Academic article
Bottom-up development as framed freedom: developmentality and donor power
Summary:
International development assistance is founded on and reproduces a set of conceptual and structural binaries. Development actors themselves have attempted to alter lopsided aid relations, as illustrated by the prominent policy agendas of ownership and localisation in the 2010s. These are both expressions of bottom-up approaches to international aid, which challenge the very hierarchical nature of development as a particular Western
instrument and historical project of intervention. This article argues that the top-heavy, donor-driven policies to turn development bottom-up fail not simply because of these discursive challenges. Aid asymmetries also persist because of the neoliberal audit culture evolving in tandem with the liberal contours of ownership and localisation agendas. This is analysed in terms of developmentality, which, as a tacit and indirect form of power, is both produced by and simultaneously undermines the liberal tenets of bottom-up approaches.
instrument and historical project of intervention. This article argues that the top-heavy, donor-driven policies to turn development bottom-up fail not simply because of these discursive challenges. Aid asymmetries also persist because of the neoliberal audit culture evolving in tandem with the liberal contours of ownership and localisation agendas. This is analysed in terms of developmentality, which, as a tacit and indirect form of power, is both produced by and simultaneously undermines the liberal tenets of bottom-up approaches.
- Published year: 2024
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DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1080/02255189.2024.2367993
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis
- Page count: 20
- Language: English
- Journal: Revue canadienne d'études du développement
- URL 1: https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3153337
- URL 3:
Written by
Jon Harald Sande Lie
Research Professor