International aid to education: Power dynamics in an era of partnership
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International aid to education: Power dynamics in an era of partnership Francine Menashy. Teachers College Press, New York, 2019. 139 pp. International Perspectives on Educational Reform series. ISBN 978-0-8077-6181-6 (hbk), ISBN 978-0-8077-6128-1 (pbk), ISBN 978-0-8077-7768-8 (eBook) Valérie Jean1
© UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning and Springer Nature B.V. 2020
The proliferation of new partnerships for more equitable international educational development represents a major shift in the development aid arena since the early 2000s, supported in particular first by the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs; 2000–2015), and today by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs; 2015–2030). This new aid architecture evolved in response to criticism of past interventions, which some argued were too northern-driven and undemocratic and basically excluded local participation in aid recipient countries. Throughout her book, International aid to education: Power dynamics in an era of partnership, Francine Menashy strives to answer the following question: “Can partnerships truly ameliorate power imbalances, or do they reproduce and exacerbate the inequities they are meant to address?” (p. 2). In pursuit of the answer, Menashy explores “the changing nature of aid to education and power dynamics” (ibid.), presenting a current holistic view of partnerships, both in theory and in practice, within development aid more generally, but with a particular focus on the education sector. The first two chapters demonstrate the relevance of studying power dynamics in what the author calls “the era of partnerships” (p. 1) in the education sector. These early chapters are primarily about the context which allowed the emergence of partnerships for development aid, and the issues that arose; the clarification of the concepts and terminology used, such as partnership, power, aid, Global North and Global South; as well as the methods used to analyse the data. Referring to Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall’s framework of power,1 the author dwells on structural 1 Barnett, M., & Duvall, R. (Eds) (2005). Power in global governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
* Valérie Jean [email protected] 1
Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada
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and productive forms of power, rather than compulsory and institutional forms, because of their constructivist underpinnings. Menashy conducted her study through three lenses: by applying a social network analysis to 293 entities holding membership in between one and five partnerships (chapter 3), and by applying process-tracing methods through two case studies of partnerships, namely the Global Partnership for Education (GPE)2 (chapter 4) and the Education Cannot Wait (ECW) Fund3 (chapter 5). In her conclusion (chapter 6), Menashy provides a summary of the results, triangulates the data from the social network analysis and the case studies, and offers a few options to reconceptualise partnerships to ensure positive changes,
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