What is the link between security and development?

Having studied the security-development nexus in another module, I came to this session aware of what Mark Duffield (2001) diplomatically phrased, ‘Global Challenges’. Through characterising underdevelopment in weak and fragile Southern states as a permissive environment for the growth of existential Northern security threats, the West has pursued the ‘securitisation of development’. In other words, in the post 9/11 era, development has increasingly been used as both a foreign policy tool and as a weapon in its own right in the fight against terrorism (The White House, 2002). What I hadn’t considered before, was how these security threats often overlap with authoritarian regimes, which thereby easily surpass the world’s poorest nations as the highest recipients of donor aid. On reflection, this is perhaps the messiest and most complex area of development politics I have encountered during this module.

How does the West aid autocracy?

A well-noted example of this phenomenon is US and UK support for regional ‘strongman’ Saudi Arabia, which scores just 7/100 on Freedom House (2018). While this index is US government-funded and conforms to western perceptions of ‘freedom’, Saudi Arabia’s track record on political rights and civil liberties is woeful. And yet it regularly receives billions in trade and arms sales from the West as part of the ‘War on Terror’, despite much of this arsenal contributing to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises in decades in Yemen. I found the conflicting goals of western bureaucracies quite poignant in this regard, as DfID is currently spending £176 million (DevTracker, 2018) to aid the relief effort in Yemen, a situation which its own Department of International Trade is widely claimed to have helped create (Full Fact, 2018).

Authoritarian agency?

I learned in the reading this week that authoritarian regimes are by no means passive actors in this process, but are active participants in constructing security threats in order to secure donor development assistance. Fisher and Anderson (2015), point to Yoweri Museveni’s role in painting the Lord’s Resistance Army to be a major security threat for the US.

What now for development politics?

Autocracies in the Global South often exhibit corrupt ‘neopatrimonialism’ and repressive characteristics including vote-rigging, suppressing social movements and criminalising LGBTQ rights. With autocracies on the rise throughout the world, and democracy on the decline, perhaps this is the most pressing issue facing development politics today?

References

DevTracker (2018) Yemen [online]. Available at: https://devtracker.dfid.gov.uk/countries/YE/projects. [Accessed: 12th January 2019]

Duffield, M.R. (2001) Global governance and the new wars electronic resource: The merging of development and security.  London: Zed Books.

Fisher, J. and Anderson, D. M. (2015). Authoritarianism and the Securitization of Development in Africa International Affairs, 91(1): 131-151.

Freedom House (2018) Saudi Arabia Profile [online]. Available at: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/saudi-arabia [Accessed: 12th January 2019]

Full Fact (2018) The UK has licensed at least £4.7bn of arms [online]. Available at: https://fullfact.org/news/uk-has-licensed-least-47bn-arms-exports-saudi-arabia-start-yemen-war/ [Accessed: 12th January 2019]

The White House. (2002) The National Security Strategy Of The United States of America [online]. https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/63562.pdf [Accessed 17th December 2018]

On December 17th 2010, Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire, killing himself in protest and inspiring millions across the Arab world to action. This week, Jessica Northey from Coventry University came to explain the rationale behind these and other protest movements.

What motivates people to action?

We began by looking at Social Movement Theory (SMT), though if there is one thing I’ve learned in this module, it’s that broad conceptual frameworks for ordering the dynamics of development politics rarely always work. For over a century, it has been the perceived wisdom that “no one can say where revolutions will occur, and much less when” (Ellwood, 1905: 59), but that hasn’t stopped SMT academics from trying, nor ‘The Economist’.

Patronisingly entitled ‘The Shoe-Thrower’s Index’, this graph attempted to translate various factors into tangible predictions for which country would fall next during the turbulent Arab Spring. Both the name and the methodology are indicative of western perspectives on the uprisings. Retrospectively, it had varying success, but such indices and SMTs attempt to reduce a very complex set of highly sensitive factors, from many different contexts, into one neat framework. It just isn’t possible.

How do movements impact upon political life?

