REVIEW ESSAY – THE PEOPLE'S CHOICE

Abstract

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This review essay was prompted by a reading of Salvador Santino F. Regilme's (2021) book entitled Aid Imperium: United States Foreign Policy and Human Rights in Post-Cold War Southeast Asia (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press). American development aid is motivated by a mixture of security, commercial, and humanitarian interests. All three rationales are characteristic for foreign aid since the Second World War, but not always in the same mix. Security concerns were quite influential in the 1950s and early 1960s and again after 9/11. Regilme describes American foreign aid rationales for two Southeast Asian countries (the Philippines and Thailand) and shows how quickly humanitarian considerations give way to security interests. What makes his study quite unique is that he focuses on the intertwinement of donor and recipient interests. Both donor and recipient act more on the basis of territorial and domestic concerns than with an eye on international, humanitarian needs.

Keywords

Development Aid Foreign Aid National Security Policy Imagined Community Territorial-Domestic V Humanitarian Motives United States

The author of this interesting and well-written book concludes his study with an important, but a utopian, observation: “The politics of foreign aid emerges from deep-seated logics of domination and moral superiority, thereby laying the preconditions for violence. Such perverse political logics ought to give way to a post-imperium world order that is constitutionalized by non-violence, justice, care-based economics, and universal humanity” (Regilme 2021, 233). So, what are the chances of that perverse political logic giving way to a post-imperium world? Let us keep an answer to this question simple and only contrast optimists who look at the future and skeptics who consider the present.

Optimists would say: pretty good. For instance, anthropologist Robert Kelly (2016, 6) suggests that war may well be no longer attractive, because the destructive power of nuclear weapons not only kills human beings but also destroys material property. Indeed most, if not all, wars started in the hope of gaining property (in land, in goods, in titles such as “king”) at the expense of people. Evolutionary biologist Joseph Henrich (2016, 318) sees a new human being on the horizon, a global citizen also implying that “we” are transcending, or are about to grow beyond, identifying with a particular territorial state and/or a particular in-group. However, both donors and recipients of development aid act in response to external stimuli outside their control (e.g., the territorial desires of other countries) and certainly operate upon the need for control over domestic security concerns.

A skeptic, and certainly a cynic, would respond to Regilme's (2021) observation “dream on!” As long as the political leaders and their followers in the territorial state will not transcend the interests of their national jurisdictions, a post-imperium world is beyond reach. And, I should add, as long as a ruler is enabled and allowed to define and dictate her/his country's interests, a post-imperium world is outside the realm of possibilities. Regilme's case studies of the Philippines and Thailand show convincingly how the American emphasis on human rights as the legitimizing rationale for development aid quickly shifted to a focus on national security interests after 9/11. He also shows that a donor country (i.e., the United States) does not control how a recipient will use received funds for objectives other than what it was given for. That is, whether development aid is offered for reasons of human rights and advancing democracy or for reasons of national security and geopolitical interests, recipient countries can “play” along and still do whatever they like with all the funds received.

In the second half of the twentieth century, American foreign aid was often justified in terms of shoring up emerging democracies and human rights in the world next to commercial and security interests (CRS 2022; Ingram 2019; Raadschelders 1995). America presented itself as the “city upon a hill,” a concept in the Sermon on the Mount used by John Winthrop in a 1630 lecture expecting America to become the “new Jerusalem” (Winthrop 2013; Rodgers 2018) focused on maintaining the covenant with God, but one-and-a-half centuries later, the American Founding Fathers, most of whom were Deists, constituted America as the beacon of the first ever experiment in large-scale democracy. In the eyes of many immigrants, the United States was the land of opportunity and American economic and military prowess increased in the course of the nineteenth century and eclipsed that of European countries by the middle of the twentieth century. In the decades following World War II (WWII), America presented itself as the example to be emulated: a thriving democracy, a thriving economy, declining income inequalities (hard to believe, but true), and a strong middle class. It offered its recipe for development to many developing countries, in the 1950–1960s focusing on the construction of infrastructure (roads, harbors, railways) and heavy industry, shifting to meeting basic needs in education, housing, health care in the 1970–1980s, and settling in the 1990s on institution building (Raadschelders 1995). The United States recognized that, without strong democratic institutions, development aid could well end up in the hands of domestic elites.

