We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 February 2008
Why has ‘development aid’ been donated by so-called developed to under-developed populations since the Second World War? Using discourse analysis, this article provides partial answers to this riddle. First, we suggest that donor motives may be rooted in an ideology of ‘being good’, which, paradoxically, motivates recipients to be helpless – that is, a Samaritan's dilemma. Second, drawing on journal articles published in 1960–70, we test this theory by tracing a global development discourse and ‘goodness ideology’ in a Western country such as Denmark – a process that was strongly influenced by the agricultural co-operative movement, which sought to export the ‘Danish co-operative model’.
Pourquoi est-ce que les pays dits développés ont apporté leur ‘ide au développement’ ux populations moins développées depuis la Seconde Guerre mondiale? En utilisant l'analyse du discours, cet article livre des réponses partielles à cette énigme. Premièrement, nous suggérons que les motifs du donateur peuvent avoir leur origine dans une idéologie ‘être bon’, qui, paradoxalement, motive les bénéficiaires à être démunis; c'est le dilemme du samaritain. Deuxièmement, en se servant d'articles de journaux de 1960 à 1970, nous essayons cette théorie en esquissant un discours global du développement et une ‘déologie de la bonté’ dans un pays occidental comme le Danemark – un processus qui a fortement été influencé par le mouvement agricole coopératif, qui a cherché à exporter le ‘model coopératif danois’.
Warum haben die sogenannten entwickelten Länder seit dem Zweiten Weltkrieg den unterentwickelten Ländern ‘Entwicklungshilfe’ gegeben? Mittels Diskursanalyse versucht dieser Artikel, partielle Antworten auf diese Frage zu finden. Erstens schlagen wir vor, daß die Gründe ihren Ursprung in einer Ideologie des ‘Gut-Seins’ haben, welches paradoxerweise die Empfänger motiviert, hilflos zu sein. Es handelt sich also um ein Samariterdilemma. Zweitens, gestützt auf Zeitungsartikel von 1960 bis 1970, testen wir diese Theorie durch das Nachzeichnen eines globalen Entwicklungsdiskurses und einer ‘Ideologie des Gutens’ in Dänemark. Hier war der Prozeß von der kooperativen Landwirtschaftsbewegung, welche versuchte das ‘dänische kooperative Modell’ zu exportieren, stark beeinflußt.
1 See World Bank, Assessing Aid: What Works, What Doesn't, and Why (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Burnside, C. and Dollar, D., Aid, Policies and Growth, Policy Research Paper 1777 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 1997)Google Scholar; Islam, S. M. N., Optimal Growth Economics: An Investigation of the Contemporary Issues and the Prospect for Sustainable Growth (Amsterdam: Elsevier Science, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; White, H., ‘The Macroeconomic Impact of Development Aid: A Critical Survey’, Journal of Development Studies, 28, 2 (1992), 163–240CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ovaska, T., ‘The Failure of Development Aid’, Cato Journal, 23, 2 (2003), 175–88Google Scholar. In recent years the economic freedom factor has also played an increasing role; see e.g. Haan, J., and Sturm, J.-E., ‘On the Relationship between Economic Freedom and Economic Growth’, Working Paper 1999/3, University of Groningen, CCSO Centre for Economic Research, 1999Google Scholar; Cole, J. H., ‘The Contribution of Economic Freedom to World Economic Growth 1980–99’, Cato Journal, 23, 2 (2003), 46–57Google Scholar.
2 Easterly, W., The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, (2001)Google Scholar; W. Easterly, ‘Why Doesn't Aid Work?’, Cato Unbound, 3 April 2006, available at http://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/04/03/william-easterly/why-doesnt-aid-work (last visited 12 November 2006).
3 Hirschman, A. O., A Bias for Hope: Essays on Development and Latin America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971), 205–7Google Scholar.
4 Easterly, W., The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), 289Google Scholar.
5 Easterly, ‘Why Doesn't Aid Work?’, 1.
6 See Finfacts Team, ‘OECD says Development Aid flows top $100 billion in 2005’ (2006), available at http://www.finfacts.com/irelandbusinessnews/publish/article10005427.shtml (last visited 8 May 2007).
