The political economy literature highlights the redistribution of resources to political support groups - often along regional or ethnic lines - as an axiom of political systems. In contrast to this dominant pattern, Kasara (2007) documents a puzzling result of discriminatory rent extraction by...

Global development policy is a particularly revealing field in which the Trump administration combines crude transactionalism with a high level of ideological commitment, namely an authoritarian libertarianism oriented toward elite interests. This is coupled with, at times, a chaotic absence of...

Aid beneficiaries know very little about development interventions in their own communities. This lack of transparency and information is likely to reduce beneficiaries' ability and willingness to become active in local development. It may also dampen intended aid effects on beneficiaries'...

Drawing from a growing body of literature on development aid in fragile contexts, this paper investigates the effectiveness of COVID-19 aid in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The paper uses the OECD's Principles for Good International Engagement in Fragile States and Situations to...

The political economy literature highlights the redistribution of resources to political support groups - often along regional or ethnic lines - as an axiom of political systems. In contrast to this dominant pattern, Kasara (2007) documents a puzzling result of discriminatory rent extraction by...

The article addresses the consequences of the externalisation of EU border policies on the legal and institutional dynamics that govern those policies. Drawing on the analysis of legal and policy documents and interviews, which were conducted with expert public servants among EU institutions and...

This article examines smart cities as a locus for international power struggles, emerged at the gap between their discursive and materialised realities. While the body of research on smart cities is growing, most studies focus on their development within individual nation-states. However, the...

This joint World Bank and UNHCR report is developed in response to the United Nation (UN) omnibus resolution to coordinate an effort to measure the impact arising from hosting, protecting and assisting refugees. Following this resolution UNHCR, with assistance from the World Bank, led a...

Financial student aid improves educational outcomes and reduces social inequality, yet many eligible students do not take it up. To examine whether correcting misperceptions increases take-up, I conducted an RCT with 6,225 university students across Germany who were not receiving aid. I find...

Given the increasing global interest in the transition to green energy sources in developing countries that have financial constraints, this study examines the influence of foreign finance on the production and consumption of renewable energy (RE). The study also explores whether globalization...

We review the literature on the political economy of foreign aid, examining the geopolitical returns generated by Official Development Assistance (ODA). Our paper identifies conditions under which donors are able to influence political and economic outcomes in recipient countries, shape their...

Development aid faces a crisis of budgets, legitimacy, and political alignment. Framed in recent decades as technocratic and benevolent, aid has always been political, shaped by donor and recipient incentives. Its post–Cold War expansion reflected a permissive era of unipolarity and...

Seven decades after the landmark Asian-African Conference held in Bandung, Indonesia, its outcomes and principles continue to guide South-South and Triangular Cooperation (SSTrC) among the nations of the global South. Despite the current challenges facing global governance, multilateralism and...

The following article diagnoses the collapse of the Official Development Aid system (ODA), this ODA system which had been rebuilt since the beginning of the century, after the earthquake of the fall of the Berlin Wall, with which it shares common points. The article points out that this second...

The African Development Fund (ADF) is much less active than the World Bank's IDA in Africa. This predominance of the IDA is only found in Africa. In fact, disbursements by other major regional banks exceed those of the World Bank in their respective regions (Central America and the Caribbean,...

Since its inception in 2008, the Development Policy Financing (DPF) with a Catastrophe Deferred Drawdown Option (Cat DDO) instrument has seen significant expansion across all regions, channeling almost five billion US dollars to support countries in the aftermath of a natural catastrophe. As a...

This publication showcases practical examples of how countries, with financing from International Development Association (IDA) and technical assistance support funded by the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), are turning this vision into reality one project at a time -...

Investing in health is one of the most powerful drivers of human capital formation, economic growth, and job creation. However, low- and lower-middle-income countries are at a crossroads with growing economic uncertainty and sharp cuts to external aid. This report-part of an annual...

Biodiversity is the variety of life at genetic, species, and ecosystems levels. It is essential to sustain human life, food security, crop yields, jobs, livelihoods, and marine productivity. Yet, it is declining at an unprecedented rate as the planet approaches a tipping point that could have...