International organizations do not always live up to the expectations and mandates of their member countries. One of the best examples of this gap is the environmental performance of multilateral development banks, which are tasked with allocating and managing approximately half of all development assistance worldwide. In the 1980s and 1990s, the multilateral development banks came under severe criticism for financing projects that caused extensive deforestation, polluted large urban areas, displaced millions of people, and destroyed valuable natural resources. In response to significant and public failures, member countries established or strengthened administrative procedures, citizen complaint mechanisms, project evaluation, and strategic planning processes. All of these reforms intended to close the gap between the mandates and performance of the multilateral development banks by shaping the way projects are approved. Giving Aid Effectively provides a systematic examination of whether these efforts have succeeded in aligning allocation decisions with performance. Mark T. Buntaine argues that the most important way to give aid effectively is selectivity - moving towards projects with a record of success and away from projects with a record of failure for individual recipient countries. This book shows that under certain circumstances, the control mechanisms established to close the gap between mandate and performance have achieved selectivity. Member countries prompt the multilateral development banks to give aid more effectively when they generate information about the outcomes of past operations and use that information to make less successful projects harder to approve or more successful projects easier to approve. This argument is substantiated with the most extensive analysis of evaluations across four multilateral development banks ever completed, together with in-depth case studies and dozens of interviews. More generally, Giving Aid Effectively demonstrates that member countries have a number of mechanisms that allow them to manage international organizations for results.

Knowledge and rigorous evidence around the role of external development partners in situations of conflict and fragility is still lacking. There is little accountability for the billions in aid being spent in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and the Democratic Republic of Congo. This book analyses evaluation theory and practice in order to help fill this knowledge gap and advocates a realistic and rigorous approach to evaluating international engagement. Through a series of case studies, this book highlights both the promise, and potential pitfalls, of taking a more evaluative approach to understanding aid in conflict regions. These illustrate the methodological and analytical approach taken by researchers working to understand the results and effectiveness of conflict prevention and peacebuilding support. While well-grounded in current theoretical and methodological debates, the book provides valuable practical information by examining how and why different choices were made in the context of each evaluation. The book shows what future steps may be envisaged to further strengthen evaluations of support for conflict prevention and peacebuilding. The analysis draws on a wealth of perspectives and voices to provide researchers and students in development studies and conflict and peace studies as well as development evaluators with a deep and broad understanding of evaluation methods and approaches.

This book is a critical analysis of several of the most disaster-prone regions in Asia. Its unique focus is on the legal issues in the phase of disaster recovery, the most lengthy and difficult stage of disaster response that follows the conclusion of initial emergency stage of humanitarian aid. In the stage of disaster recovery, the law decides the fate of reconstruction for the individual houses and livelihoods of the disaster-affected people and sets the limit of governmental support for them during the lengthy period of suspension of normal living until full recovery is obtained. Researchers who were participant-observers in the difficult recovery phase after the mega-disasters in Asia analyse the reality of the functions of law which often hinder, rather than foster, efforts to restore disaster victims' lives. The book collects research conducted with an emphasis on empirical approaches to legal sociology, including direct interviews with people affected by the disaster. It offers a holistic approach beyond the traditional sectionalism of legal studies by starting with a historical review and incorporating both spheres of public law and private law, in order to obtain a new perspective that can concurrently achieve disaster risk reductions and human-centered recoveries. With particular emphasis on the unexplored area of law in the post-disaster recovery phase, this book will attract the attention of students and scholars of disaster studies, legal studies, Asian studies, as well as those who work in the practice of disaster management.

The interconnectedness of communities, organisations, governing bodies, policy and individuals in the field of disaster studies has never been accurately examined or comprehensively modelled. This kind of study is vital for planning policy and emergency responses and assessing individual and community vulnerability, resilience and sustainability as well as mitigation and adaptation to climate change impacts; it therefore deserves attention. Disasters and Social Resilience fills this gap by introducing to the field of disaster studies a fresh methodology and a model for examining and measuring impacts and responses to disasters. Urie Bronfenbrenner's bioecological systems theory, which is used to look at communities holistically, is outlined and illustrated through a series of chapters, guiding the reader from the theory's underpinnings through research illustrations and applications focused on each level of Bronfenbrenner's ecosystems, culminating in an integration chapter. The final chapter provides policy recommendations for local and national government bodies and emergency providers to help individuals and communities prepare and withstand the effects of a range of disasters. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of disaster and emergency management, disaster readiness and risk reduction (DRR), and to scholars and students of more general climate change and sustainability studies.