Was American foreign aid two-faced? Showing the world a face of benevolent paternalism, while at the same time acting as a self-interested agent? The United States, just as many other countries, acted, and will continue to act, in its self-interest. Who is to blame? Not countries, just self-interested individuals; that is, political leaders, who are in a position to do better. Why they do not is a question I cannot answer, other than saying that they are—should I say we are?—still acting as chimpanzees (see below), and that's not saying anything bad about our primate cousins. It is just saying that humanity has not risen beyond the instinctual and emotional actions that drive primate behavior. The rational being that will make for a universal humanity still has to be born. The Enlightenment's belief in a rational and objective human being has not yet become flesh.

Regilme's (2021) book is testimony to the fact that territorial states still think “territorial.” Their leaders cannot really think about and act in accordance with the notion of a global or universal humanity that abhors war and seeks community. However, history has shown, time and again, that ideas do precede actions. Not always, and certainly not immediately. One has to be patient and keep hammering at the anvil of hope for such a post-imperium world order. In this review essay, I summarize Regilme's thesis, address his methodology, and then venture into a reflection about the importance of his observations about the motives of development aid. I situate his work in a body of thought that has been growing since the early seventeenth century. That body of printed thought shows that humanity can know what it takes to elevate the peoples of countries to a level of a decent and civilized quality of life within a territorial jurisdiction, and, I will argue, can also carry humanity beyond national (petty?) interests and into global citizenship. Before we plunge into Regilme's considerations, and then soar into the world of hope and possibility, we must briefly characterize the human–animal because it is in the interplay of our emotional and psychological (i.e., the instinctual element) make-up and our uncanny ability to adapt to environmental circumstances (i.e., the intentional element), that we can situate and understand the extent and limits of our agency. When reading the next section, the reader may find I digress, but it will become clear why this is relevant to understanding development aid rationales and Regilme's thesis.

A Conceptual Interlude About Human Nature: On Bonobos, Chimpanzees, and St. Augustine

Just as society and community are artificial creations—as Bertrand Russell (1962[1931]), Herbert Simon (1969), and Benedict Anderson (1984) pointed out—so the institutional arrangements for governing are artificial, that is, human made. They reflect human nature as was aptly pointed out by Madison in Federalist 51. Most—perhaps even all—analyses of democracy focus on the (re)actions of institutional actors in the public, private, and nonprofit realms. But, given that the institutional arrangements within which these responses manifest themselves are made by humans, the responses themselves cannot be but human. Therefore we must first pay attention to the nature of human beings and their communities.

For most of their existence on earth (somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 years) Homo sapiens live in physical communities. These communities are the size of bands with 50 up to, perhaps, 150 members who all know each other. In a physical community, you know who to go to for food, who to go to for protection, and who to go to for mediation in a conflict between two members. At least one evolutionary psychologist and one anthropologist argued that the human mind is exceptionally well developed for living in small-scale, physical communities. In their words: “Our modern skulls house a Stone Age mind” (Cosmides and Tooby 1997, 10–11; see also Bolhuis et al. 2011, 1). Our closest primate cousins, chimpanzees and bonobos, also live in physical communities, and they fission when the group size gets too big for maintaining the social relations that are maintained through grooming with all members of the band.

Today, human beings still live in physical communities, such as a nuclear and an extended family, a sports club, a church denomination, a labor union, a neighborhood association, etc. However, these physical communities are embedded in much larger, imagined communities such as a neighborhood, a city, a region, a country. It is in these imagined communities of increasingly sedentary populations that formal institutional arrangements for governing emerge. In imagined communities, social stability can no longer rely on the direct social control that individuals in physical communities exercise upon each other. The intensive interaction characteristic for individuals in physical communities assures social bonds among all. By contrast, human beings in imagined communities will only know some members, and other means are necessary to assure social stability.

To understand the challenges of institutional arrangements for governing, we must stress that these institutional arrangements are grounded in a rather conflicting set of instinctual and intentional behaviors the origins of which may well be with the common ancestor of Panini (bonobo and chimpanzee) and Homo. In the words of Prüfer et al. (2012, 527; emphasis added), that common ancestor “may in fact have possessed a mosaic of features, including those seen in bonobo, chimpanzee, and human.” To understand human behavior, we need to take a little detour into the evolution of Panini.

