CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2014
| Author | Kudzko, Alena |
|---|---|
| Title | Not so normal donors: development cooperation policies of Central and Eastern European states |
| Summary | Over the last two decades CEE countries completed a giant leap from recipients of development assistance to foreign aid donors. Like older Western donors, they began to give aid to less advantaged states through bilateral cooperation. Unlike most Western donors though, they target their aid allocation towards Eastern and Southern Europe and not to the global South. Researchers usually do not spend much time dwelling on this issue. For scholars, the CEE aid allocation practices are all too self-evident on account of the political and economic interests of these countries, their comparative advantage in development, and their lack of logistical capacity in Africa. Moreover, an even more puzzling question has been overlooked altogether; this is the divergence in aid allocation toward Africa even within the CEE. Even though they still give more to Europe overall, Poland, Czech Republic, and Slovakia give more to Africa than other CEE states. In this thesis, I problematize the notion that CEE development priorities can be taken for granted. I explore two research problems, the broader divergence of CEE countries from Africa and the within CEE divergence, by digging deeper into the social dynamics that have made the development practices of the CEE countries possible, with an emphasis on two case studies in Estonia and Slovakia. I add to the existing literature by examining how identity channels threats and aid priorities differently in different countries. I also argue that the normative environment is propitious for avoiding the norm of giving to Africa, allowing CEE countries space for maneuver. I further examine how NGOs and the OECD can be important norm entrepreneurs that influence CEE states’ decisions. Moreover, healthy competition within the European region and low level of threat perception might lead states to turn towards Africa. The implications are that even though historically produced identities present a formidable obstacle to any attempt to diffuse development norms and practices, there are possibilities for influence even without groundbreaking historical events, if the EU and OECD better shape an unambiguous normative environment and NGOs make efforts to influence CEE countries when they hold sufficient expertise about a recipient country. |
| Supervisor | Merlingen, Michael |
| Department | International Relations MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2014/kudzko_alena.pdf |
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