Negotiating accountability in South-South Cooperation: the case of Brazil, an interview with Laura Waisbich, by Laís Kuss
The (re)emergence of South-South Cooperation (SSC) at the beginning of XXI century changed the International Development Cooperation (IDC) landscape. This phenomenon has prompted the generation of different narratives and models of conflicts between SSC providers and traditional donors, as well as inside SSC providers countries.
Considering that context, the paper of Laura Waisbich “ Negotiating accountability in South-South Cooperation: the case of Brazil”, published in vol.63 no.2, discusses the conflict arenas between North and South providers, among bureaucracies and between state and society, focusing on the Brazilian case. These arenas can show us different conflict arenas around: accountability norms, methods of measuring IDC, Brazilian role in development cooperation and even around different development models, transferring domestic disputes to SSC.
The importance of the theme is even bigger when we consider the recent changes in Brazilian Foreign Policy, which can reflect on the country’s role in IDC, its narratives and its adherence of aid international norms, negotiated inside DAC/OECD. Speaking about her research, Laura was interviewed by Laís Kuss, professor at Universidade Potiguar (UnP).
Throughout the paper, you expose traditional donors’ concerns about SSC accountability. This is aligned with the Paris Agenda, that states accountability as an important pillar for Foreign Aid in the DAC/OECD context. Although, there is a narrative conflict over the hegemony in IDC between North and South. Considering this conflict, do you think the SSC accountability concern coming from the North donors is a legitimate one or just a part of the dispute?
In my research I show that concerns with accountability in SSC are embedded in geopolitical disputes over role, status, and responsibilities in global affairs and development cooperation in particular. The question of legitimacy can be understood in different ways. One can think of concerns as being legitimate from the perspective of DAC countries, which have created, since the late 1960s, a system with a set of agreed-upon norms and codes of conduct on how to be a ‘proper’ donor. The fact that DAC members want the ‘new comers’ like Brazil, China, India (but also Turkey and Mexico and many others) to respect these norms (un-tying aid, spending reporting practices, socio-environmental safeguards in the context of infra-structure projects, etc.) is thus legitimate from the point of view of the consistency of the normative regime in place. What is important, nonetheless, is to understand the ways in which the arrival of these new providers, like Brazil, and their politico-symbolic challenges to the DAC have exposed the socio-historical particularities of many of these norms and standards (including those related to accountability). It is also important to understand how DAC donors have used accountability calls to ‘Other’ or stigmatise rising powers for not respecting some of these norms, while several DAC members also fail to comply with them. Pointing to these inconsistencies does not means that concerns are not legitimate. Rather it provides us with a critical gaze that de-naturalises the calls for accountability and situates them in broader political disputes over power in international affairs.
Among SSC providers there are different views and narratives around accountability and DAC/OECD norms. In your opinion, in a mid or long term, is there a possibility of a common development cooperation regime/architecture between traditional and SSC providers? Or even among the majority of these countries?
Yes. There are different views among Southern providers on accountability and OECD/DAC norms and different strategies on how to engage them. There are also divergent within a single country, like Brazil, with sub-foreign policy communities that are more or less favourable of Brazil projecting an ‘autonomous Southern’ identity, or aligning with the OECD, or even finding a third, middle-ground, way. In the long-run, I believe Northern and Southern countries are heading towards issue-based convergence rather than a universal regime. This can happen in the future in issues like climate change or even in global health, in the case of a pandemic like Covid19. I am not convinced countries will be able to craft a common development cooperation regime in the near future for two reasons. First, the colonial legacies and economic asymmetries are still very important, both materially and politically. And this makes the ‘burden-sharing game’ very difficult to be negotiated. Second, given the fragility of contemporary multilateralism and the surge of a new forms of nationalism, there is no political will to redesign global universal norms, and new differentiated responsibilities, at this point.
Considering the global and domestic arenas of conflict over SSC accountability, how these disputes can be beneficial or do any harm for recipient countries and for the improvement of international cooperation as a tool for development?
