Abstract
The aim of this article is to understand how power, hegemony, and solidarity are related within the context of foreign aid from the perspective of recipient civil society organizations. By applying qualitative methods and the analytical framework of foreign aid understood as gift, the study explores how these factors are perceived, described, and explained by Palestinian nongovernmental organization leaders. The findings prove that even the “perpetual” recipient can exert certain nonmaterial power over the donor. In the Palestinian case, it is the weakness itself—the combination of helplessness and injustice—which can be understood as “power” even if not as “power over” the donor but at least “power to” secure foreign aid.
Introduction
Significant attention has been paid to exploring foreign aid within the context of international relations (IRs), but the role it plays in the developing world goes far beyond the disciplinary borders of IR. 1 While a great part of the literature has been concerned with the aid effectiveness debate since the early 1990s, 2 foreign aid has also been considered as a foreign policy means serving (mostly Western) donor interests. Power, a central concept in social sciences, is also part of the relations established by aid both at the level of macropolitics (foreign aid policies) and microsociology (development and humanitarian projects). Postdevelopment critiques and literature 3 places much less emphasis on the (rhetorical, stated) objectives and effectiveness of foreign aid. Focusing on the very essence and function of aid, the hegemonic being of development (and humanitarian) cooperation is widely acknowledged. 4 As it was bluntly formulated by Tomohisa Hattori “what foreign aid is, in short, is more important than what it does.” 5 Critical discourses also go “beyond and below” the macrolevel (state, IR), arguing that many nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) being responsible for aid implementation adapted their social action strategies and moral convictions to the policies of the official donors’ “neoliberal consensus.”
While power is of utmost importance in IR in general, and in relations established by foreign aid 6 in particular, the power of “weak” is usually underestimated or even ignored. It applies not only to the macrolevel interstate relations but also to the cooperation between implementing NGOs alike. By analyzing how power and solidarity is perceived by Palestinian 7 civil society actors (NGOs and grassroots organizations) in the West Bank (WB) and Gaza Strip (GS), the aim of this article is to understand how power, hegemony, and solidarity are related within the context of foreign grants from the perspective of the recipients. 8
The complex nature of interactions, power dynamics included, between individuals, groups, organizations, and states has motivated scientists to look for explanations for conflict, contest, and cooperation. As the anthropological theory and history of gift exchange shows the function of solidarity is closely linked to the concept and motives of power, which was framed within a particular analytical–conceptual framework first by Marcel Mauss. 9 Since Mauss, the vital role of solidarity—“the glue that keeps people together,” 10 “a firm and lasting commitment to the best for all” 11 —has been explored from various disciplinary perspectives, 12 but mostly in the political context of the modern welfare state. 13 Solidarity, however, has broader dimensions: global phenomena like “underdevelopment,” humanitarian crises, transnational migration, and refugee waves offer countless opportunities to show solidarity beyond the borders of the welfare (nation) state. 14
Building on earlier research on foreign aid applying the analytical framework of Mauss’s gift exchange theory, the findings are based on desk research and primary data collected in the Palestinian territories by means of observations and semistructured interviews with stakeholders in the past decade. The last round of interviews, the main source of this article, was completed in Summer 2015. Data were processed by means of the “constant comparative” method 15 and the findings were analyzed within the diverse analytical framework of gift exchange. 16 Focusing on the power-related NGO perceptions (of power, equality, solidarity, interest, and reciprocity), this framework helped capture the essence of NGO power vis-à-vis the donors. In the Palestinian case, it is the weakness itself (the combination of helplessness and injustice), which, among others, can be understood as “power” even if not as “power over” the donor, but at least “power to” secure foreign aid. This article unfolds the following way: the first section introduces the context and the methods, the second presents the findings, and the last provides room for discussing the results.
