economic development has found two new roles for civil society: one, it can replace and/or complement public services, and two, it can develop market functions. The political function is not addressed because, in many scholars’ views, the history has already achieved an end, to borrow Fukuyama’s words. This discourse, which encompasses the concept of “third sector,” does not, however, “address the material inequities that underpin civil society organizations or the role of such groups in alleviating poverty or reproducing patterns of social and economic hierarchy.”
Overall, such behaviour reflects donors’ overestimation of what Western history and culture has to offer to developing countries. This has been reflected in the common strategy of helping developing countries by giving money, without paying enough attention to where that money goes. Thus, much of the aid given was directed to friendly but ineffective projects. Nowadays, donors demand that local “partners” become self-sustainable, a euphemism that means they are required to raise their own funds. This has been an ongoing source of conflict. Projects that have been supported for years by foreign financial aid have had to adapt to this new reality. This is a reflection of the mainstream approach to the triad of state, civil society and market, which sees a free market as the fundamental principle of economic organization.
There are two main views of this triad. One, more radical, argues for a minimal state, while a moral order emerges from an unwilled and self-regulating social interaction. A second, which is commonly adopted by donor agencies, still grants to the market a central position, but recognizes that state and society must act to guarantee socially valued outcomes. This does not mean to say that the economic system cannot be funded on capital, or that the state should be interventionist. It does, however, mean that the state together with society should ensure a regulatory framework that not only fosters capital accumulation, but also minimizes the negative effects of the market on the natural environment and on the social fabric.
In this setting, civil society should monitor the transparency and accountability of the state. This alternative yet liberal view comprises a number of critiques of development. Especially those theories that argue that economic growth, urbanization, industrialization and the contemporary capitalist model are the only routes to economic development. This view of civil society, which tries to promote a more socially responsible capitalism, has not really taken root in Guyana.
Some partnerships have been established between private corporations and NGOs, which allow the corporations to improve their image and the NGOs to benefit from the corporation’s expertise. Despite the good relationship in some instances, there are others in which the meaning of “partnership” became blurred because donors wanted control over the NGOs agenda.

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