I am doing a series of articles on the book “Rethinking Canadian Aid” (University of Ottawa Press, 2015), and now it’s time for “Chapter 12: From “Children-in-Development” to Social Age Mainstreaming in Canada’s Development Policy and Programming?  Practice, Prospects and Proposals” by Christina Clark-Kazak. In the interest of full disclosure, I knew Clark in a previous incarnation at CIDA, but as with my review of Swiss’ chapter, that probably won’t mean much in terms of my review of her material. I wanted to mention it upfront as I really like the theme of the chapter — mainstreaming “age” vs. “children-in-development”, the modern-day equivalent of old “women in development” programming.

Second, for biological or social reasons, people of different ages may experience poverty differently (Sumner 2010). For example, children under the age of five have specific nutritional needs that may not be adequately met in contexts of poverty. […] Third, development initiatives have differential impacts on people at different stages of the life course.

I am doing a series of articles on the book “Rethinking Canadian Aid” (University of Ottawa Press, 2015), and now it’s time for “Chapter 10: The Management of Canadian Development Assistance: Ideology, Electoral Politics or Public Interest?” by François Audet and Olga Navarro-Flores. Remember as you read my comments that my interest is not in reviewing it from an academic perspective, but rather if it has any value-added from a managerial perspective. Where it doesn’t, my comments may seem a lot harsher than they are — it may be perfectly fine as an academic contribution, I just have little use for it as a manager.

We specifically consider whether [decisions by the Conservative government] were made on the basis of ideology, electoral politics, or the public interest. Our goal is to reflect on Canadian aid from a public administration perspective.

Colour me intrigued. Very few academics will pull themselves out of a policy paradigm and get their hands dirty with public administration, so I’m curious to see how the framework works out.  » Read the rest

I am doing a series of articles on the book “Rethinking Canadian Aid” (University of Ottawa Press, 2015), and now it’s time for “Chapter 8: Preventing, Substituting or Complementing the Use of Force?” by Justin Massie and Stéphane Roussel.

When did military operations and development assistance policies become integrated foreign policy tools? For what politico-strategic purposes? Despite significant literature on human security, failed and failing states, peacebuilding, humanitarian wars, and even foreign aid as an instrument of foreign policy, the relationship between official development assistance (ODA) and the use of military force as converging tools of statecraft remains under-analyzed.

When I saw the title of the section, I was afraid that the analysis might end up being better suited to an NGO rant than quality academic analysis. Many NGOs wrongly assume that everything a military does is has to be about force. Many would add to that by misquoting Henry Kissinger and further characterize the military as evil, hence all they’re actions are evil.  » Read the rest