Aid and Politics
援助与政治
To understand how aid works we need to study the relationship between aid and politics. Political and legal institutions play a central role in setting the environment that can nurture prosperity and economic growth. Foreign aid, especially when there is a lot of it, affects how institutions function and how they change. Politics has often choked off economic growth, and even in the world before aid, there were good and bad political systems.
要理解援助是如何运作的，我们需要对援助与政治之间的关系做一番研究。在创造恰当环境以促进繁荣和经济增长方面，政治和法律制度扮演着关键的角色。外国援助，特别是大额外国援助，会影响制度的运作及其变迁。政治向来能阻碍经济增长，即便是在援助流行以前，世上也既有好的政治体系，也有坏的。
But large inflows of foreign aid change local politics for the worse and undercut the institutions needed to foster long-run growth. Aid also undermines democracy and civic participation, a direct loss over and above the losses that come from undermining economic development. These harms of aid need to be balanced against the good that aid does, whether educating children who would not otherwise have gone to school or saving the lives of those who would otherwise have died.
但是，外国援助的大规模流入恶化了地方政治，损害了促进长期增长所必须的体制。援助还会破坏民主和公民参与，这种直接损失比破坏经济发展所导致的损失更为严重。援助的这些危害需要与援助所带来的好处进行平衡考量，不管这些好处是给那些原本无法上学的孩子提供教育，还是挽救原本会死去的生命。
From its beginnings after World War II, development economics saw growth and poverty reduction as technical problems. Economists would provide the knowledge that would tell the newly independent rulers how to bring prosperity to their people. If development economists thought about politics at all, they saw politicians as the guardians of their people, motivated by the promotion of social welfare. Politics as an end in itself, as a means of civic participation, or as a way of managing conflict was not part of their operations manual.
自二战结束后发展经济学建立伊始，这门学科就将经济增长和减少贫困视为技术问题。经济学家会向新近获得独立的统治者们提供知识，告诉他们如何为自己的人民带去繁荣。如果说发展经济学家思考过任何政治问题，那就是将政客们看作是人民的守护人，他们的动机是促进社会福利。政治，无论作为目的本身、作为公民参与手段，还是作为冲突管理方式，都不曾体现于他们的操作手册中。
Nor would development experts much concern themselves with the fact that, in many cases, the governments through which they were working had interests of their own that made them improbable partners in a broad-based development effort. There have been dissenting voices over the years, but it is only relatively recently that mainstream development economics has focused on the importance of institutions, including political institutions, and on politics itself.
发展专家们也不太关心这一事实：在许多情形下，他们的工作所需借力的那个政府，自身也拥有利益诉求，因而不太可能在一个牵涉广泛的发展计划中当好合作伙伴。历年来，持不同意见的声音一直都存在，但直到相对晚近时，主流的发展经济学才开始集中关注包括政治制度在内的制度的重要性以及政治本身。
Economic development cannot take place without some sort of contract between those who govern and those who are governed. The government needs resources to carry out its functions—preserving territorial integrity and maintaining its monopoly of violence, at the very least, and beyond that providing a legal system, public safety, national defense, and other public goods—and the resources that these functions require must be raised in taxes from the governed. It is this need to raise taxes, and the difficulty of doing so without the participation of those who are taxed, that places constraints on the government and to some extent protects the interests of taxpayers.
如果在统治者和被统治者之间不存在某种形式的契约，那么经济就不太可能得到发展。政府需要资源才能执行其功能——至少需要保持领土完整、维持垄断暴力，更进一步则需要提供法律体系、公共安全、国防和其他公共物品。而维持这些功能所需要的资源则必须从被统治者头上以税收形式获得。正是这种征税需求，再加上如果没有征税对象参与，税收很难征得，这就给政府施加了约束，并在一定程度上保护了纳税人的利益。
In a democracy, direct feedback from the electorate evaluates the government’s performance, in effect a sort of project evaluation on the programs that are carried out using taxpayers’ money. While this sort of feedback works best in a democracy, the need to raise funds exists every where, and it will often constrain the ruler to pay attention to the demands of at least some of the population. One of the strongest arguments against large aid flows is that they undermine these constraints, removing the need to raise money with consent and in the limit turning what should be beneficial political institutions into toxic ones.
在民主国家，直接来自选民的反馈可以评估政府的表现，实际上就是对那些用纳税人的钱实施的项目进行评估。虽然这种反馈只在民主国家才运作得最好，但是筹集资金的需要到处都存在，而这通常都会约束统治者，迫使他们关心至少人口中一部分人的需求。反对巨额援助涌入的最强论点之一就是：援助会破坏这种约束，移除征得同意以筹集资金的必要性，在极端情况下还会将本来有益的政治制度变成有害的。
Without an adequate capacity to tax, a state denies its citizens many of the protections that are taken for granted in the rich world. They may lack the protection of the law, because the courts do not work or are corrupt, and the police may harass or exploit poor people instead of protecting them. People may be unable to start businesses, because debts are not paid and contracts are not enforced or because civil “servants” extort bribes. They may face threats of violence from gangs or warlords. They may lack clean water or minimal sanitation facilities. There may be local endemic pests that threaten them and especially their children with medically preventable but potentially fatal diseases. They may lack access to electricity, to functioning schools, or to a decent health service. All of these risks are part of what it means to be poor in much of the world, all are causes of poverty, and all are attributable to the lack of state capacity. Anything that threatens that capacity is inconsistent with improving the lives of poor people.