Early Warning Systems: From Surveillance to Risk Assessment to Action Ted R. Gurr and Barbara Harff Initial Response to Complex Emergencies and Natural Disasters Ed Tsui Evidence-Based Health Assessment Process in Complex Emergencies Frederick M. Burkle, Jr., M.D. Concern Worldwide's Approach to Water and Sanitation and Shelter Needs in Emergencies Tom Arnold Internal Displacement: A Challenge of Peace, Security, and Nationbuilding Francis M. Deng Protection Strategies in Humanitarian Interventions Gerald R. Martone Issues of Power and Gender in Complex Emergencies Judy A. Benjamin Clinical Aspects of Malnutrition Kevin M. Cahill, M.D. Military-NGO Interaction Timothy Cross An Introduction to NGO Field Security Randolph Martin Resolutions, Mandates, Aims, Missions, and Exit Strategies Larry Hollingworth The Transition from Conflict to Peace Richard Ryscavage, S.J.

This book examines the sociological consequences of disaster relief and recovery, and uncovers its impact on the communities that were affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. It is the most extensive and intensive study of post-disaster community rebuilding yet reported in the literature on the subject. The authors draw on this research to develop a three-phase strategy for moving from quick and effective relief to long-term social recovery work. While there have been many big natural disasters since then, none have affected so many local communities spread over so many nations and none have evoked the same kind of global response. A great deal of post-tsunami recovery work was done in India and Sri Lanka, with more than 500 international aid and humanitarian agencies involved in Sri Lanka alone - many with little experience in long-term community development. This book argues that international aid agencies must work patiently to put in place meaningful partnerships with local, community-based organisations as soon as long-term physical and social planning becomes possible. The authors explain that such an approach could help address some pre-existing vulnerabilities in disaster-affected communities. They argue that it is much easier to rebuild damaged infrastructure than to rebuild shattered lives, and to ensure that traumatised communities are not put under new stresses and strains, the 'fault-lines' within these communities need to be lessened.

In The Need to Help Liisa H. Malkki shifts the focus of the study of humanitarian intervention from aid recipients to aid workers themselves. The anthropological commitment to understand the motivations and desires of these professionals and how they imagine themselves in the world "out there," led Malkki to spend more than a decade interviewing members of the international Finnish Red Cross, as well as observing Finns who volunteered from their homes through gifts of handwork. The need to help, she shows, can come from a profound neediness-the need for aid workers and volunteers to be part of the lively world and something greater than themselves, and, in the case of the elderly who knit "trauma teddies" and "aid bunnies" for "needy children," the need to fight loneliness and loss of personhood. In seriously examining aspects of humanitarian aid often dismissed as sentimental, or trivial, Malkki complicates notions of what constitutes real political work. She traces how the international is always entangled in the domestic, whether in the shape of the need to leave home or handmade gifts that are an aid to sociality and to the imagination of the world.

Current debates on emerging powers as foreign aid donors often fail to examine the myriad geopolitical, geoeconomic and geocultural tensions that influence policies of Official Development Assistance (ODA). This book advocates a regional geopolitical approach to explaining donor-donor relationships and provides a multidisciplinary critical assessment of the contemporary debates on emerging powers and foreign aid, bringing together economic and geopolitical approaches in the light of the 2015 completion of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Moving away from established debates assessing the advantages and disadvantages of foreign aid, this book challenges the current geopolitical assumptions of the emerging powers concerning issues such as 'south-south' solidarity, shared development experience and 'multipolarity'. It analyses how donor governments 'sell' aid to recipients through enabling different cultural assumptions and soft power narratives of national identity and provides empirical evidence on agendas such as aid effectiveness, aid for trade, public-private partnerships, and green growth aid. The book examines the role of, and relationships between, the leading traditional and emerging power Asian donors specifically, and explores the different and contested perspectives and patterns of ODA policy through an alternative account of emerging power foreign aid to leading African and Asian recipients. This book provides a valuable resource for postgraduate students and practitioners across disciplines such as development economics and geopolitics of development, uniquely approaching the debate from the perspective of emerging powers and donors.

