A generous giant? The Development Assistance Policy of the European Union

Andrei Alexandru Dinu

Europolity – Continuity and Change in European Governance - Old Series, 2009, vol. 3, issue 2, 14-29

Abstract: The European Union’s Development policy is an interesting topic to study for various reasons. The Union is the largest donor in the world, and its supranational institutions play a key role in the discussed policy area, presenting us with a rare case for the scrutiny of the arguments produced by the IR theory debate over the value of institutions, their capacity to influence state behaviour and build a regime of cooperation that would eliminate uncertainty and conflict. Moreover, given the advanced stage of its integration, the EU’s Development policy offers fertile ground for evaluating how multilateralism affects the quality of aid, and the results should be representative at a global scale, since enlisting 27 participant states and 55% of the world’s donations makes the EU the most extensive regime of development aid. Results are somewhat contrary to expectations because in this specific case the supranational, despite coordinating and harmonizing national interests has its own foreign policy agenda, making “development” a secondary objective in the pursuit of a more important, domestic, “European” interest.

Keywords: development aid; European Union; International Relations Theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:epl:eplold:y:2009:v:3:i:2:p:14-29

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