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203 The unbearable lightness of the support for development cooperation Policymakers and other players in development cooperation have a big problem . They do not know whether the public supports them in what they do. Yet they need its support: the government and other players operate with tax revenue, and that is best used on things that the public actually supports. During a high-level meeting of the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD (Paris, May 2001) various development cooperation ministers reported that ‘their’ public opinion had increasingly been falling away in recent years. NGDOs and other development organisations racked their brains about the best way to involve their supporters more, get the public to give more financial support and extend their support base. The uneasy relationship with the support base Talking about the support base is like discussing whether a glass is half-full or half-empty. The support base is always there, but it may be large or small, dormant or active, negative or positive… The same is true of support for anything: a new motorway, windmills in a densely populated area, extending working hours, a political party – and so too for an NGDO. If the players in the development sector take such a keen interest in their support base, they have special reasons for doing so. These are very much related to the sector’s characteristics. Take the government. Policymakers who work on development cooperation seek support for their policy domain in general and their policy choices in particular. They want the views, attitudes and behaviour of the general public or of particular groups that might be interested in the policy to be positive, or at least neutral. But such views and attitudes and such behaviour are not very readily expressed in the case of development cooperation: the political support base is largely latent and not activated. Development cooperation is not a theme that really stirs high feelings in a nation’s political and social sphere. It has too little connection with matters of immediate concern to do How do we help? 204 so. It relates to what Fowler refers to as long distance obligations (Fowler, 1992), which have little topicality in everyday social and political debate. Moreover, support for development cooperation is not based on people’s direct and short-term interests.25 Such support is less easily appealed to, less clearly defined, less readily mobilised and demonstrated collectively on fewer occasions. The marches, demonstrations or happenings associated with other issues, by which people nail their colours to the mast, are not effective tools for mobilisation here. The support base for development cooperation is thus far more diffuse, fragmented and vague than it is for many other social issues , and this makes it far harder for policymakers in the development sector than it is for their counterparts working on other issues to gain a feel for, an understanding of or a handle on the support base, or to muster public support for what they do. But there is another factor. The social and political support bases for development cooperation also have few links with each other. Development policy evolves without reference to public opinion and with little input from the majority of the organised support base. By contrast with many other domains, we can speak here of an advocacy void or a democratic deficit. Policy lacks transparency, is developed without much consultation and is rarely subjected to the test of public opinion. The minister for development cooperation can easily act in isolation: he or she can seek out new partner countries, take up new themes and alter budgets, and expect little protest in cabinet, parliament, public opinion or even the sector. Like no other minister, he or she can make substantial changes of course. Unlike fellow-ministers responsible for education , healthcare, the infrastructure or the armed forces, the minister for development cooperation has a (fairly large) budget at his or her disposal which is free from any corresponding long-term spending commitments and is not examined with a fine-tooth comb by all kinds of interest groups. Other players in the sector, the NGDOs for example, have a similarly ambiguous relationship with their support base. As we have seen, their support base consists of adherents, constituents and supporters. Few, if any, NGDOs have members. The supporters are changing all the time. People are quick to come forward if asked to do so, but equally quick to step back again. Many of those who donate money shop around...

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