The Busan Conference: Refashioning the Aid Effectiveness Myth for a Polycentric World

The fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF 4), which was held in Busan, South Korea, from 29 November to 1 December 2011, differed considerably from earlier DAc encounters insofar as emerging donors (and civil society organisations, whose involvement and role had already been a central issue at the meeting in Accra 2008; cf.

Notable participants from the global South were Brazil, India, Mexico, and China, who influenced the agenda and negotiation process in a remarkable way. These states presented themselves as unique development partners, whose aim was to strengthen South-South cooperation based on first-hand experiences of colonial heritage and liberation, cultural prox­imity, close trade and resource exchange boundaries, and being experi­enced with the role dynamics at the ‘receiving end’ of the aid flow chain. While some ‘emerging donors’ such as Brazil, India, China, and South Africa had signed the Paris Declaration—albeit in their role as recipient countries—the content and goals of the Paris Declaration were and are of less significance to them as donors, as they do not share the same donor history (and in many cases not even the term ‘donor’) and rejected the blueprint of appropriate development that had been outlined in the Paris Declaration (Sondermann 2012, 2).

The main outcome of the HLF, the Busan Partnership Document, rep­resents a ‘new and more inclusive’ consensus (OECD-DAC 2011, 1) on the goals and norms of development cooperation, which particularly offers a reinterpretation of aid effectiveness and, in a broader sense, of develop­ment as such. While the legitimacy of development cooperation had been a questionable and recurring theme for established donors right from the beginning of the aid effectiveness discourse, the Partnership Document still refers to the older formula of legitimacy by effectiveness but seeks dif­ferent ways of addressing legitimacy. Thereby it provides a more inclusive idea of legitimate development cooperation. At the same time, the scope of such commitments should be seen with a caveat. The declaration is voluntary by nature, and the southern donors insisted on explicitly not­ing this in the Partnership Document, thus underlining the non-binding character of all clauses. While not changing the nature and status of the clauses, it again marks a symbolic distance between established and non- traditional donors (Sondermann 2012).

As main commitments entrenched in the Partnership Document, two aspects are worth noting which reflect the changing dynamics of global donor relations and echo the search for a new donor consensus on aid effectiveness.

Search for Inclusive Positions and Appreciation of Difference Throughout the Partnership Document, the signatories to the declaration are viewed as ‘a new partnership that is broader and more inclusive than ever before’ (OECD-DAC 2011, 1). Yet for the first time the document also affirms the meaning of diversity in donorship, donor proliferation, and historically different justifications for development cooperation.

Also South-South Cooperation (SSC) becomes valued at least as a complement for North-South development cooperation. While the latter is still regarded as main form of development cooperation, SSC is taken as a sideline project that offers ‘additional diversity of resources’ (OECD- DAC 2011, 4). Besides this junior partner approach, the document also appreciates the positive sides of a diversified network of donors, that is, the merits of ‘distinct roles’ or ‘embracing diversity’. Even donor prolifera­tion, which was previously viewed with high suspicion by the DAC donor community (Manning 2006; Naim 2007), now serves as a positively con­noted tool for better local ownership of development goals and norms. The Partnership Document values the potential of SSC and triangular cooperation to bring ‘effective, locally owned solutions that are appropri­ate to country contexts’ (OECD-DAC 2011, 9). Being a donor and aid recipient at the same time is not perceived as a political paradox but as an opportunity to ‘enrich co-operation’ (OECD-DAC 2011, 10) and make use of local expertise.

Broadened Political Agenda and Focus on Results The Partnership Document distinctively aims to create terms and formulas that can be supported by a large number of donors, even if they belong to differing camps in terms of political/ideological meaning and justification/ legitimation of aid. Thus, the document highlights in numerous paragraphs the potential and perspectives of ‘sharing’, for example, when talking of ‘shared principles’, ‘shared growth’, ‘shared experience’, or ‘shared lessons’ (OECD-DAC 2011). This is characteristic, as it expresses the search for inclusiveness and tries to operationalise this concept at the policy level. Sharing thus translates to a distinct set of common terms, of which a silencing of the terms aid and poverty reduction in exchange for a more intense focus on results is a remarkable discursive effect.