Although my research does not focus on specific initiatives and/or particular recipient countries, the disputes over SSC accountability I have studied at the global levels and domestically in large providers, like Brazil, can be beneficial to improving SSC practices in loco because they question the simplistic myths and assumptions over SSC workings and its effects on the ground. Accountability disputes reveal fractures, coming from different actors (including governments and civil society groups in other Southern countries with whom Brazil cooperates), in the initial (or official) discourse that SSC works best or that is mutual-beneficial. Accountability-related disputes can also lead to policy and institutional reforms in the Brazilian SSC system, as sometimes they did in the past decade, improving how Brazil manages its SSC and operates as a development provider.
The politicisation of Brazilian Foreign Policy and SSC has contributed for domestic disputes around the theme. At your conclusion, you argue that recent political changes have brought de-mobilisation of bureaucracies and society about IDC. In your perspective, is there a tendency of continuous de-mobilisation in all spheres of Brazilian SSC? Are there some modalities or sectors which tends to be more or less disengaged, due to their nature or low profile as political subject?
This is definitely an uncharted research territory we still need more data: both on the sectors, as well as on the reasons why some areas have disengaged more than others. Yet my perception is that despite the extreme anti-SSC rhetoric of Bolsonaro administration, several initiatives are still going on. This include some flagship initiatives like the WFP Centre of Excellence Against Hunger or the Cotton-portfolio, but also smaller technical cooperation initiatives in the sector of agriculture, health, water. It is not surprising that, considering the current levels of polarisation, issues like social protection or family-farming (strongly expanded during the PT era because they were politically important to the federal government and to policy communities close to it) are now much less important, if not invisible. It is also true that without political prioritisation, including in the national budget, it is difficult to sustain IDC activities in the long run. Yet recent research is equally pointing to forms of ‘bureaucratic resilience’ or even ‘bureaucratic resistance’ taking place. Some initiatives are now running under a lower profile or with new partners, including subnational governments, and non-state actors (ONGs and foundations). Trilateral cooperation with UN agencies, such as the ABC-UNICEF programme, was already expanding to the so-called subnational actors in the last few years and this trend tends to expand in a context where the federal government is less (or very little) open to the agenda.
Brazil assumed an important role in SSC during the Lula´s government (2003–2010), but the flows once delivered have now decreased. In your opinion, how important is the government activism in Brazil for SSC volume and allocation? How do you perceive the civil society role in the international Brazilian activism?
The induction by the federal government is key in the SSC agenda. As we learned while analysing the Lula era, this activism was taking place at the Presidency-level, in articulation with the Itamaraty, but also in other bureaucracies (line-Ministries and others) in more or less coordinated ways with the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC), depending on the issue/sector. We also learned that during the Dilma era (and later under Temer) funds decreased because political priority was given to development at home but have not disappeared. Certain bureaucracies were also able to carry on their work by partnering with other actors, including UN agencies, what we commonly call ‘trilateralisation’. So, yes, state activism is indeed crucial, but we also need to be aware of the agency of the state and state actors at multiple dimensions and levels, including of individuals inside bureaucracies engaged in IDC/SSC. Unpacking the state is also important to make sure we understand its connections with non-state actors, like those in civil society (knowledge organisations, NGOs, social movements) that have partnered in different ways with state institutions in the past to advance the SSC agenda and might do it again if there is political space to do so. Civil society has played different roles in Brazilian SSC: as project implementers, as evaluators of SSC initiatives, as critical collaborators wishing to influence policy priorities, and also as resistance forces to certain initiatives. I believe these different patterns of state-society relations in this agenda are very important to be better understood as to help us unpacking how certain issues were expanded in the past and why.
Read the article
Waisbich, Laura Trajber. (2020). Negotiating accountability in South-South Cooperation: the case of Brazil. Revista Brasileira de Política Internacional, 63(2), e010. Epub September 07, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1590/0034-7329202000210
About the authors
Laura Waisbich, Cambridge University, Cambridge, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Laís Kuss, Universidade Potiguar, Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil
How to cite this interview
Cite this article as: Editoria Mundorama, “Negotiating accountability in South-South Cooperation: the case of Brazil, an interview with Laura Waisbich by Laís Kuss,” in Revista Mundorama, 23/09/2020, https://mundorama.net/?p=27747.
Originally published at https://mundorama.net on September 23, 2020.
