This chapter establishes an explicit link between foreign aid inflows and development indicators classified in the multidimensional setting of the SDGs. This linkage is not a black box as it takes advantage of the model’s causal chains describing budget allocations and indicator performance. First, we create counterfactuals by removing aid flows. Hence, we can estimate aid impacts and assess their statistical significance at the indicator or country levels during the first decade of the 21st century. Second, we produce a validation exercise comparing our results with econometric evidence found in a well-known sector-level study (access and sanitation of water) using a subset of our data.

The scale of the Great Depression and the obvious need for federal intervention mooted laissez-faire arguments. Nevertheless, the continuing vitality of laissez-faire sparked debates in law, economics, and public policy about the proper role of government that, in important ways, continue to the present. The chapter locates the rise of infrastructure as a common term within modernization theory and development economics, which provide the post-World War II with a western-centered model of capitalist growth. Modernization theory drew on social science, economics, and political theory to map society and economy as reciprocal systems that were amenable to policy intervention. Infrastructure” begins to circulate in the early 1950s as a novel concept among staffers at the World Bank and later in Congressional debates over the Marshall Plan. It first takes on a narrow meaning of military facilities and the resources that supported those facilities. From there, it becomes a portable concept that development economists could use to predict the “take off” or stagnation of emerging societies measured by rates of growth, GDP, social stability, and technological advance. We see our contemporary sense of infrastructure crystallize in the 1950s and 1960s as the material precondition for a flourishing modern capitalist democracy.

Has decentralization contributed to democratic accountability, civic engagement, transparency, and efforts to combat corruption in the contemporary Arab region? This chapter presents key findings from a two-year study assessing decentralization policies and initiatives in five countries – Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, and Yemen. The chapter discusses several findings of our fieldwork. One is the legacy of colonial experiences which made deconcentration rather than decentralization prevail. Another is the simultaneous promotion and subversion of decentralization, which was not only practiced by governments across the region, but was often subsidized by international assistance. Still another finding discusses how effectiveness of local governments in the region is constrained by opaque regulatory environments and limited human and financial resources at their disposal. Finally, our study also points to instances of success and innovation, against many odds, where capable leadership, engaged civil society, and other factors have paved the way toward palpable improvements in service delivery and urban management. Accordingly, we find that, despite many constraints, decentralization policies in the Arab region may occasionally present significant policy windows that could form opportunities for social, political, and economic changes, if mobilized adequately.

Part V explores how Batswana manage interdependencies and distinctions between kinship and politics on local, national, and transnational levels. It takes in three major events: in Chapter 13, a family party; in Chapter 14, a homecoming celebration for the first age regiment to be initiated in a generation; and in Chapter 15, an opening event held by a respected national NGO. Chapter 13 argues that family celebrations are catalysts for conflict, performing familial success and distinguishing home from village by demonstrating an ability to manage dikgang. In Chapter 14, families prove pivotal to regenerating the morafe (tribal polity), and initiation proves pivotal in re-embedding Tswana law in families – equipping them to better engage dikgang. NGO, government, and donor performances of success also rely on the performance of kinship; in Chapter 15’s opening ceremony, idioms and ideals of kinship legitimise the work of government and civil society agencies, establishing their precedence over the families they serve. But their everyday work is also permeated – even generated – by unmarked, conflicting kinship dynamics. In their interventions, these agencies unsettle both the interdependencies and distinctions Batswana customarily make between kinship and politics; and, in doing so, they may create more profound challenges than the AIDS epidemic.

This week, Batswana have welcomed into their family twenty-nine ambassadors from Canada. In diplomatic work, relations can be nurtured at personal level; nation-states are composed of individuals, and the international system is composed of nation-states, so it follows that individual relations facilitate better international relations.

The final chapter summarises the findings on the importance of understanding the role of intermediaries in rule of law assistance. As Myanmar struggled for foreign credibility and investment, the findings are also consistent with the global version – foreign actors’ influence and local dependence in societies where donors become an established but delicate feature of social, political, and economic life that people encounter on a daily basis. In this new landscape, intermediaries become responsible for navigating local and national institutions, values, and people. This book keeps both sides in view while focusing on the intermediaries. It also considers the extent to which the findings could be generalised beyond Myanmar and their practical implications for helping to advance enquiry into the field of rule of law assistance globally.

This chapter examines the role of international finance for post-war transitions and its relationship to international law. That relationship is considered in two respects: first, the international legal norms relevant to ‘who should pay?’; and second, the relevance of international aid to the development of international law. Section 2 tracks the evolution of post-conflict funding for settlement implementation and reconstruction in light of historical transformations in peace-making practice; and addresses the financial demands on conflict-affected states. Urgent needs for international aid to finance settlement implementation and peacebuilding, raises questions about whether third states might have a duty to provide finance. Thus, Section 3 evaluates prospects for international legal duties to provide that aid. The relevance of post-conflict finance and aid conditionality to the development of international law is considered in Section 4 to shed a different light on debates about an emerging law of peace-making or lex pacificatoria.