http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/379/48634puzzle.jpgThe Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness will be held this September in Accra. But is aid effectiveness a mirage? Yash Tandon dissects the Paris Declaration in relation to aid effectiveness and reaches the conclusion that "under the pretext of making aid more effective, the aid effectiveness project is a form of collective colonialism by Northern donors of those Southern countries that, through weakness, vulnerability or psychological dependency, allow themselves to be subjected to it at the Accra conference in September." But all is not lost and he also offers a way out.
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A HISTORICAL AND CONTEXUAL NOTE

The Paris Declaration and the debate on aid effectiveness must first be placed in its proper conceptual and historical context. The origins of the debate lie in the concept of ‘failed states’ that in the 1990s became a common explanation for ‘crisis’ in large parts of the South. Theorists, largely in the US and Europe, argued that failed states were at the root of global instability and terrorism. They had lost their legitimacy and credibility, giving the North the right to intervene in order to reshape them as democratic states that would no longer pose a threat to the rest of the civilised world.

Robert Cooper, for example, described a zone of the ‘pre-modern world, the pre-state’, which was in a condition of ‘post-imperial chaos’: ‘The existence of such a zone of chaos is nothing new, but previously such areas, precisely because of their chaos, were isolated from the rest of the world. Not so today… If they become too dangerous for the established states to tolerate, it is possible to imagine a defensive imperialism. If non-state actors, notably drug, crime or terrorist syndicates take to using non-state (that is pre-modern) bases for attacks on the more orderly parts of the world, then the organised states may eventually have to respond' [1].

Cooper, an English version of the American neo-Conservatives, might have been ignored had not some of his ideas been given a boost a year later by Martin Wolf, a respected columnist for the Financial Times. In an article entitled ‘The need for a new imperialism’ [2], Wolf argued that Afghanistan was but an extreme example of a ‘failed state’. There were others, which not only posed a threat to the rest of the world but reduced the lives of their own people. ‘If a failed state is to be rescued,’ Wolf wrote, ‘the essential parts of honest government – above all the coercive apparatus – must be provided from outside…. To tackle the challenge of the failed state, what is needed is not pious aspirations but an honest and organised coercive force.’ In his view this entailed ‘a transformation in our approach to national sovereignty – the building block of today’s world.’ The legal doctrine of sovereignty must not impede the reordering of the South, by force of arms if necessary, even pre-emptively.

In essence, underpinning Bush and Blair’s intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq was the concept of failed states and the right (indeed obligation) of the North to intervene. This was ‘hard power’ at work. Complementary expressions of ‘soft power’ included Blair’s Commission for Africa and Bush’s Millennium Challenge Account. At the World Economic Forum in January 2005 Blair called for ‘a big, big push forward’ to end poverty. The G8 meeting in July that year decided to double annual foreign aid to Africa and forgive African debt. In September the United Nations took up the theme: Jeffrey Sachs toured the world spreading the message that Africa could be saved through increased aid. The year ended with Bono being named Time magazine's person of the year for his efforts to save Africa. Aid, along with other instruments of intervention such as human rights, had become a means to democratise the South and make it safe for the rest of the world.

Many in the South condemned the idea of failed states as a Northern pretext for intervention [3]. In the North, too, some were alarmed at this new-found justification for imperial or neo-imperial intervention in their name. Others were sceptical about Bush and Blair’s grandiose plans to ‘save Africa’. As a rejoinder to the idea that accelerated aid would (or could) make Africa’s poverty history, William Easterly, formerly of the World Bank, argued that top-down, donor-driven aid does not work [4], and that aid can only play a supportive role to essentially domestic efforts. Stephen Browne emphasised aid’s inadequate market signals and the way in which donor domination distorts supply and demand [5]. Roger Riddell showed how short-term political interests distort aid [6], and argued that the aid industry must change radically to become the effective force for good that it is often claimed to be.

To summarise, then, we need to recognise that we are on very controversial and politically sensitive terrain when we talk about aid. Perhaps Bono and Sachs are honest advocates of aid, believing that the rich have a responsibility to help the poor. They do not ask if the rich had anything to do with creating poverty in the first place, but their good faith is best not questioned; they are artists and academics, not politicians, spreading the good word about humanity and humanitarianism. Bush and Blair, however, are in another camp altogether. They are in the category of people that Roger Riddell argues distort the purpose of aid because they have a political agenda, whether hidden or explicit. Their political track record suggests that they share Robert Cooper and Martin Wolf’s belief in defensive imperialism. Like their 19th century ancestors Bush and Blair are driven by a kind of missionary zeal to civilise the South and reorder it, to make it safe for democracy and ‘more like us’. Both soft and hard power are needed. Aid, from this perspective, becomes another weapon in their arsenal to discipline chaotic parts of the world. It follows that it would be irresponsible to give aid without conditions.