This identification of goals avoids a language of deficiencies and practices of othering, which had been familiar for traditional devel­opment relations (Ziai 2004). Furthermore, as ideological positions may vary significantly, its focus on results allows accepting opposing political paths and concentrating on objective, measurable outcomes. Thus, the idea of development cooperation becomes justified mainly by output legitimacy, though at the price of leaving questions of input and throughput legitimacy to the individual concern of the respec­tive donors (Kindornay and Samy 2012). The focus on results-based development is thus able to create a different and (in today’s fractured aid architecture) more powerful storyline about development policies, which prevents falling prey to the well-known irritations and misun­derstandings that have thwarted communication between Western and non-traditional donors. To focus on development results bears the potential to create neutral terms that allow for consensus building, even if the donors only partially share an intersubjective perspective on development.

So how has the aid effectiveness myth further evolved? In the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation (GPEDC), previous tales of aid and aid effectiveness are erased and rewritten using differ­ent phrases and a more inclusive and compromising tone.

A Tale of Diversity in Donorship This aspect responds to the changing donor architecture, while striving for more inclusiveness. It is nurtured by the idea of more inclusive, global development cooperation between development partners who share a common set of principles. It proposes a division of labour for global aid governance that values the roles and achievements of ‘emerging donors’ while the main responsibility is still located at the established donor club. However, in doing so it composes programmatic roles for ‘emerging donors’ that build on their local expertise, their spatial and geopolitical position, and their capacities as North-South bridge builders, thereby recreating a kind of dichotomy between donors (Mawdsley 2012).

A Tale of Development Effectiveness This aspect refers to the concept of development and development effectiveness as such. While it seeks a broad consensus among Western donors, emerging powers and recipient countries, it promotes a set of terms that are obviously regarded as facilitating consensus building, as they seem to be shared by a broad alliance of donors. Important points of reference are ‘growth’, ‘results’, and ‘effectiveness’. That being said, the concept of development becomes more driven by the growth dogma and is ‘post-aid’ (Haymen 2012, 9) insofar as it seldom mentions aid as the central material source but instead focuses solely on economic and technical cooperation. By now, this allows different readings of development effectiveness. Development effectiveness might for once stand as a synonym for aid effectiveness, albeit with a clearer focus on results, whereas other understandings refer to development effectiveness as a broadened agenda that goes beyond aid, and a third understanding speaks of development effectiveness in order to stress the need to integrate human rights and social justice into the development agenda (Eyben 2013a, 88).

A closer look at the refashioned aid effectiveness myth reveals to what extent the reformulations limit discursive space (silencing), whether they open up negotiation arenas and bear productive powers (emancipation), or whether they also entail harmonising and depoliticising functions.

Regarding the tale of diversity in donorship, the harmonising function seems to be the most important one. In contrast to earlier accusations of ‘rogue aid’ (Naim 2007) or at least critical perceptions of donor prolifera­tion (Manning 2006), especially with referral to China’s role in the aid monopoly, the refashioned aid effectiveness myth intermediates between the different camps and allows reinventing the DAC as an arena which is characterised by inclusiveness, sharing, and learning. Thereby, the myth becomes productive in creating a set of roles for established as well as ‘emerging donors’. While the traditional geography of donor relations is still taken to be the most important one, the material and symbolic power of aid, gift, and giving is dislocated, with ‘emerging donors’ now fulfill­ing complementary functions. While this ascription is in line with a partial power shift, it also leads to the creation of new dichotomies of knowledge and capabilities: the established donors still claim the role of ‘development experts’ driven by objectifiable, measurable knowledge, whereas emerg­ing donors are viewed as the ones who can provide localised expertise. This perception of emerging donors creates certain roles and responsi­bilities, whereas other characteristics of their activities—especially the very material aspects of South-South Cooperation and the ‘knowledge capital’ (Eyben 2013b, 4) attached to this—become less visible. Thus, this new version of the aid effectiveness myth also bears some silencing functions that go hand in hand with depoliticising the roles and history of non- traditional donorship.