This book examines the practices in Western and local spheres of humanitarian intervention, and shows how the divide between these spheres helps to perpetuate Western involvement. Using the Democratic Republic of the Congo as a case study - an object of Western intervention since colonial times - this book scrutinizes the contemporary practice of humanitarian intervention from the inside. It seeks to expose how humanitarian aid and peacekeeping works, what obstacles they encounter and how they manage to retain their legitimacy. By examining the relationship between the West and the DR Congo, this volume asks why intervention continues to be so central for the relationship between Western and local spheres. Why is it normal and self-evident? The main answer developed here is that the separation of these two spheres allows intervention to enjoy sufficient degrees of legitimacy to be sustained. Owing to the contradictions that surface when juxtaposing the Western and Congolese spheres, this book highlights how keeping them separate is key to sustaining intervention. Bridging the divide between the liberal peace debate in International Relations and anthropologies of humanitarianism, this volume thus presents an important contribution to taking both the legitimizing proclamations and 'local' realities of intervention seriously. The book will be of much interest to students of statebuilding, peacebuilding, peacekeeping, anthropology, research methods and IR in general.

Drawing on recently released Soviet archival materials, Hunger and War investigates state food supply policy and its impact on Soviet society during World War II. It explores the role of the state in provisioning the urban population, particularly workers, with food; feeding the Red army; the medicalization of hunger; hunger in blockaded Leningrad; and civilian mortality from hunger and malnutrition in other home front industrial regions. New research reported here challenges and complicates many of the narratives and counter-narratives about the war. The authors engage such difficult subjects as starvation mortality, bitterness over privation and inequalities in provisioning, and conflicts among state organizations. At the same time, they recognize the considerable role played by the Soviet state in organizing supplies of food to adequately support the military effort and defense production and in developing policies that promoted social stability amid upheaval. The book makes a significant contribution to scholarship on the Soviet population's experience of World War II as well as to studies of war and famine.

In June 2011, the city of Minot, North Dakota sustained the greatest flood in its history. Rather than buckling under the immense weight of the flood on a personal and community level, government, civic groups, and citizens began to immediately assess and address the event's impacts. Why did the disaster in Minot lead to government and community resilience, whereas during Hurricane Katrina, the non-resilience of the government and community of New Orleans resulted in widespread devastation? This book seeks to answer that question by examining how local government institutions affect pre- and post-disaster community and business resilience. Utilizing both survey methods and interviews, Atkinson analyzes the disasters that occurred in New Orleans, Louisiana, Palm Beach County, Florida, and Minot, North Dakota. He argues that institutional culture within local government impacts not only the immediate outcomes experienced during response, but the long-term prognosis of recovery for a community outside the walls of city hall. Understanding tendencies within a community that lead to increased vulnerability of both individuals and businesses can lead to shifts in governmental/community priorities, and potentially to improved resilience in the face of hazard events. Relevant to scholars of public administration, disaster researchers, and government officials, this book contributes to a growing literature on community and business resilience. It explores not just the devastation of natural disasters, but profiles governmental impacts that led to responsive and able processes in the face of disaster.

This collection of research papers explores the impact of the Arab uprisings on the politics and political economy of foreign aid provision in the MENA region. Contributions focus on the foreign assistance policies and strategies of key donors (United States, Europe, Gulf countries and Turkey), and on the relationship between donors and recipients of foreign aid in a select set of MENA cases (Tunisia, Egypt, Palestine and to a lesser extent Morocco). Despite widespread rhetoric among lead donors pledging to support the transformational potential of the Arab uprisings, the contributions find a more complex pattern in foreign aid provision since 2011. Among Arab donors, who have played a significant role as providers of aid to states most affected by mass protests, trends in foreign assistance reflect the competing priorities of donors, and their willingness to politicize aid provision in pursuit of their strategic interests. Among Western donors, authors find a high degree of continuity. Chapters that focus on Western donors seek to account for continuity on the part of Western governments and the EU at a moment of profound transformational potential. Two factors, bureaucratization and securitization, capture most of the explanations provided, which take into account a variety of local dimensions as well. Contributions also discuss the changing assistance environment, namely the globalization of foreign assistance, the complex bureaucratic arrangements presiding over the delivery of European and US aid, and the role of regional and international non-democracies in the provision of foreign assistance. This book was published as a special issue of Mediterranean Politics.

