Introduction: Emerging Donors in the Global South
BY TERRENCE LYONS
In April 2011, the Center for Global Studies (CGS), George Mason University, sponsored a conference on Emerging Donors: Shifting Agendas in Development and Security. This conference brought together academics, researchers, and practitioners to investigate one of the central questions relating to one aspect of South-South relationships. This conference followed a 2010 CGS conference The New South-South Dynamic in Global Affairs: A Changing World Order? that investigated whether economic and political dynamics emerging from the “Global South” were transforming global architecture in fundamentally new ways.
As is evident in the other articles in this issue of the Global Studies Review, the nations of the Global South are assuming a range of pivotal activities and strategic relationships in the realms of foreign policy, global trade, and international security. They are increasingly demonstrating their capabilities to compete and even bypass the North in the management of international relations. This new global architecture includes the challenges posed by emerging markets, such as China, India, and Brazil, but also encompasses broader issues of international peace and security that concern a more diverse set of developing countries.
Emerging donors include the emerging markets economies of China, Brazil, and India; yet, they also go beyond the kinds of new global military powers such as China. New donors from the Global South comprise a much larger and more diverse set of countries like Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa, Indonesia and others that are providing resources and leadership (and in that way are donors) in both the economic and security realms.
As emphasized by other papers in the issue, there is a need to systematically collect data on the scope of emerging donors. Burges, Paczynska, and Bräutigam all make this point. India and Brazil use their assistance and investments programs in pursuit of global leadership and have moved from a focus on their immediate neighborhoods to programs in Africa and around the world. In the case of India, conference participant Vijaya Ramachandran pointed out that this development has also led to political tension about aid disbursement from Western donors, such as the UK, and the Indian government. Paczynska, for instance, notes the importance of emerging donors in states emerging from periods of civil war such as Liberia and Tajikistan and considers the ways in which these new forms of assistance may shape post-conflict reconstruction policies. While the West often views Africa as a place of failed states and poverty, states such as China, Brazil, and India see markets and investment opportunities. Emerging donors provide resources through mechanisms of technical assistance or concessional investments that do not fit neatly within traditional accounting of official development assistance but that are increasingly important sources of financial support in the Global South.
Emerging donors shape prospects for security as well as economic development. As a case in point, Egypt has been a leader in building new conceptions of humanitarianism and peacekeeping. This is a trend, which one of the conference speakers, Paul Amar, in particular pointed to. In the areas of counter-terrorism, global health, and non-proliferation, Busza and Finlay suggest that the priorities of the United States and Europe need to match up with the interests of the states of the Global South in order to succeed. In other words, solutions to global challenges require the active participation of states in the Global South.
Countries from the Global South have long been the main sources of UN peacekeeping forces. As emerging donors become more assertive, they are also becoming increasingly important in terms of operational leadership and in the discussions around doctrines. Brazil’s leadership and the increasing voice of the South Asian troop contributors underline this emerging trend. Nigeria has led regional peacekeeping operations in West Africa and engages in security assistance in ways that are distinct from the United Nations or traditional sources of peacekeeping.
The contours of a new global architecture that incorporates the importance of emerging donors is not yet clear. The articles in this collection suggest several possibilities. Some of the current research suggests that the new powers may be absorbed within the institutions and norms established by the North. The discussions by Finlay and Busza of non-proliferation, global health, and counter-terrorism, for example, noted that the United States and European powers were willing to accommodate issues important to the developing world in order to gain acceptance of a security agenda dominated by the priorities of Washington and other developed state capitals. A second model suggests that perhaps we are seeing new efforts by emerging to bypass the traditional hegemonic powers in the North and engage more directly with other states in the South, as Paczynska noted. New forms of South-South internationalism are recalling earlier efforts of the non-aligned movement and the aspirations of Pan-Arab and Pan-African solidarities. A third model suggests that the new emerging architecture may be a hierarchical as the recent past but with new regional hegemons located in the South. Regional “big men” such as Brazil, India, South Africa, Turkey, and others are asserting leadership of their respective regions. The “north” in terms of the power to dominate may be located in the “south” in the same way that the “south” in terms of poverty may be located in the “north” (see Grovogui and Aguilar in the Fall 2010 Global Studies Review for further thoughts). In this third model regional powers may replace global powers but the poorest states remain subordinate.
Emerging donors in both the economic and security arenas have set off dynamics that will transform the roles played by states from the Global South. A new architecture and sets of new relationships that will reflect this shift in the center of gravity in international affairs is still inchoate and only the beginnings of the new order may be seen. The articles in this issue indicate the kinds of research that can bring these seismic changes into focus and prepare leaders around the globe to respond to the challenges the emerging order will generate.
Terrence Lyons is Co-Director of the Center for Global Studies and Associate Professor at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University.
