Future positive: International co-operation in the 21st century by Michael Edwards (1999, London: Earthscan, pp. 304, £20 h/bk)

✍ Scribed by Claire Mercer

• Book ID: 102349850
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 34 KB
• Volume: 13
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0954-1748
• DOI: 10.1002/jid.740

✦ Synopsis

Edwards, recently Senior Civil Society Specialist at the World Bank (while this book was written), is well-known to the development studies community for his key works (many with David Hulme) on NGOs, and also for his uncompromising contributions to the debate on the relevance of development studies to the practice of development. Future Positive represents something of an amalgamation of these concerns, which attempts to chart the failings of the institutions of international development in the post-Second World War era. It aims to consider how the development industry, recast under the all-encompassing term of `international co-operation', might respond to the challenges of increasing globalisation and the persistence of global inequality. An opening chapter places the entire book in the context of the need for improved north-south cooperation in an increasingly globalised world. With more than a cursory nod in the direction of the 1997 World Development Report, Edwards argues that while states are important, what is needed are partnerships between public, private and civil society sectors in achieving democracy and good governance. Indeed, given the wide scope of the book, the centrality of civil society to any workable notion of international co-operation is a relatively welcome constant thread.

The book is then organized into two sections. Part One: Looking Back', examines the various dimensions of external development assistance since 1945. This covers the experiences of different regions with economic development (through a contrast of East Asia with sub-Saharan Africa), the failure of the project approach' to development by a host of development agencies, and the failures of humanitarian assistance. Part Two: Looking Forward', asks the question what sort of international system should we be looking to build?', and arrives at an outline for a broadly-de®ned system of international co-operation. This rests on a reassessment of foreign aid, the `humanizing' of capitalism (through increasing the social conscience of private sector actors), and the negotiation of an acceptable and workable system of global governance. The latter requires the emergence of a culture of learning and mutual reciprocity, not only among development workers and thinkers, but also amongst the global general public, with whom the responsibility for demanding such changes from leaders in political and civil society ultimately rests.

The strength of Future Positive lies more in the breadth than in the depth of its arguments. These are important issues and it is to be welcomed that Edwards has attempted to confront them in an intelligent contribution which one hopes will stimulate a debate spanning (following the spirit of the book) academia, governments, development institutions and NGOs alike. Overall however, the book suffers to a certain extent from trying to do too much. A good deal of Part One traces rather old debates without really adding very much to them. In particular, Edwards' account of the East Asian success, and sub-Saharan Africa's relative economic decline, is interesting in that it speci®cally draws out the extent to which international co-operation both enhanced the East Asian miracle and compounded sub-Saharan Africa's problems. Nevertheless, the problematic nature of much of the external assistance Africa received is not suf®ciently brought out here (for instance, structural adjustment does not even enter the equation for another three chapters). The ®nal conclusion that Africa's problem is `one of governance' echoes once again World Bank thinking, while ignoring much of the political literature which has problematized this approach.

The second half of the book is much more interesting and introduces some innovative and potentially achievable ways in which Edwards' vision of international co-operation might be realized. In particular, Edwards highlights the need for a change in attitudes towards development and development relationships (such as donor±recipient, expert±local) not only among the general public in the north, but also among large northern NGOs, who have the potential to `build