Conditionality politics on the rise

By Dino Patti Djalal

LONDON (JP): From the first day that development aid became a feature of inter-state relations, the policy of conditionality -- the attachment of political conditions to development aid -- has been a source of contention between developed and developing countries.

In recent years, the West's pursuit of emergent "post-Cold War issues" such as human rights, democracy and environment has led to an attendant rise in the use of conditionality in the course of advancing them. And from Beijing to Hanoi, Jakarta to Kuala Lumpur, New Delhi to Ankara, tied aid has been met with one resolute rejection after another. Such head-on collisions have raised new questions as to whether the West needs to rethink the underlying premise and perceived merit of their human rights approach and the means by which it should best be pursued.

In the West, the case for "conditionality" has been argued primarily, but not exclusively, on two premises. First, as a matter of principle as in "it is principally wrong to give aid to countries regarded as human rights negative". Second, as a matter of efficacy as in "it is an effective way to alter the behavior of the recipient government". Both of these premises are seen by the developing world as suspect.

To begin with, developing countries find it difficult to accept the idea of conditionality being a "principled" stance of the West, considering the notorious practice of some western governments during the Cold War of pouring aid into virtually any government with anti-communist credentials, never mind their human rights record.

Even today, with the Cold War in debris, the view persists among the developing countries that the West's human rights policy is still applied selectively and lacks consistency, with too much posturing and scolding, without efforts to comprehend the complexities of non-western societies. One school of thought suspects that the current human rights offensive is part of a hidden agenda to maintain the competitive edge of the developed countries over the developing world. Irrespective of merit, this viewpoint is gaining ground in many intellectual and political circles in the developing world.

Another widely held view is that as western politicians vie for the moral high ground in highly competitive systems, conditional aid is more a function of domestic politics than a veritable expression of a "principled" stance.

These sinister perceptions, combined, create a critical attitude on the part of the developing world in responding to the current western human rights campaign. In their view, some westerners come across as people who shout human rights only when it is convenient for them to do so or when it serves their political interests.

The other premise of conditionality -- that it is an effective way to make a recipient government submit to pressure -- can also fall short. All too often, the opposite happens. The West tried to woo president Sukarno by offering him politically-tied aid, but this was met by flat rejection and bitter resentment from Indonesia's first president, who muttered "no Niagara of dollars can buy our self respect". History has it that Indonesia's political orientation afterwards went in a direction exactly opposite of what the West would have liked to see.

Sukarno's aversion to tied aid was no personal trademark, for it is a sentiment which commanded cross-sectional support in his time and trans-generational credence ever since. Many observers would agree that this attitude is prominently entrenched in the political mind set of the Indonesian elite and is likely to remain so.

Indeed, the defiant attitude of the developing world against tied aid is something which often bewilders the West. This is understandable: In western practice of modern diplomacy, the use of economic measures to support a variety of foreign policy objectives has long been an accepted norm. Hence, they understand little of how the thought process gets triggered when a recipient reacts disapprovingly to conditionality.

There are several assumptions which appear to guide the perception of some donor governments as to the virtue of conditionality. Although there are instances where they prove to be true, more often than not these assumptions tend to miss their mark.

First, there is the assumption that conditionality alerts the recipient of the donor's serious resolve on human rights. The problem with this assumption is that the message intended may not be the message received. Attaching a price tag to a message is seen by the recipient as a gesture which is at once condescending and patronizing. In the book of Asian political mannerism, how the message is delivered is as important as the content of the message itself. Tell someone your concern, you may get a willing listener. Give him economic aid, you will find a thankful recipient who regards you as your friend. Link them both, and you are assured of a disinterested listener who resents you and your money. At once, the aid becomes suspect and the message offensive, a process which Indonesian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Alatas describes as "detracting from the value of both".

Conditionality, hence, weakens advocacy rather than strengthening it. It forces the recipient to be recalcitrant as opposed to being receptive. It is a way of getting tough without being communicative.

