Review Articles 77 
Foreign Aid Reconsidered, Roger C Riddell, James Currey in association 
with ODI, London, 1987 (310pp, £9,95 pbk). 
Perhaps the main characteristic of the book is detail, masive detail, not only 
about debates on official aid but about development in general. It has an 
excellent summary of the development literature and could be 
recommended for this reason alone. 
But 'what does the author set out to do? Part I of the book focuses on 
whether mere is a moral case for official aid to Third World countries. The 
audior's task became that of presenting, discussing and evaluating the 
arguments of those critics who challenge die view that there is a moral 
obligation for donor government's to provide aid, those who say such aid 
does not help eidier in its present form or even at all, and those diat say 
moral arguments are irrelevant to government action (p 75). At die end of 
lengdiy and sometimes circuitous arguments the author comes down to die 
view diat "die case for aid and die case against die critics can be sustained 
without aid's mistakes and uncertainties being concealed" (my emphasis). We will 
come back to diis later. 
Part II, which deals with die dieoretical debates in foreign aid, is excellent 
in providing a survey of the development literature from die 1950s to die 
present. Bodi 'leftist' criticisms and diose from die right are analysed and 
refuted. Widi reference to both the pessimistic dependency dieorists and to 
die optimistic Warrenites, die audior concludes diat "neidier theoretical 
perspective has satisfied scholars as providing an adequate explanation of 
die manner of dynamic Third World development" (p 137). On die role and 
nature of die state die author attacks bodi die 'negative determinism' of die 
dependency school and die naive optimistic determinism diat 'all will turn 
out all right in die end'. Instead, the audior tells us, "die dieoretical 
literature on die role of die state suggests diat diere is no general and 
predictable pattern of state activity diat can lead to firm and uncontestable 
conclusions". What is required, he says, "is a case-by-case analysis to 
determine widiin particular circumstances how far die state in particular 
countries is autonomous, how far it wishes to support aid programmes 
targeted to poverty alleviation, how far the economic structure inhibits 
redistributive growdi, and how far that structure can change and in what 
directions" (pp 143-144). The writer also has some tough words for rightist 
critics and 'market' dieologians whose fundamental diesis is diat promoting 
economic development requires not aid but policies diat promote die 
extension and penetration of market forces and a greater role for die private 
sector. He writes, "diere is_ . . . no dieoretical justification for arguing, as 
the rightist critics do, diat a switch to greater market discipline, a more 
significant role for die private sector, and a deregulated price system will 
necessarily be more advantageous for Third World development" (p 169).
78 Review Articles 
In Part III, the writer assesses the evidence on the performance of aid in 
practice. The basic question he examines is: does an assessment of what aid 
has done, or not done, support or challenge the views of the critics? The 
author, while admitting that there is plenty of evidence to indicate aid's 
inadequacies, especially in the alleviation of poverty, nevertheless argues 
that a strong case can be made for aid. Part of aid's failure, he suggests, lies in 
the very nature of underdevelopment itself. Chapter 15 is devoted to 
discussing aid evaluations that use quantitative and qualitative micro-data to 
make conclusions about the impact of aid. But the author refuses to accept 
that evidence which shows that aid does not work necessarily means that aid 
has failed. He says (p 204), it is only if aid can be shgwn not to have worked, 
and not to be capable of working in the future, and that an alternative 
strategy would work, that the perspective of the critics of aid will have been 
vindicated. Readers are also reminded that there are many different kinds or 
forms of aid ranging from technical assistance to food aid. If one form fails 
another may succeed. Moreover, poorer countries tend to be characterised 
by greater uncertainties, weaker institutions, fewer socio-economic linkages 
and greater vulnerability to external influences. Under these conditions aid 
is likely to achieve less. According to the author, "the point is not to condone 
waste and to justify misuse of funds, rather it is to highlight the risky and 
uncertain environment in which any policy intervention, including aid, is 
carried out" (p 205). So much for the strong points of the book. What about 
the weak points? 
