International Development Cooperation Today

“Today's challenge is to make modern international development cooperation a principled approach that seeks win-wins wherever possible, in tandem with programmes that address long-term structural challenges and promote the interests of more vulnerable partners.”, Patrick Develtere, Huib Huyse, and Jan Van Ongevalle, editors of ‘International Development Cooperation Today’

Beyond the traditional North-South perspective
Over the past 60 years high-income countries have invested over 4000 billion euros in development aid. With varying degrees of success, these investments in low-income countries contributed to tackling structural problems such as access to water, health care, and education. Today, however, international development cooperation is no longer restricted to helping by giving. Instead, it is rather about opportunities, mutual interests, risk taking, and an inclusive societal approach. With the arrival of major new actors such as China, India, and Brazil, and the manifestation of private companies and foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, development aid is being eclipsed by new forms of international cooperation, increasingly accompanied by investments, trade, and give-and-take exchanges.

The agenda for sustainable development, adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015 and to be realised by 2030, is a case in point of new influential frameworks that usher in a global rather than a traditional North-South perspective.

This book reviews 60 years of international development aid and its relevant actors, outlining today’s challenges and opportunities. Richly illustrated with case studies and examples, International Development Cooperation Today maps successes and failures and synthesises visions and discussions from all over the world. By pointing out the radical shift from the traditional North-South perspective to a global paradigm, this book is essential reading for all practitioners, academics, and donors involved in development aid.

List of figures

List of tables

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Abbreviations

Preface

Introduction

Development cooperation in an era of globalisation
More and more new actors on the scene: is the sector still a community?
Big donors, generous donors
More conflicting views and approaches: the arena is getting tough
More transactional interests: market appeal
Do new donors have other interests?
Everybody from payers to players: the emergence of a new paradigm

From colonialism to the Sustainable Development Goals
Colonial warm-up exercises
Technical cooperation and knowledge transfer
Faith in development aid
Development cooperation: aid in a global setting
The Washington Consensus and structural adjustments
International cooperation, the Millennium Development Goals and the Sustainable Development Goals
Addressing poverty in exchange for debt relief
International development cooperation and Paris: introducing order to the community and the market
The SDGs and the need for a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach  

It takes two to tango
Internationally: among specialists
Recipient countries: donor darlings and donor orphans

The first pillar: official bilateral cooperation
Many small players and institutional pluralism
In search of an institutional foundation for development cooperation
Decentralisation: to reach the SDGs or also for other reasons?

The second pillar: multilateral cooperation
Europe’s development cooperation patchwork
Multilateral cooperation: the UN galaxy fans out further

The third pillar: non-governmental development organisations
A movement with many faces, roles, visions and strategies
Several generations of NGDOs
A sector with many different visions and strategies
A movement with a plural support base
The sector breaks free from the NGDOs
Is the new social movement becoming an established network movement?

The fourth pillar: towards a whole-of-society approach
The key players of the fourth pillar
The fourth pillar: the children of globalisation challenge the children of the North-South
Starting from a different field
From a level ‘telling’ field to joint action
The near and distant future of a whole-of-society approach

Humanitarian aid: more dispersed or more networked?
What place for emergency aid?
Overcoming the humanitarian nemesis
Cash-and-carry on the market

The unbearable lightness of the support for development cooperation
The uneasy relationship with the support base
No (more) aid fatigue?
Popular, yet little understood
Something needs to be done: but by whom?
Time for a new narrative: from development education towards education for global citizenship

Sixty years of international development cooperation: where has the bumpy road led us? 261
Progress, but not for everyone
Is aid future-proof?
Are we really that generous?
Who is receiving aid?
The effectiveness and impact of development cooperation
Development cooperation: a stumbling-block?

Conclusion: the past will not come back but is still there

Notes
Bibliography

Format: Textbook - paperback

Size: 234 × 156 mm

320 pages

Illustrated b/w

ISBN: 9789462702615

Publication: April 14, 2021

Languages: English

Stock item number: 141489

Throughout, International Development Cooperation Today remains eminently accessible in language and layout. Comprehension of basic concepts in international affairs, economics, and sociology are helpful but not required to follow the authors’ arguments. Although it lacks an index, the compendium offers a wealth of insights for students in advanced undergraduate courses. Postgraduate students not yet familiar with the field’s institutional landscape should find it equally enriching and inspiring. Whether or not the authors’ assertion of a radical shift holds, their nuanced and at times witty analysis of how international development cooperation has morphed into a complex web of relations and flows contributes a multifaceted perspective to global debates on development histories, practices, and the field’s uncertain future.
Daniel E. Esser, Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , Fall 2022 , pp. 396 - 399, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0892679422000363