Building Democracy in Contemporary Russia: Western Support for Grassroots Organizations

2005 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 1087-1088
Author(s):  
Juliet Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Organizational Capacity ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Foreign Assistance ◽  
The Other ◽  
Grassroots Organizations ◽  
Ngo Development ◽  
Policy Agendas

Building Democracy in Contemporary Russia: Western Support for Grassroots Organizations, Sarah L. Henderson, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003, pp. xii, 229.In this well-researched and provocative book, Sarah Henderson asks to what extent Western aid can facilitate the emergence of civil society in countries where civil society is domestically weak. Through an in-depth study of Western aid to Russian women's organizations, she argues that foreign assistance has dramatically affected NGO development in Russia, but not always in expected or positive ways. On the one hand, she finds that external funding “made a tremendous difference in improving and increasing the short-term financial viability, organizational capacity, and networking skills among recipient groups” (9). On the other, she argues that foreign aid contributed to at least four pathological developments within the NGO community. First, funded groups tended to copy the aid agencies' top-heavy and bureaucratic organizational structures. Second, funded groups lacked grassroots constituencies because they shifted their policy agendas to reflect aid agencies' preferences rather than objective domestic needs. Third, foreign aid encouraged the development of a “civic elite” among the domestic NGO community, exacerbating the differences between those groups that received funding and those that did not. Finally, the competition for foreign aid dollars encouraged uncooperative behaviour among funded Russian NGOs rather than bridge building and information sharing. She argues that these problematic unintended consequences were the result of avoidable mistakes in the foreign aid process, and states bluntly that “NGO development is not synonymous with civil society development, and the development of one does not necessarily imply the advancement of the other” (11).

scholarly journals National culture and the distribution of foreign aid

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 359-368
Author(s):  
Phuong-Tra Vu ◽  
Phung Bao Ngoc Van
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Aid ◽  
National Culture ◽  
High Power ◽  
Power Distance ◽  
Foreign Assistance ◽  
The Other ◽  
High Power Distance ◽  
Individualistic Culture ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
High Uncertainty

This paper investigates the relationship between a country’s national culture and the level of aid it grants to other countries. We rely on Hofstede’s culture framework to quantify national culture and find that national culture and aid are significantly related. Specifically, we show that countries having high power distance, high masculinity and high uncertainty avoidance cultures appear to refrain from engaging in foreign assistance programmes. On the other hand, high individualistic-culture countries tend to provide greater levels of foreign aid. Overall, the results imply that national culture matters in shaping the donation behaviour of aid providers.

International Co-Operation for the Improvement of Environmental Sanitation by Japan

1986 ◽  
Vol 18 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 71-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Unno ◽  
S. Yamamura
Keyword(s):  
Drinking Water ◽  
Water Supply ◽  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Technical Assistance ◽  
Mortality Rates ◽  
Foreign Assistance ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Past ◽  
Remarkable Progress ◽  
Water Supply And Sanitation

Japan has made remarkable progress in water supply and sanitation during the past 100 years. On the other hand, many developing countries lack adequate water supply and sanitation facilities, which causes high mortality rates. The “International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade” (IDWSSD) has been promulgated by the UN since 1981 to cope with this problem. Japan has made efforts to develop foreign assistance projects in the water supply and sanitation field since 1968. Recently, after the promulgation of IDWSSD, such activities have been expanded. However, there exist many problems in Japanese economic and technical assistance partly because Japan has rather less experience in foreign assistance than other advanced countries. Therefore effective measures should be taken to conduct more appropriate foreign aid programmes.

scholarly journals Waste Plastic, the Challenge Facing Developing Countries—Ban It, Change It, Collect It?

Recycling ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Godfrey
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Consumption Patterns ◽  
Waste Collection ◽  
Waste Plastic ◽  
The World ◽  
Single Solution ◽  
Single Use ◽  
Taking Action

With changing consumption patterns, growing populations and increased urbanisation, developing countries face significant challenges with regards to waste management. Waste plastic is a particularly problematic one, with single-use plastic leaking into the environment, including the marine environment, at an unprecedented rate. Around the world, countries are taking action to minimise these impacts, including banning single-use plastics; changing petroleum-based plastics to alternative bio-benign products such as paper, glass or biodegradable plastics; and improving waste collection systems to ensure that all waste is appropriately collected and reprocessed or safely disposed. However, these “solutions” are often met with resistance, from business, government or civil society, due to the intended and unintended consequences, leaving many questioning the most appropriate solution to reducing the leakage. This paper argues that there is no one single solution to addressing the leakage of plastic into the environment, but that the solution is likely to be a combination of the three approaches, based on local considerations.