如果缺乏足够的征税能力，国家就不会向其国民提供富裕世界的人认为理所当然的许多保护措施。他们可能会缺少法律保护，因为法院不起作用或者腐败不堪。警察也可能骚扰或剥削穷苦人群，而不是给他们提供保护。人们可能没法做生意，因为欠债可以不还、契约无法执行，或者因为人民“公仆”会索取贿赂。他们还可能面临黑社会或军阀分子的暴力威胁，可能缺少淡水或最基本的卫生设施。也可能存在地方性的病害虫，给他们、特别是他们的孩子带来潜在致命的疾病威胁，尽管它们医学上完全可以预防。他们可能得不到电力供应，没有学校，或者适当的医疗服务。在世界的许多地区，所有这些风险正是贫穷这一词汇的部分内涵所在，也都是贫困的原因所在，并且都可归因于国家能力的缺乏。所有一切损害这一能力的事物，都与改善穷人生活这一目的相悖。
The argument that aid threatens institutions depends on the amount of aid being large. In China, India, or South Africa, where ODA in recent years has been less than 0.5 percent of national income, and only occasionally more than 1 percent of total government expenditures, aid is not important in affecting government behavior or the development of institutions. The situation is quite different in much of Africa. Thirty-six (out of forty-nine) countries in sub-Saharan Africa have received at least 10 percent of their national income as ODA for three decades or more.
援助危及制度这一论点能否成立，取决于援助量的大小。在中国、印度或南非，近年来的政府开发援助（ODA）都只相当于国民收入的不到0.5%，而且只是偶尔才会占到政府财政支出总量的1%以上，因此援助在影响政府行为或者制度变迁方面并不重要。但在非洲的大部分地区，情况则截然不同。撒哈拉以南非洲（49国之中）有36国的国民收入中至少10%来自于ODA，这种情况已延续长达三十年甚至更久。
Given that ODA comes to governments, the ratio of aid to government expenditure is larger still. Benin, Burkina Faso, the DRC, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, Sierra Leone, Togo, and Uganda are among the countries where aid has exceeded 75 percent of government expenditure for a run of recent years. In Kenya and Zambia, ODA is a quarter and a half of government expenditure, respectively.
考虑到ODA是流向政府的，因此援助在政府支出中所占比例会更高。贝宁、布基纳法索、刚果（金）、埃塞俄比亚、马达加斯加、马里、尼日尔、塞拉利昂、多哥和乌干达等国所接受的援助最近连续多年占到政府开支的75%以上。在肯尼亚和赞比亚，ODA分别是政府开支的四分之一和二分之一。
Given that much of government expenditure is pre-committed and almost impossible to change in the short run, for these countries (and others for which the data are not available) discretionary expenditures by governments are almost entirely dependent on funds from foreign donors. As we shall see, this does not mean that the donors are dictating what governments spend—far from it. Yet the behavior of both donors and recipients is fundamentally affected by the existence and magnitude of these aid flows.
考虑到大部分政府开支都有预定用途，短期内不太可能改变，因此这些国家（以及数据尚不可得的其他一些国家）政府的自由开支几乎就全部依赖于外国援助者手中的资金。我们将看到，这并不意味着援助者能够决定政府把钱花在哪里——远非如此。不过，援助者和受援者的行为都从根本上受到这类援助资金的存在与规模的影响。
Aid is not the only way in which rulers can rule without consent. A commodity price boom is another. One famous example comes from Egypt in the mid-nineteenth century. Then, at the height of the Industrial Revolution, with its insatiable demand for cotton, the two main sources were the American South and Egypt, and Egypt’s sales of cotton accounted for most of its trade with the outside world. Egypt’s ruler, Muhammad Ali Pasha, often described as the founder of modern Egypt, paid only a fraction of the world price to the fellaheen who produced the cotton, and he and his court became fabulously wealthy on the proceeds.
援助并不是统治者不经同意而实现统治的唯一途径。大宗商品价格飙升也是。一个著名的例子是19世纪中期的埃及。在这个工业革命的鼎盛时期，市场对棉花的需求无穷无尽，主要的棉花产地有美国南部和埃及，而埃及的棉花销售占了该国对外贸易的绝大部分。当时的埃及统治者穆罕默德·阿里帕夏（常被称为现代埃及的奠基人）只给种植棉花的农民支付世界市场价格的一个零头，自己及朝廷则因棉花收益而富得流油。
The American Civil War tripled the world price in only three years, and under Ali’s successor Isma’il Pasha, this led to what a British report later described as “fantastic extravagance,” while “immense sums were expended on public works in the manner of the East, and on productive works carried out in the wrong way or too soon,” including the Suez Canal. The scale of the spending was so great that it could not be supported even by the wartime cotton price, and Isma’il borrowed on the international capital market. When the price of cotton collapsed after the war, there were riots, armed intervention, and ultimately foreign occupation by Britain.
