International Assistance and Enterprise Development

Abstract

Immediately after the fall of the Iron Curtain, a wide range of Western aid initiatives, governmental programmes and non-governmental organisations rushed in to shape political alliances and new markets, and to support social development in the former communist bloc. With varying missions and capacities these groups sometimes left positive marks but in many cases exacerbated already existing distortions and created new problems for the region. Consultants of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB) and others who advised on economic reforms knew little of the capabilities of the general population and of their governments. They instead used analogies with Eastern Europe and Russia and often applied the same prescriptions. They also failed to appreciate that the regions’ leaders understood almost nothing about how a Western-oriented market economy might operate for them. Consequently, ephemeral and disjointed policies led to confusion and a crippling lack of focus. The absence of any credible international engagements analogous to the role played by the European Union in Eastern Europe left the region without an anchored vision or concrete incentives about any transition. After almost two decades of engagement we now witness wariness on both sides. Western organisations and their experts who spent years in this vast geography express their pessimism about any ‘successful transition’ of, what they dismissively call, ‘the Stans’.