“Femininity without Feminism”

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-272 ◽  
Author(s):  
Soo-Hyun Mun
Keyword(s):  
Gender Identity ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Gender Politics ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
The Other ◽  
Korean Society ◽  
Feminist Politics ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
The One ◽  
Status Of Women

This article contributes to the debate between the merits of the ‘politics of presence’ versus the ‘politics of ideas’ by examining the case of the first female Korean president, Park Geun-Hye. On the one hand, Park did not represent ‘the ideas’ of feminist politics. While her gender identity was widely propagated and accepted, it did not transform into deliberate identity-based politics. On the other hand, she contributed to the elevation of women’s social status through various unintended consequences, although Park’s ‘femininity without feminism’ inevitably led to the negligence of gender politics in her government. Indeed, Park’s existence, rather than her intention, stimulated the debate on the role and status of women in Korean society and enabled the rise of a number of first females in various sectors. In sum, the ‘politics of presence’ was triggered even without overt political measures.

Foreign Aid and its Role in Maintaining the Exploitation of the Agricultural Sector: Evidence from a Case Study in Africa

1983 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-49 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudio Schuftan
Keyword(s):  
Rural Development ◽  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Agricultural Sector ◽  
National Development ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sizable Proportion ◽  
Using Data ◽  
State Of Affairs

Today most foreign aid donors are genuinely committed to the idea that development in Third World countries should start with rural development. Therefore, a sizable proportion of their development funds are invested in rural projects. However, donors channel these funds through local governments (most often representing local bourgeois interests) that are not as committed to the principle of rural development. These governments are often also embarked in policies that are actually—directly or indirectly—expropriating the surpluses generated by agriculture and investing them in the other sectors of the economy. The peasants are therefore footing most of the bill of overall national development. This paper contends that, because of this state of affairs, foreign aid directed toward rural development is actually filling the investment gap left by an internal system of unequal returns to production in agriculture. In so doing, foreign aid is indirectly financing the development of the other sectors of the economy, even if this result is unintended. This perpetrates maldevelopment without redressing the basic exploitation process of peasants which lies at the core of underdevelopment. Evidence to support this hypothesis is presented using data from a primarily agricultural exporting country: the United Republic of Cameroon.

scholarly journals Multinational Banks and Supranational Supervision

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (8) ◽  
pp. 2997-3035 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giacomo Calzolari ◽  
Jean-Edouard Colliard ◽  
Gyongyi Lóránth
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Coordination Failures ◽  
The Public ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Multinational Banks ◽  
Editorial Decision ◽  
Public Costs ◽  
Published Paper

Abstract Supervision of multinational banks (MNBs) by national supervisors suffers from coordination failures. We show that supranational supervision solves this problem and decreases the public costs of an MNB’s failure, taking its organizational structure as given. However, the MNB strategically adjusts its structure to supranational supervision. It converts its subsidiary into a branch (or vice versa) to reduce supervisory monitoring. We identify the cases in which this endogenous reaction leads to unintended consequences, such as higher public costs and lower welfare. Current reforms should consider that MNBs adapt their organizational structures to changes in supervision. Received January 9, 2017; editorial decision September 15, 2018 by Editor Philip Strahan. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

Considering Unintended Consequences: Evidence From Recent Evaluations of U.S. Foreign Assistance Programs

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-70
Author(s):  
Martin de Alteriis
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Foreign Assistance ◽  
Assistance Programs ◽  
Data Collection Methods ◽  
Standard Data ◽  
Logit Regression ◽  
External Evaluators ◽  
Performance Timing ◽  
Collection Methods

This article examines factors that could have influenced whether evaluations of U.S. government–funded foreign assistance programs completed in 2015 had considered unintended consequences. Logit regression models indicate that the odds of considering unintended consequences were increased when all or most of seven standard data collection methods had been used, and there were some agency effects; however, no associations were found with evaluation type (impact vs. performance), timing, or whether evaluations were conducted by external evaluators. These results suggest that some proportion of the evaluations that did not consider unintended consequences would have considered such consequences if they had employed more data collection methods. Moreover, few of the evaluations that considered unintended consequences provided many details about their investigative methodologies or the consequences themselves, which raises further concerns that users might not have received information that would have helped for learning or accountability purposes.

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