因美国发生内战，世界棉花价格三年内翻了三倍。在阿里的继任者伊斯梅尔帕夏治下，这种价格飙升导致了一份英国报告后来所称的“极端挥霍”，“发挥东方国家风格，公共工程靡费巨资，生产性项目上的巨额开销要么方向错误，要么上马太快”，其中包括苏伊士运河的开凿。开支规模如此巨大，以至于连战时棉花价格都难以支撑，伊斯梅尔只能向国际资本市场借款。随着战后棉花价格暴跌，埃及出现暴乱，接受武装调停，最后引来英国的占领。
Cotton prices rose from $9.00 for 112 pounds in 1853 to $14.00 in 1860, to a peak of $33.25 in 1865, and they fell to $15.75 in 1870. One might have thought that the foreign lenders—if not Isma’il—would have understood the trouble that lay ahead, but then, as now, the lenders could rely on another government—Britain—to protect and recover their investments. Yet this story of catastrophe is not without its bright side; the Suez Canal, after all, was a useful investment whose benefits need to be counted.
棉花价格从1853年的每112磅9美元上升到1860年的14美元，再于1865年攀至最高价33.25美元，然后在1870年回落到15.75美元。你也许会想，即便伊斯梅尔想不到，那外国放款人本来总该能认清即将发生的麻烦。但那个时候跟现在一样，放款人可以依靠另外一个国家——英国——来保护和收回自己的投资。当然，这场灾难并非全无是处；苏伊士运河毕竟是个有用的投资，其好处需要承认。
There are many parallels between commodity price booms and foreign aid. One is that cash flows come and go in a way that is divorced from domestic needs or domestic politics. In the cotton boom, the cause was the Civil War in America; with aid, it is the economic and political conditions in the donor countries, or international events such as the Cold War, or the war on terror. That aid stimulates government expenditure has been repeatedly documented, and, as in the Egyptian case, the government is freed of the need to consult or to gain the approval of its people.
大宗商品价格和外国援助之间存在许多相似之处，其中之一就是：现金流的进出与国内需求或国内政治脱节。棉花热的原因是美国内战；援助则视乎援助国的经济政治状况，或如冷战一类的国际事件，或反恐战争。援助会刺激政府开支，此类事例史载不绝，如埃及案例所显示的，此时政府已不再需要征询民众意见或寻求民众认可。
With state-owned mines, a high world price, an unlimited supply of poor workers, or a well-funded army, a ruler can stay in power without the consent of his people. With sufficient foreign aid, the ruler can even do without the mines, as eventually happened in Zaire under Mobutu. Aid from abroad kept the regime in business, and most of the aid went to doing so, so that when the regime eventually fell, there was little left, in Swiss bank accounts or elsewhere.
如果统治者拥有国有矿藏，国际市场价格高企，贫穷工人源源不断，或军队资金充裕，那他就能无需其人民同意而掌握大权。若有充足的外国援助，统治者甚至可以无需占有矿藏，蒙博托治下的扎伊尔最终就是如此。外国援助维持着政权运转，而且绝大多数援助款都被用在这方面，所以最终政权垮台时，不管是瑞士的银行账户还是别的什么地方，全都所剩无几。
Of course, with aid the government has a responsibility to the donors, and, unlike in the Mobutu case, which was driven by Cold War geopolitics, one might hope that the donors have the interests of the people in mind. But as we shall see, there are good reasons why this does not work in practice; the motivation of the donors helps much less than one might think.
当然，接受援助的政府对援助者负有责任，而且与冷战地缘政治所导致的蒙博托案例不同，你可能觉得，援助者心中会考虑人民的利益。但我们将看到，有很多可信的理由使得实情并非如此。援助者的动机助益不大，比你想象的要小得多。
Aid, like commodity price booms, can have other unhappy effects on local institutions. Without unrestricted inflows, governments not only need taxes, but also need to be able to collect them. The huge oil revenues in the Middle East are partly responsible for poor democratic institutions in the oil-producing countries. In Africa, presidential systems are common, and an externally funded president can govern through patronage or military repression. Parliaments have limited power; they are rarely consulted by the president; and neither parliaments nor judiciaries have power to rein in the presidency. There are no checks and balances. In extreme cases, large external flows, from aid or commodity sales, can increase the risk of civil war, because rulers have the means to avoid sharing power, and because the value of the inflows gives both sides a prize that is worth fighting over.
跟大宗商品价格飙升一样，援助可能对当地制度造成不幸的影响。如果没有源源不断的资金流入，政府不仅仅需要税收，而且需要有能力征税。中东地区产油国缺少民主，部分原因就在于它们拥有巨额石油收入。总统制在非洲很流行，一个得到外部资金支持的总统能够通过政治分赃或军事镇压维持统治。议会权力有限；总统很少征求其意见；不管是议会还是司法机关都无力约束总统。没有分权制衡。在极端情况下，大额的外部资金流入，不管是来自援助还是来自商品销售，都可能增加内战之危，因为统治者有办法拒绝分享权力，也因为流入资金庞大到值得双方不惜为之一战。
Why does accountability to the donors not replace accountability to the local population? Why can’t the donors withhold aid if the president refuses to consult parliament, declines to reform a corrupt police force, or uses aid flows to bolster his own political position?