7 For an overview, see Schraeder, J., Hook, S. W. and Taylor, B., ‘Clarifying the Foreign Aid Puzzle: A Comparison of American, Japanese, French, and Swedish Aid Flows’, World Politics, 50, 2 (1998), 294–323CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 In particular in Article 22, which states, ‘Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realisation, through national effort and international co-operation . . . of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and free development of his personality’, UN, ‘Fiftieth Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights’, available at http://www.un.org/rights/50/decla.htm (last visited 8 May 2007). Space does not permit further exploration of the relation between large-scale development aid and the Declaration of Human Rights.
9 Schmidt, H. I. and Pharo, H., ‘Introduction’, Contemporary European History (special issue, ‘Europe and the First Development Decade. The Foreign Economic Assistance Policy of European Donor Countries, 1958–1972’), 12, 4 (2003), 387–94, 387CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 Latham, M. E., Modernisation as Ideology: American Social Science and Nation Building in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press (2000)Google Scholar.
11 Escobar, A., Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.
12 Gilman, N., Imposing Modernity: Modernisation Theory and Cold War America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Rist, G., The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith (London, New York: Zed Books, 1997)Google Scholar; Stoler, A. L. and Cooper, F., Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997)Google Scholar.
13 Interview with former editorial assistant Tove Sølvsteen, 8 May 2007. When the last volume (106) of Andelsbladet was published in 2005, circulation was at its lowest level ever: 6,700 copies. Circulation was not reported for the 1960s volumes, making the interview necessary. That also holds for the three other publications. However, we know that their circulations were significantly lower, probably no more than 5,000.
14 This is an interesting example of what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu termed a theorisation effect, a symbolic practice that contributes to shape reality – just as Marxian terms such as ‘the class struggle’ did. See Pierre, Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 178; The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard, Nice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 134Google Scholar.
15 Tylor, E. B., Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art and Customs (New York: Henry Holt, 1871)Google Scholar; Spencer, H., The Study of Sociology (London: Henry S. King, 1873)Google Scholar; Morgan, L. H., Ancient Society (London: Macmillan, 1877)Google Scholar; Engels, F., The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, 4th edn (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1884)Google Scholar. See also Hirst, P., Social Evolution and Sociological Categories. Controversies in Sociology Series 5 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1976)Google Scholar.
16 Escobar, A., Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995)Google Scholar.
17 Fabian, J., Time and the Other. How Anthropology makes its Object (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983)Google Scholar.
18 Ibid., 143 ff.
19 Said, E. D., Orientalism (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1978)Google Scholar.
20 Buchanan, J. M., ‘The Samaritan's Dilemma’, in Phelps, E., ed., Altruism, Morality and Economic Theory (New York: Russell Sage, 1975), 71–85Google Scholar. See also Bauer, P. T., Reality and Rhetoric: Studies in the economics of development (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1984)Google Scholar; Coate, S., ‘Altruism, the Samaritan's Dilemma, and Government Transfer Policy’, American Economic Review, 85, 1 (1995), 46–57Google Scholar; Schmidtchen, D., ‘To Help or not To Help: The Samaritan's Dilemma Revisited’, Discussion Paper 9909, Centre for the Study of Law and Economics, Saarland University (1999)Google Scholar; Pedersen, K. R., ‘The Samaritan's Dilemma and the Effectiveness of Development Aid’, International Tax and Public Finance, 8 (2001), 693–703CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dijkstra, B. R., ‘Samaritan versus Rotten Kid: Another Look’, working paper, University of Nottingham, 2003Google Scholar.
21 P. Nannestad, ‘Taxing the Well-Off or the Less Well-Off? Why Immigrants on the Dole May Be the Optimal Policy for Rational Egalitarians’, conference paper presented at the annual European Public Choice Society meeting in Berlin, 2004.
22 Vague threats or promises to cut off charity by a donor in the absence of work on the part of the recipient will remain empty unless there is a demonstrated willingness to carry out such threats. However, as Buchanan puts it, ‘to carry these out, the Samaritan will, in actuality, suffer disutility which may be severe. He may find himself seriously injured by the necessity of watching the parasite starve himself while refusing work. Furthermore, even if the parasite works, the Samaritan suffers by his own inability to provide charity’. Buchanan, ‘Samaritan's Dilemma’, 76.
