Politics Of International Development Research Articles

A Turkish Mayor Goes to Moscow: Vedat Dalokay and Development Politics in the 1970s

In 1975, the mayor of Ankara requested Soviet assistance to build a public transportation system and affordable housing in the Turkish capital. This article uses Vedat Dalokay's appeal as a window into international development politics during a transformative decade. The 1970s saw growing leftism in Turkey, and Dalokay hoped that progressive urban planning would solidify voting trends among rural-to-urban migrants. He sought to introduce a new ideological element into Soviet–Turkish exchange, but politicians and academics in Moscow dismissed Dalokay's class-oriented projects. Instead, they increased their investments in the steel mills and electricity plants that were hallmarks of Soviet economic exchanges with the Third World. Whereas Dalokay's aspirations emerged from a Turkish intellectual climate that was being reshaped by dependency theory and by disillusionment in the possibilities for growth within boundaries defined by the political borders of nation-states, Soviet economists and bureaucrats remained wedded to the idea of development defined in terms of the territorial economy. The Ankara municipality eventually turned to Western Europe, but the Turkish government continued to negotiate gas pipelines and nuclear power plants with the Soviet and post-Soviet Russian governments. This article explores the ideological assumptions that have shaped economic exchange across the Black Sea.

Church charity fundraising in a decreasingly religious society: Case of the Three Kings Collection in the Czech Republic

AbstractOur research addresses the research gap of church charity fundraising in times of decreasing religiosity in the context of post‐communist countries while reflecting international trends. However, the research gap can also be understood more broadly as the inadequate understanding of faith‐based charities. We know “relatively little about how faith‐based NGOs practice policy advocacy and even less about their roles in the education and formation of faith communities in the donor countries” (Nelson, Religious voices in the politics of international development, Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, p. 14). The spiritual background of faith‐based charities and the impact of that background on society have been completely unexplored in the Czech context. The paper examines the “Three Kings Collection” (TKC), an annual fundraising event, during which tens of thousands of volunteer carolers dress as the three kings on their way to meet the newborn Jesus, visiting public places in cities and going door‐to‐door in villages, singing the Three Kings Carol, and asking for donations to the Caritas mission to help people in need. The paper aims to identify the size and scope of the revenues of the TKC and the size, scope, and value of volunteering against a background of decreasing religiosity and declining trust in churches. We also identify the Caritas strategies for overcoming periods of crisis and the challenges facing the TKC that may intensify over time. We articulate the research implications in the field of national and international giving and volunteering.

Gender, sexuality and the limits of the law

This article reflects on a programme of research conducted by gender and sexuality activists, academics and legal practitioners in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and South East Asia. Running over 4 years, the Sexuality, Poverty and Law Programme (SPLP) aimed to generate new evidence-based knowledge and policy options to support efforts that would strengthen, through legal reform, the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people and others marginalised because of their sexuality. The SPLP also aimed to demonstrate the impact of legal and policy marginalisation on the livelihoods of LGBT across the world. Instead of claiming answers or offering conclusions based on this body of work, the article draws on Sara Ahmed's writing and raises questions based on the SPLP around what it means to encounter ‘brick walls’ – specifically the materiality of juridical and productive power – through one's body. The article explores how international discourses and institutions are implicated in the shape of domestic legal frameworks that centre on gender and sexuality, and it explores how these frame-works shape which bodies are made visible, effaced or entirely ignored. Given the politics of international development and global LGBT rights discourse, this article concludes that laws are never quite sovereign and it makes a case for understanding the implications of this ‘legal porosity’ on people's embodied experiences of inequality as they fall under (beside or outside) the law.

The domestic politics of international development in South Korea: stakeholders and competing policy discourses

The paper examines the domestic politics surrounding South Korea's foreign aid policy. It delineates the institutional characteristics and strategic interests of key government and non-government stakeholders, and suggests an analytical framework to comprehend the country's aid policy regime. It suggests that two competing policy discourses exist – one emphasising ‘intellectual leadership’ and the other ‘ethical leadership’ as the key principle of aid policy. In practice, the country's political leadership promulgates a complex amalgam of these discourses in alignment with their own political imperatives and interests. The paper discusses ‘Global Saemaul Undong’ as such an example under the incumbent Park Geun-Hye administration.