As I learned from the reading this week, the Arab Spring was completely different to most revolts before it, with no connections to class, nationalism, or, as both Bayat (2013) and Roy (2013) are clear in pointing out, Islamism. Associations with political Islam were merely circumstantial, or somewhat ‘Orientalist’ perceptions of the western media and academics like Fradkin (2013). As Bayat has argued, people had deep grievances concerning political life and participation, and were protesting on the basis of reform not revolt.

A Pashtun Spring?

Many of these same features can be found in 2018’s Pashtun Protection Movement, which saw thousands of Pashtuns of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan (FATA) rising up against state aggression.

FATA has since become absorbed into the neighbouring province, finally providing Pashtuns with codified Human Rights and political participation (Wazir, 2018; Atkins, 2018), and so this a remarkable demonstration of the impact social movements can have upon development politics.

References

Atkins, H. (2018). Pakistan’s ‘Pashtun Spring’ faces off against a colonial-era law. The London School of Economics and Political Science [blog]. Available at: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2018/05/25/pakistans-pashtun-spring-faces-off-against-a-colonial-era-law/  [Accessed: 13^th January 2019]

Bayat, A. (2013). The Arab Spring and Its Surprises. Development and Change, 44(2):587-601.

Ellwood, C. A. (1905) A Psychological Theory of Revolutions. American Journal of Sociology, 11(1): 49-59.  

Fradkin, H. (2013).  Arab Democracy or Islamist Revolution? Journal of Democracy, 24(1): 5-13.

Roy, O. (2013). There will be no Islamist Revolution. Journal of Democracy, 24(1): 14-19.

Wazir, A. (2018) What does the pashtun tahafuz movement want. The Diplomat [online]. Available at: https://thediplomat.com/2018/04/what-does-the-pashtun-tahafuz-movement-want [Accessed 13th January 2019]

To supplement this session, I attended an IDD Guest Seminar Series talk on the ‘The State of Democracy: Perspectives from recent elections’ (Beardsworth, 2018). This helped to frame my understanding of democratisation in the Global South ahead of our seminar with Nic Cheeseman, and offered insights into the case of Zimbabwe.  

Is ‘electoral fallacy’ on the rise?

With multi-party elections on the increase, but without corresponding rises in election quality, it would certainly seem so. What really struck me was seeing just how much of the world suffers from declining electoral quality, or even holds none at all.

This has direct implications for the quality of democracy and therefore development in the Global South.

Does democracy work?

Democracy’s instrumental value in leading to greater accountability and service delivery, and thereby producing states with better governments and societies has been contested (Cheeseman, 2015). Such assumptions have been called into question by de Kadt and Lieberman (2017) in Southern Africa, who show a negative correlation between improved service delivery and government support because of pervasive corruption. Such messy political realities juxtapose the lofty ideals of democratisation, indicating the dangerous short-termism of elections in the South. Furthermore, along with Lindberg’s work in Ghana (2003), they indicate the strong connections between democratisation and neopatrimonial networks in development politics as a whole. So does this help democracy or merely undermine it?

Is democracy dying?

Thinking back to the discussion at the IDD talk, I would say it undermines it. Hopes were high for a ‘New Dispensation’ after the resignation of Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe in 2017, but corruption, vote rigging and electoral violence broke out, demonstrating there was nothing ‘new’ at all, and the ‘dark side’ of elections persisted (Beardsworth, 2018). I have found this week particularly interesting, and so I aim to apply much of what I have learned to the ‘Governance and Statebuilding’ module I have chosen next term.

References

Beardsworth, N. (2018) The State of Democracy: Perspectives from recent elections. IDD Guest Seminar Series, 6th November 2018.

Cheeseman, N. (2015) Democracy in Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

de Kadt, D. and Lieberman, E.S. (2017) ‘Nuanced Accountability: Voter Responses to Service Delivery in Southern Africa’, British Journal of Political Science, pp. 1-31.

