Why has the West disbursed vertiginous sums of money to the Palestinians after Oslo? What have been donors’ motivations and above all the political consequences of the funds spent?
Based on original ...academic research and first hand evidence, this book examines the interface between diplomacy and international assistance during the Oslo years and the intifada. By exploring the politics of international aid to the Palestinians between the creation of the Palestinian Authority and the death of President Arafat (1994-2004), Anne Le More reveals the reasons why foreign aid was not more beneficial, uncovering a context where funds from the international community was poured into the occupied Palestinian territory as a substitute for its lack of real diplomatic engagement. This book also highlights the perverse effects such huge amounts of money has had on the Palestinian population and territory, on Israeli policies in the occupied Palestinian territory, and not least on the conflict itself, particularly the prospect of its resolution along a two-state paradigm.
International Assistance to the Palestinians after Oslo gives a unique narrative chronology that makes this complex story easy to understand. These features make this book a classic read for both scholars and practitioners, with lessons to be learned beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
'In meticulous detail, she traces the international aid effort, and identifies why it has so dramatically failed to deliver the ‘tangible results’ it once promised. Her answer is clear: heavy Palestinian dependence on the Israeli economy, coupled with Israeli policies of territorial control—illegal settlement activity, roadblocks and other mobility restrictions, and construction of the separation barrier—have made it all but impossible for the West Bank and Gaza to flourish, even with large amounts of external assistance......this is an excellent volume. It certainly should be required reading for anyone studying the conflict—and most especially for diplomats, aid officials and others directly involved with the issues that Le More so ably explores'- Rex Brynen, McGill University, Canada; International Affairs
"...the strength of this book lies in the breadth of analysis, its well-articulated and evidenced arguments, and its focus on the role of the four main third-party actors: the United States, the EU, the UN and the World Bank..." -- Mandy Turner, University of Brandford; International Peacekeeping Journal
'International Assistance to the Palestinians After Oslo, the first in Routledge's Studies on the Arab-Israeli Conflict Series, provides an important critique of the belief that reconstruction, development, and humanitarian aid form essential counterparts to political processes aimed at resolving longstanding violent conflicts....Le More does a masterful job placing ostensibly technocratic donor mechanisms in political context.' - Ali Abunimab - Journal of Palestine Studies, Spring 2009
'This monograph tackling the thorny question of the politics of aid in Palestine is essential reading for anyone interested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, more broadly, the politics of aid in a conflict environment....The message in Le More's book is as meticulous and clear as it is sobering.' - Nathalie Tocci, The International Spectator, Vol.44, No. 3, September 2009
Introduction 1. Aid Because of Politics: The Analytical, Legal and Institutional Frameworks 1.1 Analytical background: aid, politics, conflict and peacebuilding 1.2 International law, discourse, and perceptions 1.3 The aid coordination architecture: a political framework for assistance 2. Israeli Policies: The Territorial, Demographic, and Socio-Economic Fragmentation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory Territorial separation, cantonment, dispossession, and segregation 2.1 De-development and macroeconomic decline under Oslo and the intifada 2.2 The emergence of a humanitarian crisis 3. Palestinian Adjustment: The Rise and Fall of Arafat’s Regime 3.1 Authoritarianism and the personalization of power 3.2 Corruption 3.3 Security, human rights abuses, and the failure to rein in domestic opposition 4. Aid Instead of Politics: Multiple Actors, Fragmented Interests, Limited Influence 4.1 The bilateral protagonists: the US plays; the EU pays 4.2 American-European rivalry 4.3 The multilateral sponsors: the UN ‘processes’; the World Bank leads 5. Espousing Israeli Policies: Supporting the ‘Peace Process’ 5.1 Short-term fixes, political relief, and variation on a similar theme 5.2 Mitigating the socio-economic and humanitarian crises 5.3 Underwriting the process of Palestinian territorial fragmentation 6. Funding Palestinian Adjustment: Regime Creation and the Undermining of Palestinian State Building 6.1 Bailing out the PA: budget support, 1994-1998 & 2000-2005 6.2 Legitimizing the regime; de-democratizing Palestinian politics 6.3 Reforming the regime, 2002-2005 Conclusion
Anne Le More currently works for the United Nations in New York. She holds a PhD in International Relations from Oxford University. Her research interests include the Middle East, and the Arab and Muslim world more broadly. She has published a number of articles and is the co-editor of Aid, Diplomacy and Facts on the Ground: The Case of Palestine (Chatham House, London, 2005).
