Emerging donors and new contests over aid policy in Pacific Asia

Abstract

The rise of emerging donors has unleashed new political contests over aid policy, some of which have occurred at the domestic level. This article locates the special edition's analysis of these contests within the existing literature on emerging donors, draws out the key findings of included papers, and considers their implications for policy. It argues that domestic contests have had significant influence over aid policy in both emerging and established donors, the agendas at work have varied from case to case reflecting countries' different political economies, and aid policies represent a 'work-in-progress' rather than an expression of immutable models.

South–South Cooperation in Southeast Asia: From Bandung and Solidarity to Norms and Rivalry

“…The shape of SSC debates in Southeast Asia also fits Rosser and Tubilewicz’s (2016) macroanalysis of donor aid agendas in Asia Pacific, namely as the product of contestation between diplomatic, commercial, and development priorities. The states analysed here have followed the pattern of developmental states in East Asia, where domestic competition has largely been between aid for commercial or for diplomatic purposes.…”

“…Rosser and Tubilewicz (2016) studied states whose place in the capitalist order is more secure than the Southeast Asian ones studied here. The region’s regulatory and increasingly authoritarian capitalist states are equally uninterested in questioning the hegemonic order, as is the case in East Asia.…”

“…7 National interest has always been a central driver of aid, though it was downplayed by many traditional donors during the early years of the twenty-first century. In East Asia though, national interest has remained a key goal of aid programmes (Rosser and Tubilewicz, 2016) and has returned to prominence some traditional donors.…”

“…Indeed, the Western capitalist order provides the foundation for the BRICS’ development projects and consequently they support – at times rather enthusiastically – the current system of global economic governance (Bond, 2015; Robinson, 2015). However, the BRICS have generated a new contestation over the “purposes, modalities and geographic orientation of aid and, in particular whether aid should be increasingly harnessed to commercial agendas” (Rosser and Tubilewicz, 2016: 7). Some of this contestation was more for show than of substance, as old or traditional donor motivations have always incorporated their own national economic and strategic interests.…”