Field Of Development Cooperation Research Articles

China's Development Finance: What Issues for Reporting and Monitoring Systems?

This article explores the implications of China's rise for global reporting and monitoring systems (RMSs) in the field of development cooperation. Beyond its fast‐growing – albeit still modest – foreign aid, China has emerged in the last decade as a globally pre‐eminent source of development finance. While China's endeavours are comparable to previous rising powers that strived to build linkages into global commodity chains and to participate in advanced industrial and technology value creation, what makes China distinct from OECD capital providers is its unprecedented scale, cohesive state‐market banking and enterprise institutions, and extensive utilisation of official finance for risk‐taking. This poses an existential crisis for DAC's ODA reporting system, helping to precipitate a wide‐ranging renovation process. Hence, China's intentions and capacities regarding the reporting and monitoring of its development finance have a potentially formative influence on the development of a new, wider DAC reporting system and on other international RMSs in the development finance field as well.

Transnational Partnerships: Conditions for Successful Service Provision in Areas of Limited Statehood

Transnational public–private partnerships (PPPs) are external governance actors in the field of development cooperation and vary in composition, potentially including nonprofit and for‐profit organizations, state and public agencies, and intergovernmental organizations. This article analyzes the conditions under which PPPs have been successful in providing access to basic services (water, sanitation, and food) in areas of limited statehood in Bangladesh, India, and Kenya. We focus on 10 projects carried out by two PPPs that differ in two key respects: legitimacy and institutional design. We show that partnerships with high empirical legitimacy and an appropriate institutional design are best able to fulfill complex tasks in contexts of limited statehood. A participatory approach can promote legitimacy and thus success; projects that lack legitimacy are prone to failure. Additionally, a project's institutional design must address problems that commonly affect areas of limited statehood: It should provide access to resources for capacity development, ensure adequate monitoring, and be tailored to local needs.

The North’s Growing Role in South–South Cooperation: keeping the foothold

Over the past 10 years Northern aid agencies have made a concerted effort to participate in South–South cooperation. This article analyses the key modes and motivations behind this growing engagement, looking specifically at three areas: multilateral platforms, triangular cooperation and knowledge production about South–South cooperation. Across all these efforts we perceive a concerted attempt to gain legitimacy by emphasising horizontality in the co-construction of knowledge about development. We argue that, within a context of shrinking Northern aid, this engagement is a way to harness South–South cooperation in order to preserve and expand Northern influence, both within and outside the field of development cooperation. This interpretation suggests the need to further examine the ‘bridging’ initiatives and mutual impact of intersection points between Northern aid and South–South cooperation.

Initiatives populaires de solidarité internationale en Wallonie et à Bruxelles : portrait et enjeux d'une coopération à taille humaine

Face a la multiplication et a la diversite des acteurs qui menent aujourd’hui des activites de cooperation au developpement, nous avons enquete aupres de 171 initiatives populaires de solidarite internationale en Wallonie et a Bruxelles. Cet article se propose de dresser le portrait de ces acteurs, ainsi que les enjeux auxquels ils sont confrontes dans la mise en œuvre de leurs projets de solidarite internationale comme celui, primordial, de la professionnalisation du secteur.

Gestión de la comunicación en el sector no lucrativo español

La sociedad actual se caracteriza por la existencia de tres sectores básicos: el sector público, el sector privado y el sector no lucrativo, denominado también Tercer Sector. El Tercer Sector es un concepto heterogéneo, de difícil acepción. Está compuesto por entidades que no tienen el lucro como principal objetivo, abarcando principalmente, dos grandes ramas: las entidades de economía social y las entidades no lucrativas. El problema estriba en que dichas entidades son percibidas de manera difusa como consecuencia de su falta de transparencia y, en muchas ocasiones, de su deficiente gestión de la comunicación. Dentro de las entidades no lucrativas se encuentran las Organizaciones no Gubernamentales que son autónomas e independientes del ámbito de los gobiernos sin fines lucrativos y que destinan sus recursos a financiar proyectos que emprenden en el ámbito de la cooperación al desarrollo, a solucionar los crecientes problemas de equidad, pobreza, exclusión social y destrucción ambiental, entre otros. Esta investigación tiene como objeto valorar el campo de la Economía Social y la gestión de la comunicación como herramienta estratégica. La buena gestión de la comunicación servirá para que estas entidades logren el apoyo público para una actividad, causa, movimiento o institución, consiguiendo de tal modo los fines y objetivos que se proponen.

What Is the Direction for the EU’s Development Cooperation after Lisbon? – A Legal Examination

Jointly the EU Member States and the European Union provide more than half of all development assistance in the world. The European Union's development cooperation policy was first launched with the Treaty of Rome in 1957, but only in 1992 were specific provisions on EU development cooperation introduced at Treaty level. With the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, most of these provisions were carried over in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. The Lisbon Treaty has, however, introduced a number of both minor and major novelties, and certain parts of the provisions have been re-arranged. Moreover, the Lisbon Treaty proposes to introduce a higher degree of consistency in the European Union's external relations - including also its actions in the field of development cooperation. This article sets out to provide a brief but systematic examination of the extent to which the substantive provisions of the Lisbon Treaty will affect the direction of the Union's development cooperation policy. To this end, it first provides an outline of how this policy has developed from the Union's inception until the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty. It then goes on to identify the changes brought about by the Lisbon Treaty before finally providing an evaluation of the changes.

