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The EU, the US and Partnership in Development Cooperation: Bridging the Gap? [Dec. 2014]

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Karen Del Biondo

Postdoctoral Scholar at CDDRL, 2012-2013

Postdoctoral Fellow, KFG Transformative Power of Europe, Free University of Berlin, 2013-2014

Abstract

Internationally, there has been an increasing call for ‘partnership’ in development cooperation. This refers to development cooperation based on negotiation with the recipient government on an equal basis. While both the E.U. and the U.S. have formally committed to this principle, the E.U. is known to be a frontrunner in partnership-based development, while the U.S. was found to be rather slow in implementing this agenda. This paper investigates the degree to which E.U. and U.S. development policies reflect partnership, particularly regarding general features, aid characteristics, conditionality and aid selectivity and aid motives. It finds that, while E.U. development cooperation has traditionally been stronger focused on partnership than it is the case for the U.S., in recent years the gap is narrowing. On the one hand, E.U. development policies have increasingly resembled those of the U.S., as E.U. development assistance is becoming more focused on security and there are increasing conditions on budget support. While U.S. development policies are still strongly driven by security motives, the U.S. has recently madeefforts to increase country ownership.

 

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Karen Del Biondo

Multiple Principals, Multiple Agents: EU and US Democracy Assistance in Sub-Saharan Africa [Dec. 2014]

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Author

Karen Del Biondo

Postdoctoral Scholar at CDDRL, 2012-2013;

Postdoctoral Fellow, KFG Transformative Power of Europe,

Free University of Berlin, 2013-2014

Abstract

This paper investigates under which conditions the EU and the US take a political or developmental approach to democracy assistance. It aims to find out whether the approach differs among the relevant sources of democracy assistance: the European Development Fund (EDF), European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), Instrument for Stability (IfS), US Agency for International Development (USAID), National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC). Based on the combination of interests and institutions, it is predicted that a developmental approach is more likely in the case of strategically important countries, but only for USAID, the EIDHR, the EDF and the IfS which are subject to political control. In this case, USAID is expected to be more developmental than the EDF, given the strong political control of the State Department. Based on the combination of ideas and institutions, USAID and the EDF are expected to be more developmental as their main objective is development. In comparison to USAID, the EDF is expected to be more developmental, as the EDF is co-decided with the government. Empirically, the paper analyzes democracy assistance in Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Ethiopia since 2005. Ethiopia and Kenya are strategically important, and thus we expect a more developmental approach than in Rwanda and Zimbabwe. An analysis of democracy assistance disconfirmed the importance of interests and institutions. Transatlantic differences can better be explained by ideas and institutions, particularly the fact that the EDF is co-decided by the government. Two explanations are put forward for the relative unimportance of interests and institutions. First, it is believed that the openness of the government defines the approach to democracy assistance. Second, people in the field may still maintain some autonomy regarding the approach to democracy assistance.

 

 

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Karen Del Biondo

Brett Carter

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Brett Carter is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Southern California, a Hoover Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and a Faculty Affiliate at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. He received a Ph.D. from Harvard University, where he was a fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies.

Carter studies politics in the world's autocracies. His first book, Propaganda in Autocracies: Institutions, Information, and the Politics of Belief (Cambridge University Press), draws on the largest archive of state propaganda ever assembled — encompassing over eight million newspaper articles in six languages from nearly 60 countries around the world — to show how political institutions shape the propaganda strategies of repressive governments. It received the William Riker Prize for the Best Book in Political Economy, the International Journal of Press/Politics Hazel Gaudet-Erskine Best Book Award, Honorable Mention for the Gregory Luebbert Award for the Best Book in Comparative Politics, and Honorable Mention for the APSA Democracy & Autocracy Section's Best Book Award.

His second book, in progress, shows how politics in Africa’s autocracies changed after the fall of the Berlin Wall and how a new era of geopolitical competition — marked by the rise of China and the resurgence of Russia — is changing them again.