MORE RECENT REASONS FOR THE OECD’S AID EFFECTIVENESS INITIATIVE

More recently, aid effectiveness has been driven by three additional factors. First, the need to simplify and rationalise the complex system of aid administration and reduce transaction costs [7]. Second, demands from citizens of donor countries for greater discipline and accountability in the administration of aid by their governments. And third, a sudden awareness of the serious democratic and legitimacy deficit in the present aid architecture, dominated as it is by donor countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Bank and regional development banks.

The OECD took the lead to reform the aid architecture. In 2003, at an intergovernmental High Level Forum (HLF) in Rome convened by the OECD’s Development Cooperation Directorate, Northern donors discussed how to make aid more effective. In March 2005, at the second High Level Forum, the OECD adopted the so-called Paris Declaration, which aims to take ‘far-reaching and monitorable actions to reform the ways we deliver and manage aid’. By mid-December 2007, 115 countries had endorsed it. At the third HLF in Accra in September 2008 the OECD and other signatories will agree a text on the methods and modalities of making aid more effective. Meanwhile OECD countries are already implementing the Paris Declaration in conjunction with, ironically, the World Bank.

On its website the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) gives three reasons why the Paris Declaration will improve aid effectiveness. First, it goes beyond a statement of general principles; it lays down a ‘practical, action-orientated roadmap to improve the quality of aid and its impact on development’. Second, it sets out 12 indicators for monitoring and ‘encouraging progress’ against partnership commitments. Third, it promotes a model of partnership that will improve transparency and accountability in the use of development resources. At international level it provides a mechanism for donors and recipients of aid to hold each other mutually accountable and publicly monitor compliance. At country level it encourages joint assessment of progress by donors and partners using local instruments.

The Paris Declaration accepts that current accountability requirements are often ‘harder on developing countries than donors’. It also recognises that ‘aid is more effective when partner countries exercise strong and effective leadership over their development policies and strategies’. This is why ownership – i.e. developing countries exercising strong and effective leadership over their development policies and strategies – is, so the Paris Declaration says, its ‘fundamental tenet’.

THE SOUTH’S CONCERNS ABOUT THE PARIS DECLARATION AND ITS AID EFFECTIVENESS MODEL

On the face of it, then, the Paris Declaration looks a benign document. It recognises the faults of the present system, sets out reasonably sensible principles on aid and, significantly, emphasises principles of ownership by developing countries and mutual accountability between donors and recipients. Why, then, are developing countries not very excited about it? Many of them have signed on to it, but appear to have done so without fully analysing its implications. There is now growing awareness among both civil society and some government actors in developing countries that all that glitters about the Paris Declaration is not gold and that another agenda, not readily transparent on first reading, may underlie it.

The most critical analysis of the Paris Declaration has come from a study by Roberto Bissio of Social Watch for the UN Human Rights Council's High-Level Task Force on the Implementation of the Right to Development. Bissio argues that relatively minor gains in efficiency and the reduction of some transaction costs are overridden by the asymmetrical conditions under which negotiations between donors and recipients take place. He adds that the Paris Declaration ‘creates a new level of supranational economic governance above the World Bank and the regional development banks’[8].

In light of this and similar critiques [9], it is important to understand the overall purpose and methodology of the Paris Declaration to appreciate fully its implications for the aid industry. Here are some of the South’s major concerns.

1. The UN was initially excluded from the system and then, belatedly, brought in to give the Paris Declaration a semblance of credibility. The UN lacks any leverage to promote its priorities within the Paris Declaration because it was not involved from the start. For example, the ILO`s internationally recognised concept of ‘decent work’ does not appear as one of the objectives in aid evaluation – nor do many of the MDG-related objectives, especially MDG 8 that deals with North-South relations.

