Donor’s double talk undermines African agency: Comparative study of civic agency in Burkina Faso and Togo

Dirk Kohnert

EconStor Conference Papers from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

Abstract: Despite a long-standing controversy about aid-effectiveness in general and the impact of aid-dependency on governance in particular, little is known on the effect of donors policies on civic agency for democratization in aid dependent autocratic regimes. In this study it is argued that the long-term effects of double-talk of donors, who openly promote democracy and freedom but covertly follow overriding hidden interest, are a neglected source of failure of civic protest and democratic revolutions in autocratic regimes. The differing outcome of 'democratic revolutions' in Togo and Burkina Faso – both 'aid darlings' for decades-serves to substantiate this thesis. A systematic and holistic consideration is necessary for an unbiased evaluation of the hidden adverse impact of aid on collective action at the grassroots. Therefore, a rethinking of temporal and disciplinary 'fault lines' in development politics as well as in development studies is essential.

Keywords: ODA; democratization; civil society; civic agency; aid-darlings; autocratic regimes; Burkina Faso; Togo; Sub-Saharan Africa (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F35 F54 F68 N47 N97 O21 O35 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr
Note: Accepted conference paper: Conference: The fabrication of public action in countries « under an aid regime » APAD 2015 International Conference, Cotonou, 17-20 November 2015, At Cotonou, Benin Republic, West Africa
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/120921/1/K ... aper.DK.06.10.15.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Donor’s double talk undermines African agency: Comparative study of civic agency in Burkina Faso and Togo (2019)
Working Paper: Donor’s double talk undermines African agency: Comparative study of civic agency in Burkina Faso and Togo (2015)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:esconf:120921

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in EconStor Conference Papers from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().