The OECD's Development Assistance Committee (DAC) conducts periodic reviews of the individual development co-operation efforts of DAC members. The policies and programmes of each member are ...critically examined approximately once every five years. DAC peer reviews assess the performance of a given member, not just that of its development co-operation agency, and examine both policy and implementation. They take an integrated, system-wide perspective on the development co-operation and humanitarian assistance activities of the member under review. Contents Portugal's aid at a glance Context of Portugal's peer review The DAC's main findings and recommendations Chapter 1. Towards a comprehensive Portuguese development effort Chapter 2. Portugal's vision and policies for development co-operation Chapter 3. Allocating Portugal's official development assistance Chapter 4. Managing Portugal's development co-operation Chapter 5. Portugal's development co-operation delivery and partnerships Chapter 6. Results management and accountability of Portugal's development co-operation Chapter 7. Portugal's humanitarian assistance Annex A. Progress since the 2010 DAC peer review recommendations Annex B. OECD/DAC standard suite of tables Annex C. Field visit to Sao Tome and Principe Annex D. Portugal's credit lines 2001-14.
Combining rigorous academic scholarship with the experience of a senior Pentagon policymaker, Mara E. Karlin explores the key national security issue of our time: how to effectively build partner ...militaries. Given the complex and complicated global security environment, declining U.S. defense budgets, and an increasingly connected (and often unstable) world, the United States has an ever-deepening interest in strengthening fragile states. Particularly since World War II, it has often chosen to do so by strengthening partner militaries. It will continue to do so, Karlin predicts, given U.S. sensitivity to casualties, a constrained fiscal environment, the nature of modern nationalism, increasing transnational security threats, the proliferation of fragile states, and limits on U.S. public support for military interventions. However, its record of success is thin.While most analyses of these programs focus on training and equipment, Building Militaries in Fragile States argues that this approach is misguided. Instead, given the nature of a fragile state, Karlin homes in on the outsized roles played by two key actors: the U.S. military and unhelpful external actors. With a rich comparative case-study approach that spans Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, Karlin unearths provocative findings that suggest the traditional way of working with foreign militaries needs to be rethought. Benefiting from the practical eye of an experienced national security official, her results-based exploration suggests new and meaningful findings for building partner militaries in fragile states.
Debates over foreign aid can seem strangely innocent of history. Economists argue about effectiveness and measurement—how to make aid work. Meanwhile, critics in donor countries bemoan what they see ...as money wasted on corrupt tycoons or unworthy recipients. What most ignore is the essentially political character of foreign aid. Looking back to the origins and evolution of foreign aid during the Cold War, David C. Engerman invites us to recognize the strategic thinking at the heart of development assistance—as well as the political costs.In The Price of Aid, Engerman argues that superpowers turned to foreign aid as a tool of the Cold War. India, the largest of the ex- colonies, stood at the center of American and Soviet aid competition. Officials of both superpowers saw development aid as an instrument for pursuing geopolitics through economic means. But Indian officials had different ideas, seeking superpower aid to advance their own economic visions, thus bringing external resources into domestic debates about India's economic future. Drawing on an expansive set of documents, many recently declassified, from seven countries, Engerman reconstructs a story of Indian leaders using Cold War competition to win battles at home, but in the process eroding the Indian state.The Indian case provides an instructive model today. As China spends freely in Africa, the political stakes of foreign aid are rising once again.
The UN and Development provides the first comprehensive overview of the
development policies and activities of the United Nations system from the late 1940s
to the present. With an explicit focus on ...the history of the ideas that have been
generated, institutionalized, and implemented by UN organizations, this book
examines changing trends in development paradigms from the concept of technical
assistance to underdeveloped countries, as they were called in the late 1940s, to
development cooperation in the 21st century. Olav Stokke traces this fascinating
story and demonstrates the UN's essential role and its future challenges in aiding
the least developed countries and the globe's billion poorest inhabitants.