More worryingly, the OECD has now sought to bring the UN into the Paris Declaration process. Why should this be a matter for concern? The UN`s early involvement could have been a positive step in reforming the global aid architecture, but the OECD apparently preferred to place its trust in the Bretton Woods Institutions. It now seems that the OECD’s directorate has belatedly become aware of the World Bank and IMF’s democratic deficit, and of the need to involve the UN to provide a veneer of legitimacy.

It has done this in two ways. First, the OECD-DAC has embraced the UN’s Development Cooperation Forum (DCF) initiative. The DCF was created by the General Assembly in October 2005 as a follow-up to the 2005 World Summit [10]. It is mandated to review ‘trends in international development cooperation, including strategies, policies and financing’, to promote ‘greater coherence among the development activities of different development partners’, and to strengthen ‘the normative and operational link in the work of the United Nations’. Its overall purpose is to help strengthen the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and make it more effective. In January 2007 the General Assembly further provided for the DCF to meet biennially in a forum ‘within the framework of the ECOSOC High Level Segment’[11].

It is reasonable to suggest that once the OECD-DAC became aware of the democratic and legitimacy deficit of the IMF-World Bank architecture, it embraced the DCF to provide that missing dimension. The intention behind this move may not be as conspiratorial as it appears; it may be a genuine desire to render credibility to the Paris Declaration process. However, the OECD-DAC did not allow the UN to influence the process or the outcome (for example on ILO and MDG objectives). Furthermore, the World Bank continues to play a dominant role. All that the Paris Declaration has done is remove the more offensive vocabulary of the Bretton Woods institutions (such as ‘conditionalities’) and co-opt a new terminology (such as ‘mutual accountability’ and ‘coherence’ with development objectives).

The OECD-DAC’s second strategy has been to bring the Paris Declaration into the negotiating methodology of the UN system through the back door. This appears to be the objective of the Accra meeting in September 2008 at which the text of the so-called Accra Action Agenda (AAA) will be negotiated for adoption. What its legal implications might be nobody knows. Normally, the UN methodology of a negotiated text begins very early with experts and other stakeholders from the negotiating countries working on drafts. These early texts outline areas of convergence and divergence. The final proposed text is then negotiated by member countries, paragraph by paragraph, until a text is agreed that then has legal validity. The AAA text, on the other hand, appears to have been drafted by a working party outside the UN process, and it is this text that will be negotiated in Accra.

The intentions of those shepherding the Paris Declaration process are not clear. However, the process leading to Accra and the meeting itself do not seem calculated to build credibility for the AAA, especially given the other serious shortcomings of the Paris Declaration, as discussed briefly below.

2. Donors prepare performance conditionalities in conjunction with the World Bank. In the case of Tanzania, for example, there is a 12-page matrix and 49 pages on accounting. The matrix is prepared with no participation by the recipient country. There is no real mutual accountability, contrary to the Paris Declaration`s stated objective. If recipient countries do not perform, they are subject to penalties, but if donor countries do not perform they are not penalised. In normal business transactions, banks that lend money take risks as well as borrowers; if borrowers fail to repay, the banks pay a price. But in the aid architecture proposed by the OECD, the risks are taken by recipient countries alone.

3. The compliance tests administered by the Word Bank do not use the economic and social policies of recipient countries. With regard to procurement, for example, the tests are externally imposed based on a World Bank-devised procurement assessment methodology. There is no recipient country ownership of these tests. The rating system uses a methodology provided by the OECD-DAC and the World Bank to test the effectiveness of aid in relation to systems of both public finance management and procurement. There are twelve criteria or indicators by which to measure the performance and progress of recipient countries, graded on a scale from A to E. If recipient country systems meet agreed donor criteria they will be used to make the evaluation; if not, tests provided by the OECD-DAC and the World Bank will be used. For example, if the national procurement system is not good enough, an open tender system will be used to undertake international procurement, something that developing countries have already rejected in the context of WTO negotiations. In other words, the Paris Declaration brings through the back door what developing countries have already turned down.

4. On governance, it is once again donor procedures that determine the method of harmonisation. Although the Paris Declaration talks about ownership, the opposite is in reality the case. Harmonisation processes are externally set. Donors decide whether a particular procurement item is to be tendered internationally or nationally (or locally in a local government context), and whether it is open to the private sector or the state sector or both. Donors may disagree (for example, the US favours the private sector and the Scandinavians prefer state procurement). These disagreements are first sorted out between donors, and then become inflexible instruments of enforcement on recipient countries in the name of aid efficiency.