Illiberal States and the Politics of International Development

이 글은 냉전 종식 이후 비자유주의 국가들이 어떻게 국제개발 쟁점들에 관여하게 되었는가를 이론적으로 설명하기 위한 하나의 분석틀을 제시한다. 신흥원조공여국들의 점증하는 역할에 주목하는 대부분의 기존연구는 두 가지 경향을 보인다. 하나는 비자유주의 국가들과 기존 원조공여국들의 국제개발 프로그램이 보이는 기술적 차이들에 초점을 맞추는 경향이며, 다른 하나는 비자유주의 국가들의 대외원조 공여가 현존하는 자유주의 레짐에 어떤 영향을 주는가에 초점을 맞추는 경향이다. 현재진행 중인 사태와 과정에 대한 집착으로 인하여 기존문헌에는 비자유주의 국가들과 국제개발의 연관을 패러다임에 착근하여 설명하는 시도가 미비하며, 이는 전반적으로 이론적 설명의 약화를 낳았다. 이러한 기존문헌의 결함을 보정하기 위하여 비자유주의 국가들의 국제개발 관여에 관한 유형론이 제시된다. 이 유형론이 어느 정도 현실에 부합하는지를 보기 위해 신고전적 현실주의와 구성주의를 결합하는 하나의 절충적 접근법을 도입한다. 비자유주의 국가들의 국제개발 관여 유형들이 힘의 불균등 배분, 선호의 변화, 제도적 관성, 관념의 변화가 상이하게 영향을 준 결과임을 설명하는 데 이 절충적 접근법이 유용함을 논증한다.

The Politics of Aid Revisited: A Review of Evidence on State Capacity and Elite Commitment

Based on a systematic review of the impacts of aid on both state capacity for, and elite commitment to, sustainable development, we conclude that a better understanding of the impact of aid has the potential to directly inform practices of international development. This requires better empirical insight into how donors interact with formal and informal institutions in the countries where they work, particularly in aid-dependent countries. Furthermore, it is critical to see aid as part of a spectrum of international exchange, rather than in isolation. This implies a significant research agenda, combining quantitative and in-depth qualitative analysis, as there are barriers for more informed political analysis to inform practice; and little analysis exists of how donors, even where they do start adopting a political perspective, do influence local institutions and the people they work with. The paper develops this conclusion through a review of existing large research programmes on politics of international development, the role and impact of donors political economy approaches, a scan of the literature on aid modalities, and a brief review of the practices of emerging donors, particularly China.

Development geography: Politics and ‘the state’ under crisis

This article examines theorizations of the state and politics in recent development geography. It argues that in the context of the current international financial crisis, questions about what constitutes the political and how to conceptualize the state in relation to development have taken on a renewed salience for development studies. It reviews recent research that traces the social and cultural production of states and markets, and identifies some important new work that contributes to understanding local mediations of state power. It argues that whereas the dramatic economic retrenchment of recent years has prompted reinvigorated attention to the politics of international development and the governance of international finance, critical development geographers have maintained a steady focus on these issues for many decades. It concludes with a call for sustained engagement with questions about development praxis and the role of the public intellectual in development studies.

The Altai Road: Visions of Development across the Russian–Chinese Border

ABSTRACTThe Altai Republic is a poor mountainous region of Russia squeezed between Kazakstan, China and Mongolia. A project to build a road connecting Russia with China through the Altai has been conceived within a quadripartite regional co‐operation project, supported by Western development organizations. Yet while at the Chinese side of the border road construction went ahead, in Russia, a coalition of globally connected ecologists, romantic ‘Eurasianists’, nostalgic conservationists and anti‐Chinese xenophobes turned the road into a political hot potato. This case study, in which production and investment are the focus on the Chinese side and environmental protection is key on the Russian side of the border, shows the inadequacy of approaches that pit global capital/international (read: Western) organizations against local (read: non‐Western) resistance or adaptation. China's entry into the politics of international development may be a setback for development critics who have helped engineer a ‘cultural turn’ in institutions such as the World Bank.

Reconstituting the ‘Third World’? poverty reduction and territoriality in the global politics of development

This article explores the relationship between the politics of international development and the reproduction of global inequality. I argue that contemporary discourses about— and the practices of—‘development for developing countries’ represent an attempt to reconstitute the political utility of the ‘Third World’. In an era of globalisation the deployment of the notion of a Third World of ‘developing countries’ which require immediate, systemic attention through the discourse and practice of international development continues to provide a way of both disciplining and displacing the global dimension of social and political struggle. I refer to this dynamic in terms of the political utility of the Third World, which, I argue, has been conducive to the organisation of global capitalism and the management of social and political contradictions of inequality and poverty. I develop this argument by drawing on the historical implications and legacy of ‘international development’ as practised in and on the Third World and through a critical analysis of the methodological premises that constitute international development. I illustrate this by drawing on a key strategy aimed ostensibly at development: the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (prsp) approach, promulgated by the World Bank and the imf, which I discuss in relation to the ‘development agenda’ inaugurated during the 1999 wto meeting in Doha (Qatar). I argue that the ideology and practice of the global politics of international development reinforce the conditions of global inequality, and must be transcended as both an analytical framework and an organising principle of world politics. While the prsp and related approaches are currently presented as key elements in the building of the ‘architecture for (international) development’, what is emerging is a form of governance that attempts to foreclose social and political alternatives.