Donors in transition and the future of development cooperation: What do the data from Brazil,India, China,and South Africa reveal?

How are Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors evolving their financial flows and aid modalities in response to the growing influence and economic power of Southern BRICS? After presenting the shifting landscape of international development cooperation, we explore five hypotheses about the changing nature of DAC aid allocation patterns and modalities in BRICS countries. In our conclusion, we reflect on the evolution of DAC engagement in Brazil, China, India, and South Africa (BASIC countries) and what it might mean for all official donors. Our assessment is that the changing geopolitical environment for development cooperation is once again privileging economic diplomacy concerns within DAC donors, propelling specific kinds of decisions about the choice of instruments, sectors, and modalities in BASIC countries. It would appear that the administrative practice of foreign aid is increasingly derived from changes within the institutional environment for international development.     

Making good on donors’ desire to Do Development Differently

Foreign aid donors are increasingly focused on changing the way their development agencies function. This discourse has focused on desired qualities, including greater knowledge of local contextual realities, appropriate adaptation to context and greater flexibility to respond to changing circumstances. We argue that more attention needs to be devoted to the achievement of these qualities and turn to contingency theory to identify some under-exploited ways to ‘do development differently’. The qualities sought by donors are emergent properties of complex organisational systems and will only be achieved through a micro-level and interlinked focus on the fundamentals of organisation.