5. There is a shift from project lending to programme-based lending, which involves the pooling of donor resources and the injection of these funds into the national budget through direct budget support. Donor countries develop a single Joint Assistance Strategy for each country. Recipient countries must discuss their strategies with donors and the World Bank. The provision of assistance and funding is based on a collective donor assessment of recipient countries’ policies and the extent to which these policies are acceptable to donors. There is a danger that if the performance of recipients falls short of the indicators, direct budget support may become the instrument for stopping the flow of aid. Recent World Bank documents show that in Poverty Reduction Strategy assessments undertaken by the World Bank, ‘few of them provide the level of operational detail that specifies how objectives are to be achieved through policy actions’. [12] Growth is apparently much lower than expected by the donor community. If this is still the case in 2010, the implication is that donors will demand better performance from recipient countries or they might stop aid.

CONCLUSION

The conclusion is unavoidable. Under the pretext of making aid more effective, the aid effectiveness project is a form of collective colonialism by Northern donors of those Southern countries that, through weakness, vulnerability or psychological dependency, allow themselves to be subjected to it at the Accra conference in September.

Is there a way out? Can the Paris Declaration be salvaged? Yes, it can. In order to give it legitimacy and credibility, the following steps are necessary.

1. The Paris Declaration must be properly embedded in the UN system. The UN (ECOSOC, for example) must thoroughly analyse it and bring into it the UN`s evaluative criteria on aid effectiveness, such as those related to internationally agreed development goals, the MDGs, and the ILO`s concept of ‘decent work’.

2. Meanwhile, there must be a moratorium on the Accra process and the proposed Accra Action Agenda.

3. The Paris Declaration must distance itself from the Bretton Woods institutions or it will suffer the same credibility and legitimacy gap.

4. The principle of mutual accountability must be properly structured and monitored by a UN body. The Development Cooperation Forum of the UN can play this role. Although it is a new institution created as a forum, without power of implementation or enforcement, it could undertake or commission a proper study of the Paris Declaration and recommend how a two-way process of accountability could be put in place.

5. Finally, aid is not the route to development. It creates dependency and erodes self-reliance. The UN should encourage a study on how developing countries can exit from aid dependency over the next 10 or 15 years. The South Centre is already engaged on such an exercise.

* Yash Tandon is the Executive Director of South Centre (http://www.southcentre.org) based in Geneva.

*Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

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http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/376/48446boy.jpgA man or woman with no passion has no heart; one with no power of reasoning has no mind, writes Yash Tandon. It is the combination of heart and mind that produces the balanced person who uses their mind to pursue their passion. Let us speak truth to power, but let us also speak the existential truth of our people’s world to the negotiated truth of the diplomatic world. Our collective efforts, he continues, will lead to a new vision of a better world, one that is fair, just, peaceful and bountiful to all the peoples of the world.

The National Project began before countries in the South achieved their independence from colonial rule, continued for several years after political independence and then, in the era of globalisation, died a sudden death. It needs to be revived.

However, let me first address the issue of what I call the ‘South intellectual’. Is it artificial to describe certain scholars and intellectuals by their geographical domain? We talk about ‘an Indian scholar’, ‘an African intellectual’, or a ‘Caribbean scholar’. Does it make sense to go beyond the nation and the region? Is there something distinctive about a ‘South scholar’ or a ‘South intellectual?’[1]

My answer is yes. There was something in the writing and engagement of Caribbean scholars and writers – such as Norman Girvan, Arthur Lewis, M.G. Smith, C.L.R. James, V.S. Naipaul, Walter Rodney and Clive Thomas – with which those of us at universities in East Africa in the 1970s easily identified. Something in common pulsated in our hearts. How else could we in East Africa have resonated so ardently with intellectuals thousands of miles away in the Caribbean? Of course, the writing of many others from Asia, Africa and Latin America contributed to our lively debates. All these scholars were trying to define the specificity of peoples who had gone through the colonial experience.

Intellectuals were only a small part of the National Project. Political leaders such as Nehru, Nkrumah, Nasser, Sukarno, Manley, and Nyerere were the real inspiration. Politicians and intellectuals alike sought answers to some critical questions of self-identity and collective destiny: Who are we as a ‘nation? What do we do with our hard-won independence? How do we build our nation in ways that answer to the needs of our own peoples rather than those of colonising powers? In challenging the claims of neo-classical economics and neo-liberal policies to universal validity, Professor Girvan writes, significantly, that the objective of ‘policy autonomy’ in the South is self-determination [2]. This, in my view, is the crux of the National Project: self-determination.