Research Context, Analytical Framework, and Methods
Inspired by theories about gift and social exchange, 17 a huge body of literature has focused on the philosophy of the gift, 18 on its role in social (exchange) relations in general, and in IRs in particular. 19 Since the simultaneously coercive and consensual dimensions of foreign policy instruments (e.g., foreign aid) were merged by combining the (gift) exchange approach and Dahls’s concept of coercive power, 20 foreign aid as “gift” has been understood as “symbolic domination,” a “hegemonic system” that attempts to realize international “order.” 21 Regardless to its impacts and effects, the practice of foreign aid can hardly be separated from the concept of power. It applies to macroland (IR, foreign policies, and development policies) and microlevel (project) too. The essence of power and hegemony can be understood by analyzing a number of overlapping and closely related characteristics via various disciplinary lenses. 22 As summarized by Mark Haugaard, power can be used as a scalar concept (consensual power to vs. conflictual power over) and it can simultaneously be viewed as an “agent-centered” versus “structured” phenomena whereby power is an independent property of social systems. The same applies to the concept of hegemony: seen as an empire, it is a conflictual relationship of domination, but as an alliance, it reflects a consensual view. 23 In addition to power, there is another formative concept linked closely to the policy and practice of modern gifts (foreign aid), that is, solidarity. While foreign aid is an obvious foreign policy tool, the importance of international solidarity is featured at the level of implementing organizations (NGOs), public discourse, and opinion.
Palestinians enjoy exceptionally strong international solidarity due to the unique historical context and the overwhelming donor interests in supporting the Oslo peace process (PP). Even if Palestinian civil society organizations had provided services to the population before the beginning of the PP, the Palestinian nongovernmental sector 24 became more visible and vibrant during the 1990s. The PP brought about major changes and not only in terms of the size of the civil society sector. Due to the huge foreign interest in “supporting the PP” and the relative abundance of resources, a new NGO sector emerged at the expense of the older indigenous civil society initiatives. This “tier” of NGOs, as in other parts of the world, 25 was cut off not only from the final beneficiaries that they were supposed to serve but also from the grassroots organizations and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA or PA) itself for different reasons. 26 The failure of the PP, the prolonged Israeli occupation and the donor money keeping the PNA alive artificially has meant a huge challenge for the indigenous civil society. While NGOs are supposed to play a significant role not only in implementing projects in the field of development and humanitarian assistance but also in the “emergence of a democratic system and democratic practices in the WB and GS,” their role and influence have been constantly undermined by the PA/PNA and in some sense by their very donors as well. 27 Donors have equally been criticized for dominating the Palestinian development and humanitarian scene by advocating nonindigenous often termed “neoliberal” solutions, maintaining the status quo, and for complicity in the Israeli occupation. 28 In addition, the competition and consent among the NGOs led to the “survival of the fittest” whereby the concept of “fittest” has not that much to do with Palestinian sovereignty, national self-determination, or democracy either. It has rather concerned the skills needed for fund-raising, that is, the capacities needed for income generation from foreign sources.
In order to capture the perspectives and experiences of the interviewees working with various (religious, nonreligious; humanitarian, development) NGOs at the recipient end of the aid relationship, qualitative data were collected and analyzed using a grounded theory approach. 29 By using an inductive approach, an initial set of substantive codes (e.g., gift giving, exchange, domination, aid, and politics) was identified during earlier phases of the research. These encouraged me to interpret aid in Palestine within the broader analytical framework of social (gift) exchange. 30 The developing theory required me to collect further data on how particular individuals working with implementing NGOs think about factors influencing donor behavior and how they think about terms such as power, influence, domination, and subordination. Interviews were useful methods for exploring these questions. The new data generated additional codes (such as “power dynamics, “no influence”) by applying a deductive approach.