那么，为什么受援国统治者对本国人民负责的必要性（因外国援助而放松之后）无法由他们对援助者负责的必要性所取代呢？如果总统拒绝与议会磋商，拒不改革腐败的警察机关，或者使用援助资金来巩固自身政治地位，为什么援助者不能暂停援助呢？
One problem is that the donor governments and their constituents—the ultimate donors—can’t make the right calls because they do not experience the effects of aid on the ground. Even when the crunch comes, and the donors see what is happening, it is rarely in the interests of the donor countries to withhold aid, even in the face of egregious violations of agreements, however much they may have wished to do so in advance.
困难之一是：援助国政府及其选民——也就是最终的援助者——并不能做出正确的决策，因为他们并没有亲自体验援助的影响。即便危机降临，援助者看清了正在发生的事，哪怕恶性违反协议的行为当面发生，暂停援助也很少会符合援助国的利益——无论事前他们是多么渴望这么做。
It is the local people, not the donors, who have direct experience of the projects on which aid is spent and who are in a position to form a judgment. Such judgments will not always be well informed, and there will always be domestic debate on cause and effect and on the value of specific government activities; but the political process can mediate these normal divergences of views. For foreign donors or their constituents—who do not live in the recipient countries—there is no such feedback. They have no direct information on outcomes; they must rely on the reports of the agencies disbursing the aid, and so tend to focus on the volume of aid, not its effectiveness.
只有当地人民，而不是援助者，才能直接体验援助款所支持的那些项目，也才有资格做出判断。这类判断并不总是信息周全的，对于特定政府活动的原因结果及其价值，国内也总是存在争议，但政治进程能够调和这类常规的观点分歧。然而对于外援国或他们的选民而言，由于他们并不生活在受援国，就不存在这种反馈。对于结果，他们没有直接的信息来源，他们必须依赖负责分配援助的各种机构所提供的报告，所以会倾向于更加关注援助的体量，而不是其效力。
The aid agencies, in turn, are accountable to their ultimate donors, and there is no mechanism that holds them responsible if things go wrong for the recipients. I once asked an official of one of the most prominent non-governmental aid agencies in which part of the world she spent most of her time. “The West Coast”—which turned out not to be Africa, but the United States, where several of the agency’s largest donors lived. As we have already seen, World Bank officials have long moved on to other things by the time the effects of their handiwork become visible. There is no responsibility of donors to the recipients of their aid.
而援助机构则是对最终援助者负责，如果受援者那里出了问题，并没有什么机制来追究援助机构的责任。我曾问过某著名非政府援助机构的一个官员，她在世界上什么地方呆的时间最长久。答案是“西海岸”——不是非洲西海岸，而是美国西海岸，该机构几位最大的援助者就住在那里。正如我们所见，早在他们的劳动效果显现之前很久，世界银行的官员们就已经忙别的事去了。援助者对于受援者并没有负什么责任。
Sometimes the agencies know that aid is going wrong and are alarmed by what they see, but can do nothing about it. The director of one national aid agency gave me a bloodcurdling account of how aid funds had gone to gangs of murderers—people who had already carried out one massacre and were training and arming themselves to return to finish the job. I asked him why he continued to supply aid. Because, he replied, the citizens of this country believe that it is their duty to give and will accept no argument that aid is hurting people. The best that he could do was to try to limit the harm.
有时候，援助机构知道援助已出了问题，并且已经对所见所闻感到忧虑，却什么也做不了。某国家援助机构的主任曾向我提供过一份令人毛骨悚然的记录：援助资金到了谋杀团伙的手里，这些人已经实施过一次大屠杀，现在正在加强训练和武装，准备杀回去把事情做个彻底。我问他为什么还要继续提供援助。他回答说，因为本国公民相信提供援助是他们的义务，并且拒不接受任何指出援助正在害人的观点。他能做的，只是尽力减少伤害。
Even when donors know what conditions ought to be imposed, they will often be reluctant to penalize recipient governments who flout them. Donors may threaten punishment to induce good behavior, but when the good behavior is not forthcoming they may be reluctant to take action if the penalties harm themselves or their constituents.
即便援助者知道应该施加何种限制条件，但当受援政府无视这些条件的时候，通常援助者也会对是否惩罚左右迟疑。援助者可能会以惩罚相威胁的方式来诱导良好的行为，但如果好行为迟迟不出现，且如果真正施加惩罚会伤及自身或本国选民，他们可能又会迟疑。
This would hardly apply to the arming of murderers, but it can be a problem in lesser cases. In effect, aid conditionality is “time-inconsistent,” a favorite term of economists: what you want to do in advance is no longer in your interests after the fact. The governments who are receiving aid understand this very well; they can call the donor’s bluff and ignore the conditions with impunity.
在武装谋杀犯问题上，这种情况当然不太可能发生，但在其他没那么严重的事情上，则可能成问题。实际上，援助的限制条款具有“时间不一致性”（这是经济学家爱用的一个词汇）：在木已成舟的情况下，你原先想做的事已经不再符合你的利益。接受援助的各国政府深知这一点，他们面对援助者的虚张声势，会直接要他们摊牌，从而能无视限制条件而不受任何惩罚。
Why the reluctance to enforce conditionality?
为什么在执行限制条件上产生迟疑？
The economist Ravi Kanbur was the World Bank representative in Ghana in 1992. He was called upon to enforce conditionality by withholding a tranche of a previously agreed loan in response to the government having violated the agreement by awarding an 80 percent pay increase to public-sector workers. The tranche was large, almost an eighth of Ghana’s annual import bill. Opposition to the cut-off came from many sources, not just the government of Ghana. Many innocent bystanders would be hurt, both Ghanaians and foreign contractors, who would likely not be paid.
