The Verdict on Aid Effectiveness: Why the Jury Stays Out
| Author | Gerald J. Schmitz |
| Date | 01 June 1996 |
| Published date | 01 June 1996 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070209605100205 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
GERALD
J.
SCHMITZ
The
verdict
on
aid
effectiveness:
why
the
jury
stays
out
AID
IN
AN
AGE
OF
ERODING
EXPECTATIONS
In
the
second
half of
the
199os,
it
is
hard
to
be
confident
about
the
future
of
foreign
aid
in
general
and
Canadian
official
devel-
opment
assistance
(ODA)
in
particular.
A
decade
ago
a
volume
target
of
0.7
per
cent
of
gross
domestic
product
(GDP)
seemed
possible.
Today,
as
Canada's
ODA
ratio
slips
below
0.4
per
cent,
the
question
at
budget
time
is
not
whether
aid
will
be
reduced
but
by
how
much.
Even
those
commonly
thought
to
be
the
most
effective
in
reaching
the
poor
-
notably
non-governmental
organizations
(NGOs)
working
in
development
at
the
grassroots
level
-
have
seen
large
cuts
in
government
support.
Funding
for
development education
has
also
been
slashed.
A
variety
of
factors
account
for the
erosion
of
earlier
hopes.
Externally,
the
passing
of
Cold
War
rivalries
removed
strategic
rationales
for
aid-giving
but
did
not
necessarily
produce
more
stable
conditions
for
societies
in
transition.
The
North-South
Institute described
1989
as
'miserable'
for
the
South
and
pre-
dicted
trouble
ahead
in
the
'nervous nineties." Recent
human-
itarian catastrophes
have
escalated
the
demand
for
emergency
aid
and
chilled
the
climate
for
long-term
official
aid
to
govern-
ments.
The
reigning
mantra
of
'globalization'
-
that
is,
the
Political
and
Social
Affairs Division,
Research
Branch,
Library
of
Parliament,
Ottawa.
I
'The
nervous
nineties:
uncertainties
cloud
decade
for the
Third
World,'
Review
'89
Outlook
'9o
(Ottawa:
North-South
Institute
199o
) , I.
InternationalJournal
LI
SPRING
1996
288
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
dominion
of
the
increasingly
integrated,
operations
of
a world
capitalist
economy
-
suggests
that,
for
good or
ill,
the
roles
of
states
have
been
rendered
subservient
to
those
of
market
actors.
According
to
Susan
Strange: 'Firms,
responding
to
markets,
effect
more
change
in
less
time
in
the
distribution
of
wealth
in
the
global
economy
than
all
the
international
organizations
and
bilateral
aid programmes
have
done
in
nearly
half
a
century.'
And
she
does
not
shy
away
from
posing
the
discomfiting
ques-
tion: 'how
much
does
it
matter
to
the
system,
to
the
people
living
in
and
by it,
that
half
of
Africa
and
certain
parts
of
Latin America
and
Asia
remain sunk
in
political
chaos,
economic
stagnation,
recurrent
famine,
endemic
disease,
and
internecine
warfare?'2
Domestically,
despite the
rhetoric
of 'interdependence,'
a
polarization
between
the
separate
worlds
of
the
upwardly
and
downwardly
mobile,
the
favoured
haves
and
inconvenient
have-
nots,
is
observed
with
similar
perturbing
consequences.
An
American
board
member
of
World
Vision
International
wonders
aloud:
'Why
have
we
[humanitarian
organizations] been
so
effective
at
reducing
overseas
poverty
while
we
seem
to
be cre-
ating it
in
this country?'3
The
first
contention
is
arguable
but
less
so
than
the
paradox
that
countries
which
have
a
mission
to
help
poor
countries
cannot
seem to
find public
policy
solutions
to
growing
poverty in
their
own
backyards.
That
may
help
to
explain
why
faith
in
private
voluntary
giving
continues
in
the
face
of
declining
generosity
as
to
government
funding
for
sim-
ilar
purposes.
In
Canada,
some
analyses
indicate
that
the
Canadian
official
aid
system,
or
at
least
important
parts
of
it, are
only
too
happy
to
scale
back
previous
commitments
to
a
lofty
'humane
inter-
nationalism'
in
favour
of
supposedly
more
objective
and
eco-
nomically
realistic
imperatives
tied
to
national
interests.4
Justice
2
Susan
Strange,
'The
defective state,'
Daedalus
124(spring
1995),
69,
72.
3
Dale
Hanson
Bourke,
'Creating
American
poverty,'
Prairie
Messenger
(Muenster,
Saskatchewan),
16
October
1995,
15.
4
Cranford
Pratt,
ed,
Canadian
International
Development
Assistance
Policies:
An
Appraisal
(Montreal
&
Kingston:
McGill-Queen's
University
Press
1994: 2nd
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