Data Collection
This study was based on desk research and fieldwork. The data collection was part of a larger project tracking the recent changes of Western-aid policies in Egypt, Jordan, Palestine (WB and GS) and attempting to understand local perceptions on aid-related foreign interventions. While aspects of the broader context were reported elsewhere, 31 the preceding brief summary on the Palestinian civil society (see above), the following description of the data collection and data analysis resemble the corresponding sections of a sister article based on the same data set. 32
The most recent—and from the perspective of this article the most relevant—round of interviews was conducted in the WB and GS in Summer 2015 (Table 1). The interviews were conducted in natural settings in which the approached NGO leaders and managers worked in order to explore the nature of relations (bonds, ties) between NGO recipients and (locally active, bigger) foreign donor organizations by means of qualitative methods. Building on earlier studies mapping local perceptions on foreign aid in Palestine, 33 the core objective was to understand the personal-level feelings and human experiences attached to or stemming from daily interactions between organizations (between the NGO recipient and the donor organization). Altogether twenty-two people were interviewed (nine women, thirteen man and thirteen in the WB, ten in the GS; further details can be found in Table 2). They gained rich experience in working with various local, regional, and international-aid organizations during the course of their lives. All of the interviews were semistructured; the vast majority of them were face to face (twenty), while two of them were conducted via e-mail correspondence. The interviewers were native Palestinians experienced in both qualitative and quantitative data collection who previously worked at the same research institute as the author of this article. The interviews were conducted in Arabic, were recorded, transcribed, and translated to English. In addition to these interviews, the author of this article has conducted relevant interviews with various stakeholders since 2005.
List of the Interviews (Data Anonymized).
Note: MGR = managerial position (director, managing director, general manager, executive manager, etc.); PC = project coordinator; FO = fund-raising officer; HRs = human rights; Dev = development field; Hum = humanitarian and relief activities.
Profile of Interview Participants.
Note: NGO = nongovernmental organization; MENA = Middle East and North Africa.
Data Analysis
The data analysis, which resulted in conceptualizing latent patterns and structures of international development cooperation as perceived and experienced by recipient NGOs, was built on the process of constant comparison. 34 First, by reading the transcripts line by line, coding was performed with the aim of identifying basic elements (codes) that were labeled, for example, as “conditions,” “donors agenda,” “equal partners,” “influence,” power, “credibility and transparency,” and more. The second step focused on identifying connection between the categories and recognizing subdialectics, such as “donors agenda versus Palestinian national interests” or “the lack of NGO influence on donors versus existence of NGO influence on donors.” As the coding progressed, patterns started to emerge. Codes related to power dynamics in the context of solidarity were scrutinized with extra attention; for example, the perceived “NGO influence on donors” was divided into further subcategories (“yes,” “no” in general, and no for specific reasons). These and other codes in line with the textual context in which they emerged were instrumental in interpreting solidarity as a means of power. In the third step, the subdialectics were merged into bigger categories based on their content. For example, the main category “solidarity, power, and influence” is composed of the subcodes “aid and politics” and “donors influence and behavior” or NGO influence on donors. Finally, interview excerpts were scrutinized to understand how experiences with project implementation from the perspective of the nongovernmental recipient relate to the concepts of power and domination in the context of foreign aid. The data offered a much broader pool of findings that can be presented and discussed here, 35 so only those relating to solidarity and power are described in detail in the next section.
Palestinian perceptions of power and solidarity (embodied in relations established by foreign aid) can be understood only by keeping in mind that there are various analytical–theoretical levels that can hardly be separated from each other. While respondents participated in the interviews as individuals, they also acted as representatives of their organizations and reflected on the broader political context concerning their lives pursuing Palestinian independence in the shadow of the Israeli occupation. Whether their views reflected their own (personal) opinion or those of their organizations was not asked, but they nevertheless reflected on the significance of power in aid relations. The way the respondents talked about power and solidarity (of the donor country, organization, or employees working at donor organizations) will be analyzed in the Discussion section.
Findings
The processed data enabled me to identify the most important concepts and patterns perceived by NGO recipients in an aid relationship at the level of development and humanitarian projects. Respondents used the term “donor”—an actor that gives—broadly. It covered states, official donor agencies, international organizations, local or international NGOs as partners, and sometimes even private persons. 36 Our respondents’ experiences with their donors reflected on the following main features of power: the power of donors, influence of NGOs on donors, the determining role of power structures and relations.