However, the refashioned myth can also carry emancipatory functions insofar as it can be taken as a vehicle in order to make the DAC are­nas more accessible to non-traditional donors. How far this function can be carried out depends on the audience, the structure of the negotiation arena, and the way non-traditional donors acquire development discourses and modes of aid governance. At the moment, the careful framing of their roles as ‘participant observers’ (Mawdsley et al. 2013, 35) tells as much about role inconsistencies as it does about the non-adoption of com­mon principles. However, some emancipatory trajectories may lie in the readiness of ‘emerging donors’ to engage with traditional donors, their knowledge-sharing, and the embedding of the GPEDC into reconfigured aid governance structures (Eyben 2013b; Mawdsley et al. 2013).

The tale of development effectiveness also displays a harmonising func­tion as it seeks to create a term that serves the interests of different actors. The ability to offer a compromise-building formula comes through the creation of a storyline that is open for differing interpretations and allows overcoming ‘incommensurabilities’ (Yanow 1992), while at the same time it facilitates communication and policy learning among a diverse com­munity of actors. While development effectiveness is in fact clearly opera­tionalised with a set of indicators, it provides at the same time a flexible framework for mainstreaming efficacy, transparency, and results-based management within all fields of development policies. While this is a fairly neo-liberal approach that can be traced back to advanced liberal modes of governance and new public management, such roots (and their implica­tions) play a subordinate role, as first and foremost the harmonising func­tion of development effectiveness represents a crucial and unique strategic achievement for a diversified donor community.

Thus, the harmonising function is closely connected to dcpoliticising notions: The MDGs had already been criticised for their ahistorical and depoliticising tendencies (Ziai 2006), yet they were less influential in creat­ing a universal concept of development. Here, development effectiveness might be more successful, as it systemically broadens the policy agenda as far as possible so that the positivist idea of development as linear, universal, and measurable can be adopted by an even wider community of develop­ment actors. This being said, the tale of development effectiveness might also serve emancipatory functions, inasmuch as it stresses local ownership of development goals and seems to support a wide understanding of own­ership that focuses on local agency, including veto-player options, which is a conceptual evolution/change we can also witness in the post-MDG negotiations. Yet this directly depends on how non-traditional donors and civil society make use of the DAC arena or alternative fora, a question which remains unsolved until today.

The GPEDC opens a new chapter in a story which began more than a decade ago. By bringing developing countries, new donors, and civil society representatives to the table, it represents a break from the DAC- dominated past. Yet it seems that this new beginning might also constitute the end to a more ambitious aid effectiveness endeavour. Broadening the agenda and widening the set of actors has not been met by an appropriate follow-up process to streamline agendas and interests or bridge differ­ences, as the proceedings of the first High-Level Forum of the GPEDC in Mexico in April 2014 showed. Instead, non-traditional donors have kept their cautious attitude, partly politically motivated by the OECD- DAC’s continued co-leadership of the process, while DAC donors have— as reviews show—dramatically failed to live up to their commitments. Moreover, it remains unclear and unsolved which role the Busan partner­ship shall play next to the UN-led ‘global partnership for development’ (which the MDGs had called upon) or the more ambitious ‘global part­nership for effective sustainable partnership’, which came out of the prepa­rations of the post-MDG agenda. The Busan Partnership is not a UN process and it seems even more difficult to reconcile the two processes (and also the third stream of debate on ‘Financing for Development’) now that the aid effectiveness agenda has lost its initial narrow but more clearly defined purpose—a process interpreted as OECD-DAC mission creep by UN staff and some countries.