Lindberg, S. I. (2003) ‘It’s Our Time to” Chop’: Do Elections in Africa Feed Neo-Patrimonialism rather than Counter-Act It? Democratization 10(2): 121-140.

Nicolas Lemay-Hebert led our session this week, providing a captivating introduction for the ‘Conflict Analysis and Humanitarian Intervention’ module I’ve chosen to take next term, and to which I will apply much of what I’ve learned here.

How do interventions impact everyday life?

The main take-away I had from this session was how the “conflicting objectives” (Lemay et al., 2018) of humanitarian relief versus development assistance could cause such dire implications. Having previously studied some of the history of international development, I am aware of the negative outcomes interventions have often had, but this session really challenged me to think on a much more detailed level about the potentially damaging effects of seemingly insignificant changes. In Haiti, the effects of providing free health services during and after the emergency phase caught my attention. While it is considered a ‘right’ in humanitarian doctrine, it ultimately resulted in bankrupting local health providers and businesses, challenging the ‘Do No Harm’ principle of development (Lemay et al., 2018).

Do No Harm?

An approach devised to limit the impact of NGOs in the 1990s, there have since been several examples of development projects failing to meet this standard, often intensifying social divisions (Anderson 1999). Regardless, Duffield (2001) argues this minimalist approach doesn’t go far enough and that to achieve long-term goals, sustained development assistance needs to be made a priority from the start.

Is ‘unintended’ a justifiable excuse?

In coming away from this debate, I am reminded of the words of former Minister of State for DfID, Rory Stewart. In likening intervention to mountain rescue, he suggested:

“you don’t take a doctorate in mountain rescue, you look for somebody who knows the terrain… a guide who doesn’t press on relentlessly when conditions turn against them” (Rory Stewart, 2011)

Perhaps the development community could learn a lot from this?

Throughout this week I developed a keen desire to study the ‘unintended consequences’ of interventions further, so I will most likely choose this topic for my second assignment. I’ll build on what I’ve learned this week on Haiti, and apply similar frameworks to investigate other contexts, probing the idea of development intervention as a whole.

References

Anderson, M. (1999). Do No Harm: How Aid Can Support Peace – Or War. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.

Duffield, M., Macare, J. and Curtis, D. (2001). Editorial: Politics and Humanitarian Aid. Disasters, 25(4): 269-74.

Lemay-Hebert, N., Martel, A. and Robitaille, P. (2018). “Haiti: tensions between aid relief and development in the health sector”. Humanitarian Alternatives, 8. Available at: http://alternatives-humanitaires.org/en/2018/07/03/haiti-tensions-between-aid-relief-and-development-in-the-health-sector/  [Accessed: 10th January 2019]

Stewart, R. (2011) Time to end the war in Afghanistan [Video file]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwU8eavPInw [Accessed: 10th January 2019].

What is ethnicity?

Central to debates concerning neopatrimonialism is the concept of ethnicity, a key determinant of one’s identity. On reflection, I would say the ‘constructivist’ model best represents the contemporary reality of ethnicity, a socio-political construct with nonetheless powerful meanings to many. Such meanings, often entrenched by colonial powers like the caste system under the British Raj in India, have perpetuated a fixed ‘primordial’ interpretation, which has informed much of post-colonial development politics to this day.

Neopatrimonialism’s role in India?

Ethnic identity in many parts of the Global South has become a central factor in determining votes, a practice operationalised by the patron-client based system of neopatrimonialism. In this way, ethnicity has become highly politicised, as in India, reducing elections to mere “auctions” (Chandra, 2004), in which government services are offered to voters along lines of caste and religion. It will be interesting to see whether this remains an issue in the upcoming election, though there is evidence to suggest such competition among patrons may actually improve service delivery and thereby generate development in India’s slums (Auerbach, 2016).

Is ‘neopatrimonialism’ a useful term?

