International Development Aid and Its Impact on a Donor Country: A Case Study of Norway

Abstract

This article argues that it is important to reconstruct and analyse how the international aid system that was established after the Second World War has impacted on the national histories of donor countries. The focus is on what has happened in Norway, using it as an example of how the relationship between national traditions and the international aid system can be studied. The article emphasises the need to develop concepts that can establish analytical distance to the normative and conceptual influence of the powerful rhetoric of the aid system. Based on very extensive empirical research of the Norwegian aid system over many years, the author presents a historical summary of his findings and a set of concepts developed in order to better grasp what has been happening; concepts like ‘the southern political system’, a national ‘do-gooder's regime’, a ‘strategic communication regime’, ‘inside aiding’, and ‘elite circulation’. Cet article soutient qu'il est important d'etablir et d'analyser la facon dont le...