Some 2.1 to 1.9 million years ago, in the Congo basin in Western Africa, a small stream emerged that became wider and deeper (today it is the deepest river in the world) to the point that the Panini north and south of the Congo River were separated and no longer interacted. North of the river the Panini (we now call them chimpanzees) had to compete for food resources with gorillas and they became male-dominated societies with strong checks and balances. Individuals are aggressive and cheat. South of the river, the Panini we refer to nowadays as bonobos did not have to compete with gorillas for food resources. They became female-dominated societies characterized by empathy, caring, cooperation, and sexuality for both pleasurable and conflict-resolving reasons (de Waal 2005; Reich 2019, 46; Rilling et al. 2012; Takemoto et al. 2015; Tan et al. 2017; Wrangham and Peterson 1996).

Human behavior, however, triggered or motivated (instinctual or intentional), is still characterized by a mosaic of features, a mixture of chimpanzee and bonobo behaviors. St. Augustine already noted in the fifth century CE how human beings are torn between the conflicting inclinations of: collectivism/individualism; egalitarianism/hierarchy; submission/domination; cooperation/aggression (conflict); conformity/uniqueness; community/competition; altruism (honorability)/selfishness (manipulation: deceit, covert, cheating); and compassion/cruelty (Hundert 1992; Manent 2013, 279–280). One could add to these impulsive (emotional) versus rational (deliberative) behaviors (Ariely 2012, 98)¹ and revenge (Daly and Wilson 1989) versus forgiveness (McCullough 2008). Like primates, human beings recognize the in-group to which they belong and thus treat groups of others as out-groups. In an in-group, individuals look after each other for the benefit; that is, survival, of the group as a whole. When the in-group is a physical community it is hard to cheat; when the in-group is an imagined community cheating becomes much easier. How do chimpanzees, bonobos, and human beings deal with cheaters?

Especially the organization of chimpanzee bands merits attention as there are two types of alliances between individuals that we see mirrored in human institutional arrangements for governing. In the so-called rank-changing alliance, one male depends on supporters to get into and hold onto a position of dominance. However, should the dominant male consume more resources than needed, and thus harm the survival of the group, a leveling alliance (also known as a reverse dominance hierarchy; see Boehm 1993, 1999, 66) of several lower-ranking males will form a coalition that restricts or even deposes the dominant male (Gintis et al. 2015, 331). This has happened with plenty of monarchs, dictators, and leaders throughout history. A rank-changing alliance is what keeps authoritarian rulers in power; a leveling alliance is what brings them down. The human institutional arrangements for democracy are also characteristic of a leveling alliance which balances the need for hierarchy with an equally important need for checks and balances between fragmented sources/branches of power. What differentiates a rank-changing alliance from the leveling alliance is that public, nonprofit, and private actors in the latter can access, participate in, and have an influence on public policy making. To be sure, these two types of alliances are analyzed among primates in a physical community but are just as relevant to understanding the dynamics in an artificial or imagined community such as the territorial state.

As far as I know, these two types of relational power dynamics have not been used for understanding international relations, and certainly not for grasping the motives for development aid. Is it too much of a stretch to suggest that they are? What accounts for the survival of authoritarian and democratic regimes? What contributes to their demise? In the mosaic of instinctual and intentional features described above, the strongest and genetically oldest in human beings is the instinctual need for survival. Neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp (1998, 54) distinguished between seven basic human emotions: fear, rage, seeking, lust, care, panic, and play. Of these, fear, rage, and seeking have pre-mammalian (reptilian) origins, the other four are specific to primates (Buller 2012). Fear, rage, and seeking for food sources are about (threats to) survival. In peaceful times, and at least in politically stable times, one can see that development aid is motivated by both geopolitical and human rights interests. As soon as the existing world order is perceived as under threat, security interests rise to the surface at the expense of advancing human rights. The conflicting emotions and inclinations in human beings have been guided so far mostly by the instinctual need for survival and less by the intentional desire to “spread the love.”