What does the National Project mean for the engagement of Southern intellectuals today? In my view, three passions should steer or motivate their intellectual creativity: to critique the dominant imperialist ideology, to critique the dominant structures of power (speaking truth to power), and to provide ideas for a future vision of global society. I will first address the larger question of the relationship between ideas and political practice, and then outline an alternative vision or strategy to the dominant neo-liberal paradigm. Finally, I will take one aspect of this strategy, which is close to my heart, and that is integration in the regions of the South as a counterweight to globalisation. CRITIQUE OF THE DOMINANT IMPERIALIST IDEOLOGY

The language of discourse of the dominant imperialist ideology is economics. Economics has an aura of the scientific, although we know that its scientific pretensions are based on make-believe (much of it self-motivated) rather than rigour. Furthermore, when economics is bolstered with mathematics and graphics, it acquires an added aura of ‘authority’, which is often quite spurious. Does it then follow that the language of counter-ideology must also be economics? Our own economists have answered the orthodox economic theory of mainstream economists and trade theorists with what is called ‘heterodox’ economic theory. Like its adversary, this is largely an abstraction from the reality of power and politics; substantial political analysis is lacking. None of the heterodox economists that I know deal with the issue of imperialism; it is not in their vocabulary. Furthermore, I am not sure what real impact heterodox economics has made on the ground. Even in the realm of ideas it has not made as much impact as it might have.

I do not want to be misunderstood. I think that heterodox economics has provided a valuable and necessary critique of orthodox economics. In my own writings I find that, among some audiences, quoting Joseph Stiglitz or Dani Rodrick gives me a better punch than all my efforts to rally data and evidence on behalf of my arguments. My point is that heterodox economics is good up to a point but that it is not good enough. It must move beyond the realm of economics to the realm of political economy. In other words, I endorse the theme of this conference – ‘Reinventing the Political Economy Tradition of the Caribbean’.

SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER AND A REALITY CHECK FOR THEORY

I shall start this discussion with a quote from none other than the late Michael Manley:

‘Those who have to face the challenge of action may make mistakes. Meantime, those who reside permanently in the world of ideas, alone and untested, do not help anyone when they refuse that reality is more complex than theory’ [3].

I must say that I sympathise, even empathise, with Manley. Academics can speak truth to politicians, but when do politicians get an opportunity to challenge the academics with a reality check? We who research, write and critique have an obligation to speak truth to power – to say how things are and how they should be, from the vantage point of some distance from political power and authority. That vantage point is extremely important: it gives a larger perspective to the drama of daily politics. At the same time, however, we cannot escape the question of what we would have done were we in power at the time that difficult decisions had to be made. Theoreticians speak truth to power. Politicians, in return, provide theory with a reality check. The coin has two sides.

The challenge is how political leaders and theoreticians meet and work together when it matters rather than after the event. When there is a separation between, as it were, the philosopher and the king, how do we create a synthetic ‘philosopher-king’? The Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, gave a partial answer to this question in his concept of the ‘organic intellectual’. For Gramsci, an organic intellectual arises as part of society and in the midst of struggle for liberation from oppression and exploitation. An organic intellectual is always in the midst of struggle, always on the move, drawing strength from history and from the society in which they are embedded and that nurtures them.

Let me go a step beyond Gramsci. There is also an ‘organic institution’, held together by a shared vision of society and long-term strategy among a group of organic intellectuals. Both organic intellectuals and organic institutions are involved in daily struggles, not from the privilege of distance, as academics do, but in the heat of battle. There are many research and academic institutions in the South, but they mostly remain on dry ground. Organic institutions, on the other hand, have to swim in the middle of the ocean.

SPEAKING ‘EXISTENTIAL TRUTH’ TO ‘DIPLOMATIC TRUTH’ AND THE ROLE OF THE SOUTH CENTRE

Truth, of course, has many dimensions. The kind of truth that we at the South Centre deal with on a daily basis is what I call ‘diplomatic truth’, or truth as negotiated between asymmetrical power relationships, in our case between the North and the South.

