Beyond "soft power": humanitarian influence and cooperation in foreign policy
In: International affairs: a Russian journal of world politics, diplomacy and international relations, Volume 66, Issue 6, p. 64-77
ISSN: 0130-9641
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In: International affairs: a Russian journal of world politics, diplomacy and international relations, Volume 66, Issue 6, p. 64-77
ISSN: 0130-9641
World Affairs Online
In: International journal / Canadian International Council: Canada's journal of global policy analysis, Volume 64, Issue 4, p. 989-1010
ISSN: 0020-7020
The article analyzes the Canadian foreign aid relationship with Asia; focusing primarily on the motivations and reasons why the government should rethink the utilization of scarce resources to promote wellbeing and strategic ties. The author then presents the argument, that despite the traditional leveraging of its foreign aid relations, Canada has been slow in responding to the dramatic changes and shifts in Asia and has not effectively recalibrated such programs. Utilizing the writing of Carol Lancaster, the author explains the instrument role of foreign aid and main purposes: diplomatic, developmental, humanitarian relief, commercial, and less prominently, cultural. The article then examines concerning reasons behind such utilization; explains the Asian aid policy in effect through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and the International Development Research Center (IDRC); and discusses the policy shift, levels attained, projects, and the role and influence of multi and bilateral aid agencies in the region. Then the article addresses the diversions from this coherent strategy of the CIDA; exemplifies implementation and administering through humanitarian relief efforts in the Indian Ocean nations and Afghanistan; discusses the present state of bilateral and multilateral aid funding, and cites developmental interests in areas such as Indonesia, and Vietnam. The article also looks at bureaucratic organizational constraints and other problems factored in the aid process, discussing programming policy, programming, projects, and personnel hierarchy. Finally, the author opines on the future of aid and the uncertainty and purpose of the strategy behind implementing such programs. Adapted from the source document.
Einstellungen und Verhalten der Niederländer gegenüber
Entwicklungsländern und Entwicklungshilfe.
Themen: Wahrnehmung der Situation und der Probleme der
Entwicklungsländer; Beurteilung der Effizienz
verschiedener Maßnahmen zur Entwicklungshilfe; Informiertheit
über Entwicklungshilfeaktionen und Informationsquellen
der Befragten zu diesem Themenkreis; eigene Teilnahme
an Entwicklungshilfeaktionen.
Demographie: Alter; Geschlecht; Familienstand; Konfession;
Schulbildung; Einkommen; Mitgliedschaft.
GESIS
Since 2015, the 'refugee crisis' in Greece has turned the Eastern Mediterranean migration route into one of the main entry points to Europe. In response, a grassroots solidarity movement has emerged in the Aegean islands that has become instrumental for boat rescue at sea, and for camp service provision. These local and international volunteers, as well as refugees, identify as 'New Humanitarians'. This paper presents the emic aspects of the 'New Humanitarians', and focuses on vernacular actors and how they challenge the humanitarian landscape in Greece by examining their principles, practices, and discourse. A key finding is that the 'New Humanitarian' principles that they model revisit the existing ones—i.e. solidarity, hospitality, equality, and agency. Other findings show that the 'New Humanitarians' are reproducing governing technologies imposed by the government and other agencies. They do so while trying to contest mainstream humanitarianism and pleading for much-needed change in the European border regime and refugee management systems.
BASE
Few issues in global politics are as contentious as foreign aid – how much rich countries should give, in what ways, to whom. For years, it has been a commonplace that U.S. policies are stingy. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) routinely ranks the United States far behind its industrialized peers in official development assistance (ODA), measured as a percentage of gross national income (GNI). An endless parade of critics has implored the government to do more; some suggest that the Bush Administration's support for the Monterrey Consensus, which sets a goal of increasing assistance to 0.7% of GNI, commits it to do more. Against these allegations of miserliness, executive officials and certain sympathetic scholars have begun to argue that the published statistics are misleading because they fail to account for individual and corporate philanthropy. What the OECD misses, this argument runs, is the exceptional extent of Americans' private generosity. What both sides of the debate have missed, this Article proposes, is not the role of the private sector in generating foreign aid but the role of tax expenditures in subsidizing it. Better known as tax breaks or loopholes, tax expenditures are deviations from the normal tax structure "designed to favor a particular industry, activity, or class of persons." They take the form of deductions, exemptions, exclusions, deferrals, credits, or preferential rates. Economically, these "expenditures" may be seen as equivalent to direct government outlays: if U.S. taxpayers saved $70 billion last year from, say, the mortgage interest deduction, the government therefore gave a $70 billion (implicit) subsidy to homeownership. Stanley Surrey pioneered the theory of tax expenditures in the late 1960s, and the concept is now widely, though not universally, credited. Since 1974, Congress has required the annual publication of a tax expenditure budget. Although not immediately evident from the budget data, in recent years a growing amount of expenditure has gone toward foreign aid. The reason lies in America's tax treatment of nonprofit organizations. Whenever U.S. charities and foundations spend money overseas – as they have increasingly been doing – some portion of this spending can be attributed to the support they receive from numerous state and federal tax privileges. More controversially, several other domestic tax expenditures, such as the deferral granted to foreign source active business income, might also be seen as providing foreign assistance. Unlike traditional ODA, these tax expenditure funds are privately organized and distributed, yet unlike voluntary transfers they are paid for by the public fisc. This is not private aid; it is privatized aid. The basic, descriptive goal of this Article is to show, in Parts I and II, how nonprofit tax policies have shaped the content of American aid. This analysis implies that the definition of ODA should be revised, as the next Part explains. The broader goal is to begin to connect these insights, in the balance of Part III, with the literatures on tax expenditures and international development – and, in so doing, to illuminate some attractive and unattractive features of using tax expenditures in the foreign aid context. While my focus throughout is on the United States, the central argument can be generalized to any country with broadly analogous international tax policies.