Regilme's Thesis, Method, and Cases

It is that need for survival that appears to underlie Regilme's (2021, 2) thesis as to whether foreign aid undermines human rights in recipient countries. He focuses on physical integrity rights such as freedom from extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance, physical harassment, and torture. In his view the concept of foreign aid refers only to material resources donors provide, so he introduces the term foreign strategic support that, next to material resources, also includes political support and other nonmaterial influences (3). This emphasis on the interplay between the ideational-discursive elements on the one hand, and the material support on the other will offer understanding “beyond the excessive analytic emphasis on quantitative aid data” (4). Whether foreign aid/foreign strategic support (he uses both terms throughout the book) is good or bad is not the issue; what is, is the extent to which stakeholders’ ideas and interests converge in shaping the “material conditions and political opportunity structures that make foreign aid a potent tool for social transformation” (4).

This is a comparative study of what motivated U.S. development aid to the Philippines and Thailand. These countries were selected because they share a variety of similarities (Regilme 2021, 12), thus a most similar systems design. The novelty of the study is in the focus on the interaction between ideational and strategic-instrumental motives of donor and recipient countries (15). Regilme advances the theory of interest convergence where the political elites in both donor and recipient countries instrumentalize foreign aid in relation to their respective domestic interests. He references a 2013 study of panel data on 124 countries from 1960 to 2009 that concluded how “aid makes already democratic countries more democratic and dictatorial countries more dictatorial” (23). In his two case studies, Regilme shows how U.S. aid to Thailand and the Philippines strengthened the coercive capacities in both countries. As the United States is the world's largest donor of foreign aid with more than 180 recipient countries in the fiscal year 2019 (CRS 2022, 19), its politics of foreign aid constitute an aid imperium (Regilme 2021, 24). This term includes both territorial (military, geostrategy) as well as nonterritorial expressions and practices (diplomacy and economic, cultural, and socio-economic interventions) (24). In this aid imperium, donor and recipient constitute each other through inequality in power and differentiation in terms of identity (25). What that statement means, however, is unclear to me. We can assume asymmetry in power and identity differentiation, but does it influence (1) motives for giving aid and (2) motives for receiving aid? Both case studies suggest that, whatever America's reasons for providing development aid were (e.g., advancing humanitarian objectives during the Clinton Administration and pursuing national security), anti-terrorism interests during the Bush administration, both recipient countries acted more in line with their domestic interests anyway.

There is one element regarding methods employed and that is that the author claims to offer “the first comprehensive study that specifies the causal mechanisms and the ways in which foreign strategic assistance (aid and diplomacy) shape physical integrity rights in recipient states” (Regilme 2021, 7; emphasis added). That claim is reiterated in figure 2.1 (an explanatory model of interest convergence and integrity rights) (34) and repeated throughout the text when arguing that the relationship between ideas and material factors is both causal and constitutive (see e.g., 226). There are two objections to this claim. First is the suggestion that causality can be established in social reality. A variety of social scientists since John Stuart Mill observed that causal explanation in the social sciences is a dream because its scholars deal with

a “plurality of causes and intermixtures of effects” (Mill),

ever increasing number of “causes” the further we go back in time (Weber),

an interplay between and reinforcement of various economic, social, and cultural factors (Myrdal),

potentially different constellations of situational and institutional factors for each case (Scharpf), and

with an immense number of combinations of variables at multiple levels of analysis (E. Ostrom) (see Raadschelders 2020a, 34 for a brief discussion of these).

With these commentaries in mind, I can see that ideas and material factors constitute each other, but I fail to see a causal link. After all, what is cause and what is effect is in the case of social realities a chicken-and-egg question.

The second objections concern Regilme's (2021) use of the term ‘model.’ Looking at figure 2.1, it strikes me as a framework rather than a model. In that terminology I follow the distinction Ostrom et al. (1994, 23–25) made between model, theory, and framework. A formal model makes explicit assumptions about elements and structure of a particular situation and uses logical tools of theory to derive predictions about outcomes of a particular set of parameters. Mathematics works that way. A theory applies to a general class of models rather than a specific model and provides a metatheoretical language for formulating, postulating, predicting, evaluating, and changing models. For example, game theory provides the meta-language for all game theoretical models. The third level is that of a framework, that identifies broad working parts and proposes relationships between those parts. To be sure, relationships are not necessarily causal, and calling something a ‘framework’ does not diminish in any way the quality of the arguments and research presented. Case in point, Elinor Ostrom's work on common-pool resource management systems and the IAD framework that came out of initial case studies and was further refined over time with ever more case studies earned her various awards, among them the Nobel Prize in economics in 2009.

