Assessing South Korea's Compliance with Global Norms on Development Cooperation

Abstract

Over the last f ive decades, the UN and OECD/DAC have strongly urged member states to comply with global aid norms to improve aid effectiveness. To what extent are the global aid norms actually put in practice in countries that have pledged themselves to comply with these norms? Norm life cycle theory explains the internalization of global norms as legalization, institution-building, and official policies at the national level. This study supplements the norm lifecycle theory by subdividing the process of norm internalization into the policy formation stage and the post-implementation stage at the national level and empirically examines it by employing five criteria: ODA/GNI ratio; aid to LDCs; the ratio of grant to loan; aid-untying; and fragmentation. The results show that some aid norms are well accepted and implemented at both stages while other norms are neither addressed in official aid policies nor put into practice.