This example is one of many that problematise normative conceptions of neopatrimonialism, namely that it is the corrupt reserve of African states (Chabal and Daloz, 1999) and that it can ultimately lead to economic stagnation (Sandbrook, 1986), both of which have been solidly refuted by Mkandawire (2015). Such characteristics have been used to categorise politics in the Global South as fundamentally different to that in the North. However, if we apply this framework to the US, not only is President Trump demonstrating ‘Big Man’ characteristics by appointing family members to advisory roles, but ethnicity is becoming an increasingly contentious factor in swaying votes.

What is the relationship between ethnicity and politics?

If we take ethnicity as a form of identity, such politics could equally be applied to the UK’s Brexit referendum, with both sides mobilising votes along lines of ‘young/old’, ‘metropolitan/rural’, or ‘upper/lower class’. All constitute aspects of our identity, which shape our political views in ever increasing ways (Fukuyama, 2018).

So not only is neopatrimonialism an ambiguous concept, but ethnicity itself should not define development politics. Though powerful, it is ultimately just one of many socially-constructed aspects of identity. Perhaps the question regarding neopatrimonialism, is whether its relevance is determined by which lense you view ethnicity through?

References

Auerbach, A. (2016). Clients and Communities: The Political Economy of Party Network Organization and Development in India’s Urban Slums, World Politics, 68 (1): 111-148.

Chabal, P.  and Daloz, J. P. (1999) Africa works: disorder as political instrument. Oxford: Oxford International African Institute in association with James Currey.

Chandra, K. (2004). Elections as Auctions [online]. Seminar, 539. Available at: https://www.india-seminar.com/2004/539/539%20kanchan%20chandra.htm [Accessed: 7th January 2019]

Fukuyama, F. (2018) Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Mkandawire, T. (2015). Neopatrimonialism and the Political Economy of Economic Performance in Africa: Critical Reflections, World Politics, 67(3): 563-612.

Sandbrook, R. (1986). The state and economic stagnation in-tropical Africa. World Development, 14(3): 319–32.

This week our session was led by Nic Cheeseman, whose insights really brought this topic to life. Rapid population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa has led to urbanisation at a remarkable rate, disrupting the dynamics of development politics to create distinct urban arenas of political activity.

Why is Africa urbanising?

In many rural, developing communities around the world, the promise of urban areas as opportunities for employment attracts many to migrate. I personally experienced this in Kathmandu, where the city was bustling one day and then empty the next, as workers returned home to their families in the hills to celebrate Dashain. In the session it was interesting to learn just how much urban workers send in remittances back to their rural families – far out-performing aid – which is something I will apply to my dissertation.

What is the impact on poverty?

Opportunity doesn’t always abound however, and so the attractiveness of urban areas can often be an illusion (Ferguson, 1999). Urban planning can often lag behind, with a lack of adequate housing, services, and sanitation leading to the rise of ‘slums’. However, Holston (2009) disagrees with the use of this over-simplified and disempowering term, arguing that population growth in cities can instead inspire innovation. This reminded me of the work of Julian Simon (1981), who countered sensationalist neo-Malthusians to argue an increase in population pushes collective improvement.

Does urbanisation improve democratisation?

So, urbanisation can be a driver for change, creating radical new ideas among a mobilised working class, who often vote against a disinterested national government (Cheeseman and de Gromont, 2017). In Lagos, this led to the creation of a sub-national government, which was able to generate innovative development solutions for the city through a statebuilding project predicated on ethnopopulism (Cheeseman and Larmer, 2015). This exposed the ‘dodgy’ side of development politics to me, as I learned just how influential methods such as clientelism can be, something we will be exploring further next week.

References

Cheeseman, N., and de Gromont, D. (2017) Managing a mega-city: learning the lessons from Lagos. Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 33(3): 457-477.

Cheeseman, N., and Larmer, M. (2015) Ethnopopulism in Africa: opposition mobilization in diverse and unequal societies. Democratization 22(1): 22-50.

Ferguson, J. (1999) Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

Holston, J. (2009). Insurgent citizenship in an era of global urban peripheries. City & Society, 21(2): 245-267.

Simon, J. L. (1981) The ultimate resource. Oxford: Martin Robertson.

