Anomalies of Aid A festschrift for Juhani Koponen edited by Jeremy Gould & Lauri Siitonen INTERKONT BOOKS 15 HELSINKI 2007 Copyright © The editors, authors & publisher Published by Institute of Development Studies University of Helsinki Distributor Finnish Society of Development Studies Box 59 00014 University of Helsinki ISSN 0359- 307X (Interkont Books 15) ISBN 978-952-10-4266- 9 Also available as Interkont e-Books 1 http://www.valt.helsinki.fi/kmi/english/publications.htm Table of Contents Preface ii Learning in development interventions by non-governmental 1 organizations Tiina Kontinen Aid and underdevelopment. Toward an emancipatory development 24 cooperation regime Severine Rugumamu State agency and the structure of foreign aid in Nepal 58 Sudhindra Sharma Development or disillusionment? Economic Partnership Agreements 88 and the goals of European Union development policy Marikki Stocchetti Politics and partnership in the Cotonou Agreement 116 Liisa Laakso An aid regime at work: European aid and policy export to Nepal and 142 Tanzania Lauri Siitonen Msitu wa Angai: Haraka, har aka, haina baraka! Why does handing 168 over the Angai forest to local villages proceed so slowly? Irmeli Mustalahti Popular dissatisfaction and the erosion of political support in 187 Mtwara and Lindi Regions Bernadeta Killian Social forms of culture in development 209 Helena Jerman Neo-Pentecostalism in Tanzania. Godly miracles, Satanic 223 interventions or human development? Päivi Hasu Social resilience, urban poverty and sustainable livelihood in 244 megacities of the South Marja Järvela (Dis)assembling development 269 Jeremy Gould Bibliography of Juhani Koponen’s publications 296 Contributors 302 ii Preface Matti Juhani Koponen – Juhani (or Jussi) to family, friends, colleagues and students alike – is only the second person to hold the Development Studies chair at the University of Helsinki. Following the tragically premature death of Michael Cowen in 2000, Juhani took over the reins at the Institute of Development Studies on an interim basis and was eventually confirmed as Professor in 2003. Despite his relatively recent rise to the pinnacle of Finland’s small community of development scholars, Development Studies has undeniably been Juhani’s life’s vocation for decades. His selfless commitment to the field, and the Institute, have earned him the respect of all who know him. For Koponen, Development Studies is a critical scholarly enterprise, with the emphasis equally on critique and scholarship. His devotion to Development Studies derives, in no small part, from a conviction that better knowledge can make a difference in human affairs. This guiding principle is evident from his writings, his teaching, his administrative style and his active participation in public affairs. Academic research was not Jussi’s first vocation. One of us got to know him in the 1970s as ‘that journalist at the foreign desk of Helsingin Sanomat who is writing an M.A. thesis on Tanzania.’ The thesis was well received and the foreign desk was soon history. Indeed, history became Juhani’s first academic obsession, leading to thick tomes on precolonial and colonial Tanzania. Koponen probably still considers himself a historian but for more than a decade his academic work has increasingly focused on so-called development assistance. Every now and then one hears rumours of a definitive ‘History of Finnish development aid’ taking shape on his computer hard drive, but Juhani has never been one to rush to press. Meanwhile, he and his various research teams have been methodically analyzing and problematizing the ‘impacts’ of Finnish ‘development interventions’ in a wide range of contexts, iii of which Tanzania, Nepal and Vietnam and the forestry sector figure most centrally. Juhani turns sixty on October 24, 2007. With typical modesty, he won’t be making much of fuss about this biographical milestone. In light of his immeasurable contribution to our common enterprise, however, a group of his friends, colleagues and students have been pleased to compile this Festschrift in recognition of his accomplishments, and to encourage both Juhani and others to continue along the path he has forged. Despite the title, Anomalies of Aid, this is not a book about development assistance alone. Reflecting Juhani’s wide scope of interests there are a good number of contributions that do not sit easily on the shelf of aid research. Yet, while one is accustomed to extremely heterogeneous festschrift volumes, this one seems to have a certain degree of coherence and even debate among the contributors. This is, we think, a perfect reflection of Juhani’s legacy as a scholar and an academic leader. Under his stewardship, the Institute of Development Studies fosters pluralism and