Sources of Civic Engagement in Latin America: Empirical Evidence from Rural Ecuadorian Communities

The concept of civic engagement has greatly influenced the policy-making process in the field of development cooperation. However, in contrast to a vast quantity of empirical studies for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)–world, there is only little knowledge with respect to developing countries. Using Ecuadorian rural communities as an example, this paper analyses socioeconomic, political and cultural sources of civic engagement with multivariate regression analyses, which demonstrate that volunteering strongly depends on the cultural tradition. Additionally, the empirical results show that a pure application of the theoretical assumptions and operationalisations from the OECD–world is misleading, when analysing social processes in developing countries.

Eastern Donors and Western Soft Law: Towards a DAC Donor Peer Review of China and India?

The international system is still governed by a normative framework designed mainly by OECD countries, especially with regard to soft‐law standards in the field of development co‐operation. However, the growing relevance of ‘Eastern donors’ is weakening its efficiency and raises the question of how compliance with these standards can be assured in a changing donor landscape. Despite efforts to integrate emerging countries into the traditional approach of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) to monitoring compliance through peer reviews, the aid architecture of the future might turn out to be a synthesis of established and new approaches.

Internationally Shared Goals and National Governments : A Case Study of France and Financing for Development

This paper focuses on Franceʼs response to internationally shared ODA/GNI targets in the field of development cooperation. At the Monterrey Conference in 2002, the international community declared that they would increase the ratio of ODA/GNI to 0. 7% by 2015. Although France undertook an individual target to achieve 0. 7% in 2012, she decreased her ODA and postponed her deadline. Facing the global financial crisis, international society reaffirmed its commitment to increase ODA at the 2008 Doha Conference. The DAC peer review called on France for national improvements in development cooperation, including ODA. The European Union also urged member states to increase ODA in order to achieve the agreed-upon ODA/GNI target and argued that the current economic crisis could not stand as an excuse for decreasing aid. These pressures did not succeed in forcing France to increase her ODA. Budgetary-planning processes and the attitudes of both the President and the ministry revealed that France seemed to give up increasing ODA, while she seemed to adhere to spread the concept of Global Public Goods and new financing measures. International pressures were ineffective in changing the course of Franceʼs national strategies/plans.

Knowledge Sharing through Collaboration in Development Studies: the Focuss.Info Initiative

This paper introduces a new research tool within the international field of development cooperation and studies: the Focuss.Info initiative. Focuss.Info facilitates a content specific search engine. This search engine indexes the favourite websites of partners in the initiative and individual contributors who are tagging their websites on a social bookmark platform. In this way, the field of global studies facilitates a valuable research tool in which institutions from all over the world collaborate and share their `knowledge of websites' with each other.

Ireland's Foreign Aid in 2004

This paper reviews Ireland's official development assistance (ODA) programme during 2004. It opens with an overview of global developments, including international conferences and negotiations, and then highlights the main events in the field of development cooperation during Ireland's presidency of the EU in the first half of the year. It then presents an overview of official aid flows from DAC donors, indicating an increase in real terms of 4.6% compared with 2003. Irish official aid also grew, but by much less than would be necessary to keep it on track for reaching the UN target of 0.7% of gross national income by the end of 2007. The paper provides data on total ODA for selected years since 1994 and a detailed breakdown of bilateral and multilateral aid expenditures for 2002, 2003 and 2004, comparing budgets with outturns under each of the main expenditure headings. Budgets for 2005 are also presented. New information relating to the government's proposal to decentralise DCI to Limerick is also examined.

Square Pegs and Round Holes

This article explores the relationship between the social construction of risk, uncertainty and evaluation in the field of development cooperation. It explores the assumption that risk and uncertainty are unusually high in development cooperation. Perceptions of risk and uncertainty are cultural constructs. Several authors have identified perceptions of uncertainty as one of the most important dimensions in organizational cultures. An analysis of evaluation reports shows that risk and uncertainty often emerge as a consequence of operational factors. Evaluations indicate that uncertainty is higher in technological and environmental areas. Furthermore, there are a number of management techniques of handling risk and uncertainty that could be used on development projects. Why have evaluations not influenced the conception of risk and uncertainty more than they have? Three characteristics of the evaluation system are described and discussed. First, the evaluation system is found to send mixed signals in respect of risk and uncertainty. Second, the messages are weak. Evaluation reports are not sufficiently anchored in theory and practice to command respect and belief among a widespread constituency. Third, the signals from the evaluation system have become routine. The messages no longer alarm management and decision-makers. The article concludes by assessing the future of risk and uncertainty management, in particular how evaluation systems may become more relevant in this field.

Professional training in environment and development: an example from the field of development co-operation

SUMMARY The application of the concept of sustainable development in development co-operation has created a need for additional professional training in The Netherlands. Sustainable development is a relatively new concept. Applying this concept in development projects and policies requires professionals with a interdisciplinary, analytical and environmentally-conscious approach. However, most of today's development experts have professional biases. Is it possible to teach development experts the sustainable development approach in a short training course? This article deals with the implementation of the concept of sustainable development for professional training purposes in the field of development co-operation. It describes the development of a training programme and its two central frameworks, illustrated with case studies. It also reports on experiences and makes evaluative remarks about the impact of the training on the participants. Since 1991, a one-week training programme has been used to update project staff and desk officers. The training offers: (1) an overview of backgrounds and policies in the field of environment and sustainable development; (2) theory and tools to analyse problems of unsustainability; and (3) theory and tools to (re-)design environmentally-sound activities, projects and programmes.