The Power of Donors
The fact that donors play an influential role in Palestine is known from the literature dealing with the Oslo PP. 37 Donors are mostly seen as official actors being present in Palestine with the aim of supporting the PP. Regarding the Palestinian perceptions, earlier studies focused on the following elements: donor motives, behaviors, their role in implementing the PP, and agenda-setting attitudes in line with the PP. 38 NGO experiences with and individual perceptions on the power dimension, however, have not been widely explored.
In the past decade, there have been two main events affecting not only changes in the influence of donors but also reflecting on their power. While the Fatah–Hamas split in GS (2007) led to a more active and visible donor presence in the GS in the form of international, Western NGOs, the regional consequences of war in Syria (since 2011) led to allocation decisions that decreased the availability of funding to GS according to some of our respondents. The Hamas takeover in Gaza led to more intensive relations between (Western oriented) NGOs and their donors in the GS, for donors, “follow up the activities in the implemented projects on the ground by themselves” (GS3).
39
While “there is a competition between the donors in Gaza, all of them want to fund the NGOs” (GS5), funding “intends to draw restrictions to the NGO’s activities, and push us to work at a certain direction to serve the donor interest” (GS3). The perceived problem, however, is that “all the projects are humanitarian projects” as repeated by our respondents. While development activities have been more prevalent in the WB, the more “apolitized” or “depolitized” a development project is, the easier it is to get funding from the West. As a prominent actor working for a Palestinian civil society organization (WB10) formulated: When the foreign policy doesn’t correspond with the Palestinian’s, the donor tries to push you away from what you believe in because they have all this money they have to spend. This makes the Palestinian partners uneasy, it makes them feel dirty even. Some donors ask some NGOs to do their work the way they want, while including some aspects that don’t relate to the goal specifically. NGOs are often forced to bend to these conditions to receive the funds. The donors sometimes use their power to bend the will and the goals of the NGOs.
While donor power was assessed in different ways, many of our respondents emphasized that “a common denominator among all of them [on the very broad spectrum of donors] is the clear awareness of the power dynamic in the relationship” (WB7). All donors were said to be aware of their power that they could impose due to the local NGOs’ need for their funds. Typical examples include the expectation to decry any form of violence vis-à-vis Israel and the Jewish settlements,
41
renounce terrorism
42
, and comply with bureaucratic demands (tendering, applications, proposals, reports, etc.). It has been particularly true in recent decisions concerning aid allocation since the Syrian war, because “most of the donations transferred their attention to relief for the Syrian refugees in Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon” (GS9). Power, even its noncoercive and subtler forms, was perceived as an option donors resorted to, but it did not guide their actions exclusively. The complexity of influencing factors was put this way (WB10): Donors are seen as neocolonial invaders that are insincere and damaging Palestine. At the same time, they are seen as well intentioned people, who are doing high quality work but they should do it better. (…) I learned how smart most of these workers are. I think that a lot of them are very knowledgeable about Palestine and sincere in their desire to do good.
NGO’s Influence on Donors
The way NGOs evaluated their own influence on their donors’ policies reflected similar complexity. While they acknowledged that they were too small to influence “grand politics” or “macropolitics,” many of them reported partial achievements at the level of microsociology and politics. Respondents said yes to the questions concerning their influence on donors mostly with reference to project implementation (WB4): The Palestinian NGO partners are the ones who determine this relationship. If they allow the donors to influence their policies, strategies and decisions, they lose all ability to maneuver. Donors will always want to interfere. They will always want to get most of the decision-making discretion because they provide the funds. In our organization, we don’t allow them. (…) The only way for this to work is to constantly prove our professionalism and dedication; this can always give us access to new funding and new donors. We had a big influence on our donor partners, certainly with reference to solidarity with the Palestinian people and [in terms of] arranging the campaigns to boycott Israel. We also managed to influence our donors in something else, that is, changing the donor’s priorities (…) we can positively influence our partners, even change priorities.
