Philanthrocapitalism and Hegemony in (Financing for) Development. The Philanthropic Discourse as a Neoliberal (Development Agenda) Artefact

Resumen

Based on a critical analysis of the financing for development (FfD) model established by the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, this article shows how that FfD model is structurally neoliberal, contributing to the literature that views the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as a new phase of the Neoliberal Development Agenda (NDA), which has been consolidated as hegemonic within the international development (ID) field in recent decades. In this way, considering philanthrocapitalism as an ideological framework that proposes its own diagnoses and prognoses, we analyse various discourses of five philanthrocapitalist institutions (PIs) and two major international organisations in the arena of ID —the OECD (Paris Declaration on Aids and Effectiveness, and Accra Agenda for Action) and the UN (2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development)— to point how PIs legitimate themselves. This article shows how philanthrocapitalism has been constituted not only as a key element within the current model of FfD but also as a genuine neoliberal artefact; that is, a device designed to perfectly encapsulate the NDA apparatus and scrupulously fostered by the discourse of international agencies to contribute to the metaobjective of consolidating the neoliberal model as hegemonic in the ID arena.