Search Results

This chapter examines the New Left argument that the Marshall Plan evolved out of the corporatist framework of American foreign economic policy-making set before the Second World War. It also challenges the notion that the economic goals and programmes of the Marshall Plan enhanced and remained compatible with the thrust of cold war strategic defence. As evidence to the contrary, this chapter focuses on one Marshall Aid programme, the US Productivity and Technical Assistance Programme (USTA&P), and its struggle to advance business reform overseas in the face of shifting cold war military objectives and European reactions.

This chapter explores the implications of the analytical approach for the design of development assistance. The model suggests a number of margins on which we would expect such assistance to have an effect. The results illustrate the difficulties faced by external donors and actors who are trying to improve the situation in developing countries, particularly in weak and fragile states. Some of the issues are well known, particularly the problem that development support might crowd out rather than crowd in government. It is clear that a great deal more has to be understood about the political equilibrium before any reasoned assessment on aid can be reached. Absent this understanding, the triumph of hope over expectation, so characteristic of more than 50 years of policy experience, is likely to continue.

This chapter examines whether World Trade Organization (WTO) technical assistance and capacity building can serve developing countries or not. After describing the multiple capacity constraints which less-developed countries face in advancing their interests in WTO meetings, WTO negotiations, rule-implementation, and WTO dispute settlement proceedings, it examines competing rationales for trade-related capacity building and technical assistance by the WTO, such as promoting internal trade-related capacity in governments rather than in the private sector. Furthermore, this chapter describes the evolution of WTO capacity-building programmes and discusses their various difficulties and uncertain future after the end of the Doha Round. The much more active engagement of developing countries in the Doha Round than in previous General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade negotiations reflects their ‘much greater “ownership” of the technical assistance provided’.

One reason why Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea appear to have industrialized rapidly is that they have invested relatively heavily in education. A well‐educated work force, both white‐ and blue‐collar, is a general property of late industrialization, distinguishing it from earlier industrial change, and premised on the learning of production processes and procedures that are characteristic of more advanced economies. Thus, formal education of the workforce and the apprenticeship of firms to foreign technical assistants (rather than the apprenticeship of workers in particular crafts) lie at the heart of late industrial expansion. This chapter, therefore, is devoted to both formal education and foreign technical assistance, and ends with a firm‐level illustration of interaction between the two. Learning is explored in the second manufacturing affiliate of the Samsung Group, the Cheil Wood Company, founded in 1954.

This chapter examines the hypothesis that climbing the ladder of comparative advantage is a matter of creating competitiveness, usually with government assistance, rather than stepping into it. The evidence comes from South Korea's integrated iron‐ and steel‐maker (the Pohang Iron and Steel Co. Ltd., POSCO), which is the centerpiece of basic industry and a public enterprise. The chapter discusses POSCO's founding in 1968; its profitability and subsidization; international competition; foreign technical assistance and the nature of steel‐making technology; POSCO's initial prioritization of increasing volume production, and the later shift to improving product quality and introducing new products; shop‐floor focus; and cross‐subsidization.

This chapter argues that a stronger capacity for international assistance, in conjunction with a sound strategy for economic reconstruction at the country level, would greatly improve a country's chances of success in consolidating peace and in fully devoting its resources and energies to the normal challenge of development and poverty alleviation. The chapter argues in favor of greater flexibility and more aid on concessional terms from the international financial institutions (IFIs) and other donors on the one hand, and on the other, for post-conflict countries to assume greater responsibility and accountability for dealing with aid and reconstruction issues. The chapter discusses issues of aid (official flows, tied aid, post-conflict vs development aid); budgets; external debt; conditionality; concessionality; technical assistance; and governance related to economic reconstruction. It also proposes measures to improve the mechanisms and capabilities of the international community as a whole to carry out effective reconstruction in the future.

