Power, mutual accountability and responsibility in the practice of international aid : a relational approach

Abstract

Drawing on both theory and experience, this paper takes a fresh look at current \nefforts to strengthen mutual accountability in international aid relations. What \nadditional possibilities become available when we conceptualise aid as a field of \ninterdependent and dynamic relations that are played out in the absence of \npre-established consensus or shared vision concerning desired changes? \nThe tendency is to understand mutual accountability as holding each other to \naccount for performance against pre-established objectives. It reflects a \nperception of aid as a contract and exemplifies the dominant ‘philosophical \nplumbing’ of donor organisations, one that views the world as a collection of \nentities. From this substantialist perspective, mutual accountability is about \nstrengthening mechanisms for regulating behaviour between autonomous parties. \nBut such efforts are constrained by the global political economic structures that \nsustain the very inequities in aid relations that make mutual accountability so \ndifficult. Can a complementary perspective help? \nRelationalism understands entities as mutable, shaped by their position in relation \nto others. Relational notions, married to ideas of process and complexity \nilluminate the messy and contradictory quality of aid relations that substantialism \nfinds difficult to cope with. Yet, arguably much of what proves with hindsight to be \neffective aid may well be an outcome of relational approaches, although such \napproaches are rarely valued or reported. \nAssociated with these perspectives are different concepts of power. Whereas \nmutual accountability requires identifying specific power holders, diffuse or \nrelational power links to ideas of mutual responsibility and the effect we have \nupon each other and the wider system. In that respect the paper concludes with \nsome practical steps that aid agencies could immediately start to take to \nencourage mutual responsibility. In so doing they might also make more effective \nthe mutual accountability mechanisms that until now have been the sole focus of attention. \n \nKeywords: substantialism, power, complexity, aid, accountability, results.

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