Aiding Global Public Policy: Rethinking Rationales and Roles

Abstract

Traditional development agencies, emerging aid providers, and recipient countries are in strong agreement that the fundamental purpose of aid is to help achieve the development priorities of sovereign states in need. This agreement serves both aid effectiveness and national interest objectives. At the same time, a range of global problems is rendering development gains ever more precarious and making increasing calls on aid budgets. Such problems include instability in highly integrated global markets for food, fuel, and finance, natural resource depletion, the persistence or emergence of infectious diseases, and the increasing impacts of climate change. Moreover, after growing by some 60 percent over the previous decade, global aid peaked in 2010 and now looks set to decline or at best stagnate, as most donor countries pursue fiscal consolidation and public debt reduction strategies and as more and more countries graduate from low-income status.