South-South Cooperation from the BRICS: new paradigms and old practices?

1. South-South Cooperation from the BRICS: new paradigms and old practices? Lizbeth Navas-Alemán and Alex Shankland IDS Rising Powers in International Development Programme BRICS e a Cooperação Sul-Sul: O Futuro da Cooperação Internacional para o Desenvolvimento BRICS Policy Centre, Rio de Janeiro 26 October 2012

2. Understanding the impact of the BRICS on international development cooperation What is it?

3. Dissolving imagined geographies What is it? Eyben and Savage (forthcoming): Emerging and Submerging Powers at the Busan High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness: How the South Has Split into Two and Nobody Wants to be in the North Any More • The consolidation of the BRICS bloc as a symptom of dissolving imagined geographies: no convincing abstract rationale, but the bloc has survived and thrived while others have faltered because it doesn’t have to justify why it exists by any rigid rationale of global division. • The impossibility of legitimacy: dissolving imagined geographies mean that any bloc that seeks such justification these days is doomed to fail; geographical as well as economic size (países baleia) makes BRICS impossible to ignore, and they demand a voice – but once they get it they don’t always know who they’re speaking for, or what to say. • Development cooperation as a safe space for negotiations among (rising) powers that have more contradictions than commonalities?

4. Reimagining development cooperation? What is it? • Old paradigm: Aid and Trade are separate • New paradigm: They are part of the same relationship • Old paradigm: Harmonisation of Aid delivery • New paradigm: “Free market”, the partner decides. Buyer’s market! • Old paradigm: Aid doesn’t require reciprocity but creates inferiority • New paradigm: Aid doesn’t create inferiority but it creates obligation • Old paradigm: Aid creates high transaction costs (compliance costs) • New paradigm: “Zero” conditionality

5. New paradigms: Aid and Trade What is it? • Old paradigm: Aid and Trade are separate • New paradigm: They are part of the same relationship • China: MOFCOM leads the coordination of flows to developing countries…but the role of the Chinese private sector is more complex and independent than previously thought • Brazil: ABC only deals with ‘official’ technical cooperation but all the other kinds of cooperation (Industrial, investment, etc) have different organisational leads

6. New paradigms: Harmonisation v. markets What is it? • Old paradigm: Harmonisation of Aid delivery • New paradigm: “Free market”, the partner decides. Buyer’s market! • African governments have options (Traditional vs Rising Powers) • Unexpected shifts in loyalties and preferences • Harmonisation of anti-corruption practices by traditional donors: Values-based or competitiveness-based strategy?

7. New paradigms: Aid and the Gift What is it? • Old paradigm: Aid doesn’t require reciprocity but creates inferiority • New paradigm: Aid doesn’t create inferiority but it creates obligation • Aid as the “ruler’s gift”: who is the audience of the gift – recipient or constituency? Or other rulers? • Russia: the gift as existential necessity • The self-interested gift: using other people’s countries to train our people (SENAI example – how different from Northern practice?) • The knowledge gift: how different from the money gift? If it doesn’t require reciprocity of learning, then it’s constructing inferiority – when has Brazil learned from a LIC?

8. New paradigms: Zero conditionality? What is it? • Old paradigm: Aid creates high transaction costs (compliance costs) • New paradigm: “Zero” conditionality “We each bring our experience as a developing country... we are not trying to impose our views. It is a conversation. We are not trying to tell them what to do. We are not arrogant” (South Africa-based Brazilian diplomat interviewed by IPS for Guardian article, April 2011) • From demand-driven to cooperação estruturante? • From insisting on sovereignty to understanding the diversity of interests within a partner country? • As the level of investment grows, so does the temptation to impose conditionalities • Compliance as a two-way street: who holds the BRICS (and their bank) to account?

9. Conclusions: from discourses to practices What is it? Homogeneous discourses, heterogenous practices Understanding whether or not a new paradigm is emerging requires us to shift focus from discourse to practice

10. Conclusions: the new and the old What is it? Towards a research agenda • Imaginaries of the other in development cooperation • Practices and power • Agency: • of the “recipients” (elite and subtaltern) • of the front-line practitioners • of the actors of Old Aidland (with the Götterdämmerung of the DAC, everything is up for grabs – from Götterdämmerung to Gattopardo?)

11. For more information... What is it? RPID mailing list signup: rpid@ids.ac.uk RPID website: http://www.ids.ac.uk/idsproject/rising-powers-in-international-development Associated programmes for sector work: Social Protection: Centre for Social Protection (www.ids.ac.uk/go/csp) Health: Future Health Systems Consortium (www.futurehealthsystems.org) Agriculture: Future Agricultures Consortium (www.future-agricultures.org/research/brics)