Carter’s other work has appeared in the Journal of Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Perspectives on Politics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Security Studies, China Quarterly, Journal of Democracy, and Foreign Affairs, among others. His work has been featured by The New York Times, The Economist, The National Interest, and NPR’s Radiolab.

Hoover Fellow
CDDRL Affiliated Scholar
CDDRL Visiting Scholar, 2020-2021
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State Building Outside-In

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There is no consensus in the policy or academic worlds about what kind of interventions are most effective in promoting governance in badly governed polities.   The three major approaches to understanding state development — modernization theory, institutional capacity, and rational choice institutionalism suggest very different approaches.   While modernization theory is most expansive about the possibilities for external action, its record over time is the most problematic.   Rational choice institutionalism, in contrast, suggests that in rent-seeking exclusive orders the opportunities for external actors are limited.  Rational choice institutionalism, however, does not provide a clear mapping of mixed order polities, ones in which the interests of political elites are torn between open access and rent-seeking.
 
Speaker Bio:
 
Stephen Krasner is the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations, the Senior Associate Dean for the Social Sciences, School of Humanities & Sciences, and the deputy director of FSI. A former director of CDDRL, Krasner is also an FSI senior fellow, and a fellow of the Hoover Institution. From February 2005 to April 2007 he served as the Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department. While at the State Department, Krasner was a driving force behind foreign assistance reform designed to more effectively target American foreign aid. He was also involved in activities related to the promotion of good governance and democratic institutions around the world.

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Stephen D. Krasner

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall
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(650) 723-0676 (650) 724-2996
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Emeritus
Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations
Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Emeritus
krasner.jpg MA, PhD

Stephen Krasner is the Graham H. Stuart Professor of International Relations. A former director of CDDRL, Krasner is also an FSI senior fellow, and a fellow of the Hoover Institution.

From February 2005 to April 2007 he served as the Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department. While at the State Department, Krasner was a driving force behind foreign assistance reform designed to more effectively target American foreign aid. He was also involved in activities related to the promotion of good governance and democratic institutions around the world.

At CDDRL, Krasner was the coordinator of the Program on Sovereignty. His work has dealt primarily with sovereignty, American foreign policy, and the political determinants of international economic relations. Before coming to Stanford in 1981 he taught at Harvard University and UCLA. At Stanford, he was chair of the political science department from 1984 to 1991, and he served as the editor of International Organization from 1986 to 1992.

He has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences (1987-88) and at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2000-2001). In 2002 he served as director for governance and development at the National Security Council. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

His major publications include Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investment and American Foreign Policy (1978), Structural Conflict: The Third World Against Global Liberalism (1985), Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (1999), and How to Make Love to a Despot (2020). Publications he has edited include International Regimes (1983), Exploration and Contestation in the Study of World Politics (co-editor, 1999),  Problematic Sovereignty: Contested Rules and Political Possibilities (2001), and Power, the State, and Sovereignty: Essays on International Relations (2009). He received a BA in history from Cornell University, an MA in international affairs from Columbia University and a PhD in political science from Harvard.

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The Geography of Governance: Evidence from Slums, Satellites and Foreign Aid

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It is almost too obvious to state, but access to public services and the nature of governance varies hugely within countries, regions and cities. Nevertheless, most work on the “quality of government”, rule of law, corruption, etc. focuses on between-country comparisons. After providing some evidence that within-country variation belies any notion of a national “quality of government”, I lay out a framework for explaining why outcomes vary so much across localities within countries. I explore the usefulness of the framework by providing evidence from three ongoing projects. The first relies on surveys designed to examine the role of slum-level social and political networks in conditioning access to basic public services in Udaipur, India. The second project relies on four post-civil war settings to understand why authorities target some localities with electrification projects but not others.  The third project involves a field experiment embedded in an aid program that compares alternative means of improving accountability in Ghana’s district governments. I will conclude with some reflections on the costs and benefits of working with donors on governance programming.

