The objectives of aid to development
The concept of international assistance appeared in the
19th century but the real expansion of foreign aid to development
started with the launch of the Marshall plan and the creation of the Bretton
Woods institutions in the aftermath of World War II. Since then, the history of
international cooperation has been largely influenced by the evolution of
geopolitics and development thinking.1 Initially widely considered
as a weapon against the soviet influence the objectives of foreign aid took
various directions following the donors and their motivations. Hence, aid has
been attributed for many different purposes and in many different forms. Even
if we stick to official objectives of bilateral development agencies, they
appear to be very diverse.2 They go from self-sustaining growth to
poverty reduction through good governance. But the variety gets even larger as
we consider donor's real intentions. Amongst
1 See Kanbur (2003 p 4-9)
2 See Lensink and White (1999, p 15-16)
the latter, some are hardly avowable3. As Boone
(1996, p306) writes: «Despite the popular belief that aid is primarily
motivated to assist the poor, substantial evidence points to political,
strategic, and welfare interests of donor countries as the driving force behind
programs.»
For Alesina and Dollar (1998), there is general agreement
about what matters for aid allocation, namely poverty of the recipients,
strategic interests, colonial history, trade, political institutions, etc. But
the dominant variable can be very different from a country to another. After
looking at several studies analysing the determinants of foreign aid, Boone
(1996) concludes that aid flows primarily reflect donor's interest rather than
recipient needs. In this sense, Alesina and Dollar (2000) find evidences that
assistance allocation was essentially dictated by political and strategic
consideration much more than by economic needs and policy performance of the
recipients. In a more recent study, Berthelemy (2004) find that the vast
majority of donors behave in a rather selfish way.
3. Aid effectiveness
The question of whether aid globally works or not has always
been highly controversial and the debate is constantly and rapidly evolving.
The diversity of goals, donors and types of aids makes the concept of «aid
effectiveness» quite unclear. In consequence, the efficiency of aid has
been approached from different methodological and ideological point of views.
Some studies have concluded that aid was only able to increase bureaucracy,
enlarge inequalities or develop corruption. On the other hand, many economists
have argued that growth would have been lower and poverty worse without
international assistance.
As well mentioned by Kanbur (2000, p15): «Given the great
ideological divides in development doctrines and in aid policy, and given the
ambiguities in the theoretical analysis of the impact of aid [...] empirical
literature on aid evaluation has taken on special significance.» This
empirical literature can roughly be divided in two main streams. The first one
investigates the effects of foreign aid on receiving countries. The other one
studies the determinants of foreign aid allocation and the behaviour of donor
agencies. Both have led to
3 Hjertholm and White (2000, p81) attempt to synthesize the
core evolution of aid throughout the last decades. But their schematic
synthesis does not reflect the large diversity of objectives going form very
altruistic behaviour to perfectly selfish interests.
numerous analysis and fierce debates. However, for the purpose of
this work, we will essentially focus on the first part of this literature.
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