What Regilme (2021) offers is a multilevel theory (cf. Ostrom et al. 1994) that considers how macro-level developments (e.g., end of the Cold War, and the global war on terror since 2001) influenced not only ideational expectations and policies, but also how at the meso-level these shaped and interacted with the foreign policy agenda in relation to domestic interests. It also adds how—in turn—at the micro-level this affected patterns of domestic state repression of individual physical integrity rights (16). In this review, it is not possible to regurgitate the case analyses. The detail Regilme provides is rich and quite compelling.

Philippines and Thailand

In the case of the Philippines, the 1990s were characterized by rising interest in human rights as a key element of a comprehensive socio-economic agenda. Then, after 2001 Filipino president Gloria Arroyo and U.S. president George Bush shifted the rationale for development to counterterrorism measures. The question Regilme (2021, 71) asks is why this shift occurs after a decade of democratization and economic development reforms? The answer, obviously, is 9/11, but more important is his second question of the impact of that policy shift upon the level of state repression and physical integrity rights. The answer to that question confirms Regilme's theoretical expectation: an increase in foreign strategic support will lead to a deterioration of human rights when both donor and recipient governments’ interests converge on a counterterror agenda and when the recipient government has weak domestic legitimacy (104). Especially, domestic military and police forces used anti-terrorism measures to justify state violence against indigenous communities and political opposition against the Marcos presidency. Under the Aquino and Obama administrations, foreign aid shifted again to a range of nonmilitary policy interests, and domestic military and police forces had less opportunity for advancing their own interests (133). It helped that the Aquino administration enjoyed strong support from the population, thus undercutting rent-seeking behavior by the military and the police. The analysis of the Philippines case ends in 2016, so it would be interesting to see a follow-up study of what happened in the U.S.–Philippines relationship after that.

In the case of Thailand, the end of the Cold War also led to improvements in human rights, as both strong domestic legitimacy and America's interest in advancing democracy converged upon equitable economic development (Regilme 2021, 171). The Thai government shifted to a counterterrorism agenda after 9/11 simply because it thus hoped to attract more U.S. aid and to gain “domestic public support for increased state repression in order to combat internal security threats” (215). These repressive policies were implemented by the military and the police.

Why did the U.S. aid imperium “turn … a blind eye to the Thai and Philippine state's violent repression of unarmed political dissidents” (Regilme 2021, 219; emphasis in the original) even though it professes a commitment to upholding human rights norms? Regilme suggests two possible explanations. First, human rights considerations were deemed of less importance than the national security interests in counter-terrorism measures. Second, foreign aid is fungible in the sense that, under conditions of the perceived security crisis, recipient governments may see the opportunity to misuse aid for purposes the donor did not intend. As Regilme (2021, 29) foresees in chapter two, it is a culture of impunity that drives both donor and recipient. The donor does not want to hold the recipient accountable for physical integrity rights violations because its domestic anti-terrorism agenda is seen as more important. The recipient can get away with such violations because it knows that the donor is consumed by domestic security and geopolitical dominance rather than human rights interests in recipient countries. The United States’ geopolitical considerations mainly concerned the effort to keep the increasing influence of China in South-East Asia in check (221). There is, though, a possible third explanation: states, being artificial creations of the human mind, have behavioral responses similar to that of the individual decision maker. Individuals and, by extension, states and their governments have so far simply acted upon personal/domestic interests for the survival of, and domination by, the in-group. When push comes to shove, these personal/domestic interests in security, as driven by emotions of fear and panic, will override efforts to advance human rights through care and play.

In the concluding chapter, Regilme (2021, 231) expresses the hope to have dispelled two dominant myths or narratives about development aid. The Western-centric myth holds that the North's development aid has been mainly beneficial to recipient countries. In the cases that foreign aid proved not to be successful, it was reasoned to be because of poor, irresponsible, and corrupt states in the South. The critical view holds that Western intervention is basically imperialistic and evil, harmful to the emancipatory politics of people beyond the West. Regilme's analysis is much more nuanced in recognizing that both donor and recipient can manipulate the provision and use of foreign aid to serve their own interests. In the case of the United States as a donor, it is the geopolitical interest of keeping Chinese influence at bay and thus remain the dominant actor on the world stage; in the case of recipients, it is the domestic need for domination in the face of political opposition. Is the cynical view more realistic than the optimistic view?

