Foreign aid and discourses of National Social Responsibility: evidence from South Korea

ABSTRACT This article analyses a recent discourse of responsibility that accompanies states’ foreign aid provision. States adopt this discourse of National Social Responsibility (NSR) to show their compliance with globally accepted ethical standards by providing aid. This ethical behavior is underpinned by a political-economic logic, which derives from the promotional literature exhorting states to maintain national competitiveness by mimicking firms’ behaviors. While discourses of aid responsibility are not new, in the NSR discourse, the state communicates its ethical compliance with aid norms to promote economic competitiveness. This discourse is not a benign rhetorical device; it reproduces development inequalities and leads to the marketization of development policies. The article’s theoretical arguments are then used to analyze South Korea’s communication of its foreign aid. The case of South Korea exemplifies the patterns and tensions highlighted in the discussion of the NSR discourse.