Is development aid securitized? Evidence from a cross‐country examination of aid commitments

Abstract

Motivation How has the securitization of development affected the distribution of bilateral development aid by sector? Over the past two decades, academics and development NGOs have become increasingly concerned about the impact of the securitization of development. This debate has not, however, adequately addressed the impact of securitization on actual aid commitments to key sectors. If aid commitments are influenced by securitization this will have implications for the types of programmes funded by bilateral donors. Purpose This article examines whether and how securitization has affected the distribution of UK, US, Danish and Swedish development aid by sector through investigating how conflict in aid‐recipient states—and the extent to which these states are perceived as a security threat—affect aid commitments to priority sectors; democratization and peace, conflict and security. Approach and Methods A mixed‐methods approach analyses the policy discourse and aid commitments of the four bilateral donors. The former involves a systematic collection and analysis of development policy documents from the four donors over the last two decades. For the latter we use data from the OECD's Creditor Reporting System and the Uppsala University Conflict Data Programme, along with data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and the Global Terrorism Database in a cross‐sectional time‐series regression analysis. Findings The new data produced indicate that the securitization of development has had the most significant effect on aid commitments to states not affected by conflict and that the strategic importance of conflict‐affected states and the domestic character of donor governments both influence the strength of aid securitization. Policy Implications Given the concerns regarding aid for security purposes and donors’ policy discourse, bilateral donors should consider the need of current funding for conflict, peace and security programmes in states not affected by conflict and recognize the role of national security interests in decisions about the distribution of aid.

“Securitized” UK aid projects in Africa: Evidence from Kenya, Nigeria and South Sudan

“…Since 2000, the UK development policy discourse, in line with that of other traditional bilateral (Lazell & Petrikova, 2020) and multilateral (Petrikova & Lazell, 2017) donors, has become increasingly securitized. A relatively high provision of official development assistance (ODA) has been justified by the need to protect the UK's domestic security from threats posed by fragility and instability | 13 of 42 PETRIKOVA And LAZELL in L&MICs.…”

“…2 They are also former British colonies. Our previous work has shown that securitization is more prevalent in countries of higher strategic interest to the donor (Lazell & Petrikova, 2020). African countries of lower strategic interest to the UK, for instance former French colonies Mali and Senegal, have had comparatively few aid projects funded by the UK and linked to the security agenda (OECD-Stat, n.d.-a), demonstrating the continent's continued division into its former colonial powers' spheres of influence.…”

“…According to the UK policy discourse, reducing and preventing conflict in L&MICs requires two types of development intervention (Lazell & Petrikova, 2020). The first are development projects which seek to encourage the development of democratic, inclusive societies that respect human rights.…”

“…These studies, however, focused on aggregate aid levels rather than aid to the two sectors identified by the UK government as key to reducing security threats posed by L&MICs: democratization and good governance projects; and explicit conflict-prevention measures. Lazell and Petrikova's (2020) large-N analysis of aid to these sectors found that aid to both increased between 1995 and 2015 in absolute as well as relative terms. Interestingly, the provision of conflict-prevention aid rose faster in countries not affected by conflict than in conflict-affected countries.…”

Security actors in fragile contexts

“…Source: Information in this Box is gathered from Kemp (2016 [15]), "OSCE peace operations: Soft security in hard environments", https://www.ipinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/1606_OSCE-and-Peace-Operations.pdf and (OSCE, 2019 [16]) "Survey of OSCE mission", https://www.osce.org/secretariat/74783?download=true.…”