Development Aid, Civil War and the Containers of Capitalism

Abstract

The politics of international aid and development, so often wrapped in the language of human improvement, mutual respect and selfless generosity, are well recognised for their pragmatic, duplicitous and often disingenuous self-interest. This is nowhere more apparent than in the civil wars that litter the postcolonial world. According to ex-senior USAID administrator, Andrew Natsios, it was determined in 2004 that sixty percent of the countries USAID funded in 2001 ‘had had a civil conflict in the preceding five years’ (Natsios 2010: 51). Prompted by this apparent realisation to tie development more strategically with conflict mitigation, Natsios explains that the problem USAID encountered was the ‘obsessive measurement disorder’ (OMD) of the new ‘counter bureaucracy’ (ibid.). How, Natsios asks, ‘do you prove quantitatively that an aid programme prevented a conflict if it never takes place?’ (ibid.). The problem with contemporary development, therefore, is a problem of excessive accountability or what others refer to as the rituals of verification associated with audit cultures (Shore 2008; Strathern 2000a). Such cultures, or the larger domain of value to which they refer (e.g., ‘risk society’), are not always disparaged and nor are they restricted to development. Audit culture is, as Strathern declares, a new regime in international affairs where ‘governance has become reconfigured through a veritable army of moral fieldworkers (NGOs)’, environmental responsibilities and indigenous rights provide constant sources of accusation, and ‘transparency of operation is everywhere endorsed as the outward sign of integrity’ (ibid.: 2). These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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