Taiwan's Foreign Aid in Transition: From ODA to Civil Society Approaches

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 469-490
Author(s):  
TEH-CHANG LIN ◽  
JEAN YEN-CHUN LIN

AbstractSince the 1950s, Taiwan and China have utilized foreign aid as an instrument of foreign policy. After Taiwan's forced withdrawal from the United Nations in 1971, diplomatic and aid-giving competition with China became more intense. As a result, Taiwan's and China's struggles to gain supporters have been reflected in foreign aid strategies. Taiwan's bid for the UN and the WHO, and the issue of diplomatic recognition empirically demonstrate the utilization of aid to obtain diplomatic support from recipient countries, and, frequently, any decisions are heavily influenced by the competition it experiences with China. Theoretically, this highlights an important relational framework for analyzing foreign aid decisions – particularly the management of foreign relations of small states or middle powers simultaneously influenced by greater powers and aid recipient states.Using data from ICDF and related reports, we observe geographically concentrated patterns in the distribution of Taiwan's aid recipients from 1988 to 1997 – mostly in Latin America and Southeast Asia. In contrast to China's foreign aid which emphasizes infrastructural development, the spirit of Taiwan's economic development aid programs often took the form of technical cooperation. However, a high percentage of aid went to countries with diplomatic ties to Taiwan. With civil society development and increased international activities of Taiwanese NGOs in humanitarian relief and development projects after 2000, we find a new emerging set of geographical aid distribution patterns that expand beyond countries that recognize Taiwan. In addition, while the process of incorporating civil society into foreign aid work was initiated by the ICDF the following decade, Taiwanese NGOs have increasingly demonstrated autonomous international agendas, funding, and direction, as well as the formation of civil society alliances that work on common international development issues.

1990 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-37
Author(s):  
Michael Bratton

Of all the policy issue areas that concern the U.S. government in its relations with Africa, economic assistance policy has attracted the deepest and widest involvement from U.S. university scholars. University-based analysts have enjoyed numerous avenues of access to officials who define, design, implement and evaluate U.S. foreign aid programs for sub-Saharan Africa. U.S. universities have stronger institutional linkages with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) than with any other Washington institution discussed in this ISSUE, including the U.S. Congress and agencies within the the national security bureaucracy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-173
Author(s):  
Insebayeva Nafissa

This article joins the discussion on foreign aid triggered by the rise of multiplicity of emerging donors in international development. Informed by the constructivist framework of analysis, this article evaluates the philosophy and core features of Kazakhstan’s chosen development aid model and explains the factors that account for the construction of distinct aid patterns of Kazakh donorship. This article asserts that Kazakhstan embraces a hybrid identity as a foreign aid provider through combining features and characteristics pertaining to both—emerging and traditional donors. On one hand, it discursively constructed its identity as a “development cooperation partner,” adopting the relevant discourse of mutual benefit, respect for sovereignty, and non-interference, which places it among those providers that actively associate themselves with the community of “emerging donors.” On the other hand, it selectively complies with policies and practices advocated by traditional donors. This study suggests that a combination of domestic and international factors played an important role in shaping Kazakhstan’s understanding of the aid-giving practices, and subsequently determined its constructed aid modality.


1962 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Windle ◽  
T. R. Vallance

There are many means employed by the United States to maintain and advance its position throughout the world during the current period of bipolar conflict. The most conspicuous of these are subsumed under what is known as the Mutual Security Program. Nearly half of the approximately $4 billion budgeted during fiscal year 1962 for mutual security went into military assistance. Of this, about $125 million was devoted to the training of foreign military personnel. This Military Assistance Training Program, including the training of foreigners in the United States and that administered overseas by Military Assistance Advisory Groups (MAAG's), missions, overseas commands, and third countries, constitutes by far the largest effort the world has known on the part of one country to educate and train citizens of others. The number of foreigners given military assistance training in the United States each year—about 16,500 in 1960—exceeds the number trained here under the Fulbright, Smith-Mundt, and Agency for International Development (AID) programs combined.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodney Yates

<p><b>Abstract</b></p> <p>Freire would see the imposition of western values and programs through foreign aid as a form of oppressive cultural invasion; “The invaders mold; those they invade are molded; invaders choose; those they invade follow that choice or are expected to follow it; invaders act; those they invade have only an illusion of acting, through the actions of the invaders” (1970, p. 133). Recipients of aid accept the imposed norms and values of the donor and perceive the donor as superior and, therefore, themselves as inferior. Freire comments, “one cannot expect positive results from an educational or political action program which fails to respect the particular view of the world held by the people. Such a program constitutes cultural invasion, good intentions notwithstanding” (1970, p. 76). Cultural invasion within development aid programs can be seen in the ready acceptance of developed countries’ values and practices by developing countries, which are introduced and enforced through ‘banking’ by an invading force of expatriate advisers.</p>


Author(s):  
A Burcu Bayram ◽  
Catarina P Thomson

Abstract The negative impact of populist anti-aid rhetoric on public opinion has been based on anecdotal reports to date. Here, we take a systematic and empirical look at this inquiry. We hypothesize that even though populist rhetoric decreases support for foreign development aid in donor publics, this effect is conditioned by individuals’ preexisting beliefs about populist leaders. Using data from original survey experiments conducted with representative samples of American and British adults, we find that exposure to different variants of populist frames decreases individuals’ willingness to support their government providing development aid through an international organization. However, this effect is moderated by whether people think populist leaders stand up for the little guy or scapegoat out-groups. Connecting foreign aid and populism literatures, our results suggest that the future of global development might not be as bleak as previously feared in the age of populism.


