Commissioned Book Review: Justin Yifu Lin and Yan Wang, Going Beyond Aid: Development Cooperation for Structural Transformation
| Author | Veysel Tekdal |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14789299211030773 |
| Published date | 01 November 2022 |
| Date | 01 November 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Commissioned Book Reviews |
Political Studies Review
2022, Vol. 20(4) NP1 –NP2
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Commissioned Book Review
1030773PSW0010.1177/14789299211030773Political Studies ReviewCommissioned Book Review
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Commissioned Book Review
Going Beyond Aid: Development
Cooperation for Structural Transformation
by Justin Yifu Lin and Yan Wang. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2017. 232 pp., $29.99
(paperback), ISBN 9781316607152
Lin and Wang’s book has an ambitious
goal: charting a new development coop-
eration perspective that goes beyond the
limitations of the incipient aid-centred
mechanisms. The book is well-positioned
to influence ongoing discussions on devel-
opment cooperation thanks to, other things
aside, the profiles of its authors. The book
is written jointly by Justin Yifu Lin, from
Peking University, and Yan Wang, from
George Washington University. Both
authors previously held positions at the
World Bank, Lin being the Bank’s chief
economist from 2008 to 2012. Being
regarded as a leading economist and
insider to policymaking circles in China,
Lin also has the capacity to influence eco-
nomic policy in the country.
Development cooperation as a domain
of global economic relations has wit-
nessed somewhat unsettling dynamics in
the last two decades. Two particular pro-
cesses, at least, contributed to this. First,
the efficacy of conventional modalities of
cooperation, centred on the Organization
for Economic Co-operation and Develop-
ment’s (OECD) Development Assistant
Committee (DAC) as the leading interna-
tional forum and the Official Development
Assistance (ODA) as the primary type,
has been increasingly questioning, from
within and without. Second, the emerging
economies, most notably China, India and
Brazil, have significantly increased their
presence in development cooperation by
employing modalities that are mostly not
conforming to the DAC norms and frame-
work. Lin and Wang’s book reflects on
these processes and offers a pathway for
development cooperation, which rests on
‘unorthodox’ theoretical premises and
practices from China’s development coop-
eration with low-income countries (LICs).
The book’s content can be rehearsed
around three core arguments. First, the
book takes issue with the ODA. Hovering
slightly above 100 US$ billion in recent
years, the volume of ODA is insufficient
(p. 54). Also, according to the authors,
core features of the ODA regime, such as
conditionality, overdue debt-sustainabil-
ity concerns, and neglect of infrastruc-
ture and industrial projects, have
precluded it from efficiently contributing
to sustained growth and transformation
in LICs.
Second, drawing on the New Structural
Economics – a theory developed by Lin –
the authors argue that LICs’ quest for struc-
tural transformation should target indus-
trialisation in sectors with ‘latent compara-
tive advantages’ (i.e. light and labour-inten-
sive manufacturing). Therefore, the govern-
ments in LICs should aim to ‘ease the bot-
tlenecks to growth’ in those sectors. Aid,
ideally combined with other types of devel-
opment financing that go beyond aid,
should be oriented to empower the recipient
country governments’ capacity to ease the
bottlenecks (i.e. provision of suitable infra-
structure) and ‘jump-start dynamic struc-
tural transformation’.
And finally, the third core argument of
the book is that South–South cooperation
modalities, China being the exemplary
case, which combine aid with trade and
investment, have been more effective.
Emerging powers, most notably China
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