Multilateralism and Development Cooperation: The End of an Interesting Era?

Abstract

My argument is that while enormous progress has been made during the post–World War II “development era” during which there was substantial multilateral and bilateral development cooperation, or “foreign aid,” that era is coming to a close. The main driving forces of the end of the relevance of development cooperation to the overall development endeavor is that the politics of the rich Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries has shifted such that the broad development agenda of interest to the leaders (and citizens) of the “recipient” countries can no longer muster support. Instead, the mainstream, legacy development organizations supported by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (e.g., the World Bank) are caught in a cycle of increasing irrelevance and decline, and I argue that both the external political and the internal organizational dynamics of development organizations are past the point of no return.