discussion. For Koponen, critique, reflexivity and interdisciplinarity are not merely catchwords; they are something he actively seeks to facilitate and defend. JG & LS October 2007 Learning in development interventions by non-governmental organizations Tiina Kontinen Introduction Development intervention has been one of the central themes in Juhani Koponen’s work. For him, intervention is one of the dimensions of the very concept of development in development studies (Koponen 2004: 6). According to Koponen (ibid.), development consists of a goal, a process leading to that goal and the intervention in order to initiate the process to reach that goal. Even a quick look at development practice – what is done under the title of development – confirms the centrality of interventionist thinking. Development consists of an uncountable number of development projects and programmes that are considered as instruments to enhance development. Moreover, huge amount of institutions, organisations and mechanisms are devoted to development interventions. Accordingly, hundreds of development experts are defining the overall objectives, development objectives, inputs and outputs of a project in thousands of project planning workshops in many corners of the world. As long as the development intervention business has existed the question of success and failure has puzzled development practitioners as well as those engaged in LEARNING IN DEVELOPMENT INTERVENTIONS / 2 analysing development. One development framework after another has been doomed to failure and new approaches have been introduced. In practice, insufficient planning has made the scapegoat for these failures and increasing emphasis has been put on improved planning mechanisms. Enhancing project planning in order to improve ownership, partnership and participation is one of the most enduring themes in development practice. Without Southern ownership, without equal partnership and participation by the so-called beneficiaries, projects are not supposed to have any chances whatsoever of success. Thus, the recipe for the success seems to be known. Why, then, is it so hard to put it into practice? “Development” is considered a learning institution that learns from its mistakes in order to improve its policies and practices. However, as Sharma et al. (2004: 218) rightly point out, these accounts rarely explicate a detailed definition of learning. The discourse on learning in development often stays at quite a superficial level. Analyses commonly refer to monitoring and evaluation exercises along the project cycle the results of which are disseminated in a workshop before placing the report in the bookshelf. Learning, thus, remains an ideal goal that is supposed to take place more or less automatically. The guidelines on development co-operation and the civil servants in charge of development funding continue to emphasize that development interventions should be mutual learning processes, but what is meant by learning is not always very clear. In the pervasive “learning-speak” in development it has not been made very clear who is supposed to learn, how the learning is supposed to take place and what is supposed to be done with the knowledge learned (Johnson and Wilson 2000: 1894). When left non-conceptualised, learning easily becomes one of the buzzwords circulating in the aid system: everybody should learn, co-operation should be a process of mutual learning and learning in general is a good and desirable thing. However, not all actors praise learning with such enthusiasm. As Biggs and Smith (2003: 1745) point out there seems to be an explicit paradox in development literature dealing with LEARNING IN DEVELOPMENT INTERVENTIONS / 3 learning. The literature is divided into normative and critical genres. On the one hand there are a great number of handbooks and guidelines for enhancing learning based on a positive belief in its possibility. On the other hand, there are plenty of critical accounts stating that no learning whatsoever is taking place in development. Thus, the two extreme poles of “learning advocates” and “learning sceptics” identified in the field of organisational learning in Northern societies (Argyris and Schön 1996: xx) are also found among development practitioners and researchers. As known to researchers of development, learning is not the only idealistic notion in development discourse. Development tends to turn into idealistic goals and solutions, into rhetoric that are at great distance from the reality (Mosse 2005). One of the recent examples of such idealism has been the growing emphasis given to civil society and non- governmental organisations (NGOs) in development practice. NGOs are now performing an important role as distributors of development aid, as