Slavic Review ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 71 (2) ◽  
pp. 234-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Hemment

By interrogating Putin-era civil society projects, this article tracks the aftermath of international development aid in post-Soviet Russian socialist space. State-run organizations such as the pro-Kremlin youth organization Nashi (Ours) are commonly read as evidence of an antidemocratic backlash and as confirmation of Russia's resurgent authoritarianism. Contributing to recent scholarship in the anthropology of postsocialism, Julie Hemment seeks here to account for Nashi by locating it in the context of twenty years of international democracy promotion, global processes of neoliberal governance, and the disenchantments they gave rise to. Drawing on a collaborative ethnographic research project involving scholars and students in the provincial city Tver', Hemment reveals Nashi's curiously hybrid nature: At the same time as it advances a trenchant critique of 1990s-era interventions and the models and paradigms that guided democracy assistance, it also draws on them. Nashi respins these resources to articulate a robust national-interest alternative that is persuasive to many young people. Moreover, rather than a static, top-down political technology project, Nashi offers its participants a range of registers and voices in which they can articulate their own individualized agendas.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Skladany

AbstractExisting best practices for aid delivery are well known and largely uncontroversial but often neglected by bilateral and multilateral aid agencies because of domestic political considerations and bureaucratic resistance. Developing countries should unilaterally ratify an agreement committing them, in the future, after they have experienced sustained and robust economic, social, and political development, to establish their own foreign aid programs that follow existing best practices for aid delivery. Such foreign aid reciprocity agreements would have numerous benefits, including: being an international tool to signal a developing country’s resolve to reform and a domestic tool to pressure corrupt public officials to improve; enabling developing countries to take a leadership position in international development discourses; putting pressure on developed countries to implement best practices; and encouraging other developing countries to support and eventually adopt aid reciprocity agreements, which would lead to an increase in the amount of aid in the future. Furthermore, the idea of unilateral reciprocity agreements could potentially be expanded to areas of international interaction beyond foreign aid such as finance, trade, security, technology transfer, migration, and environmental policies.


Author(s):  
Reiko Kanazawa

Abstract This article brings histories of medical activism in conversation with studies of international development to understand Ford Foundation-supported AIDS non-governmental organisations in India. While there were organisations with far-reaching visions for change through the voluntary sector, the article argues that the advocacy, caught between political critique and service delivery, was ultimately awkward and ambiguous. It demonstrates this by focusing on the Foundation’s support for Indian civil society after the Emergency, how it ‘learned’ activism from mainstream global and national responses and how AIDS was subsequently subsumed under a resurgent reproductive health movement after the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development. Finally, it argues that AIDS activism declined after the early 2000s because the Indian government absorbed the developmental rhetoric and services of the NGOs. Ultimately, Ford’s career in AIDS activism showcases the limitations of sustained political critique by civil society and non-governmental actors.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodney Yates

<p><b>Abstract</b></p> <p>Freire would see the imposition of western values and programs through foreign aid as a form of oppressive cultural invasion; “The invaders mold; those they invade are molded; invaders choose; those they invade follow that choice or are expected to follow it; invaders act; those they invade have only an illusion of acting, through the actions of the invaders” (1970, p. 133). Recipients of aid accept the imposed norms and values of the donor and perceive the donor as superior and, therefore, themselves as inferior. Freire comments, “one cannot expect positive results from an educational or political action program which fails to respect the particular view of the world held by the people. Such a program constitutes cultural invasion, good intentions notwithstanding” (1970, p. 76). Cultural invasion within development aid programs can be seen in the ready acceptance of developed countries’ values and practices by developing countries, which are introduced and enforced through ‘banking’ by an invading force of expatriate advisers.</p>


1965 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Baldwin

Although the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development has been in existence for nearly two decades, the political aspects of its activities have received scant attention. Most of the literature on IBRD operations has been written by economists, who quite naturally emphasize the economic aspects. Political scientists, to the extent that they have discussed it at all, have described most of its operations as removed “from the sphere of international or domestic politics.” The purpose of the following analysis is to determine in what respects the activities of the International Bank may be described as “political.” Such a determination would be useful in three ways. First, it would, it is hoped, stimulate research on international organizations as actors in international politics; second, it would require revision of the standard explanations of the evolution of international development aid programs; and third, it would aid in evaluating the argument for more multilateral aid which assumes that such aid is “nonpolitical.”


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