What to Play Next: Development after the End of Development

By Heiner Janus and Michael Roll

Manchester embodies reinvention like few other places. It built the world’s first industrial economy, watched it rust, and recast itself as the capital of England’s north. When protests turned deadly at the Peterloo massacre, it helped galvanise a tradition of organised labour and democratic reform — one that later produced the suffragettes, founded there by Emmeline Pankhurst. And when the band Joy Division collapsed, the remaining members re-emerged as New Order. That instinct — not to reassemble what broke, but to build something new — was the animating spirit when the University of Manchester’s Global Development Institute convened researchers in mid-April to ask: is the era of Development over? And if so, what replaces it?

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The Disciplinary Roots of Disagreement in Development Studies: Findings from a Global Survey of Scholars

By Ryan Briggs and Andy Sumner

Development Studies is institutionally well established. The QS rankings identify over 150 universities with postgraduate Development Studies programmes across approximately 40 countries. Journals, institutes and scholarly associations have proliferated since the 1960s.

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Beyond Aid: The Political Economy of International Solidarity

Who Counts When Vulnerability Has No Strategic Value?

By Nadia Molenaers

The debate about the future of development cooperation has accelerated sharply. Aid budgets are shrinking in several donor countries. Geopolitical rivalry is reshaping international partnerships. New actors and new financing mechanisms are challenging long-standing assumptions about how international cooperation should be organised. For many observers, the central question is what comes after aid.

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Towards a New Governance Architecture for Development Cooperation

By José Antonio Alonso

At the beginning of the 1960s, OECD donors decided to establish a specialized body—the Development Assistance Committee (DAC)—to govern the aid system. Since then, the DAC has proven effective in defining standards, harmonizing reporting, disseminating good practices, and promoting learning and accountability among donors. These achievements, however, go along with a fundamental limitation: the exclusive nature of the institution. Although development cooperation formally embraces the principle of country ownership, the governance of the system excludes the representation and voice of those who are expected to exercise that ownership.

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Three Implications of the Oil Shock for the Turbulent Political Economy of Development Cooperation

By Andy Sumner and Stephan Klingebiel

The 2026 US–Israel–Iran war has produced what the International Energy Agency describes as the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. Brent crude rose from around $70 at the end of February to a peak of about $140 in early April before settling around $100 as of early June 2026. In a new Brief we argue that the significance of the oil shock lies not only in the price increase itself but in its timing.

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