Let me give an example of diplomatic truth. Globalisation is defined in the course of negotiations between contending political forces in a particular context. Africans might argue, for example, that they have seen few benefits from globalisation; that they have only seen its negative consequences. They would present it as a “challenge”. On the other hand the North might argue that many of the benefits of globalisation have not permeated Africa because of problems with internal governance and corruption, and the failure to create the conditions for investments to flow; that globalisation is an “opportunity” that Africans have missed. The “negotiated” or “diplomatic” truth about globalisation is thus a compromise between these views and presented as both an opportunity and a challenge. This compromise camouflages huge differences in ideology and policy that obscure the reality on the ground.

As organic intellectuals and organic institutions we have a moral obligation to speak truth as we know and experience it to the diplomatic truth that is negotiated by our governments in the forced circumstances in which they find themselves. In the South Centre we have often taken positions against those that some of our governments have been compelled to take because of the pressures put on them by powerful forces in the North.

The trade negotiations in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) are a case in point. Ever since the WTO was formed, the countries of the South, especially the smaller and vulnerable ones, have been subjected to enormous pressures to conform to agreements entered into by the bigger trading powers such as the USA and the European Union. These powerful trading blocs divide and rule the South. To the poorer countries of the South they offer ‘technical assistance’ and incentives such as ‘quota-free’ and ‘duty-free’ access to their markets. Once these smaller countries are taken out of the loop of negotiations with promises of technical and financial assistance and privileged access to their markets, the Northern power blocs then face the bigger countries of the South in hard bargaining over the technical details. Once the big powers, including the larger trading nations of the South, have agreed to a compromise deal in which they have taken care of one another’s interests, this jointly agreed formula is then imposed on the smaller countries. They are forced to surrender the illusory and temporary ‘concessions’ that they were earlier given and accept full reciprocity as, so to speak, ‘equal’ partners in the negotiations. This is the existential truth of the global trade negotiations.

In the case of the negotiations between the EU and ACP countries over Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) the diplomatic truth put out by the European Commission and some governments in Africa and the Caribbean confounds all logic and evidence. The European Commission (EC) argues that EPAs are good for ACP countries. Our analysis in the South Centre shows that the agreements in their present form will further de-industrialise African countries. They may even threaten their food security and policy options for endogenous development. The EC has systematically practiced a policy of divide and rule in Africa, especially in Eastern and Southern Africa, where older, indigenous efforts at regional integration within the context of SADC, COMESA and the East African Community are now in shreds.

Fortunately, there is growing resistance from some African governments to this old-style, colonial policy. Civil society social movements in Africa are also very active in this area. On 23 March 2008 50 of them called for a stop to the EPAs, saying that they will destroy the economies of African countries, lead to a substantial loss in government revenue accrued through tariffs, and a loss of jobs and policy space. They demanded that the interim agreements must be nullified. In the Caribbean context, Norman Girvan has argued that the Cariforum-EC EPA negotiations have been subject to lesser disclosure, debate and parliamentary oversight than legal and constitutional changes of lesser importance, and that the agreements must be subject to full public disclosure and debate, and possible review.

This, in my view, is the most challenging issue of our time that those engaged in the National Project must address, one in which all social and political forces from Jamaica to Cape Town and Vanuatu must join. They must invite bigger countries in the South, such as China, India and Brazil, to fight in solidarity against this European aggressive effort to recolonise a significant and vulnerable part of the South.

Other examples of the struggles of Southern countries in today’s globalising world, in which the South Centre is involved, include: - The struggle for access to knowledge and innovation, protection of indigenous knowledge, and flexibilities in intellectual property and copyright laws that would permit the diffusion of knowledge as a public good.

- The importance of resurrecting the original mandate and vitality of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

- The ‘aid effectiveness’ project of the OECD, called the “Paris Declaration” which will be the subject of negotiations in September 2008 in Accra, and which we must oppose. Many of our countries have become so dependent on aid that it is impossible to talk about self-reliance or the National Project unless effective exit strategies from aid are offered to them.

- The debate on finance for development and the so-called Monterrey Consensus, which will be the subject of further negotiations in Doha towards the end of this year, and which has acquired an entirely new dimension in the wake of the financial crisis in the North.

AN ALTERNATIVE VISION

Let me now come to the third task of the South intellectual, that of offering alternative visions of a future society. It is not enough to critique the present system without offering an alternative vision of where one would want to go.

