Financialisation of official development assistance

Official Development Assistance is a significant global enterprise. Organsiations engaged in funding and implementing ODA (the bilateral donors, multilateral organsiations such as the World Bank and IMF) have unprecedented political and economic influence over a large number of sovereign developing countries. This paper analyses if, and how financialisation impacts on development aid, and implications for effective aid policy agendas, drawing on and linking critical debate on finacialisation, and ODA. Subsequent to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and the persistence of the European Monitory Crisis (EMC), specific needs of developing countries became increasingly sub-ordinated to political and ideological power relations between ‘real’ economics and financial economics otherwise known as financialisation. The paper finds ‘financialisation’ as the ideological, political and economic catalyst for economic growth potentially confusing long-term development to combat poverty, and a short term need to overcome the lack of financial capacity in developing recipient countries. Sustainable economic development requires developing countries to forsake the pursuit of financialisation and to re-delineate their national finance, trade and investment regimes, and re-state it in a balanced manner as to take into account their unique economic development needs rather that the donor agencies’ demands and to advance their own ‘real’ economies.

Official development assistance and impact assessment, theoretical and practical frameworks

Official Development Assistance (ODA) remains the most prominent development instrument for allocation of foreign aid with the aim of promoting prosperity in developing countries. This includes economic, political, and social development, and most significantly poverty alleviation. However, it needs to be noted that the positive impact of ODA on recipient countries economic, social, political, and other forms of development is not a foregone conclusion. As such it is subject to diverse interpretations, value claims, perceptions, and a range of indicators. Thus, ODA has it proponents and opponents. As such the need for an assessment of the impact of ODA, be it positive or negative, remains a subject of discourse amongst academics, practitioners, aid agencies, politicians, governments, and other stakeholders. The purpose of this chapter is to bring to the fore and to unpack some overarching issues, which will be taken up in following contributions from different vantage points. The focus will be on foreign aid, and development theory and practice in the contemporary social, political, and economic environment.

Divided Over Internationalism : The Canadian Public and Development Assistance

This analysis of public opinion towards foreign aid shows that Canadians are divided over internationalism. First, while most citizens agree that development assistance is important, their support often remains shallow, unmatched by a commitment to undertake concrete actions. Second, the attitudes Canadians hold toward development assistance indicate that there is a clear division in the country’s public between liberal and conservative internationalists, a cleavage that is anchored in domestic ideological and partisan differences. In many ways comparable to what is found in other countries, the internationalism of Canadians does not appear as vigorous and as consensual as is often suggested.