How Do We Help?: The Free Market in Development Aid

Endnotes

245 Endnotes 1  Until 2005 there was also a second list of ‘new developing countries’ which had been created out of the break-up of the Soviet Union (known as the ‘Eastern European and New Independent States’). These states received official assistance, but not official development assistance. The two lists have since then (rightly) been combined. 2  By 1960, public and private capital flows from the rich countries amounted to 0.83% of their GNI. Around three-quarters of this was official bilateral aid. 3  By far the largest Chinese project was the Tamzam railway, which covers more than 1,750 km and connects the Tanzanian port of Dar-es-Salaam with the Zambian city of Kapiri Mposhi. 4  The only official condition is that the recipient country may not give Taiwan diplomatic recognition. 5  The British talked in terms of ‘responsible trade unionism’ and ‘constructive co-operativism ’ to make it clear that these social organisations were definitely not supposed to act against vested interests. 6  Originally, the Société Générale also kept itself aloof from Leopold II’s colonial project. Only in the early years of the 20th century did the Société Générale develop into an active , pro-colonial enterprise. 7  This refers to the colonies and territories that were run by the colonial countries which had lost the First World War. 8  Even so, real changes were taking place in the South at that time. Indonesia declared its independence in 1945, the League of Arab States was created in the same year, India gained its independence in 1947, the state of Israel was established in 1948 and Mao Zedong rose to power in China in 1949. 9  The proposal to set up another international trade organisation was rejected. However, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was created. 10  Named after the then US Secretary of State, George Marshall, who devised the plan. 11  Only USD 13.5 billion was actually used during the five-year Marshall Plan. 12  The European Recovery Plan functioned as a ‘countervalue fund’. The money at the USA’s disposal could be converted into loans, but 70% was used to purchase goods from the USA: USD 3.5 billion was used to purchase raw materials; USD 3.2 billion for food, cattle fodder and fertiliser; USD 1.9 billion for machines and vehicles and USD 1.6 bil- How do we help? 246 lion for fuel. Every country was able to indicate its requirements, and the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC) decided who got what. The American suppliers were paid in USD. The European recipients had to make payments in local currency into a countervalue fund for the goods. That money could be used by the recipient countries for investment projects. 13 Quoted in The Guardian, 16 February 1996. 14  See e.g. the Structural Adjustment Participatory Review International Network (www. saprin.org). 15  This refers exclusively to members of the so-called Paris Club, an informal club of 19 creditor countries (mainly Western countries, plus the Russian Federation). 16  100% cancellation of all pre-2005 debts with the IMF and the AfDB and all pre-2004 debts with the World Bank. 17  The developing countries’ tax income relative to GNP is less than half that of the industrialised countries. 18  Creating such a scoreboard is of course particularly complex. The criticism of the index mainly relates to the methodology used. Questions have been raised about the definition of a ‘development-friendly policy’ and about the weighting procedure. 19  The realistic school in the study of international relations in fact consists of realists and neorealists. The assumptions that they share are as follows: (1) states are the primary actors in the international system; (2) the state acts as a unit; (3) the international system is anarchical and there is no entity with a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence (although the neorealists accept that a certain structure can be identified in the international system); (4) all states try to maintain or extend their power and interests via the international system. The idealistic or liberal school works on the following assumptions : (1) individuals are the primary international actors; (2) states are pluralistic actors which have internal divisions and have to take account of elections and negotiations between groups; (3) states have multiple interests which they seek to defend/extend via the international system, but they also take account of the interests of others. 20  Omoruyi...