This chapter, within the context of the shipbuilding industry in the acutely competitive decade of the 1970s, examines the hypothesis that the diversified business (industrial) group provides a multitude of capabilities and a protective cover to latecomers wishing to enter world trade. The whole chapter is devoted to Hyundai Heavy Industries of South Korea, a subsidiary of the Hyundai Group, which began building its first ship (a very large crude carrier) in March 1973. Aspects discussed are the competitive challenge, government assistance, foreign technical assistance, the acquisition of design capability, investment in the formation of the Hyundai Engine and Heavy Machinery Manufacturing Company, intermarginal changes (quality, and time and motion studies and cost control), and organization (chaebol membership).

The field of international relief and development during the 1960s went through several changes. The foreign policy agenda of John F. Kennedy’s administration brought significant reform to foreign assistance. This chapter discusses the effects of that reform on the increasing numbers of secular agencies known as volagencies and the permanence of federal funding programs to PVOs. The creation of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) gave the federal government the institutional means of promoting and increasing PVO involvement in foreign assistance. Mirroring changes in American society, evangelical PVOs began to grow in both number and revenue with private funds, not federal dollars. With U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War, a third point of contention—political neutrality—among PVOs arose.

This Chapter provides a brief historical account and introduction to community-based participatory research (CBPR), important principles and methodological considerations and issues, and an illustrative example of its application to Photovoice. Examples are provided from the “Good Neighborhoods”, a large community-based participatory research project underway in the City of Detroit. A central premise of this chapter is that the CBPR approach is congruent with the values and respective missions of the profession of social work (e.g., self-determination, democratic leadership, empowerment, etc.). The second theme of the chapter adds knowledge to the literature on university–community partnerships and the roles foundations can play in creating dynamic and systemic community change when a collaboration consisting of the three is formed. The third foci is Photovoice, an intervention that has been used worldwide to promote social change and to empower individuals who have historically not been given a voice in their community.

The book concludes that because post-conflict economic reconstruction takes place amid the political, security, and social transitions it is fundamentally different from “development as usual”; that without the creation of dynamism and social inclusion in the economy peace will be elusive; and that the high chance countries have of reverting to war makes reconstruction a significant risk-high reward investment for the international community and the respective countries. Case studies presented in this book and elsewhere provide ample evidence that economic reconstruction is a critical but neglected aspect of transition to peace. A development as usual approach; the failure to develop a realistic comprehensive strategy for reconstruction; the lack of effective aid and technical assistance mechanisms; and the inexistence of appropriate and specific institutional arrangements to deal with reconstruction at the international and national levels have failed to help countries to stand on their own feet in peacetime.

This chapter examines the legal nature of Special and Differential Treatment (SDT) provisions in the WTO agreements. What rights and obligations do they create and for whom? Using the language of the provisions as well as developments in international law generally, this chapter argues that many SDT provisions could be given more legal force than has been the case so far, and hence become operational tools for developing members. It then surveys the implementation record of SDT provisions to assess whether developing members have in fact used them since the inception of the GATT. It demonstrates that only a handful of SDT provisions have been invoked consistently, and even some of those have fallen into disuse since the inception of the WTO.

Abstract: This chapter reviews the bylaws written by six community governance boards taking part in Good Neighborhoods, a comprehensive community initiative concerned with improving the health and well-being of children and youth living in Detroit. A policy review of bylaws suggested that the bylaws are predominantly characteristic of a community-building model of community organizing, with some elements of a power-based model of community organizing. Technical assistance providers can provide technical assistance based on their experience working with boards and their perceptions of board assets and needs. However, a more effective approach might be one in which technical assistance providers develop technical assistance activities and content in collaboration with board feedback. The use of program documentation, such as bylaws, can aid in developing conceptually based technical assistance.

This chapter analyses the ongoing hybridization of contemporary international monetary law which covers a very broad phenomenon resulting from constant changes in the formal and material sources of this body of law, from the increasing unsuitability of the rigid categories of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ law for appropriately characterizing all recent normative evolutions in this important sub-discipline of international economic law as well as from the rise in importance of transnational monetary law. After an examination of the diversification of the legal regime for international current and capital transactions across the three traditional pillars of international economic law, this chapter examines the evolving normative effects of the conditionality of IMF and World Bank lending and the impact of the IMF’s surveillance and technical assistance activities. Finally, this chapter looks into relevant aspects of the rise in importance of transnational monetary law and its implications.