BASE
In: Frontiers in political science, Volume 3
ISSN: 2673-3145
The so-called "refugee crisis" in Lesvos, Greece provides a poignant example of situated, local suffering that has called for the coordination of global resources to provide relief. Some of the first to respond were local and international Citizen Initiatives for Global Solidarity (CIGS). While a growing role for CIGS has been interpreted as a call for more global involvement, arguments for the increased localization of relief efforts suggest the need for aid agents to maintain a reflexive awareness of the potential for an influx of outside assistance to disempower those most affected. We argue that barriers to implementing the localization of humanitarian aid can be better understood by positioning this localization alongside theories of global solidarity. This paper pairs theoretical contributions from the fields of moral and political philosophy with an analysis of interview material gathered in Lesvos between 2015 and 2019. Our goal is to use narratives of conflicting interests in Lesvos to explore conceptual distinctions concerning solidarity and emphasize the importance of the localization of global solidarity in humanitarian aid. We conclude that while global solidarity represents a demanding effort to identify with distant others and provide aid, the intensity and transformative potential of the process of "making the crisis one's own" through solidary engagement can overshadow the importance of local ownership of crisis management.
In: Foreign affairs, Volume 79, Issue 5, p. 74-88
ISSN: 0015-7120
Argues that goals of US diplomacy and foreign assistance should be to help preserve peace, address challenges of globalization, and improve quality of life for the poor and disadvantaged.
In: Journal of liberty and international affairs, Volume 4, Issue 2, p. 25-39
ISSN: 1857-9760
The aim of this paper is to analyse the independence, neutrality and impartiality of the EU humanitarian assistance and to which extent is influenced by the EU's political, economic and military goals. The paper focuses on the legislative framework and the interactions between the main actors of EU humanitarian aid and external action, questioning the politicization of EU humanitarian aid. The paper provides a detailed analysis of the structure and organization of the Directorate General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations and its relations to the Member States, different EU bodies and humanitarian partners, primarily NGOs and UN bodies. The last part of the paper addresses the Comprehensive Approach and how it affects humanitarian aid.
In: Cambridge studies in international relations 120
Why do countries give foreign aid? Although many countries have official development assistance programs, this book argues that no two of them see the purpose of these programmes in the same way. Moreover, the way countries frame that purpose has shaped aid policy choices past and present. The author examines how Belgium long gave aid out of a sense of obligation to its former colonies, The Netherlands was more interested in pursuing international influence, Italy has focused on the reputational payoffs of aid flows and Norwegian aid has had strong humanitarian motivations since the beginning. But at no time has a single frame shaped any one country's aid policy exclusively. Instead, analysing half a century of legislative debates on aid in these four countries, this book presents a unique picture both of cross-national and over time patterns in the salience of different aid frames and of varying aid programmes that resulted
In: The journal of politics: JOP, Volume 75, Issue 2, p. 422-435
ISSN: 1468-2508
In: Development: the journal of the Society of International Development, Issue 2-3, p. 14
ISSN: 0020-6555, 1011-6370
In: International organization, Volume 66, Issue 4, p. 571-607
ISSN: 0020-8183
World Affairs Online
Foreign aid has connected China and the international community through many channels, and created new types of strong partnerships throughout the world. As a recipient country, China and donors have engaged in an unprecedentedly deep level of cooperation on development-related issues. China's development experience has resulted in key changes to the relationships and partnerships between China and donors, from receiving foreign aid to entering into development cooperation. China has provided valuable experiences for other developing countries, experiences that are all the more relevant because they have revealed key factors at work in developing recipient countries. This has also led China to form closer cooperative relationships with other developing countries with regard to development issues. In short, foreign aid has changed China
Blog: Blog - Adam Smith Institute
Rachel Reeves plans to cut almost £2 billion from the foreign aid budget. The Chancellor is preparing to let spending on aid fall to 0.5 per cent of gross national income after two years, a drop to a 17-year low. This has aroused Cabinet opposition.The Adam Smith Institute has already told the Chancellor how to deal with this, but it seems she might not have been paying attention. In my Overton Window piece I pointed out that in addition to the aid publicly provided by the government, the UK should calculate the amount of aid sent in remittances by people to their families in the countries they originally hailed from. This frequently exceeds public sector aid as a proportion of total aid. The UK's foreign aid should thus be declared as the sum of public and private aid.The US is often criticized for giving relatively little in government aid, but the inclusion of private aid makes it clear that it is among the most generous nations in helping those in poorer countries.The UK could increase the amount of private aid that is remitted to families in poorer countries by allowing it some measure of tax deductibility. This would increase the number sending it, and probably the amount that they send.Private foreign aid is better in one important respect in that it goes directly to people instead of being filtered through governments and bureaucracies. Private aid is less likely to go to fund space programmes, or to fund gold bathtubs in presidential palaces or to buy tanks. Remittance has been shown to circumvent corruption-induced deadweight loss.The Chancellor should include private aid in addition to government aid and strive to increase the former by giving some tax breaks to that given through reputable and regulated agencies that transfer funds internationally. It should prove to be an attractive prospect to a Chancellor who is no stranger to redefining things.