Speaker Bio: 

Erik Wibbels is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Duke University. His research focuses on development, decentralized governance and other areas of political economy. He has also spent considerable time working with USAID's Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights and Governance in an effort to improve the quality of aid programs aimed at decentralized governance and service provision.

 

 

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Erik Wibbels Associate Professor of Political Science Speaker Duke University
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Scaling Products in Low-Income Markets

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Growing global design expertise and interconnectedness makes it possible for a small organization to address stubborn large-scale social problems. D-Rev is a nonprofit product company that improves the health and increases the income of those living on less than $4 per day.  With its roots in the Stanford design ethos, D-Rev has delivered two products to markets and is redefining what foreign aid is and should be. This talk will focus on five lessons learned from the design, development and now scaling and impact measurement of Brilliance, a phototherapy device for severely jaundiced newborns.

Krista Donaldson is the CEO of D-Rev and has worked in international development, product development and engineering for more than 15 years. She has been recognized by Fast Company as one of the 50 designers shaping the future, and the World Economic Forum as a Technology Pioneer. She did her graduate work at Stanford.

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Krista Donaldson CEO Speaker D-Rev
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Petroleum to the People: Africa's Coming Resource Curse and How to Avoid It

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In the coming decade new oil discoveries in Africa will leave fragile democracies vulnerable to corruption, patronage and rent seeking behavior. In a piece co-written in Foreign Affairs, CDDRL Director Larry Diamond and Research Associate Jack Mosbacher advocate a new scheme to directly distribute oil revenue to citizens in the form of taxable income. This oil-to-cash system would strengthen accountability and increase citizens ownership of state resources.

Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, where he directs the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Diamond also serves as the Peter E. Haas Faculty Co-Director of the Haas Center for Public Service at Stanford. He is the founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and also serves as Senior Consultant (and previously was co-director) at the International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy. During 2002-3, he served as a consultant to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has also advised and lectured to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other governmental and nongovernmental agencies dealing with governance and development. His latest book, The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (Times Books, 2008), explores the sources of global democratic progress and stress and the prospects for future democratic expansion.

At Stanford University, Diamond is also professor by courtesy of political science and sociology. He teaches courses on comparative democratic development and post-conflict democracy building, and advises many Stanford students. In May 2007, he was named "Teacher of the Year" by the Associated Students of Stanford University for teaching that "transcends political and ideological barriers." At the June 2007 Commencement ceremony, Diamond was honored by Stanford University with the Dinkelspiel Award for Distinctive Contributions to Undergraduate Education. He was cited, inter alia, for fostering dialogue between Jewish and Muslim students; for "his inspired teaching and commitment to undergraduate education; for the example he sets as a scholar and public intellectual, sharing his passion for democratization, peaceful transitions, and the idea that each of us can contribute to making the world a better place; and for helping make Stanford an ideal place for undergraduates."

Jack Mosbacher is a Research Associate at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, where he works with Larry Diamond on democratization trends in Africa. A 2012 Stanford graduate, Jack participated in the Undergraduate Honors Program with the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. His thesis, "Bracing for the Boom: Translating Oil into Development in Uganda," won the Departmental Best Thesis Award, and his work has appeared in Foreign Affairs, The Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Quarterly.

 Please click on link to read article that appeared in Foreign Affairs: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/print/136843

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Larry Diamond

CDDRL
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C147
616 Jane Stanford Way
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-6448 (650) 723-1928
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Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Professor, by courtesy, of Political Science and Sociology
diamond_encina_hall.png MA, PhD

Larry Diamond is the William L. Clayton Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He is also professor by courtesy of Political Science and Sociology at Stanford, where he lectures and teaches courses on democracy (including an online course on EdX). At the Hoover Institution, he co-leads the Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and participates in the Project on the U.S., China, and the World. At FSI, he is among the core faculty of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, which he directed for six and a half years. He leads FSI’s Israel Studies Program and is a member of the Program on Arab Reform and Development. He also co-leads the Global Digital Policy Incubator, based at FSI’s Cyber Policy Center. He served for 32 years as founding co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

