also (a shorten version of the original paper!)

http://www.businessworld.in/index.php/Miscellaneous/The-Business-Of-NGOs.html

You question if it is right for us to characterize as ‘propaganda’ things with which we disagree. DfID is certainly funding many of those. But more than that, it is funding campaigns which have nothing to do with development such as religious group’s “faith and development” activities abroad or the work of anti-Israeli groups. Whatever your political stripe, using taxpayers’ money to fund projects large proportions of the population would find objectionable is wrong.

£140m is small beer compared to the total DfID budget, as you say. But we chose to concentrate on just four programmes in our study. When researching other areas, we found that many DfID funds include significant “communications” or “campaigning” budgets, in the UK and abroad. Don’t worry, there’s plenty more dodgy funding to be uncovered in future studies.

It’s a fair point that non-profits need to dedicate a certain proportion of their income to campaigning and marketing, otherwise they would soon run out of donations. DfID, in contrast, does not face the threat of going bust as it is underwritten by the taxpayer. It certainly shouldn’t be using people’s own money to convince them it is spending it well. If that’s not propaganda, I’d like to hear a better definition.

Arguing that this is what the public NEED to know so that it can put its foot down on the bases of an article, which problematise that funds are spend on advocacy, seems a bit odd to me.

More generally:

Is this really the reintroduction of the seventies’ Manchester School, and is the problem with the policy winds in the eighties that they didn’t go far enough? Summing up the underlying logic and consequences of the majority of most Aid Watch posts would seem so suggest it.

If that is the case, may I suggest that Aid Watch first does a bit more reading on Political Economy to understand how it’s different from Public Choice and then continue the recent history classes.

It’s not that I mind disagreeing on things – not at all. However, it would be somewhat more interesting if you bothered to do a bit of backreading on development economics other than micro-economics.

I’m starting to fear that Smith and Ricardo are the only classics known to US scholars.

And back to the current post. I took note of this quote:

“IPN calls this “propaganda” but doesn’t convincingly explain how “propaganda” is different from “making people aware of concepts that IPN happens to disagree with.”

To aid recipient, may be there should be campaign on ‘Publish What You Receive’

There is far too much unaccountable Aid with no measurable results. Corruption is inevitable.

I guess the more this is exposed, the more the public will be informed about where their tax money goes and hopefully put their foot down!!!

Keep up the great work.

On the other hand, competitive bidding is almost always a good idea.

That aside, those who dislike corporately-funded climate change denial and the establishment of fake “African” NGOs to do web advocacy for privatisation may be interested in the following sources….

http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/International_Policy_Network

http://thinktank-watch.blogspot.com/2007/12/international-policy-network.html

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=International_Policy_Network

Can you also find out the amount of Dfid and bilateral aid that to multilaterals such as World Bank, IMF UNDP etc. and to agencies such as GDN, IOM etc.

I have seen so much waste in these non-transparent transfers! No one looks into these.