23 Coate, S., ‘Altruism, the Samaritan's Dilemma, and Government Transfer Policy’, The American Economic Review, 1 (1995), 46–57Google Scholar.
24 Dijkstra, ‘Samaritan versus Rotten Kid’.
25 Burt, E.g. R.S., Structural Holes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992)Google Scholar. Originally developed by US anthropologist Marshall Sahlins in Stone Age Economics (Chicago: Aldine-Atherton Press, 1972): ‘The Spirit of the Gift,’ 149–83.
26 Bauer, P. T., From Subsistence to Exchange and Other Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984)Google Scholar.
27 Simmel, E.g. G., Conflict and the Web of Group Affiliations (New York: Free Press, 1955 [1908])Google Scholar; Mauss, M., The Gift (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969 [1925])Google Scholar; Polanyi, K., The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of our Time (Boston, MA: Beacon Hill, 1944)Google Scholar; Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice.
28 Ben-Porath, Y., ‘The F-Connection: Families, Friends, and Firms and the Organization of Exchange’, Population and Development Review, 6 (1980), 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29 Ostrom, E., ‘Constituting Social Capital and Collective Action’, Journal of Theoretical Politics, 6, 4 (1994), 527–62, 559CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
30 Pedersen, K. R., ‘The Samaritan's Dilemma and the Effectiveness of Development Aid’, International Tax and Public Finance 8 (2001), 693–703CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also R. Cassen et al., Does Aid Work? (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994)Google Scholar; Krueger et al., Aid and Development (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989); Boone, P., ‘Politics and the Effectiveness of Foreign Aid’, European Economic Review, 2, 289–329 (1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; P. S. Jensen and M. Paldam, ‘Can the New Aid-Growth Models Be Replicated?’, Working Paper 2003–17, Department of Economics, University of Aarhus, 2003.
31 White, ‘Macroeconomic Impact of Development Aid’, 168 ff.
32 Pedersen, ‘Samaritan's Dilemma’; Bauer, P. T., From Subsistence to Exchange and Other Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
33 For details see Svendsen, G. L. H. and Svendsen, G. T., The Creation and Destruction of Social Capital: Entrepreneurship, Co-operative Movements and Institutions (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2004)Google Scholar.
34 The Danish term strukturændringer is a direct translation of ‘structural changes’, corresponding to the German word strukturwandel or the French changement structurel. It was imported from the United States after the Second World War. Thus a search on article databases reveals that the concept was first developed in the late 1930s in the American Economic Review. Alvin H. Hansen wrote about ‘deep-seated structural changes in economic institutions’ after the First World War in his paper ‘The Situation of Gold Today in Relation to World Currencies’, American Review of Economics, 27, 1 (1937), 130–40, 131. In the same journal, Benjamin Anderson, M. Jr, wrote about disturbances in global economy after 1929 due to ‘structural changes’ in his ‘Governmental Economic Planning’, American Review of Economics, 30, 1 (1940), 247–62, 247Google Scholar.
35 See Svendsen and Svendsen, Creation and Destruction of Social Capital, 128–9.
36 Among these modern-thinking new leaders and experts was Anders Andersen, who during the 1960s headed the Danish National Confederation of Agricultural Syndicates, was president of the Danish Agricultural Council and an MP; economist Poul Nyboe Andersen, chairman of the Danish Union of Co-operative Wholesale Societies and of the Danish Agency for Promotion of Technical Co-operation with Developing Countries (1962–5); Johs. Dons Christensen, chairman of the Danish Co-operative Committee; Clemens Pedersen, editor of Andelsbladet during that period; Professor Kjeld Philip, special consultant for the Danish Agency for Underdeveloped Countries on issues on agricultural co-operatives; and Torkil Mathiassen, head of the Danish Dairy Office.
