AID FOR TRADE AS CONTESTED STATE BUILDING INTERVENTION: THE CASES OF LAOS AND VIETNAM
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The thesis analyses the provision of “Aid for Trade” as a specific form of state building
intervention (SBI) in Laos and Vietnam, two countries that have received trade-related assistance
as part of their global economic integration. The thesis uncovers how global economic and
institutional reform agendas related to trade integration are accepted or contested within both
states, as part of a highly political process characterised by strategic agency and structural
selectivities of various actors involved. The thesis employs a theoretical framework to help
analyse how global trade governance programmes intervene within targeted states, and how local
socio-political contestation shapes the outcomes of such programmes. Drawing on Marxist state
theory, SBIs are understood as contested processes which open up strategic opportunities for
social forces to shape the transformation process and thereby to stabilise or challenge existing
power relations. Special attention is directed towards the state as an arena of conflict in order to
understand the specific forms and varying results that these interventions take. This framework
allows us to grasp how dominant social forces within the Laotian and Vietnamese forms of state
are able to modify or circumvent external reform imperatives, resulting in highly selective
changes in trade governance, which often departs from the intention of “Aid for Trade” project
managers. The thesis thereby changes conventional technocratic assumptions that believe that aid
interventions are a matter of best practice and contributes to a growing research agenda which
analyses development interventions within the wider political economy of the targeted state.
Authors
Schippers, Lan KatharinaCollections
- Theses [4099]