Diamond’s research focuses on global trends affecting freedom and democracy and on U.S. and international policies to defend and advance democracy. His book, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, analyzes the challenges confronting liberal democracy in the United States and around the world at this potential “hinge in history,” and offers an agenda for strengthening and defending democracy at home and abroad.  A paperback edition with a new preface was released by Penguin in April 2020. His other books include: In Search of Democracy (2016), The Spirit of Democracy (2008), Developing Democracy: Toward Consolidation (1999), Promoting Democracy in the 1990s (1995), and Class, Ethnicity, and Democracy in Nigeria (1989). He has edited or coedited more than fifty books, including China’s Influence and American Interests (2019, with Orville Schell), Silicon Triangle: The United States, China, Taiwan the Global Semiconductor Security (2023, with James O. Ellis Jr. and Orville Schell), and The Troubling State of India’s Democracy (2024, with Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree).

During 2002–03, Diamond served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and was a contributing author of its report, Foreign Aid in the National Interest. He has advised and lectured to universities and think tanks around the world, and to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other organizations dealing with governance and development. During the first three months of 2004, Diamond served as a senior adviser on governance to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. His 2005 book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, was one of the first books to critically analyze America's postwar engagement in Iraq.

Among Diamond’s other edited books are Democracy in Decline?; Democratization and Authoritarianism in the Arab World; Will China Democratize?; and Liberation Technology: Social Media and the Struggle for Democracy, all edited with Marc F. Plattner; and Politics and Culture in Contemporary Iran, with Abbas Milani. With Juan J. Linz and Seymour Martin Lipset, he edited the series, Democracy in Developing Countries, which helped to shape a new generation of comparative study of democratic development.

Download full-resolution headshot; photo credit: Rod Searcey.

Former Director of the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law
Faculty Chair, Jan Koum Israel Studies Program
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Myopic Solutions to Chronic Problems: The Need for Aid Effectiveness in Yemen

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This paper offers a close analysis of the key challenges facing the foreign aid sector in Yemen, and presents recommendations to the government of Yemen and the international donor community to make aid to Yemen more effective.

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Stanford scholars: Lessons learned from the Afghanistan War

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More than 2,860 American and allied troops have been killed in the Afghanistan war, which was launched in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to avenge the deaths of nearly 3,000 civilians. As many as 17,500 Afghan civilians have lost their lives in America's second-longest war. The U.S. military intends to withdraw its combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, closing a chapter in American history that has largely been dropped from the headlines and the collective consciousness of the American people.

Stanford scholars and military experts, including Karl Eikenberry, Joseph Felter, J.B. Vowell, Viet Luong, Anja Manuel and Erik Jensen, talk about the lessons learned, the gains and losses and what to expect after the war formally comes to an end.

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Qatar's Foreign Policy: The Limits of Pragmatism

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Qatar has become an Arab country with a high international profile and an ambitious foreign policy, particularly as a result of its role in the Arab Spring. It has cultivated a reputation as a political mediator and a key source of foreign aid. Following the Libyan uprising, Qatar demonstrated further political adaptability in leading regional action against the Gaddafi regime.

However, this foreign policy does not appear to be built on long-term planning, but rather seems centred on opportunism and promiscuity as Qatar engages with multiple, often clashing, actors and plays the role of political maverick in the Middle East. This article assesses the key components of Qatari foreign policy, as well as public diplomacy, highlighting the potential implications of the lack of a coherent foreign strategy for the country, both on the domestic and external fronts.

Domestically, Qatar faces increasing pressure for reform and the prospect of instability, both catalyzed by high centralization of decision-making with regard to Qatari policy. Externally, it risks overextending its network of political partners to involve potentially volatile actors, losing the credibility of its public diplomacy messages, and subsequently, international scepticism towards its foreign policy motives.

Those domestic and external factors highlight the limits of relying on pragmatism in Qatari foreign policy and the need for long-term strategy if Qatar is to maintain its leadership role in the Middle East.

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