Motives of Development Aid

In the opening statements of this review, the optimist's perspective is presented as utopian, while the cynic's view is informed by the present situation. We can now revisit this and review some of the motives for development aid that have been advanced in the literature. Keep in mind, though, that the literature on development aid is vast, and in this review essay I do not offer a meta-analysis of the various constellations of motives and variables identified.

In the early 1990s, David Lumsdaine (1993), not referenced in Regilme, suggested that developed countries favor the neediest aid recipients, and that donors that are most concerned with domestic poverty give the most aid. Thus, development aid is motivated by egalitarian principles and humanitarian considerations. His analysis was quickly criticized for its lack of evidence and for lack of attention for the extent to which national security concerns of the United States reduced the influence of political and economic concerns and interests (Krueger 1995).

Based on annual monetary transfers and documents archived by the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD concerning development aid between 1960 and 1993, an analysis of the motives of bilateral development aid of the seven largest donors was conducted by Julie Raadschelders (1995). She noted four distinct patterns. Development aid of England, France, and the Netherlands was motivated by redressing the wrongs of the colonial past. That is, aid went to former colonies, not to the neediest countries. Germany's and Japan's development aid was prompted by efforts to make right the wrongs inflicted upon occupied nations during WWII. Development aid by the United States was provided for the geopolitical reasons of containing communism, for the humanitarian reasons of protecting human rights, and for improving the economic well-being of populations at large. Sweden was the “bleeding heart,” the only donor country to provide foreign aid to the neediest of the needy.

Much of the analyses of development aid focus on the motives of either recipient or donor countries, and Regilme (2021) augments this by pointing to the intertwinement of donor and recipient interests and how each balances domestic in-group concerns on the one hand with international, geopolitical forces of out-groups holding various levels of power and influence on the other. His study concerns Thailand and the Philippines, not South-East Asia as the book title expansively suggests. However, I suspect that we can find similar rationales for development among most donors and recipients. That is, each donor will present a rationale to the world that is benevolent, while underneath its aid is still driven by in-group domestic interests. It seems to me that we need a comparative study of development aid rationales of donor countries and development aid use by recipient countries that covers the past 70 years. I can imagine that at the height of the Cold War, in the 1950s and 1960s American aid was more motivated by security interests, shifted to a more humanitarian focus in the 1980s and 1990s as the Cold War “warmed up” and came to an end, and shifted back to a national security focus after 9/11 as Regilme documents. Did other donor countries show similar shifts in rationale? We can understand national security concerns as an important rationale for development aid, but where does this desire to pursue humanitarian concerns that transcend purely national, in-group interests originate?

The Deeper Rationale for Humanitarian Objectives

President Aquino, mentioned earlier, appealed to the electorate with the slogan: “If there is no corruption, then there is no poverty” (Regilme 2021, 117). In his view, government corruption is the root cause of poverty, of human rights violations, and of all sorts of other social injustices. Linking human rights abuse to public sector corruption and economic stagnation came to be known in the Philippines as Aquinomics: good governance and good economics go hand-in-hand. It does not hurt to emphasize this message that has a history, first, at the level of interactions between rulers and superiors vis-á-vis people and subordinates going back to Antiquity, and, second, at the level of states and their government going back to at least 1613.

As noted above, for most of their existence human beings lived in physical communities, and it is only in the past 10,000 years or so that people started living in communities far larger than those where everyone knows everyone (Raadschelders 2020a). In the first age of government, people did not have formal institutional arrangements for governing; they self-governed. From 6,000 BCE until the late eighteenth century, the second age of government, people as subjects were ruled by a king (or whatever the title of the ruler was) supported by an elite. Only in the third age of government are rulers and the elite subject to the law that emanates from the sovereign people as citizens (at least in terms of political theory).