This chapter focuses on how the IMF interacts with macroeconomic policy formulation in low-income countries (LICs). It addresses four related concerns. Can the IMF remain fully engaged with LICs without having a loan program (such as the PRGF) in place? How can it sign up to a macroeconomic approach characterized by greater fiscal flexibility? Is its approach (jointly with the World Bank) to debt sustainability adequate, especially in the context of aid concessionality? Is the type of technical assistance it offers suitable to the needs of LICs? The general conclusion is that the Fund has made considerable progress in addressing these issues, but that much more remains to be done: specifically, it should strengthen the underpinnings of its technical assistance and advice, develop a more focused low-income analytic perspective, build its own capacity to assist countries to explore their macroeconomic options, and more systematically evaluate its technical advice in the light of the outcomes this has helped to induce.

In chapters 5 and 6, we ask whether the most common intentional efforts to bring about recovery through public policy or civic action that we identified in the previous two chapters was likely to have made a difference. We do so by first, setting forth and discussing the logic underlying the policy, i.e., why and under what circumstances the policy might (or might not) be expected to have an effect on regional economic resilience or development. We then summarize the existing research literature that evaluates the specific policies and over what time frames they are likely to occur. Chapter 5 considers policies intended to aid specific businesses and individuals: business tax incentives; industry targeting and cluster policy; technical assistance to firms; and entrepreneurial assistance and promotion.

Abstract: This chapter describes how the University of Michigan School of Social Work’s Technical Assistance Center (UMSSW/TAC) developed its theory of change as a partner in the Skillman Foundation-funded Detroit Good Neighborhoods initiative. The definition of a theory of change accepted was of “a specification of what must be done to achieve the desired goals, what other important impacts may also be anticipated, and how these goals and impacts would be generated.” The chapter discusses the processes in the creation of iterations of Foundation and UMSSW/TAC theories of change. The chapter concludes with the benefits, limitations, issues, and challenges of aligning logic models with the varied expectations and goals of residents, funding foundations, and university partners.

This chapter examines how the Soviet Union attacked Point Four as “A Program for Expansion under a Screen of Anti-Communism” that was no different from older forms of imperialism. While condemning American assistance, however, they applauded a fair aid policy that supported political independence and invested to promote national agriculture and industry. This signaled that they were open to joining a multilateral program and offering technical assistance and industrial machinery to underdeveloped countries, with a stress on equality and open criticism of imperialist dynamics. But what would the Soviets contribute? Western analysts thought of expertise, while critics familiar with the Central Asian precedent worried about the repression of minorities. Only in 1954 did the Soviet Union respond with a plan for the Virgin Lands, the campaign to bring up-to-date farming and irrigation techniques to backward steppe regions in Kazakhstan. This became a paradigm for what socialist modernity could offer to less developed countries. The chapter then recounts how, in the early 1950s, the world's less-developed countries began identifying as a homogeneous group. In the United Nations, the phrase used was “underdeveloped countries,” but this was soon replaced by a much more evocative concept: the “Third World.” The expression was coined in 1952 by French demographer Alfred Sauvy, who anticipated a collective awakening of the subject peoples previously ignored, exploited, and watched warily.

This chapter examines the early activities of the International Labour Organization (ILO). It begins by outlining the political context of the ILO’s founding and the framework of its constituent instrument. The chapter then details the vision of “constitutional” growth that guided ILO officials, the reforming actions they took to realize that vision, and the moral grounds of those actions. The ILO faced a succession of political and legal challenges, resulting in a series of seminal advisory opinions by the Permanent Court of International Justice that confirmed the organization’s broad competence. Drawing upon contemporary discourses of efficiency and expertise, the ILO was finally transformed into a dynamic instrument of technical assistance services, especially in the area of social insurance. The chapter ends by describing the mix of constitutional and administrative ideas that emerged in internationalist thinking, and in the ILO, at this time.