Reconsidering Development Aid: a Systemic Analysis

Abstract

In the political and academic debates on development aid in the post-Cold War years, there is often reference to a “new aid architecture.” This study explores what is new about this “new architecture of aid” and traces change and continuity by comparing the form and essence of aid architecture in the Cold War and the post-Cold War years. It discusses to what extent development aid can be interrogated within the inter-systemic competition during the Cold War period. After having located aid into a systemic framework, it seeks to understand the emergence of the “new aid architecture” in the post-Cold War years. To this end, it first analyses the relevance of aid to the hegemonic project that pursues the proletarianization of the world’s poor. It then focuses on aid’s role in transforming social and industrial relations to promote capitalist competitiveness at the global level. In this respect, it pays particular attention to “global value chains.” This study argues that “new aid architecture” is nothing more than an attempt to set a new framework for the role and contribution of aid in expanding and deepening the hegemony of capital over labor on a global scale in the absence of the Soviet factor. © 2020 Pluto Journals. All rights reserved.