For over sixty years, conflict between state forces and armed ethnic groups was ongoing in parts of the borderlands of Burma. Ethnic minority communities were subjected to systematic and widespread abuses by an increasingly complex patchwork of armed state and non-state actors. Populations in more remote and disputed border areas typically had little to no access to even basic healthcare and education services. As part of its counter-insurgency campaign, the military state also historically restricted international humanitarian access to civilian populations in unstable border areas. It was in this context that "cross-border aid" to Burma had developed, as an alternative mechanism for channelling assistance to populations denied aid through more conventional systems. Yet by the late 2000s, national and international changes had significant impacts on an aid debate, which had important political and ethical implications. Through an ethnographic study of a cross-border aid organisation working on the Thailand-Burma border, this book focuses on the political and ethical dilemmas of "humanitarian government". It explores the ways in which aid systems come to be defined as legitimate or illegitimate, humanitarian or "un-humanitarian", in an international context that has witnessed the multiplication of often-conflicting humanitarian systems and models. It examines how an "embodied history" of violence can shape the worldviews and actions of local humanitarian actors, as well as institutions created to mitigate human suffering. It goes on to look at the complex and often-invisible webs of local organisations, international NGOs, donors, armed groups and other actors, which can develop in a cross-border and extra-legal context - a context where competing constructions of systems as legitimate or illegitimate are highlighted. Exploring the history of humanitarianism from the local aid perspective of Burma, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Southeast Asian Studies, Anthropology of Humanitarian Aid and Development Studies.

Less than half of the public in the U.S. have taken the three steps to prepare for emergencies that are recommended by FEMA and the Red Cross: having a 3-day emergency kit, a family communication plan, and knowing where to get information during an emergency. Although emergency managers attempt to train the public, often they are only able to distribute brochures and make public notifications. For a variety of reasons, the public frequently ignores this guidance, leaving people more vulnerable during emergencies. This book applies the process of social marketing, which has been used widely in public health and other disciplines, to the lack of public preparedness. Written for emergency managers in government and non-profit agencies, students, and volunteers, the book provides enough background and resources to enable the user to carry out an effective emergency preparedness campaign in their community and maintain it over time. Unlike preparing one message for everyone, social marketing involves working with smaller communities to identify what and how people want to learn, training them, and then maintaining that relationship to insure their preparedness. Because most emergency management agencies lack resources to take on such an initiative, the book provides readers with low cost methods to begin a social marketing program.

Less than half of the public in the U.S. have taken the three steps to prepare for emergencies that are recommended by FEMA and the Red Cross: having a 3-day emergency kit, a family communication plan, and knowing where to get information during an emergency. Although emergency managers attempt to train the public, often they are only able to distribute brochures and make public notifications. For a variety of reasons, the public frequently ignores this guidance, leaving people more vulnerable during emergencies. This book applies the process of social marketing, which has been used widely in public health and other disciplines, to the lack of public preparedness. Written for emergency managers in government and non-profit agencies, students, and volunteers, the book provides enough background and resources to enable the user to carry out an effective emergency preparedness campaign in their community and maintain it over time. Unlike preparing one message for everyone, social marketing involves working with smaller communities to identify what and how people want to learn, training them, and then maintaining that relationship to insure their preparedness. Because most emergency management agencies lack resources to take on such an initiative, the book provides readers with low cost methods to begin a social marketing program.

The West and the East approach economic development differently. The Europeans and Americans stress free and fair business climate, promoting private activities generally without picking winners, and improving governance. East Asia is interested in achieving concrete results and projects rather than formal correctness, prioritizing a few sectors for industrialization, and eventual graduation from aid. The West mostly shapes shifting strategies of the international donor community while the East has in reality made remarkable progress in industrial catch-up. The two approaches cannot be merged easily but they can be used in proper combination to realize growth and economic transformation. This book proposes more dialogue and complementarity between the two in the development effort of Africa and other regions. In this collected volume, contributed by experts and practitioners from both East and West, the need to introduce Eastern ideas to the global development strategy is emphasized. Analysis of British and other Western donor policies is given while Japanese, Korean, and other Asian approaches are also explained with concrete examples. The concept of governance for growth is presented and the impact of rising China on development studies is contemplated. The practices of industrial policy dialogues and actions assisted by East Asian experts are reported from Tunisia, Zambia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and others. The book should be applicable to all donors, institutions, NGOs and business enterprises engaged in development cooperation.