37 See Andelsbladet 1963: 3.
38 Ugeskrift for Landmænd (UfL) 1963: 733 (our translation).
39 Andelsbladet (1965), 1186, 1368.
40 Andelsbladet (1962), 113, 125, 303, 958; (1963), 1045.
41 Andelsbladet (1962), 958.
42 Andelsbladet (1961), 159.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid., 187.
45 Ibid., 189.
46 Ibid., 219.
47 Ibid., 189. Whether Myrdal's economic analysis was correct or not, it seems evident that the implicit development theory it builds on was the idea of a global development race with equal participants. In contrast, the evolutionist ideas of Herbert Spencer and Edward Tylor implied development as biologically determined evolution, i.e. conditioned by the physical, mental, social and cultural environments of various human races – polygenesis – involving naturally conditioned qualifications among participants in the global development race. Rather, Myrdal's vision is very similar to that of nineteenth-century English Christian altruists, who emphasised the unity of human races, in that every human being was created by the same God (Hirst, Social Evolution; H. E. Augstein, ‘Physical Anthropology: Natural Similarity’, Clio Medica, 52, 1 (1999), 57–104. In this monogenetic version, all races had the same opportunities to ascend the evolutionary ladder, because they were made of the same material – although lack of Christian enlightenment could act as a barrier.
48 Andelsbladet (1966), 129.
49 Andelsbladet (1965), 31, 124; (1966), 422.
50 Andelsbladet (1963), 1280.
51 See also Svendsen and Svendsen, Creation and Destruction of Social Capital.
52 Andelsbladet (1964), 688.
53 E.g. Andelsbladet (1965), 923, 1186, 1304; (1966), 860; (1968), 1128; (1970), 70.
54 Andelsbladet (1966), 860.
55 Andelsbladet (1963), 60.
56 Andelsbladet (1964), 511.
57 For example, Nyboe Andersen stated in 1965 that ‘in the long run, a good contact to, and goodwill in, the developing countries may enhance Danish agricultural exports’. In a true altruistic spirit he hastened to add that, primarily, ‘the economic, technical and social development within Danish agriculture during the last century contains elements of high value for ongoing development in poor agricultural countries all over the world’ (Andelsbladet (1965), 261).
58 E.g. Andelsbladet (1965), 78 ff.
59 Andelsbladet (1964), 510.
60 Dansk Ungdom (Danish Youth) (1961), 150; Andelsbladet (1961), 210.
61 Andelsbladet (1964), 510.
62 Paldam, M., Dansk u-landshjælp. Altruismens politiske økonomi (Aarhus: Århus Universitetsforlag, 1997)Google Scholar.
63 Svendsen, G. L. H., ‘Andelsbevægelsen og den hvide mands byrde. Et bidrag til en antropologisk−historisk belysning af dansk u−landsbistand 1960–70’, Historie, 2 (2002), 263–309Google Scholar; Easterly, ‘Why Doesn't Aid Work?’.
64 Andelsbladet (1964), 512.
65 Ibid. The roots of this influential modernist idea, or myth, can be found in Alexander Gerschenkron's conceptualisation of the economic advantages of being backward, allowing poor countries to undergo rapid ‘catch-up processes’. See, e.g., Gerschenkron, A., Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective, a Book of Essays (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1962)Google Scholar. Such a line of thought has been severely attacked by more recent authors within a cultural relativist tradition. For an overview, see Burkett, P. and Hart-Landsberg, M., ‘A Critique of “Catch-Up” Theories of Development’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, 33, Part 2 (2003), 147–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
66 Andelsbladet (1964), 1493.
67 Andelsbladet (1965), 1506; (1966), 295; (1969), 97, 187; (1970), 807.
68 E.g. Andelsbladet (1962), 969; (1965), 1143; (1966), 296–7. For the ICA see Andelsbladet (1965), 258, 1186.
69 Andelsbladet (1970), 1065; (1963), 451 ff., 1011 ff.
70 Andelsbladet (1964), 1043. See also Andelsbladet (1963), 451 ff.; (1966), 129.
71 Pharo, H., ‘Altruism, Security and the Impact of Oil: Norway's Foreign Economic Assistance Policy, 1958–1971’, Contemporary European History, 12, 4 (2003), 527–46, 546CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
72 Tomlinson, J., ‘The Commonwealth, the Balance of Payments and the Politics of International Poverty: British Aid Policy, 1958–1971’, Contemporary European History, 12, 4 (2003), 413–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
73 Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, Cambridge: Polity Press (1990).
74 Andelsbladet (1964), 687–8.