经济学家Ravi Kanbur曾于1992年担任世界银行驻加纳代表。由于加纳政府违反协定，给公共部门工作人员增加了80%的工资，Kanbur接到呼吁，要求他执行限制条款，暂停拨付贷款协议中的一笔款项。这笔款项数额巨大，大约是加纳年度进口额的八分之一。反对中断贷款的呼声此起彼伏，加纳政府只是其中之一。许多无辜旁人，包括加纳和外国的承包商，都有可能受到伤害，因为他们可能将收不到工程款。
More fundamentally, the normal, good relations between the donors and the government would be disrupted, threatening not only the government but also the operations of the aid industry itself; “the donors control so much in the way of funds that to stop these, at any rate to stop them sharply, would cause major chaos in the economy.” In effect, it is the aid industry’s job to disburse funds, and its operatives are paid to do so and to maintain good relations with its client countries. A face-saving compromise was eventually reached, and the loan went ahead.
更为根本的是，援助国与加纳政府的正常友好关系可能受到破坏，不仅会危及加纳政府，而且也会危及援助行业本身的运转。“援助者对资金运作有很大控制，以至于如果停止贷款，至少停贷过于突然，将会给经济造成重大混乱。”实际上，援助行业的任务就是分配资金，从业人员拿着薪水就是要做好这一本职工作，并与客户国维持良好关系。最终，双方保存体面，达成妥协，贷款得以继续发放。
Kenya provides another example of the dance among donors, the president, and parliament. The donors periodically become exasperated by the corruption of the president and his cronies, and they turn off the flow of aid. Parliament meets and starts discussing how to raise the revenue required for the government to meet its obligations. The donors heave a huge sigh of relief—they too are under threat if the aid ceases to flow—and turn the taps back on; parliament is shuttered until the next time. Government ministers also sigh with relief and order up the latest-model Mercedes from Germany; the locals refer to these wealthy beneficiaries as the “WaBenzi.”
关于援助者、总统和议会之间的这种委蛇周旋游戏，肯尼亚也是个例子。援助者总是会周期性地被总统及其党羽的腐败激怒，然后暂停援助。此时议会就会召开，开始商量如何增加政府收入，以满足政府履行义务的必需用度。援助者会大松一口气，然后又把水龙头打开——因为如果援助真正停止，他们也会面临威胁。于是，议会就可以关门歇业了，直到下次再发生类似事情。政府的部长们也会大松一口气，又开始从德国订购最新型号的奔驰汽车。当地人管这些富裕的受益者叫做“奔驰族”。
The award for sheer creativity might go to Maaouya Ould Sid’Ahmed Taya, president of Mauritania from 1984 to 2005. He adopted a pro-Western stance and in 1991 abandoned his previous support for the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. Even so, in the early 1990s, his domestic repression became too much for donors, and aid was withdrawn. Real political reforms were begun—at least until the president had the brilliant idea of becoming one of the few Arab countries to recognize Israel. The aid taps were reopened and the reforms rescinded.
绝对原创奖可能还是要颁给1984至2005年任毛里塔尼亚总统的马维亚·乌尔德·西德·艾哈迈德·塔亚。塔亚1991年采取了亲西方的立场，放弃支持伊拉克的萨达姆·侯赛因政权。即便如此，90年代初他在国内的镇压行动对援助者来说仍属过分，援助因此而撤销。此时，真正的政治改革拉开大幕，改革至少维持到了总统突发奇想，成为承认以色列的极少数阿拉伯国家之一。援助龙头重新打开，改革又被废止了。
Domestic policies in the donor countries can also make it difficult to turn off aid. Government aid agencies are under pressure from their domestic constituencies to “do something” about global poverty —a pressure that is stoked by a well-intentioned but necessarily poorly informed domestic population—and this makes it hard for government agencies to cut back on aid even when their representatives on the ground know that it is doing harm. Politicians in both donor and recipient countries understand this process.
援助国的国内政策也可能使停止援助面临阻碍。国内选民会向政府援助机构施加压力，要求他们为全球贫困“做点事”。这些国内民众虽然满怀好意，但在信息掌握上却总是非常缺乏。他们把这压力之火烧得通红，使得政府机构难以切断援助，即便它们在当地的代表知道援助正在害人。
Recipient governments can use their own poor people as “hostages to extract aid from the donors.” In one of the worst such cases, government officials in Sierra Leone held a party to celebrate the fact that UNDP had, once again, classed their country as the worst in the world and thus guaranteed another year’s worth of aid.
受援国政府能把自己的贫困人口当做“从援助国身上索取资金的人质”来使用。塞拉利昂的政府官员是此类案例最糟糕的表现之一，在联合国开发计划署再次将该国列为世界最差国家，因此保证了该国下一年度的援金之后，他们居然开了一个派对来庆祝。
On the other side, donor politicians can give aid to buy political credibility at home when they are deeply unpopular for unrelated reasons; they too will oppose the cessation of aid, even when it is clearly being misused. When this happens—as it did with British aid during the Kenyan elections in 2001, when aid was used to subvert the elections and preserve the power of a corrupt elite—Africans suffer to burnish the tarnished reputations of Western politicians.
