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Hiding Relations: The Irony of ‘Effective Aid’

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Abstract

The present vogue of ‘managing for development results’ is an expression of a historically dominant mode of thought in international aid – ‘substantialism’ – which sees the world primarily in terms of ‘entities’ such as ‘poverty’, ‘basic needs’, ‘rights’, ‘women’ or ‘results’. Another important mode of thought, ‘relationalism’ – in association more generally with ideas of process and complexity – appears to be absent in the thinking of aid institutions. Drawing on my own experiences of working with the UK Department for International Development and other aid agencies, I illustrate how despite formally subscribing to the institutions' substantialist view of the world, some staff are ‘closet relationists’, behaving according to one mode of thought while officially framing their action in terms of the other, more orthodox mode. In doing so, they may be unwittingly keeping international aid sufficiently viable – by the apparent proof of the efficacy of results-based management – to enable the institution as a whole to maintain its substantialist imaginary.

Abstract

La vogue actuelle pour la ‘gestion axée sur les résultats’ est l’expression d’un mode de pensée historiquement dominant dans le domaine de l’aide internationale, à savoir le ‘substantialisme’, qui conçoit le monde essentiellement en termes d’ entités telles que ‘la pauvreté’, ‘les besoins de base’, ‘les droits’, ‘les femmes’, ou ‘les résultats’. Un autre mode de pensée important, le ‘relationalisme’ – plus généralement associé aux notions de processus et de complexité – paraît absent. À partir de mes propres expériences de travail avec le Département pour le Développement International du Royaume Uni (DFID) et d'autres organisations d'aide internationale, je montre comment certains membres de ces organisations bien qu’adhérant officiellement à la conception substantialiste du monde de l’institution qu’ils représentent, sont en fait des ‘relationnistes cachés’, dont les actions obéissent en pratique à un mode de pensée différent de celui à travers lequel leurs actions sont officiellement conçues. Il est possible que ceci leur permettent, sans le savoir, de rendre l’aide internationale suffisamment viable – par la preuve apparente de l’efficacité de la gestion axée sur les résultats – pour permettre à l’institution dans son ensemble de préserver son imaginaire substantialiste.

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Notes

  1. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for this turn of phrase.

  2. In 2007, the Expert Group on Development Issues (EGDI) of the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs was about to commission such a study when a change of government resulted in the dismantling of EGDI and the cancellation of the study.

  3. From Paris 2005 to Accra 2008: Will Aid Become more Accountable and Effective? A Critical Approach to the Aid Effectiveness Agenda. Draft for discussion at regional consultations – September 2007, http://betteraid.org/, accessed 15 January 2008.

  4. Author's interviews in early 2006.

  5. See www.mfdr.org, accessed 10 January 2008.

  6. But see Kothari (2005, p. 430) who argues that the kind of thinking I am describing has increased in aid practice and been shaped by ‘the universalising principles of the neoliberal agenda’.

  7. I am grateful to Susan Godt for reporting this remark to me.

  8. The relational or contextual point of view suggests that what the person ‘is’ or indeed what ‘gender’ is, is always relative to the constructed relations in which it is determined. ‘As a shifting and contextual phenomenon, gender does not denote a substantive being but a relative point of convergence among culturally and historically specific sets of relations’ (Butler, 1999, p. 15).

  9. See Chambers (1997). I am not proposing here to discuss what ‘development’ is, nor consider the different explicit and latent purposes of international aid. My argument is that many aid practitioners feel a moral commitment to support what they see as ‘good change’ and try to act accordingly.

  10. Possibly ‘turning a blind eye’ sounds too conscious a process. ‘Knowing and not knowing’ might be a better way of expressing what is happening, see Cohen (2001).

  11. I borrow this term from Engelke's reference to those project staff who objected to the publication of Mosse (2005), whom he described as ‘closet relativists’.

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Acknowledgements

I am indebted to both EJDR reviewers and to the Associate Editor for their constructive feedback, as well as to colleagues in the Participation, Power and Social Change team at the Institute of Development Studies, and to Arjan de Haan for helpful comments on earlier drafts.

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Eyben, R. Hiding Relations: The Irony of ‘Effective Aid’. Eur J Dev Res 22, 382–397 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/ejdr.2010.10

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