So, is the study and practice of development politics inherently flawed? Post-development theorists would certainly say so, with a nihilistic call to completely abandon the idea of development as a ruined and malfunctioning “invention of the West” (Sachs, 2010: viii). However, denying agency to those in the ‘Global South’ is colonising in of itself, and as Sally Matthews (2017) argues, ignores the cautiously pro-development African perspective. She is part of a much larger community of academics that have proposed several ideas about the ways in which we might be able to ‘decolonise’ the subject, particularly with reference to the African continent, but what does this actually mean?

What does it mean to ‘decolonise’?

As a history graduate, I came to the session with a relatively solid understanding of the historical precedent that has led to such debates, from the ‘Scramble for Africa’ among European powers, to the sweeping post-war rise of independence. Decolonisation in this sense, was the throwing off of Yanguas’s ‘old rules’ (2018) in favour of the hope of a new kind of ‘decolonised’ politics. However, several decades later and the ‘post-colonial hangover’ of legal structures, local elites and neo-colonial interventions still persists, as Aldous Huxley once noted:

“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all lessons that history has to teach.” (Huxley, 1959)

Should we decolonise development politics?

Central to ideas about decolonisation is Edward Said’s seminal work ‘Orientalism’ (1995), one that I am familiar with and which critiques normative ‘eurocentric’ world views and histories. Sabaratnam (2011) builds upon these ideas to frame her six ‘intellectual strategies’ for decolonisation, which I read in preparation for the session.  

In our first group task, I was able to employ one of these strategies by pointing out the discursive Orientalisms in Paul Collier’s ‘Bottom Billion’ (2007). He perceived it to be his Oxford-educated obligation to provide direction to “ill-equipped” (Collier, 2007: ix) African states, which is indicative of the paternalistic way some academics have viewed the ‘Global South’. As a British student, I am aware of Oxford’s own role in the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ movement, reflecting an increasing desire within universities to decolonise academia. But this is merely symbolism, what about knowledge itself?

Does ‘Southern’ knowledge offer the answer?

Southern academics are key to decolonising development politics, but their ideas may well be a reflection of many years based in Northern institutions. Ali Mazrui (1995: 28), for example, applies Weberian interpretations of statehood uncritically to the African context of failed states, such as Somalia. This is later mirrored in development practice in that country, with AMISOM’s 2007 intervention rejecting clan-based political authority in favour of a more western-style multi-party system (Fisher, 2018). This intellectual domination of western frameworks within African ideas only goes to show how ingrained neo-colonial perspectives are within development politics, and how difficult it is to decolonise them.

What should we do?

There is no question that academics, policymakers, development practitioners, and we as students, need to do more to decolonise development politics. In fact, I was surprised to learn just how far we still have to go. The point of contention now is just how far to decolonise and how? Among the many ideas discussed at the end of the session, the one I found most personally achievable was to read and cite more genuinely ‘Southern’ academics in my assignments. This may be a difficult task given the structural inequalities against them (Medie and Kang, 2018), but it is one I will endeavour to apply.

References

Collier, P. (2007) The bottom billion electronic resource: why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Fisher, J. (2018) ‘Somalia and its neighbours: AMISOM and the regional construction of a failed state’. African Affairs. Accessed abstract available at: https://research.birmingham.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/somalia-and-its-neighbours(7129dbfb-4bf8-4ced-9e59-7be4e573b964).html

Huxley, A. (1959) “Case of Voluntary Ignorance. In Collected Essays. New York: Harper.

Matthews, S. (2017). “Colonised Minds? Post-Development Theory and the Desirability of Development in Africa”, Third World Quarterly, 38 (12): 2650-2663.

Mazrui, A. A. (1995). “The Blood of Experience: The Failed State and Political Collapse in Africa”, World Policy Journal, 12 (1): 28-34.

Medie, P. A. and Kang, A. J. (2018) The shocking absence of Global South scholars in international journals [Online]. Available at: https://africanarguments.org/2018/07/30/shocking-absence-global-south-scholars-international-journals/ [Accessed 6th January 2019].