另一方面，如果援助国的政客因为其他一些无关原因而非常不受欢迎，他们也可能通过提供援助来收买国内政治信用。因此即便援金明显遭到滥用，他们也会反对停止提供。比如英国在肯尼亚2001年大选期间提供的援助就是如此，当时援金就被用于颠覆选举，帮助腐败精英维持大权。此类事情发生时，相当于非洲人民为了擦洗西方政客的声名污点而受苦受难。
Lyndon Johnson helped hype a largely nonexistent famine in India in order to distract attention from the Vietnam War, not to mention to gather support from American farmers by buying their crops. The givers and receivers of aid, the governments in both countries, are allied against their own peoples. All that has changed from colonial times is the nature of what is being extracted.
为了把民众视线从越南战争上面引开，林登·约翰逊不仅帮助印度虚假宣传了一场基本上并不存在的大饥荒，还通过收购美国农民的农产品来收买支持。援助的提供者和接受者，即两国政府，联合起来欺瞒自己的人民。与殖民时代相比，唯一的变化只是它们索取的东西性质不同了。
There are also practical reasons that restrict the ability of donors to enforce conditionality. Aid is fungible; a recipient can promise to spend aid on health care and do so with projects that would have been undertaken in any case, freeing up funds for nonapproved purposes. It is often difficult for donors to monitor such diversions. The aid industry is competitive, and if one country refuses to fund another will often step in, with a different set of priorities and conditions. The donor who tries to enforce conditions is then shut out and may lose political influence or commercial opportunities, with no compensating gain.
也有一些实践上的原因会限制援助国执行限制条款的能力。援助具有可替代性；比如受援国可以先承诺将援助用于医疗保健，然后用即使没有援助本来就会实施的项目来履行承诺，从而腾挪资金用于未经授权的项目。援助者很难对这类腾挪实施监督。援助行业充满竞争，某国拒绝提供援助，另一国就会带着一套新的政策偏好和限制条款来插手。于是，试图执行限制条款的援助国会被拒之门外，可能会丧失其政治影响力或商业机会，而且得不到补偿。
Aid agencies have recently tried to move away from conditionality, and their language has moved toward an emphasis on partnership. The recipient proposes a plan according to its own needs, and the donor decides what to finance. Of course, none of this disposes of the reality that the donors are responsible to their constituents in the rich world, and that the recipients, knowing this, will design plans that mimic just what they think the donors would have proposed on their own—a process that has been aptly described as “ventriloquism.” It is not clear what sort of partnership is sustainable when one side has all the money.
近来，援助机构已在试图放弃限制条款，转而强调伙伴关系。受援国会根据自身需要提出一份计划，然后由援助国来决定向哪些提供资助。当然，这些都无法绕开援助者需对身处富裕世界的本国选民负责这一现实，受援者深知这一点，因此他们在提出计划时会刻意鹦鹉学舌，提出在他们的心目中援助国自身可能设想出的方案。这一过程已经被人恰当地称为“腹语术”。在一方拥有全部资金的情况下，我们想不出何种伙伴关系才是可持续的。
Politics and politicians, doing what they regularly do, undermine aid effectiveness, but it works the other way too: aid flows undermine the effectiveness of politics. Donors decide matters that should be decided by recipients; even democratic politics in donor countries has no business deciding whether HIV/AIDS should be prioritized over antenatal care in Africa. Conditionality violates national sovereignty.
政治和政治家的惯常行事准则会破坏援助的有效性，但事情也可能在相反方向上发生：援助资金会破坏政治的有效性。本应由受援者决定的事，变得由援助者来决定了。即便是援助国的民主政治也没有理由来决定非洲国家是否应将艾滋病优先于产前保健考虑。限制条款侵犯国家主权。
Imagine a well-funded Swedish aid agency coming to Washington, D.C., and promising to pay off the national debt and fund Medicare for fifty years. The conditions are that the United States abolish capital punishment and fully legalize gay marriage. Perhaps some governments are so dysfunctional that such violations have little cost to their populations. But taking a country into foreign receivership is hardly a good start on building the kind of contract between government and governed that might support economic growth over the long haul. It is not possible to develop someone else’s country from the outside.
试想，如果瑞典一家资金充裕的援助机构跑到华盛顿来，承诺帮我们清偿所有国家债务，并会援助国家医疗保险五十年，条件是美国废除死刑，并将同性结婚全面合法化。也许有些国家政府确实无能透顶，因而此类侵犯行为并不会对该国人民造成什么损害。但是，一国接受外国的托管，对于建立政府与人民之间的契约关系而言并不是什么好开头，而这种契约关系从长远来看可能有助于经济增长。不可能从外部来发展别国。
We have already seen that it is difficult to give convincing evidence of the effects of aid on economic growth, and the same applies when we look at the effects of aid on democracy or on other institutions. Yet once again, we have the fact that small countries that get a lot of aid also tend to be less democratic; sub-Saharan Africa is the least democratic area of the world, and the one that receives the most aid. Countries that receive aid from their ex-colonists are not the most democratic. Perhaps most interesting is a counterpoint to Figures 1 and 2: there has been an upsurge not only in growth but also in democracy in Africa since the cut in aid that followed the end of the Cold War. As always, there are other possible explanations for these facts, but they are what we would expect if democracy were undermined by foreign aid.
