Dialogue in Pursuit of Development - Are you looking for one of ...

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the buses stop, who can register presence and who is invited. Dialogue, on
the contrary, needs to be seen as a process that happens over time and that
need not be restricted to any one place. Indeed if we understand dialogue as
the construction of conversation between different viewpoints, knowledges
and the like that are themselves conversations, then everything is moving at
the same time in different ways in overlapping and multiple networks of
meaning production. Dialogue therefore for aid and the very special type of
relationship that takes place between countries should never be restricted
or even imagined as beginning and ending with conversations between donors
and government representatives. On the contrary it should be seen as
seeking to hear different views, inform both known and unknown others
about what is being considered, seeking to gather views and bring these
forwards for debate.
After all, resources are being articulated around activities that are being
seen as priority. But priority by whom? Here there is no point in donors
hiding behind the diplomatic convention of government sovereignty when
the very same donors have signed international conventions and declarations
in a number of areas. Working with colleagues in the Division for
Democratic Government in Sida during 1998 to debate what we had learned
from Swedish support to State and Public Administration Reform in a variety
of different countries, we carried out an exercise of listing the various
conventions to which the Swedish Government had pledged support and
the resulting specific Sida policy statements in the areas of poverty reduction;
gender equality; sustainable development; and peace, democracy and
human rights. One of the conclusions that we came to was that given that all
of these are constructed and confirmed in everyday activities, what was
needed was a ‘rights based approach’ to public administration reform (Division
for Democratic Governance, 1998). That is, we should be discussing
the effectiveness of reform activities not simply in terms of service provision,
but – to follow the lead from the mainstreaming of gender questions
– in terms of their impact on the everyday construction of rights, the reduction
of poverty and the sustainability of development. Such an approach
would be the logical consequence – if we were to be sincere – of Sweden’s
different commitments in the international arena. Should we pretend that
such commitments do not exist or should we recognize that, like it or not,
they are part of the processuality of dialogue?
Take, for example, those resources that are delivered through financial
donations and loans. More and more, the bilateral donors are gathering together
with the different regional and international development banks to
create packages of ‘basket financing’ that provide a mixture of donations
and loans. What should be our aim when we seek to build dialogue in a
setting where part of the aid package is 30 million dollars in loans to be
repaid, or with specific aid linked to donor country specific export credits
or many of the other financial tie-in mechanisms that exist, or even when it