Development economist William Easterly (NYU) directs another thoughtful broadside against the hypocrisy underpinning the international aid and developmet regime in 'Foreign Aid for Scoundrels' (New York Review of Books). The proverbial elephant in the room of international aid is the consistent practice by Western aid donors to fund dictators. The amount of Western aid going to dictators and otherwise authoritartian governments has remained fairly constant since the early 1970s, which means that the end of the Cold War did not end such practices which obviously contradict the official rhetoric of support for freedom and democracy. But the new 'war on terror' and our interest in keeping key regimes on 'our side' does not explain the continued giving of aid to dictatorships either. In some cases it is simply a matter of constant aid flows being used to secure the continued existence of aid agencies themselves. They exist to give aid, and so give aid they will.
As Dambisa Moyo argues in her though-provoking Dead Aid, these reliable aid flows in effect prop up dictatorships and thus prolong theoppression and corruption that prevent many poor countries to embark on sustainable developmental trajectories. However theoretically and empirically thin by comparison to standard academic tracts on development, Moyo's argument constitutes perhaps the most constructive and potentially redefining intervention in a long-standing, and largely stagnant, scholarly and political debate on how to better promote development.
If the UK government is going to stand fast on their somewhat surprising commmittment to protect international aid and development funding (DFID Business Plan - Vision) while at the same time embarking on a comprehensive programme of deficit cutting and related austerity measures, they have an excellent reason for redefining the reasons for giving aid and to then redirect that aid in light of Moyo's and Easterly's arguments.
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