之前我们已经提到，关于援助对经济增长的效用，我们拿不出什么有说服力的证据。同样，援助对民主或其他制度的效用也是如此。不过，我们这里又有一个事实：接受大量援助的小国也趋向于更不民主；撒哈拉以南的非洲是全世界最不民主的地区，同时也是接受援助最多的地区。接受原殖民母国援助的国家并非最民主的。最有意思的可能是图1和图2【译注：原文无图，略】的对比：随着冷战结束后援助的减少，非洲不但出现了经济上升，而且出现了更多的民主政体。当然，对于这类事实，总是有其他可能的解释。但是如果民主会受到外援的破坏，这一事实就与我们的预期一致了。
The antidemocratic aspects of foreign aid have been exacerbated by the long-held donors’ belief that aid—and economic development itself—is a technical issue, not a political one. In the hydraulic theory (recall, we are just fixing the plumbing), there can be no legitimate dispute over what needs to be done. This belief has led donors and advisers to ignore or be impatient with local politics.
外援的反民主面向还被援助者长期持有的一种信念加剧了：他们相信援助和经济发展本身都只是技术问题，而非政治问题。在水力学理论（记住，我们不过是在修理水管）看来，关于我们需要做什么，没有什么值得争论的。这一信念导致援助者和建议者都对当地政治置之不理或毫无耐心。
Worse still, the donors have often deeply misunderstood what people needed or wanted. Population control is the worst case; to the donors it was obvious that if there were fewer people each person would be better off, while to the recipients, the opposite was just as obviously (and correctly) true. Western-led population control, often with the assistance of nondemocratic or well-rewarded recipient governments, is the most egregious example of antidemocratic and oppressive aid. Effective democracy is the antidote to the tyranny of foreign good intentions.
更糟的是，关于人民需要什么或渴望什么，援助者通常误解甚深。人口控制就是最糟糕的例子：在援助者看来，很显然人口更少则人均状况就会更好，但是在受援者看来，相反的看法【编注：即人口多没坏处】同样显而易见且真确无误。西方人推动的人口控制，通常伴随着非民主或受益丰厚的受援国政府的协助，是援助之反民主和压迫性的最恶劣例证。有效的民主是外国善心暴政的解毒剂。
The anthropologist James Ferguson, in The Anti-Politics Machine, one of the greatest books about aid and economic development, describes a large Canadian-funded development project in Lesotho in the 1980s that was based on a profound misunderstanding of the way the economy functioned; what in reality was a reservoir of labor for the South African mines was reimagined as a textbook subsistence-farming economy.
人类学家詹姆斯·弗格森在《反政治机器》这本有关援助和经济发展的杰作中，为我们描绘了1980年代在莱索托实施的一项由加拿大资助的发展项目，该项目从根本上就对经济运转方式存在深刻误解。该国经济模式实际本来应是南非矿业的劳动力储军，却被臆想为一种教科书式的自给农业经济。
The agricultural investment projects designed for the imagined economy were about as likely to be successful as a project to grow flowers on the moon. The project administrators—busily fixing the plumbing—remained unaware of how the project was being manipulated by the ruling party for its own political purposes and against its political opponents. In the end, there was no development or poverty reduction, only an extension of the state’s monopoly of political control, an anti-politics machine that made an extractive elite even less responsive to its people.
为这种想象的经济所设计出来的农业投资项目，其成功的可能性就跟在月球上栽花差不多。该项目被执政党操纵，以实现他们自身的政治意图，压制政治对手，而忙于修水管的项目管理人员自始至终对此毫不知情。最后，项目得到的并不是发展或贫困减少，而只是加强了国家对政治控制的垄断性质，催生了一种反政治的机器，这种机器使得榨取型精英对其人民甚至更加漠视。
The technical, anti-political view of development assistance has survived the inconvenient fact that the apparently clear technical solutions kept changing—from industrialization, planning and the construction of infrastructure to macroeconomic structural adjustment, to health and education, and most recently back to infrastructure. That the ideas kept changing did nothing to imbue the developers with humility or uncertainty, nor did the sensitivity of the fashions to first-world politics appear to undercut the technical certainty of the aid industry. The antipoverty rhetoric of the World Bank when Lyndon Johnson was U.S. president was replaced by the “getting prices right” rhetoric when Ronald Reagan was president. “Our” politics seems to be a legitimate part of development thinking, while “their” politics is not.
发展援助问题上的这种技术性、反政治的观点始终存在，尽管我们面临一个尴尬事实：看似显然的技术解决方案经常在变，从工业化、计划和基础设施建设变成宏观经济结构调整，又变成健康和教育，最近又回到基础设施。想法一直在变，但这并没能促使开发人员保持谦逊或心生犹疑，发生在第一世界政治领域中的潮流敏感似乎也没能减少援助行业的技术自信。林登·约翰逊担任美国总统期间由世界银行提出的反贫困辞藻在罗纳德·里根当政时期被“矫正价格”的辞藻所取代。“我们的”政事似乎在发展思考当中理所应当占据一席之地，而“他们的”政事则并不如此。
Aid and aid-funded projects have undoubtedly done much good; the roads, dams, and clinics exist and would not have existed otherwise. But the negative forces are always present; even in good environments, aid compromises institutions, it contaminates local politics, and it undermines democracy. If poverty and underdevelopment are primarily consequences of poor institutions, then by weakening those institutions or stunting their development, large aid flows do exactly the opposite of what they are intended to do. It is hardly surprising then that, in spite of the direct effects of aid that are often positive, the record of aid shows no evidence of any overall beneficial effect.