While the success and failure of development cooperation and humanitarian aid have found extensive coverage in the academic literature and the public debate, studies that address the experience of aid workers are still rare. This book explores the life worlds of people working in aid and analyses the processes that lead to the involvement in development cooperation, emergency relief and human rights work and what impact aid work has on the life-courses of aid workers, including their relationships with friends, family and partners.

In order to capture the trajectories which lead to "Aidland" a biographical perspective is employed. Rich reflexive data allows the author to theorize about the often contradictory experiences of those involved in development cooperation, emergency relief and human rights work. A life-course perspective on the involvement in "Aidland" reveals that boundary crossing between development cooperation, emergency relief and human rights is not unusual and that considering these fields as separate spheres might overlook important connections. The book addresses power relations not just between aid recipients and donors but also among aid personnel.

This book constitutes an important supplement to existing studies that predominantly focus on the contradictions and dilemmas of aid, but neglect the experiences of aid workers themselves. It contributes to the emerging sociology and anthropology of aid workers and is of great interest to professionals and researchers in Humanitarian and development studies, sociology, anthropology, political science and international relations, international social work and social psychology.

The overflow of information generated during disasters can be as paralyzing to humanitarian response as the lack of information. This flash flood of information-social media, satellite imagery and more-is often referred to as Big Data. Making sense of this data deluge during disasters is proving an impossible challenge for traditional humanitarian organizations, which explains why they're turning to Digital Humanitarians. Who exactly are these Digital Humanitarians and how do they make sense of Big Data? Digital Humanitarians: How Big Data Is Changing the Face of Humanitarian Response answers this question. Digital Humanitarians are you, me, all of us-volunteers, students and professionals from the world over and from all walks of life. What do they share in common? They desire to make a difference, and they do by rapidly mobilizing online in collaboration with international humanitarian organizations. In virtually real-time, they make sense of vast volumes of social media, SMS and imagery captured from satellites and UAVs to support relief efforts worldwide. How? They craft and leverage ingenious crowdsourcing solutions with trail-blazing insights from artificial intelligence. This book charts the sudden and spectacular rise of Digital Humanitarians by sharing their remarkable, real-life stories, highlighting how their humanity coupled with innovative solutions to Big Data is changing humanitarian response forever. Digital Humanitarians will make you think differently about what it means to be humanitarian and will invite you to join the journey online.

It was almost November 2012 when Hurricane Sandy, a late arrival in an otherwise quiet tropical season, slammed into the Mid-Atlantic US coastline. Millions of residents were plunged into darkness and billions of dollars in property and infrastructure were flooded or washed away in surging waters. Blizzard conditions struck the Appalachians as the hybrid Halloween monster moved inland. Savage Sand and Surf: The Hurricane Sandy Disaster is multi-faceted examination into one of the most recent natural disasters in the United States. Scholars from multiple disciplines address a wide range of important aspects of this event, including unique meteorological and social impacts of Sandy, Sandy's intersection with vulnerable social groups in society, and social institutions' adaptations to the disaster. Also, different theoretical models of disasters are explored and applied to better understand and prepare for similar events in the future.

For effective preparedness, emergency managers must comprehend how a disaster impacts not only the physical infrastructure of the affected community but also the population. They must understand how the people interact with one another, how they interact with government, and how they react to the disaster event. In other words, they must have social intelligence. Emergency Management and Social Intelligence: A Comprehensive All-Hazards Approach provides a comprehensive framework for understanding a community before, during, and after a disaster in order to best mitigate the effect of a disaster on its people. After an overview of what we've learned and what we haven't learned from past events, the book provides detailed case studies on a spectrum of disasters spanning a century, including hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and oil spills. This context provides a framework for understanding a host of essential issues, including: The interplay between how people perceive people in their communities, the public policy which results from socially constructed views, and the issues which surface during and after disaster as a result The base logic of Social Intelligence which is rooted in the U.S. national security and intelligence apparatus The application of the intelligence cycle in emergency management and how to develop and understand situational awareness Baseline data points applicable to any community or jurisdiction and how they can be woven together to build on existing jurisdictional competence and real-time situational awareness How geographic information systems (GISs) are used in emergency management, along with their limitations and the different software programs available Modeling for disasters and how this helps the emergency management community plan for and respond to disasters How emergency managers can use social intelligence to build resiliency at the local level and harness preexisting community strength before, during, and after a disaster The insight presented in this volume supplies emergency managers, policy makers, and elected officials with a powerful blueprint for implementing social intelligence in any community or organization, maximizing the effectiveness of disaster recovery efforts. Equally important, this volume supplies emergency managers, municipalities, government organizations, and private sector entities with a framework to understand and identify social and economic fault lines in communities.

