Short Abstract:
International power shifts have caused changes in International Development cooperation. New actors, such as the BRICS, are challenging the established donors by promoting their South-South cooperation as an alternative. This panel investigates these trends in the context of the post-2015 agenda.
Long Abstract:
Due to the emergence of new actors on the international scene, changes can be observed in the power relations of the international system. This is reflected in the area of International Development Cooperation. Countries such as China, Brazil, India and South Africa (the BRICS countries), among others, have shown significant increases in their respective cooperation activities. They present their technical cooperation as South-South cooperation (SSC), a cooperation modality that takes place among the members of the "Global South".
At the very least, since the 4th High-Level meeting on Aid Effectiveness in Busan in 2011, SSC has been recognized as a separate modality of cooperation. As a result, the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC) has been established to foster a dialogue between SSC providers and NSC donors. Nevertheless, part of the new (or re-emerging) providers of SSC make a point of maintaining their distance from the established donors, the members of the OECD´s Development Assistance Committee (DAC). In the context of the upcoming post-2015 agenda and the official adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the United Nations the question remains how South-South cooperation will shape new trends in development cooperation.
This panel asks what kind of policy approaches the providers of South-South cooperation take towards the post-2015 agenda and how the established institutions respond to these new actors on the scene. It aims to combine case studies on SSC providers and their development policies with research on current trends in international development cooperation.
Accepted papers:
Session 1
The Path toward Common Ground: Reviewing the 'New Actors in International Development' Research Agenda
Erik Lundsgaarde
(Danish Institute for International Studies)
Signe Cold-Ravnkilde
(Danish Institute for International Studies)
Adam Fejerskov
(Danish Institute for International Studies)
Paper short abstract:
This paper assesses the literature on a diverse set of actors in international development, highlighting differences within OECD-DAC and South-South cooperation provider groups and the processes of interaction among them to provide a common foundation for the analysis of cooperation approaches.
Paper long abstract:
The rising prominence of new state and non-state actors in international politics has stimulated extensive discussion in the social sciences over the last decade and development cooperation has been a central arena for conceptualizing the encounter between old and new powers. This paper critically reflects on the substantial body of scholarship that seeks to document the characteristics of new actors in international development, identify their influence over development cooperation norms and practices, and chart the consequences of their engagement for global development governance. The review underlines the importance of questioning the homogeneity of actor constellations, relationships and ideas, especially asking to what extent the commonly used binary concepts of development cooperation provider groups adequately capture relevant distinctions among the actors and add analytical value to research on development cooperation. The paper advocates adopting more analytically and conceptually diverse approaches to study the interaction between heterogeneous development actors and homogenizing forces in the field of development cooperation, recognizing the complexity and (dis)continuities of stability and change in this arena. The paper presented will represent the further development of a working paper on this topic published by the Danish Institute for International Studies in April 2016.
South South Cooperation and Hegemonic Order in a Post-Aid Era
Caroline Hughes
(University of Notre Dame)
Behrooz Morvaridi
(University of Bradford)
Paper short abstract:
Contemporary discourses of South South Cooperation suggest a challenge to northern hegemony from the Global South, but the restatement of this within a context of the globalization of capital and production chains suggests a loss of the radical potential of the original formulation.
Paper long abstract:
The changing geography of poverty and inequality and the emergence of new aid actors have disrupted the neat binaries of developed/developing countries, rich/poor and donor/recipient that underpinned the meaning of development assistance in the second half of the twentieth century. Under the umbrella of BRICS, a group of countries are challenging the whole notion of development that is constructed in the global north at the exclusion of the south. The essence of the challenge to the hegemony of current global governance institutions is an alternative network of organisations, which effectively distinguish 'themselves as knowing from first-hand experience what it is like to do development, as well as to receive aid' (2013). Embedded within the promotion of 'South to South' cooperation (SSC) is the concept of mutual self-interest between development partners and a rejection of dependency relationships based on ex-colonial power relations. A key aspect of the original conceptualisation of SSC in the 1960s was that this should empower states to counter flows of capital that support exploitative economic practices, disrupting the hegemony of traditional northern donors. The contemporary discourse of SSC by contrast sits comfortably within a neoliberal framework, promoting the closer integration of national economies into globalised production chains and global financial flows. Are new forms of South-South Cooperation and public-private partnerships challenging the aid and development model? Or are they bolstering it by mobilizing new sources of ideological legitimacy that promote consent to a process that in fact expands exploitative relationships?
