Development for whom? The case of #USAID in Ukraine’s Donbas: Review of International Political Economy: Vol 0, No 0
▻https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09692290.2023.2170444
I focus on the USAID Economic Resilience Activity (ERA) to demonstrate that donor programs serve as mechanisms of capitalist accumulation (for development contractors) and neoliberal responsibilization (for conflict-affected citizens). The analysis points to uneven development and the (neo)liberal peace fallacy in Ukraine’s Donbas. At the same time, it corroborates a wider trend in global political economy to obfuscate the interests of development capital with liberal discourses of vulnerability, resilience, and women’s empowerment.