Lecture 1 MIs synonymous with IOs

Lecture 1 • MIs synonymous with IOs • The are organization established by national governments to help them deal with common problems such as trade, environmental protection, telecommunications, air travel, defense and security, monetary, etc • They are bureaucratic entities like schools, universities, corporations or government agencies within countries.

Lecture 1. 2 • Have physical locations, permanent staff, boards of directors, budgets, property and organizational missions. • Thousands exist today the world over. • MIs are a effort to impose rules and regulations upon disorderly world of international politics. Egs-- •

Lecture 1. 3 • MIs cover almost every imaginable issue in world agenda: • -international trade • -protection of the environment • -human rights • -international mail delivery • -nuclear non proliferation • -marketing of resource like oil. • -etc •

Lecture 1. 4 • Membership is made up of states. • Membership is voluntary; states participate because they believe that they will be better of with regimes than without them. • It does not mean that state may be better off than they be without it. They may be better off than not joining but that doesn’t mean better off than no institution.

Lecture 1. 5 • States may be worse of without it e. g. OPEC harms non-members. • • Some are anti-MIs. Two reasons exist: • 1. too much constraint on behavior of states 2. too little constraint on behavior of states and other actors

lecture 1. 6 • It has to be understood that NESSESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS. • No one can worst effort on useless ideals, institutions. • Lots of problems but not lots of solutions

Lecture 1. 7 • Many problems cannot be fixed through unilateral action but this does not mean that they will be addressed. • When MI in some form do arise, it does not mean that it is good thing for all concerned.

8 AID • Aid denoted the transfer of goods and servises between international actors on a concessionary basis. • it is a general term that covers both grants and loans, bilateral and multilateral both governmental and private it excludes specifically commercial transactions were the makes no concessions

9 • Aid is disbursed in variety of forms e. g project aid, cash aid, capital aid and trade and investment, concessions and credits. • Oftenly aid categories and objectives overlap exacerbating the difficulty neat conceptual definitions and explanation in several social science disciplines

10 • The concept of aid has elicited a considerable amount of controversy in international political economy discourse. There is hardly any consensus as to the meaning, let alone the objectives and motives of both the donour and the recipient state.

11 • Too often researchers have tended to pay too much attention to the publicised progressed economic and humanitarian objectives of aid and the expense of subtle less forcefully articulated but significant political motives.

12 • It should be noted that foreign aid was born out of the political and ideological rivarly, the primacy of politics should have pervaded the analysis. • Hyter and Payer have seen aid for what exactly is ‘merely the smooth face of imperialism’

13 • Origins and objectives of aid can only be understood within the global political context. This context include cold war, hostility and super power divisions or the globe into first and 3 rd Worlds after WW 1. Since all politics is the struggle for power- major post war powers used aid as one of their principal economic instruments to impress and win over the uncommitted Third nation-states to their ideological side.

14 • This role is aptly captured by Liska’s statement that ‘foreign aid is an instrument of foreign policy’ The US 1961 Foreign Assistance Act openly agreed to this when its preamble stated that its purpose was to promote ‘the foreign policy and general warfare of the US’

15 • Provision of aid to the south originally started as a programme to facilitate the short term war recovery of both western and eastern Europe after second world war. This recovery was facilitated through the Marshall plan 1948 -52. Beneath the visible economic recovery objective was a subtle clear cut political objective to rebuild Europe strong enough to resist the menace of communism.

16 • Simply the US wanted to check the spread of communism in Europe by stabilising their economic conditions so as to create powerful and attractive alternative to the soviet economic system. • Throughout the cold war period politics emanated to be the major motivating principle of aid regime.

17 • During the early 1950 s the US government authorised technical, military and economic assistance package for Greece and Turkey then relatively poor countries bordering on communist world and perceived to be highly vulnerable. South Korea and the Philippines were also included in the programme at a latter stage

18 • The third phase was ushered by the disintegration of colonial empires and the proliferation of the newly independent states of Asia and Africa. Cold war struggle were extended to these countries. In the struggle foreign aid was extensively used by the major powers in the contest to win the minds of the new states.

19 • Scholars like Hans Morgenthau have equated this practice to bribery. The west initially used the aid to buttress resistance to commit military of subversive aggression and was gradually extended to reward friends and punish enemies, gain influence over forceful governments in the south, retain influence once achieved and preventing communist donors from succeeding.

20 • The Word Bank and other multilateral agencies also expended their foreign assistance programmes. • The end of the cold war in the early 1990 s marked the fourth and contemporary phase of aid regime. There is a change and a search for new rationale for disbursement of aid.

21 • Griffin, however maintains that aid will continue to go where national self interest are at most. According to Todaro Donors give Aid primarily because it is in their political, strategic or economic self-interest to do so. Some are motivated by moral and humanitarian desires (emergency food supplies)

22 • However, there is no historical evidence to suggest that over long periods of time donor nations assist others without expecting some corresponding benefits (political, economic, military and in return)

23 Political motivation • Have been by far the most important for aid granting nations especially the US has viewed aid from its begging in the 1940 s as a means of containing international spread of communism. • With the shift of cold war interest to 3 rd world in the mid 1950 s the policy of containment embodied the US aid programme dictated a shift in emphasis towards political, economic and military support for friendly less developed nations especially those considered to be geographically strategic.

24 • Thus most aid to developing countries was therefore oriented towards purchasing security and propping up their sometimes shaky regimes than promoting long term social and economic development. • Successive shifts in emphasis of US aid reflects changes in its strategic and political interests more than changing evaluations of economic need.

25 • With very few exceptions the western donor countries by and large used foreign aid as political lever to prop up friendly political regimes whose continued experience they perceived as being in their national security interests.

26 Economic Motivations • Donors tend to benefit economically. Giving aid- loans and grants to boast exports of donor countries. This often lead to debt payment burdens.

27 why receive aid • 3 reasons can be identified to explain. • 1. Is largely based on recipients acceptance of donor’s perceptions of what the poor country require to promote their economic development. This is supported by the success cases of Taiwan Israel and south Korea to the exclusion of many more failures- thus aid is portrayed by donor countries as a crucial and essential ingredient in the development process.

28 • 2. The recipient state see aid as providing greater political leverage to the existing leadership to suppress opposition and maintain itself in power. In such cases assistance takes not only financial resources transfers but of military and internal security reinforcements as well. Once such aid is accepted the ability of the recipient state to extricate themselves from implied political and economic obligations to donor and prevent donor governments from interfering in internal affairs can be greatly diminished.

29 3. Moral obligation- many proponents of foreign aid in both developing and developed nations believe the rich nations have an obligation to support the economic and social development of the Third world. There is a belief that the rich nations owe the poor nations conscience and money for past exploitation.