Aid and Influence: Patronage, Power and Politics - Paperback

by Stephen Browne (Author)

This book turns the argument about aid effectiveness on its head. Since development assistance is inherently self-interested, a source of soft power, political manipulation and commercial opportunity, its real effectiveness could arguably be judged by the strength of donor influence and not by development impact. Its subjective nature means that its impact on development is often weak, mainly short-term and confined to limited and specific contexts.

Aid as influence was prevalent during the Cold War era. The connection is equally strong in this century's newly bipolar world in which the contest is between western donors led by the United States, and China which is spending hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure as a means of influence in the global South. Influence permeates both bilateral and multilateral aid and in parallel with official aid, the rise of global philanthropy has seen it taken up by some of today's billionaires.

The response by donors to the growing havoc caused by the three Cs - conflict, climate change and COVID-19 - confirms the main findings of the book, which concludes by outlining what aid without influence would look like. This book draws on the author's 40 years of experience of the aid industry and will be essential reading for development students, practitioners and policy makers alike.

Author Biography

Stephen Browne is co-director of the Future United Nations Development System (FUNDS) project, Senior Fellow of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, Graduate Center, City University of New York, and visiting lecturer at the University of Geneva, Geneva. He worked for the United Nations for more than 30 years, and has written a dozen books on aid, development and the United Nations, including Beyond Aid: From Patronage to Partnership (1999), Sustainable Development Goals and UN Goal-Setting (Routledge, 2017), UN Reform: 25 Years of Challenge and Change (2019), and the Routledge Handbook on the UN in Development (Routledge, 2020).