Sabaratnam, M. (2011). “IR in Dialogue…but Can we Change the Subjects? A Typology of Decolonising Strategies for the Study of World Politics”, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 39 (3): 781-803.

Sachs, W. (2010) The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power 2nd ed. London and New York: Zed Books.

Said, E.W. (1995) Orientalism. Reprinted with new afterword. edn, London: Penguin.

Yanguas, P. (2018) Why we lie about aid: development and the messy politics of change. London : Zed Books.

What is ‘politics’?

This was the first of three questions that kicked off the seminar, and the answers we came to are far from simple. On our tables we discussed notions of decision-making and compromise, which are perhaps more succinctly summarised by Leftwich (2006: 4) as “all the activities of cooperation, negotiation and conflict in the use, production and distribution of resources”. However, this is a very sanitised definition that, while allowing for conflict, avoids the complexity of it all.

This complexity stems from “institutionalizing uncertainty” (Przeworski, 1991: 14), where institutions set ‘the rules of the game’, but politics has free roam to play ‘games within the rules’ (Leftwich, 2006: 4). In many developing states with weak institutions, the rules are easier to manipulate, and the games all the more chaotic for it. The contentious nature of politics in such countries is therefore mirrored in the messy reality of development.

Does ‘politics’ matter for development?

Yanguas (2018: 75) sees development as “institutional change… the transition from old rules to new rules, and the often-difficult path that lies between them.” Development, therefore, is synonymous with change, but the implications of that ‘difficult path’ for development politics are often messy and unpredictable. Issues like decolonisation, urbanisation, intervention, democratisation, social movements and autocracy promotion show how change can have negative outcomes, as we will explore further in coming weeks. Reflecting on this as a history graduate, there is in fact nothing new about this idea at all, as sixteenth century political theorist Machiavelli once wrote:

“There is nothing more difficult to execute, nor more dubious of success, nor more dangerous to administer, than to introduce new political orders.” (Machiavelli, 2005: 74)

And yet, the history of development is littered with examples of the ‘Global North’ attempting to impose their own framework of rules onto the incompatible political systems of developing states in the ‘Global South’.

Is ‘politics’ in the Global North different to that in the Global South?

These simplistic binary terms are analytically problematic, as they hold both geographical and temporal exceptions. As I was surprised to learn from Hans Rosling, the differences between these two groups have become increasingly blurred in recent decades (Gapminder, 2018).

In an increasingly multi-polar world, the fading influence of international institutions and the emergence of rising powers highlights how outdated these terms are. Nevertheless, their use in the literature remains pervasive due to differences with political ties to the military, the separation of powers, and the strength of institutions.

Fukuyama’s ‘Getting to Denmark’ thesis (2014) reminds me of previous research I conducted on Helmand province, Afghanistan, in which British hopes were to create “Belgium in a couple of years” (Gordon, 2011). There is clearly something attractive about using small developed Northern states as development blueprints for the ‘Global South’, but this ignores the intricacies of their political systems.

Attitudes regarding the ‘Global North’/’South’ divide are difficult to overcome, perhaps because they became so entrenched following centuries of colonialism. Does the fact we continue to use these terms mean the study of development politics is inherently flawed?

References

Fukuyama, F. (2014) Political order and political decay: from the industrial revolution to the globalization of democracy. London: Profile Books.

Gapminder (2018) Income [online]. Available at: https://www.gapminder.org/about-gapminder/ [Accessed: 8th January 2019]

Gordon, S. (2011). Interview in: War Without End? [TV Episode]. In L. Telling, (2011) Afghanistan. London: BBC2. 2011, June 26, 2300hrs.

Leftwich, A. (2006) Drivers of change: refining the analytical framework: conceptual and theoretical issues. York: University of York, Department of Politics.

Machiavelli, N. (2005) The prince electronic resource. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Przeworski, A. (1991). Democracy and the market. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Yanguas, P. (2018) Why we lie about aid: development and the messy politics of change. London : Zed Books.