Our respondents were unanimous in their negative assessment of their macrolevel influence for various reasons. The Israeli occupation, neoliberal donor policies, or the consequences of the “Arab Spring” in the region all meant challenges that they could not win over. While these structural forces will be detailed in the next part, it is important to draw attention to the perceptions with reference to personal influence regarding these issues. Some of our respondents elaborated on their attempts to discuss the matter of “personal power” with their colleagues at donor organizations, believing, for example, that “the donor community could do much more and force the Israelis to accept just solutions” (WB6). Reactions to this and similar questions ranged from hearing “donor people” saying “we are professional staff and not politicians” to perceived cognitive dissonance (WB9): There is also significant cognitive dissonance. (…) There is a separation in most of their [aid professionals’] minds between their jobs [official roles] and their personal views on what is actually needed.
The Power of the Structural Context
The “context” or the conditions under which the NGOs had to operate were seen as power(ful) structures constraining NGO performance in particular and aid activities in general. Respondents listed the Israeli occupation, the PNA, the Fatah–Hamas divide in GS, the humanitarian situation (in particular in GS), the settler colonialism in WB, “neoliberalism” of donor policies, and the war in Syria as “independent” powers influencing aid activities. Donor solidarity was seen as conditional on power constraints both the GS and WB. For example, “donors are not willing to deal with the electricity problem, because it is closely related to the political conflict between Fatah and Hamas” and “donors do not want to run any risk” in the GS (GS2). As for the WB, donors and recipients equally had to adjust to the Israeli “facts on the ground” (WB9): Many donors avoid this—[to invest in the development of Palestinian industrial zones that are close to WB Area C]—to avoid conflict with the Israelis, while others that are willing to invest are not willing to defend their investment in the face of Israeli aggression against their own investment. [Donors] claim that they understand the circumstances of their partners, but based on the foreign policies of their home countries they [also] claim that their hands are tied. They are too smart to issue orders or to phrase their requests as such, rather they phrase them as what they can and cannot do. The ethical problem for me is that if you are part of the system and you criticize it, how long can you continue criticize it and be impartial in your critique. But there is no real alternative to being in it. The system is totally hegemonic. You can’t really work without supporting the Israeli economy, while working in Palestine, for example. This is really uncomfortable for everyone involved.
Discussing the Findings
Foreign aid to Palestine has been provided in the form of financially unreciprocated, but not necessarily unconditional 44 grants. If foreign aid remains “financially unreciprocated,” the recipient becomes “complicit in the material order that weighs him down”: this way power and “domination” becomes “symbolic.” 45 These features of development (and humanitarian) cooperation mostly remain covered not only by the gestures of donor generosity and recipient gratitude, 46 but also that global solidarity that is so closely related to the idea of global justice (not only in the Palestinian case). 47 But if grants remain unreciprocated in financial terms (at least in the Palestinian case), how can the weak recipients of foreign aid “feel equal” and exert any power over their “strong” donors?
While the most common answer in the literature is “no way”—inasmuch as it is the donor which has power over the recipient either in symbolic or in material terms—“minority” perspectives of power may help us think again. Georg Simmel observed that “even in the most oppressive and cruel cases of subordination, there is still a considerable measure of personal freedom,” and Thrainn Eggertsson pointed out that “the costs of monitoring the activities of slaves enables them to acquire ‘rights they can trade.’” 48 Exploring the essence of rebellion and resistance in rural (peasant) and slave societies and how these communities can responding to domination, James C. Scott argued that resistance can also be built on various forms of cultural resistance or everyday practices of non-cooperation that are employed over time “through the course of persistent servitude.” 49
Janeway argued that the powerful may also be afraid of the weak, provided that power is seen as a more complex concept than simple domination/subordination. This fear can be based on “the existence of some real capacity which is in the possession of the weak.” In the Palestinian case, it is the weakness itself (the combination of helplessness and injustice) coupled with the threat of regional instability (the cause of which is the violence which has to be prevented) that can be understood as power even if not as power over the donor, 50 but at least power to secure 51 foreign aid. Donors would feel ashamed and humiliated, not least in front of their own public or electorate, if they did not try to alleviate suffering, mitigate the effects of injustice, or prevent the escalation of regional tensions by means of foreign aid. Indeed, arguments concerning Foucault’s concept of power say that power can be “productive, creating certain ways of behaving or knowing” and it means “power over people’s minds and bodies, over their routine chores and daily activities.” 52
To discuss further the findings in the context of solidarity, it is worthwhile to recall that anthropologists emphasized that a crucial and important function of the archaic gift was to reinforce personal prestige and power between communities in order to avoid conflicts/wars. 53 Modern (Western, global) solidarity with distant others, however, is rather self-serving and ironic in many cases. Just as pity and compassion, it is a form of politics which relies on the spectacle of vulnerability 54 and worries for (regional, i.e., Western) security.