Global development actors such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund claim that the shift to the poverty reduction strategy framework and emphasis on local participation address the social cost of earlier adjustment programs and help put aid-receiving countries back in control of their own development agenda. Drawing on the case of Ghana, Lord Mawuko-Yevugah argues that this shift and the emphasis on partnerships between donors and poor countries, local participation, and country ownership simultaneously represents a substantive departure from earlier versions of neo-liberalism and an attempt by global development actors and local governing and social elites to justify, and legitimize the neo-liberal policy paradigm. This book shows how the new architecture of aid has important implications in three distinct but related ways: the discursive construction and production of post-colonial societies; the changing focus of Western aid and development policy interventions; and the reproduction of the politics of inclusive exclusion. The author provides detailed and original research on the new development paradigm and develops a critical theoretical approach to re-think conventional analyses of the new discourses on aid whilst offering a fresh, alternative interpretation of changes in international aid relations.

New Media and International Development is the first in-depth examination of microfinance's enduring popularity with Northern publics. Through a case study of Kiva.org, the world's first person-to-person microlending website, and other microfinance organizations, the book argues that international development efforts have an affective dimension. This is fostered through narrative and visual representations, through the performance of development rituals and through bonds of fellowship between Northern donors and Southern recipients. These practices constitute people in the global North as everyday humanitarians and mobilize their affective investments, which are financial, social and emotional investments in distant others to alleviate their poverty. This book draws on ethnographic material from the US, India and Indonesia and the anthropological and development studies literature on humanitarianism, affect and the public faces of development. It opens up novel avenues of research into the formation of new development subjects in the global North. This book will appeal to researchers and students of international development, anthropology, media studies and related fields, as well as practitioners and professionals in the field of international development

New Media and International Development is the first in-depth examination of microfinance's enduring popularity with Northern publics. Through a case study of Kiva.org, the world's first person-to-person microlending website, and other microfinance organizations, the book argues that international development efforts have an affective dimension. This is fostered through narrative and visual representations, through the performance of development rituals and through bonds of fellowship between Northern donors and Southern recipients. These practices constitute people in the global North as everyday humanitarians and mobilize their affective investments, which are financial, social and emotional investments in distant others to alleviate their poverty. This book draws on ethnographic material from the US, India and Indonesia and the anthropological and development studies literature on humanitarianism, affect and the public faces of development. It opens up novel avenues of research into the formation of new development subjects in the global North. This book will appeal to researchers and students of international development, anthropology, media studies and related fields, as well as practitioners and professionals in the field of international development

In December 2004 the Indian Ocean tsunami devastated coastal regions of Sri Lanka. Six months later, Michele Ruth Gamburd returned to the village where she had been conducting research for many years and began collecting residents' stories of the disaster and its aftermath: the chaos and loss of the flood itself; the sense of community and leveling of social distinctions as people worked together to recover and regroup; and the local and national politics of foreign aid as the country began to rebuild. In The Golden Wave, Gamburd describes how the catastrophe changed social identities, economic dynamics, and political structures.

Current debates on emerging powers as foreign aid donors often fail to examine the myriad geopolitical, geoeconomic and geocultural tensions that influence policies of Official Development Assistance (ODA).

This book advocates a regional geopolitical approach to explaining donor-donor relationships and provides a multidisciplinary critical assessment of the contemporary debates on emerging powers and foreign aid, bringing together economic and geopolitical approaches in the light of the 2015 completion of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Moving away from established debates assessing the advantages and disadvantages of foreign aid, this book challenges the current geopolitical assumptions of the emerging powers concerning issues such as 'south-south' solidarity, shared development experience and 'multipolarity'. It analyses how donor governments 'sell' aid to recipients through enabling different cultural assumptions and soft power narratives of national identity and provides empirical evidence on agendas such as aid effectiveness, aid for trade, public-private partnerships, and green growth aid. The book examines the role of, and relationships between, the leading traditional and emerging power Asian donors specifically, and explores the different and contested perspectives and patterns of ODA policy through an alternative account of emerging power foreign aid to leading African and Asian recipients.

This book provides a valuable resource for postgraduate students and practitioners across disciplines such as development economics and geopolitics of development, uniquely approaching the debate from the perspective of emerging powers and donors.