It is in the city-states of the ancient world, specifically in Egypt and Southern Mesopotamia, that ideas emerge on how individuals in different stations in life should treat one another. What initially was an instruction from father (in public office) to son (who was assumed to literally follow in father's footsteps), came to include instruction for employer behavior toward employees, and finally extended to instruction for rulers toward subordinates. All these instructions (also known as wisdom literature) basically emphasized the importance of individual morality, impartiality, justice, and truthfulness in the relation between people (Raadschelders 2020b). Instructions for how rulers were supposed to behave to their subjects continued well into the European high Middle Ages and Renaissance. During the second stage of government, the state and its administrative apparatus were literally regarded as a property of the ruler. That is, the ruler embodied in the most literal sense the state.

Perceiving the state as property or patrimonium changed first at the local level where citizens of various European city-states acquired since the eleventh-century charters that gave them some degree of independence from the ruler in exchange for a portion of taxes (unless stated otherwise, the following is based on Raadschelders 2022). Good government was imaged as one that is, pace Antiquity's instructions, virtuous and just, and had the interests of the entire citizenry at heart. The communal government was considered superior to a government of kings and nobles, especially under the circumstance that government provided the parameters within which the economy could thrive.

Sitting in a prison cell, Antonio Serra (2011 [1613]) wrote his Breve Trattato about what states could and should do to elevate their people to a better standard of living. It was published in 1613. Serra's recipe for social-economic development contained four ingredients:

establish a diversified economy and avoid one that is dependent upon and vulnerable to the weather (as agriculture is); thus, stimulate agriculture, as well as craftsmanship and trade;

connectivity between communities of people so as to further trade; in his day and age, canals, harbors, and roads; in our age, telephone and internet, for instance;

an enterprising citizenship which can be assured through education for skilled labor; and

a good government that would lead in assuring the first three elements.

Serra's ideas about government initiative and education for the many were in the spirit of the times and shared by contemporaries such as Hugo Grotius, Jean Bodin, and Johan Althusius. His ideas foreshadowed calls in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries for a more interventionist government by scholars and administrators who came to see the role of the state as one of bringing well-being and happiness to all people. The best-known of these is Adam Smith who in his 1759 work, Theory of Moral Sentiments, and his famous 1776 work, The Wealth of Nations, noted that people are both self-interested and care for others and that the duties of government are threefold: first to protect society from violence by other countries, second to protect society from injustice from within, and third to be the institutional arrangement that furthers commerce, education of youth and of people of all ages (Kennedy 2010, 164–167).

The idea that the state and its government have a duty to advance the well-being of all citizens comes to full bloom in the three decades following WWII (Fourastié 1979), the only time in world history that, in democracies, income inequality actually dropped and that a strong middle class emerged. The focus of social-economic development is domestic and local. Did this emergence and development of the welfare state affect the rationale for development aid?

The initial focus of development aid in the decades surrounding the 1900s was to lift up the plight of people in the colonies. It was the white man's burden to bring civilization, molding its colonial subjects to be like the citizens in the mother- or father-country. Hence, for instance, the French policy of assimilation and the Dutch so-called cultuurbeleid or ethische politiek (i.e., cultural policy and ethical politics). After WWII, development aid emerges as a moral responsibility of developed countries toward developing countries. Development aid was no longer only a bilateral affair, as various international organizations such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund joined. The emphasis on humanitarian reasons for development aid at a national and even international scale is simply an expansion of the very ancient desire for just, righteous, impartial, and truthful interaction between individuals of different statuses. However, so far history shows that both at the individual and institutional levels it remains a struggle to overcome the self-interested motives and behaviors for survival and transcend into a truly global humanity where the emphasis on in-group versus out-groups has evaporated. If and when we can move into that post-imperium world Regilme hopes for remains to be seen. Until then, we will simply have to navigate our individual and territorial-institutional inclinations of serving self before others.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no specific financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

About the Author

Jozef C. N. Raadschelders, PhD, is a professor of public administration at the John Glenn College of Public Affairs, The Ohio State University. He serves as Associate Dean of Faculty, and as Faculty Director for Professional Programs. His research interests include administrative history, comparative government, civil service systems, epistemology of the study of public administration, and social ontology of government.

ORCID iD

Jozef Raadschelders

1

But see , about how emotion and reason ought to be intertwined.

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