While the author points out some of the limitations of the discussions 
about aid performance, in particular that it "takes place in a sanitised world 
of the donor and perfect recipient where wider political, foreign policy, 
strategic, commercial, and economic influences are not considered" (p 206), 
he himself gives only cursory attention to such influences. A small section — 
pp 206-212 — is devoted to discussing the impact of these wider influences 
on aid effectiveness — for example, giving aid to friendly or, more 
commonly, 'client' states, or those that adopt recommended policy reforms; 
using aid to promote donor economic interests through, for example, tiedaid, 
with the attendant distortions and costs to recipient countries; other 
non-aid specific policies of donor countries. 
While the less than altruistic motives of donors are mentioned, they are 
not really subjected to detailed analysis and critique. For example, in 
discussing the lack of donor coordination as a factor contributing to aid 
effectiveness the author says "there is no doubt that one major inhibiting 
factor here is the manner in which donor self-interest (political, strategic, 
commercial) influences the direction and destination of aid resources, the 
quantity of funds allocated to different recipients over time, and the form in 
which aid is provided. Especially where these interests are dominant they 
can and do considerably lessen the developmental impact of official aid,
Review Articles 79 
either directly through the 'misuse' of aid funds or indirectly through the 
pursuit of mutually conflicting policies, for instance in the case of trade 
protectionism. In recent years, the United States, Japan, West Germany and 
Britain have all increased the impact of their (different) goals of self-interest 
to the detriment of aid's developmental impact" (p 206). This is the first time 
that the author alluded to one of the thorniest issues in the North-South 
relationship — trade protectionism. This important theme — the (.ill l>v 
developing countries for more open trade not tied aid is not at all 
developed in the book. The problems of the commercialisation of aid, the 
dumping of excess food surpluses, and the immense pressures on Third 
World countries to open up their economies while donor countries do not 
do so, are mentioned only in passing. 
In discussing ways ol improving the effectiveness of aid the writer 
pinpoints two important areas: the nature of recipient government polii iis 
— that recipient governments should spell out more clearly the gap-filling 
role of foreign aid; and, secondly, donor coordination in identifying and 
quantifying those constraints that impede aid effectiveness. The second area 
is rather controversial. What should be the role of donors in shaping the 
broad policy environment in aid-recipient countries? Where should the line 
be drawn between 'helping' and actually interfering in the domestic policymaking 
process of recipient countries? The author appears to see no real 
danger of donor interference when he says "donors could well have a 
crucial role in devising, drawing up and helping to implement such a policy 
framework" (p 27/5}. Many Third World countries have serious misgivings 
about the involvement of donors in the determination ol their domestic 
policies and priorities, which have in some cases gone beyond what could be 
justified by the need to protect current loans and guarantee their responsible 
use. This preoccupation with 'control' by most donors is reflected by the fact 
that most bilateral aid is still in the form of project lending whereas the needs 
of Third World countries are for programme aid — flexibly usable funds 
which are not tied to specific investment projects. 
One other area of concern to many recipient countries, and which is not 
discussed by the author, is the often slow rate of disbursements of assistance 
already pledged (this was a major problem with Zimbabwe's Zimiord 
funds). This is usually due to die insistence by donors that the recipients 
create and maintain an acceptable pipeline of projects and supply 
performance reports of almost impossible standards. Manv Third World 
countries do not have the capacity or expertise to meet such conditions. 
In a leading chapter (16) the writer considers what he terms the 'bedrock' 
question about foreign aid: is it, or is it capable of, reaching and assisting the 
poor in aid-recipient countries? But who are the poor or poorest is never 
clearly spelt out. The author clearly avoids mentioning class as a category of 
analysis, so that the discussion remains vague and generalised.
80 Review Articles 
The point, in my view, is not to ask whether aid should be given or not or 
whether there is a moral obligation to give aid or not. The fact is that some 
resource flows are taking place, for all sorts of reasons. The role of 
progressive social scientists should be to analyse and expose the 'aid 
business'. We need on-going research on the effects and consequences of 
aid. Discussion about the reform of aid must obviously go on. Many 
developing countries could do with more concessionary aid — not tied to 
particular projects, to orders from particular countries, or to any economic 
policy. The most important issue is: what are the conditions which are 
necessary for the effective utilisation of genuine aid? One such is that we 
need a redistribution of productive wealth to give more wealth, and hence 
economic power, to the poor and underprivileged classes so that they can 
participate more effectively in decision-making about development. 
Reviewed by Nelson P. Moyo, University of Zimbabwe, Harare.