South-South cooperation and horizontality - differences in aid modalities? The case of Brazil in Mozambique
Jurek Seifert
(Ruhr University Bochum)
Paper short abstract:
The paper analyzes whether South-South cooperation can be distinguished from North-South cooperation by looking at horizontality and power relations in Brazil´s cooperation in Mozambique. The study is presented in the context of the discussion on Southern Development partners in the post-2015 agenda
Paper long abstract:
Due to the emergence of new actors on the international scene, changes can be observed in the area of international development cooperation. Countries such as China, Brazil and India present themselves as providers of South-South cooperation (SSC) and maintain a distance from the established donors of the OECD´s Development Assistance Committee (DAC).
South-South cooperation is ascribed a notion of horizontality that distinguishes it from North-South cooperation (NSC). SSC providers declare that their cooperation is horizontal, meaning that it based on solidarity that stems from the shared colonial past, that it occurs between equal partners and that it creates mutual benefits for both sides.
The paper analyzes these characteristics of SSC by conducting an inductive case study. Brazil is presented as a prominent SSC provider and the country´s interaction with one of its Southern partners, Mozambique, is analyzed. The paper asks (a) whether it is possible to carry out horizontal cooperation in an asymmetrical context and (b) whether it is possible to identify characteristics of SSC that distinguish it from NSC. The preliminary results presented in the paper are based on field research conducted in both countries. The case study is analyzed against the background of ongoing shifts in the international development landscape and the current discussion around the post-2015 agenda.
The influence of providers of South South Cooperation on traditional Northern donors: The reactions within the USA and the UK
Milena Elsinger
(University of Marburg)
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores the responses of two traditional donors (the UK and the USA) to the activities of Southern providers. It studies their reactions on three levels: their perception of Southern providers, their response in official narratives and their practices.
Paper long abstract:
Most existing research on the topics of South-South Cooperation has focused on the individual donor policies of Southern providers, often in comparison with the model of traditional donors. However, the consequences that traditional donors draw from this increased South-South cooperation remain an understudied field of research.
This paper is a valuable addition to the discussion and investigates the consequences that two traditional donors draw from the activities of Southern providers, namely the United Kingdom and the United States. I use a qualitative approach to analyse government documents and expert interviews over a ten-year period, which allows me to look at three levels within the reaction of the traditional providers: first, their perception of Southern providers. Are Southern providers perceived as a threat? Are they taken as a model for cooperation? Second, the level of the narrative: what does the Northern provider claim to do in response to Southern providers? And lastly, the level of practice: how much of the narrative's claims are actually put into practice?
The paper argues that the initial responses of both donors are comparable: in both states, Southern providers are perceived to be a challenge to the development system. Both pledge in their official narratives to increase support for activities related to good governance and human rights and both fail to deliver on the translation of these narratives into practice. The paper investigates the motives behind this apparent contradiction and thereby contributes to the discussion about the future of relationships between the two groups.
Brazil, China, India and South Africa´s development cooperation approaches in health: a critical analysis of Southern expertise as transnational policy transfer sites.
Manaíra Assunção
(Hamburg Universität)
Paper short abstract:
The paper investigates how Southern expertise through South-South cooperation projects in health consolidates itself as transnational policy-making and transfer site. Brazil, China, India and South Africa's expertise is based on symbolic engagements with Northern and Southern development actors.
Paper long abstract:
South-South cooperation (SSC) projects managed between two developing countries have been high on the agenda of the Global South, particularly of emerging economies such as Brazil, China, India and South Africa. In the health field, these initiatives have enabled sharing these countries´ innovative domestic health programmes which provide powerful models to improve health policies and systems in general. Those health experts and their knowledge circuits allowed for new transnational policy sites, in which health policies are elaborated and transferred to other contexts. Instead of analysing the country's individual motivations and foreign policy objectives behind these initiatives, the paper aims to map the health experts, their institutional backgrounds and the SSC projects in health which have contributed to translating national experiences and opening socio-political spaces in which health and development professionals interact. These health experts designing and implementing projects in third countries do not belong to a development agency per se as the Northern development expert. The credibility emanating from the Southern expertise permitted these domestic health expert communities to play at the global level and influence drivers and determinants in both fields, health and development. This credibility follows different symbolic engagements between proximity and distance with actors in both fields: on the one hand, pushing for common policy solutions elaborated by the South for the South, on the other hand claiming alternative models and confronting the verticalized donor-recipient structure. The paper will critically examine how the Southern expertise has established itself as transnational site for policy-making and transfer.
