Aid and Authoritarianism - Book launch at Chatham House

Last week I was at Chatham House on the panel for a book launch. The book, Aid and Authoritarianism in Africa: Development without Democracy, is edited by Tobias Hagmann and Filip Reyntjens, and my chapter was on the budget support given to Rwanda.
I characterised the donor-recipient relations as an unstoppable rock meeting an immovable post - borrowing from a philosophical logic problem. In the political realm, the challenge is to understand how aid - which is conditioned by a dominant set of northern ideologies and interests - interacts with a government that is does not comply with aid's strictures (for example of liberal peaceful democracy) but nevertheless records development successes.
My chapter traces the disjointed and halting discussion as aid donors attempted to discipline the Rwanda government with regard to its governance of domestic political space and its support to militia forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The apparent illogic of the unstoppable rock and the immovable post is maintained by a buffer zone of discussion on three points: whether the Rwandan government is authoritarian and violent; whether it is justified; and whether the donors are in any position to judge.


Chatham House peeps through the bamboo fronds


Available from Zed books

Comments