Practically all donor countries that give aid claim to do so on the basis on the recipient's good governance, but do these claims have a real impact on the allocation of aid? Are democratic, human ...rights-respecting, countries with low levels of corruption and military expenditures actually likely to receive more aid than other countries? Using econometric analysis, the author examines the factors that really determine the patterns of aid giving. The author analyses such examples as: * aggregate aid flows * aid from multilateral organisations such as the EU and the UN * aid from bilateral donors such as Germany, Japan, the US as well as Arab donors. This concise, well argued and well researched book will be a great read for students, academics and policy-makers involved in development studies, economics and international relations.
Eric Neumayer is Lecturer in Environment and Development at the London School of Economics, UK.
'Eric Neumayer's book is an important contribution to the current debate about development assistance and the motivation of aid donors, and it deserves to be read by academics and policy makers alike.' - Development and Change, January 2004
1. Introduction 2. Good Governance and its Relation to Aid 3. Overview of Existing Studies 4. Research Design 5. Aggregate Aid, Western Bilateral and Multilateral Aid 6. The Arab Donors 7. Analysis and Discussion of Results 8. Testing the Robustness of Results 9. Conclusions
Despite ongoing instability and underdevelopment in post-Saddam Iraq, some parts of the country have realized relative security and growth. The Kurdish north, once an isolated outpost for the Iraqi ...army and local militia, has become an internationally recognized autonomous region. In The Kurdish Quasi-State, Natali explains the nature of this transformation and how it has influenced the relationship between the Kurdistan region and Iraq’s central government. This much-needed scholarship focuses on foreign aid as helping to create and sustain the Kurdish quasi-state. It argues that the generous nature of external assistance to the Kurdistan region over time has given it new forms of legitimacy and leverage in the country. Since 2003 the Kurdistan region has gained representation in the central government and developed commercial, investment, and political ties with regional states and foreign governments.
This book examines competition and collaboration among Western powers, the socialist bloc, and the Third World for control over humanitarian aid programs during the Cold War. Young-sun Hong's ...analysis reevaluates the established parameters of German history. On the one hand, global humanitarian efforts functioned as an arena for a three-way political power struggle. On the other, they gave rise to transnational spaces that allowed for multidimensional social and cultural encounters. Hong paints an unexpected view of the global humanitarian regime: Algerian insurgents flown to East Germany for medical care, barefoot Chinese doctors in Tanzania, and West and East German doctors working together in the Congo. She also provides a rich analysis of the experiences of African trainees and Asian nurses in the two Germanys. This book brings an urgently needed historical perspective to contemporary debates on global governance, which largely concern humanitarianism, global health, south-north relationships, and global migration.
When the Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia in 1975, they inherited a war-ravaged and internationally isolated country. Pol Pot's government espoused the rhetoric of self-reliance, but Democratic ...Kampuchea was utterly dependent on Chinese foreign aid and technical assistance to survive. Yet in a markedly asymmetrical relationship between a modernizing, nuclear power and a virtually premodern state, China was largely unable to use its power to influence Cambodian politics or policy. In Brothers in Arms, Andrew Mertha traces this surprising lack of influence to variations between the Chinese and Cambodian institutions that administered military aid, technology transfer, and international trade.
Today, China's extensive engagement with the developing world suggests an inexorably rising China in the process of securing a degree of economic and political dominance that was unthinkable even a decade ago. Yet, China's experience with its first-ever client state suggests that the effectiveness of Chinese foreign aid, and influence that comes with it, is only as good as the institutions that manage the relationship. By focusing on the links between China and Democratic Kampuchea, Mertha peers into the "black box" of Chinese foreign aid to illustrate how domestic institutional fragmentation limits Beijing's ability to influence the countries that accept its assistance.
Itineraries of Expertise contends that experts and expertise played fundamental roles in the Latin American Cold War. While traditional Cold War histories of the region have examined diplomatic, ...intelligence, and military operations and more recent studies have probed the cultural dimensions of the conflict, the experts who constitute the focus of this volume escaped these categories. Although they often portrayed themselves as removed from politics, their work contributed to the key geopolitical agendas of the day. The paths traveled by the experts in this volume not only traversed Latin America and connected Latin America to the Global North, they also stretch traditional chronologies of the Latin American Cold War to show how local experts in the early twentieth century laid the foundation for post-World War II development projects, and how Cold War knowledge of science, technology, and the environment continues to impact our world today. These essays unite environmental history and the history of science and technology to argue for the importance of expertise in the Latin American Cold War.