If the donor is perceived to put himself or herself in a morally superior position by the act of giving, 55 it could be counterbalanced only by returning the gift for this is the only way to resist to the “[Western] power over [non-Western] people’s minds and bodies.” Acknowledging that foreign aid is financially unreciprocated grant in many cases, nonmaterial forms of reciprocity deserve attention. 56 In the absence of reciprocity, there is not equality in power, only the sense of indebtedness, shame, and humiliation. 57 It is particularly true in the Middle Eastern cultures and societies that consider shame and humiliation as important elements of their identities, lives, and social order. 58 Recipients, however, seek to avoid “indebtedness” and the “sense of humiliation” not in spite of, but because they themselves are interested in the constant circulation of foreign grants—in economic terms. 59
Looking at the data, not exclusively the “donor agent” exerted influence on the Palestinian aid recipient, 60 but some of the interviewed “recipient agents” also reported power over the matters (not least to counterbalance the sense of humiliation 61 ). At this point, a distinction needs to be made between the individual and the group (organizational and state) level. If power is understood as “the capacity of an individual, or group of individuals, to modify the conduct of other individuals or groups in the manner which he desires, and to prevent his own conduct being modified in the manner in which he does not,” 62 meaningful personal (microsociological) power was acknowledged at least at the level of projects by some of the NGO leaders: “we are the decision maker, we determinate the priorities” (GS3), “there are many realistic donors, [that] can deal with reality, but they need to directed, [after all] we are more aware about our need” (GS5), and “my experience has been that donors are not real limiting factors to our goals” (WB1). These perceptions seem to be in line with what James C. Scott called “the ideas if hidden and invisible power” that are shared by individuals (microlevel), but not necessarily visible in terms of macrolevel processes. 63
That this “appearance” (of power) is illusory in many senses—definitely at macrolevel—is due not only to the Israeli occupation but also to other power structures, such as Western foreign policies and neoliberal ideas that could be tracked behind aid activities. 64 Most of our respondents, indeed, blamed external “agents” (Israel and the donors) and various power structures, which were perceived to constrain how they can act. For example, as the division between Hamas and Fatah (2007) affected the priorities of the donor countries, funding was shifted to the humanitarian relief projects with a stronger than ever involvement of international aid organizations in GS. Indeed, literature 65 also emphasizes that international civil society actors, even if the relations between them are not free from tensions, are trustful substitutes to (an existent, but noneffective) political authority (PNA in WB, Hamas in GS). They can simultaneously satisfy public concerns and maintain the appearance of domestic sovereign competence, 66 which was in line with the self-reflections of some of the NGO leaders and their perceptions on power and influence. Some of these organizations even contribute to the creation and maintenance of the “chimera” state that is run by parallel, foreign, and domestic institutions. 67
If there is any recipient influence and power in the context of foreign aid on meso- and macrolevel, it can be understood only by including the concepts of solidarity, compassion, and pity in the analysis. 68 Recalling Komter, there are four sets of motives underlying solidarity in gift relations, that is, affection (belonging to the same group), (the desire to prove) equality (of members), power (to do something), and instrumentality (or self-interest). 69 Focusing on the power motive, aid coupled with overtly formulated or hidden conditions and the “sticks and carrot” approach not only forges solidarity between allies belonging to the same group in political or cultural sense. It also makes enemies due to inclusive/exclusive nature of solidarity and due to the humiliation 70 coded in the system. By doing so, it confuses power dynamics in the recipient countries: 71 indeed, foreign aid has always been a useful indicator of the ambiguities that described the relations between international powers and local actors (governments, NGOs) in Arab countries. 72 International solidarity, even if only compassion-based, is so closely linked to the concept of global justice, that it is the sense of injustice (regarding Palestinian pain, suffering, development needs) and the spectacle of suffering 73 that mobilizes Western and regional public support for official foreign aid and charities in donor countries (in addition to foreign policy interests of the great power).
