In the required readings for this week, both authors took a stance on whether or not they were of the opinion that politics is important or even matters in the realm of development and development aid. Prior to reading both papers, my personal opinion was that politics does play a role in development aid and the ongoings in the political arena of a state is very important when it comes to formulating and carrying out development projects. At the same time, politics should not extremely integrated in development. For instance, the type of government a country has, should not be a conditionality to receiving aid. Regardless of whether or not the agencies decided to actively factor politics into their program design, politics will still play a role somehow. The political atmosphere in a country or region will determine whether or not the organisation is even allowed in the country as their mobility within it. Also, in most contexts where development aid is strongly needed, politics is usually the cause of the problem such as in cases of violence due to civil unrest or starvation/deplorable conditions due to ethnic or regional animosities.
The first paper, "Development Aid Confronts Politics" heavily advocated for the importance and inclusion of politics in development and clearly lays out the problems that arise from separating development aid from politics. Upon reading. some of the problems that she stated such as overlooking the sociopolitical reasons for resources not reaching a certain state. While aid workers might assume that this is due to the lack of transportation and poor management in the displaced region, it could actually be a political tactic employed by the ruling party as an act of ethnic marginalization. By development workers seeking to understand the sociopolitical framework of the country or region that they are entering, aid objectives and procedures can be designed in a manner that will result in the most goals being met. This paper showcases that donor organisations are beginning to notice and realize that they do need to incorporate politics into their plans, the question that remains though is much of a role politics should play.
Towards the end of this paper, the author presents exactly what I consider to be the problem when politics does become intermixed with development. Over time, development aid and the affiliated projects all become a tool to espouse 'good governance' which often translates to liberal democracy as is the norm with most Western states. This is where the problems begin to arise. The politics portion is no longer about simply understanding what's going on in that region or state but more about how can we(IGOs/NGOs) use these funds to garner what we want.
