The uncertain future of bilateralism or, ‘it takes two fingers to kill a louse’

Economic and political accounts of events often exist as distinct texts which can obscure the political economy of the subject under discussion. In the analysis of bilateral relations this is particularly evident in the new orthodoxy which takes as given that there is a necessary accommodation which must be made with the requirements of ‘modern’ globalisation to ensure international competitiveness. This has caused many economic policy issues to be regarded as a closed box, as a given, not open to discussion. Debates about them have disappeared from view. As a consequence, it is possible for bilateral development finance organisations to maintain a political and, more importantly, moral agenda of poverty reduction, human rights, good governance and a crusade against corruption without questions of political economy or the more specifically economic relationships between states impinging on considerations of the ‘donor’ state's behaviour. This article argues that the radical agenda of Britain's Department for International Development (DfID) and the political interventions of international NGOs are often undermined in practice (whatever their good intentions) by bilateral economic and trade relations which are in desperate need of regulation and reform. If there were some concept of international solidarity and true co‐operation, it might be possible to shape the reforms required. Instead, international fora ‐ generally characterised by a democratic deficit themselves ‐ become immersed in a quagmire of hypothetical, even arbitrary, ‘good practice’ codes while developing a blindspot concerning the underlying inequities of bilateral economic relations between North and South.