To sum-up, Palestinian perceptions on power underlined the relevance of the consensus element of power and hegemony. These findings are in line with the conclusions of social theorists who argue for combining agency and structure in exploring the nature of power. While some of the interviewed leaders of Palestinian NGOs experienced and reported significant power in terms of decision-making and implementing actions, all of them fiercely opposed the power over attitudes of donors. However, consensual understanding of donor power (power to) was widely understood, even if not welcomed, due to the simultaneous sensation of international solidarity and acknowledgment of their dependence on aid. The hegemony of development (and humanitarian) cooperation is explained not only by the practice of “policing” and “coopting” people at the receiving end of foreign aid mainly for the safety and security of the donors 74 but also by the power of the weak (recipient) over the master (donor).
While the poem says “in vain you try to escape its wrath/prisoner and jailer, you are both” describing the nonvoluntary (?!) nature of oppressive and tyrannical political ideas, 75 Mauss emphasized that voluntarily “accepting it [the gift, the grant] one knows that one is committing oneself (…) one has accepted a challenge and has been able to do so because of being certain to be able to reciprocate.” Hegemony and tyranny are not identical concepts, but the hegemony of solidarity, let it be ironic, resembles a sort of tyranny that actors cannot escape from, only participate in.
Conclusion
The article attempted to draw attention to the two-way nature of (hegemonic) power relations implying that the exchange and reciprocity dimension of aid relations is more complex than usually assumed. Our (hopefully not so cynical) findings discussed in the previous sections show that even the “perpetual” recipients may also exert certain nonmaterial power over the donor by “coercing” it to acknowledge their plight by calling for solidarity 76 and demanding more aid (contemporary gifts). Building on the conceptual framework of (gift) exchange, it drew attention to the simultaneous presence of power and solidarity on the one hand and to the existence of power on the side of the weak recipient on the other hand. The “power of the weak,” in the Palestinian case, lies in the dual sense of injustice and helplessness, which has been instrumental in securing “contemporary gifts” not only for official actors (the PA in WB and the Hamas-led government in GS) but also at the level of civil society organizations. In addition to the agent-centered articulation of power, structural factors played a role in understanding the hegemonic power of foreign aid.
The quoted ethical dilemmas on NGO participation, recipient “complicity,” and perceptions on the “cognitive dissonance”—indicating that even donor employees, foreign policy actors cannot have the power to influence change—show that the system itself has its own hegemony, perhaps even tyranny. It is upheld not only by personal and political (regional, international, neoliberal, etc.) interests, but by economic interests and solidarity sentiments (linked closely to notions on global social justice) as well. Solidarity, a concept conveying constructive and positive meanings in our daily lives, seems to be a means of power in contemporary terms too: it is a sort of two-edged sword which is smarty used by all actors. It is (compassion-based) solidarity which influences international, Western, and regional public opinion in order to mobilize more material, intellectual, and emotional support to the Palestinian cause either by Palestinians themselves or by pro-Palestinian actors, such as the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions movement. And it is solidarity which is taken advantage of by official donors and used for achieving closely or loosely related political purposes under the cover of foreign aid. But while solidarity functions well on ethical and humanitarian grounds, the reality proves that it cannot free itself entirely from the tyranny of political and economic concerns.
Conclusions drawn are my sole responsibility.
Footnotes
Acknowledgment
I thank my Palestinian colleagues and those who participated in the interviews for sharing their thoughts during the data collection phase.
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) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was supported by the European Union under a Marie Curie IEF grant (AIDINMENA project, 2013–2015 [2016], grant number PIEF-GA-2012-327088; host institute: Fafo, Oslo) and complemented by the Research Council of Norway.