The BRICS effect: The impacts south-south cooperation has on cooperation practices in Mozambique
Geovana Zoccal Gomes
(BMZ)
Paulo Esteves
(PUC-Rio)
Paper short abstract:
SSC has been implemented as an alternative to traditional cooperation practices. Accordingly, traditional donors need to accommodate these new forces. The paper will discuss the impact SSC has on the practices of the international development cooperation field, in light of the Mozambican case.
Paper long abstract:
After a small number of research visits in Mozambique, it is very clear why the country is considered the "donor-darling" of the field of international development cooperation (IDC). The elevated number of stakeholders and initiatives taking place there indicates the complexity of the field. In light of Pierre Bourdieu's thinking, a social field is composed by a number of agents relating to each other based on different hierarchies of power. A social field is under constant transformation, and the IDC field is no different. Historically a recipient country of North-South Cooperation, Mozambique has recently seen an increasingly participation of emerging countries, such as the BRICS, implementing South-South Cooperation as an alternative model to the traditional practices. Hence, traditional donors need to accommodate the new forces present in the field. The inclusion of new agents and alternative practices endowed bargaining power to recipient countries, such as Mozambique, increasing their capacity to negotiate the definitions and implementation of their cooperation programmes. The ownership principle, fostered by Paris Declaration, is one of the reflexed of these transformations happening in the IDC field. Indicating that the aid effectiveness depends on mutual responsibility and on commitments agreed by both donor and recipient, the ownership principal reveals that the relation between those agents has been rethought. Therefore, the paper will discuss the impacts the growth of South-South Cooperation has on the practices of the IDC field, in light of cooperation programmes and projects taking place in Mozambique.
Old and new relations between Brazil-Japan and Triangular cooperation: The case of ProSAVANA
Laís Caroline Kuss
(Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina)
Paper short abstract:
An analysis of the cooperation between Brazil and Japan that has developed in ProSAVANA, focusing on aspects of the North-South relationship which can contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between "emerging" and "traditional donors" on the context of triangular cooperation.
Paper long abstract:
Japanese International Cooperation Agency has operated in Brazil for over fifty years. In this period, Brazil and Japan have developed dozens of bilateral cooperation projects and also entered in the arena of Triangular Cooperation (TrC) in the 1980s. One such example is the ProSAVANA program, a partnership between Brazil, Japan and Mozambique for agricultural development of the mozambican savannah, the biggest initiative between both countries in terms of time horizon and budget. ProSAVANA was established in 2009 and can be considered an outspread of cooperation experience between Japan and Brazil in the Cerrado region. Then, an analysis of ProSAVANA can reveal some characteristics of the relationship between "emerging" and "traditional donors" and how these relations impact the agenda of development cooperation.
The first section is dedicated to introduce the cooperation Brazil-Japan as part of a friendly relationship in which cooperation for development plays an important role. To introduce Triangular Cooperation there is a second section presenting a definition of TrC, North-South Cooperation and South-South Cooperation. In the third section the focus is the TrC between Japan and Brazil, including the main frameworks constructed and the main areas of experiences replication in third countries. Finally, the last section has as objective the analysis of Japan-Brazil relations in the ProSAVANA, involving Mozambique, and will introduce what constitutes the program. This section will present a discussion focusing on aspects of what is called "North-South" relationship, looking for the contributions can be done for the changing paradigms of international development cooperation.
China and India as 'Rising Powers': of Methods and Possibities between dialogic and dialectics
Rityusha Tiwary
(Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, University of Delhi)
Paper short abstract:
This paper revisits the concept of rising power through China and India investigating the methods to interpretation that this term connotes.
Paper long abstract:
The idea behind the usage of 'rising powers' vocabulary is prima facie poised in the light of changes in power dynamics of world politics. China and India studied together in this context invariably invite a prori analyses in terms of nature of their interactions, interpretation of their ideas of Self and their future behaviours. The methods of enquiry are limiting and restricted to an overarching paradigm.
This paper investigates the term ' rising powers' in contexts of China and India taking cues from the interpretation of their ideas of modern 'Self', their Asian interconnections and seperations. The presence of multiple and oft negleced variables lead to reinterperation of possibilties of cooperation and collaboration as well contradictions of inter- state, inter- regional rivalries.