I give below the elements of an alternative vision taken from an initiative of activist trades union leaders in Southern Africa called the ANSA project - Alternatives to Neoliberalism in Southern Africa [4]. 1. A people-led political and social strategy, as opposed to one led by the IMF/World Bank/WTO/donors.

2. Grassroots-led regional integration, as opposed to the current fragmentation of the region by the Empire.

3. An alternative economic production system, based on domestic demand, human need and the use of local resources and domestic savings, as opposed to the present export-oriented strategy based on foreign investments.

4. A phased withdrawal from globalisation, rather than further deepening of integration within the existing iniquitous global system.

5. A science and technology policy that harnesses people’s collective knowledge and wisdom, instead of blind emulation of techno-science rooted in the commodification for profit of nature, human labour and social structures.

6. Alliance-building and networking with progressive forces at national, regional and global levels, rather than their co-option by capital-led globalisation.

7. Politically governed redistribution of wealth and opportunities from the so-called formal sector to the informal sectors, instead of the misallocation of resources and the integration of informal sectors through their provision of cheap inputs and semi-employed labour.

8. Women’s rights as the basis for a healthy and productive society, replacing the present system based on the exploitation of women`s labour.

9. Education linked with production and improvements in the technical, managerial, research and development skills of workers and those directly in control of matters of production and governance, as opposed to education for a bureaucratic and technocratic elite.

10. Peoples’ demonstrations in support of the evolving ethical and developmental state regarded as embodying the democratic strength of society and creating a dynamic, participatory and radical democracy, rather than the present system in which mobilisation is seen as a threat and in which the representative democracy can sign away people’s future rights.

The ANSA project aims to evolve into a mass movement, a renewed liberation struggle, through sustained education, consultation, debate and action. It is fully compatible with and an extension of the National Project.

THE CASE FOR INTEGRATIVE REGIONALISM IN THE SOUTH

One of the major challenges that the National Project and the ANSA project face is the question of how we in the South integrate our own countries in the face of continuous fragmentation and balkanisation by the forces of globalisation. I identify four main types of regional integration. The first type is what I call distributive regionalism between countries that are roughly equal in economic and political strength. The gains and losses are closely tabulated and calculated. No state surrenders anything unless it gets something of equal value in return. When this kind of distributive regionalism takes place between roughly equal partners that share borders, and when these relations stabilise over a long period of time, it can lead to the second type: integrative regionalism. States are perceived to have compatible interests. Conflicts are sublimated by consideration of the common good that comes from integrating into a single economic or political unit. The best example of this type is the European Union.

A third type is what I call enforced regionalism, where one country is subject to the diktat of another largely because of an asymmetrical power relationship. In theory the weaker partner could walk out of the arrangement, but in practice walking out may be even more costly than a bad bargain. The African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA) is an example of this. The fourth and final type is structured regionalism where the outcome is determined not by negotiation but by historically created conditions or institutions in which asymmetry is embedded. One example of structured regionalism is the ACP-EU Partnership Agreement, signed in Cotonou in June 2000.

It is hardly necessary to make the case for integrative regionalism. The economic case based on market size and the benefits of large-scale production is obvious enough. However, the argument that must be reiterated here is the political one, i.e. that only through integrative regionalism can the populations of the region acquire a negotiating clout in the global fora of trade and investment negotiations.

The biggest hurdle to integrative regionalism in the South is forced or structured regionalism imposed on them from above by the dominant economic and power blocs, namely the United States and the European Union. Their interventions result in the disruption and disintegration of efforts that Southern countries have been making to move towards genuine integrative regionalism.

CONCLUSION

A man or woman with no passion has no heart; one with no power of reasoning has no mind. It is the combination of heart and mind that produces the balanced person who uses their mind to pursue their passion. Let us speak truth to power, but let us also speak the existential truth of our people’s world to the negotiated truth of the diplomatic world to which many of our governments have surrendered their people’s mandate and trust. Let us hope that our collective efforts will lead to a new vision of a better world, one that is fair, just, peaceful and bountiful to all the peoples of the world.

*Yash Tandon is the Executive Director of the South Centre, an Intergovernmental think tank of the developing countries.

* This essay was edited and summarised by Izzy Birch of Fahamu from the keynote speech given by Professor Yash Tandon in honour of Professor Norman Girvan at the 9th annual conference of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES), Kingston, Jamaica, March 2008. The fuller version may be requested from Professor Yash Tandon at [email][email protected]

*Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

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