Hagmann Tobias - Aid and authoritarianism in Africa: development without democracy

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About the editors

Tobias Hagmann is associate professor of international development at Roskilde University, a research associate with the Political Geography Chair at the University of Zurich and a fellow with the Rift Valley Institute in Nairobi and London.

Filip Reyntjens is professor of African law and politics at the Institute of Development Policy and Management, University of Antwerp. He is a full member of the Belgian Royal Academy of Overseas Sciences and a board member of several scientific organizations.

Aid and authoritarianism in Africa

Development without democracy

edited by Tobias Hagmann and Filip Reyntjens

Aid and Authoritarianism in Africa: Development without Democracy was first published in association with the Nordic Africa Institute, PO Box 1703, SE-751 47 Uppsala, Sweden, in 2016 by Zed Books Ltd, The Foundry, 17 Oval Way, London SE11 5RR, UK.

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Editorial copyright Tobias Hagmann and Filip Reyntjens 2016

Copyright in this collection Zed Books 2016

The rights of Tobias Hagmann and Filip Reyntjens to be identified as the editors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

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Contents

TOBIAS HAGMANN AND FILIP REYNTJENS

RITA ABRAHAMSEN

ZO MARRIAGE

DAVID M. ANDERSON AND JONATHAN FISHER

EMANUELE FANTINI AND LUCA PUDDU

MARIE-EMMANUELLE POMMEROLLE

HELENA PREZ NIO AND PHILIPPE LE BILLON

NICOLAS VAN DE WALLE

Introduction: aid and authoritarianism in sub-Saharan Africa after 1990

Tobias Hagmann
and Filip Reyntjens

Introduction

This book explores the motives, dynamics and consequences of international aid given to authoritarian African governments.). In 2013, four of the ten most important aid recipients in Africa Ethiopia, Mozambique, Uganda and Rwanda were ruled by one-party regimes that do not allow for democratic participation and criminalize political dissent. While bilateral and multilateral donors constantly claim to be promoting democracy, good governance and human rights in Africa, many are effectively complicit in fostering development without democracy. The recent revival of the complicity between foreign aid and authoritarianism in the name of development is not only problematic, but also went largely unnoticed by both academics and the broader public. This book is thus a first and certainly incomplete attempt to draw attention to some of the illiberal effects of aid channelled to authoritarian political regimes in sub-Saharan Africa.

A significant body of scholarly work exists on why and how donors disburse aid, explaining both positive and negative impacts of development assistance with regards to economic growth, poverty, development and domestic governance. Yet much of this literature suffers from one of two shortcomings: it either conceives of aid in technocratic, managerial and ultimately apolitical terms or, alternatively, it seeks to explain the relationship between foreign aid typically modelled as the independent variable and democracy or democratization or the lack thereof often represented as the dependent variable. In other words, while economists and political scientists have scrutinized how and whether foreign aid contributes to democracy in recipient countries, the more sinister hypothesis that foreign aid strengthens autocracies has rarely been explored in the literature. Consequently, published research on the relationship between foreign aid and authoritarian governance in sub-Saharan Africa after 1990 namely in countries that benefit from substantial aid flows is close to non-existent.

The collusion between donors and one-party regimes or dictatorships in sub-Saharan Africa raises numerous questions. A main empirical puzzle, which has motivated the editors of this volume, is the following: why do donors not only support, but also align their policy agendas with authoritarian rulers who reject the very liberal democratic values that Western donors endorse? Where does this creeping African democracy fatigue, as Nicolas van de Walle puts it in his concluding chapter, emanate from and what is its significance for previous, current and future development paradigms? But donor assistance to undemocratic regimes also raises many moral questions, in particular concerning the manner in which prominent donor agencies such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the UK Department for International Development (DFID) or the European Commissions (EC) various country development programmes have recently revised their earlier stances on democratization in favour of more narrow developmental objectives that are easily quantifiable, but come without freedom (). This shift is also due to competition from so-called emerging donors. More problematically, donors rhetoric about the supposed trade-off between political rights and economic development is neither approved nor shared by taxpayers living in donor countries nor by beneficiaries in Africa. Rather, the decision to continue or increase funding to authoritarian regimes is essentially the outcome of an elite bargain between donor and recipient governments.