毫无疑问，援助和由援金所资助的项目助益良多；世上多出了许多公路、大坝和医院，没有援助是不可能的。但援助的负面影响始终存在；即便实施环境友好，援助也会损害制度、污染当地政治，且会破坏民主。如果说贫困和欠发达首先是因为制度糟糕，那么通过削弱此类制度或阻碍其正常发展，大规模援助资金的实际效果确实事与愿违。因此，尽管援助的直接效果通常都是正面的，但援助史上并没有证据表明它们总体上带来了有益效果，对此我们不必感到惊讶。
The arguments about foreign aid and poverty reduction are quite different from the arguments about domestic aid to the poor. Those who oppose welfare benefits often argue that aid to the poor creates incentives for poor behavior that help to perpetuate poverty. These are not the arguments here. The concern with foreign aid is not about what it does to poor people around the world—indeed it touches them too rarely—but about what it does to governments in poor countries. The argument that foreign aid can make poverty worse is an argument that foreign aid makes governments less responsive to the needs of the poor, and thus does them harm.
关于外国援助与减少贫困之间关系的论争，与关于针对穷人的国内援助的论争颇为不同。反对福利津贴的人通常论证说，援助穷人会激励穷人做出使得贫困得以长期维持的行为。我们这里的论证则与此不同。在外国援助问题上，我们所关注的并不是它们对世上的穷人起到了什么作用——实际上援助极少触及穷人——而是它们对贫穷国家的政府起到了什么作用。外国援助会使得贫困恶化这一论点说的是，外国援助会使得受援国政府更加漠视穷人的需求，从而对他们造成损害。
The harm of aid—even in the presence of some good—poses difficult ethical problems. The philosopher Leif Wenar, criticizing Peter Singer’s vision, with which I began this chapter, notes that “poverty is no pond”; Singer’s analogy is not helpful. Those who advocate more aid need to explain how it can be given in a way that deals with the political constraints. They should also think hard about the parallels with the colonialism that came before the era of aid.
援助的危害——即使也会有某些好处——提出了一些伦理难题。本章开头，我曾引用过哲学家彼得·辛格的设想【译注：本文是作者著作 The Great Escape 第7章的一小节。第7章开头数页，作者曾提到辛格的著名比喻：由于我们所需要付出都很小，拒绝援助非洲儿童的伦理错误就跟拒绝挽救池塘落水儿童一样。而我们离非洲较远、离落水儿童较近这一事实并不会造成什么伦理上的区别】。莱夫·韦纳对此提出批评，他说“贫困并非池塘”，辛格的比喻并没有什么用。鼓吹加大援助的人需要解释，援助如何以一种能够考虑政治约束的方式分发。他们也应该努力思考，援助与援助时代之前的殖民主义之间的对比。
We now think of colonialism as bad, harming others to benefit ourselves, and aid as good, hurting us (albeit very mildly) to help others. But that view is too simple, too ignorant of history, and too self-congratulatory. The rhetoric of colonialism too was all about helping people, albeit about bringing civilization and enlightenment to people whose humanity was far from fully recognized. This may have been little more than a cover for theft and exploitation.
我们现在觉得殖民主义是坏的，只是损人利己，而援助则是好的，是损己（尽管很轻微）利人。但这种观点过于简化，对历史过于无知，同时也过分自夸。殖民主义的论调一样说的全是帮助他人，虽然只是要把文明和启蒙带给其人性尊严远远还未被承认的人们。这种说法有可能仅仅只是偷盗或剥削的文过饰非。
The preamble to the charter of the UN, with its ringing and inspiring rhetoric, was written by Jan Smuts, premier of South Africa, who saw the UN as the best hope of preserving the British Empire and the dominance of white “civilization.” Yet at its worst, decolonization installed leaders who differed little from those who preceded them, except for where they were born and the color of their skins.
联合国宪章的序言部分用语响亮且令人振奋，其作者南非前总理杨·史末资可是将联合国视为维持大英帝国和白人“文明”统治地位的最大希望所在。然而，在最糟糕的情形中，殖民地独立后上台的领导人跟他们的前辈并没有什么不同，区别只在于出生地点和皮肤颜色。
Even today, when our humanitarian rhetoric acts as a cover for our politicians to buy themselves virtue, and when aid is our way of meeting our moral obligations to deal with global poverty, we need to be sure that we are not doing harm. If we are, we are doing it for “us,” not for “them.”
即便是在今天，当人道主义辞藻被我们的政客用来为自己购买德性名声时，当援助被我们当成是履行自己对于全球贫困所负道德义务的手段时，我们也需要明确，我们并没有在害人。如果我们确实在害人，那援助就只是为了“满足自己”，而不是为了“帮助他人”。
翻译：沈沉(@你在何地-sxy)
校对：辉格(@whigzhou)
编辑：辉格@whigzhou