The second assumption is that conditionality is a way to manipulate the recipient by means it is supposedly vulnerable to -- to "strike them where it hurts", so to speak. Here is where some donors overrate the clout derived from their foreign aid. It is true that recipient governments do value development aid when given in good faith. However, foreign aid does have its limitation as a factor of influence. In Indonesia, the influence of donor governments on the policy makers rests not so much in the amount of money they invest or donate as it does in their being perceived as a trusted friend.

Having watched diplomacy at work from the inside, I have been intrigued to learn of occasions where smaller countries with less dollar power tend to be more persuasive to the ear than the bigger, affluent donor countries. In the art of persuasive diplomacy, trust, confidence and ultimately influence are assets which cannot be measured in financial terms. A reasoned whisper from a sympathetic friend does bear more impact than public criticism from a loud bully.

The third assumption is that conditionality renders the position of the donor government at the home front politically tenable. It may well be. However, like donor governments, the recipient governments too have a domestic audience to face up to.

No government would like to be seen as selling out to foreign interests, especially in the face of criss-crossing currents of non-interference, patriotism, self-sufficiency and veiled anti- West sentiments. To a nationalist polity, lost face is more expensive than lost aid. Rejecting tied aid is as much a politically macho thing to do for the recipient government as it is for the donor government which threatens economic sanctions to delight its home audience. Under this circumstance, conditionality would only make it difficult for both sides to move forward on a given human rights issue without appearing to be "selling out" (for the recipient) or "retreating" (for the donor).

Finally, there is the assumption that conditionality has merit because it is the only way to arm twist target governments into paying attention to human rights. As a matter of fact, recipient governments resent conditionality precisely because it looks as if matters cannot be discussed with a degree of finesse without money being used as a cudgel. When the recipient rejects conditionality, it is not the message that is repudiated but the way in which it is packaged.

What the West often misjudges is the willingness of recipient governments to listen. Officials and politicians in developing countries can appear sensitive -- even defensive -- to human rights criticism, but many of them, including those in Indonesia do see human rights as an important issue. They are generally aware of problems, they realize that there is work to be done and they do value human rights advice from other countries in the same way they make use of foreign advice on economic development. As Alatas has repeatedly stressed, Indonesia's international approach to human rights is anchored in "cooperation", not "confrontation".

In my observation, many governments in the developing world would like to spare the rhetoric and finger-pointing, get down to the substance of the matter and do concrete work to improve the intricate lot of human rights. However, many have expressed that they find this hard to do if the entity on the other end is seen behaving, as one senior Indonesian diplomat put it, like a "money-dangling lily-white angel". Singaporean diplomat Kishore Mahbubane spoke for most in the developing countries when he stated that the West "should listen more and preach less" in their dealings with the rest of the world.

Noticeably, a number of western governments have begun to pursue development aid and human rights as two independent issues -- for want of a better term, we may call this "untied advocacy". They have found that separating aid from human rights does not mean compromising their human rights position, for it merely changes the tactics, not the position. They have also found that untied advocacy makes the message more digestive to the recipient government.

This new thinking is in line with an emerging school of thought in the West which regards human rights as part of a multidimensional, as opposed to non-dimensional, relationship with other countries and that it should be pursued by way of constant, preferably low-key, dialog which avoids confrontation as much as possible. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Asia Pacific Winston Lord reflected this point in a leaked memo last year to Warren Christopher when he criticized that too aggressive a policy on human rights risked U.S. influence being corroded in the region.

If this school of thought manages to expand further and find prominence in western diplomatic practice, it will surely augur a communicative, two-way dialog on human rights between the developed and developing world, which would benefit both by minimizing the gap in their perceptual and conceptual understanding on human rights and facilitating greater progress in international diplomacy on human rights.

Window A: ...the defiant attitude of the developing world against tied aid is something which often bewilders the West. This is understandable considering the western practice of modern diplomacy, which has long used a number of "carrot and stick" economic measures to support foreign policy objectives.

Window B: Noticeably, a number of western governments have begun to pursue development aid and human rights as two independent issues -- for want of a better term, we may call this "untied advocacy". They have found that separating aid from human rights does not mean compromising their human rights position, for it merely changes the tactics, not the position.