By Lars Engberg-Pedersen
In a recent piece on this blog, Stephan Klingebiel and Andy Sumner take up the important question of how the present situation of international cooperation and global development should be described. Clearly, they should be thanked for addressing the question, which has become increasingly urgent the last year. In this piece, I will discuss some of their arguments as an input into the discussion of contemporary changes.
Multilateralism and solidarity
Overall, Klingebiel and Sumner describe multilateralism and global solidarity as the norms underlying international development cooperation. This can be questioned. Most major donors have provided the majority of their aid through bilateral channels or earmarked multilateral assistance. While the Sustainable Development Goals can be seen as a truly multilateral undertaking, their lack of financing demonstrates the limited enthusiasm for multilateralism.
Solidarity has only characterized development cooperation as a legitimizing tool. In reality, foreign aid has always been organized according to donor interests (geopolitics, commerce, security, migration, etc.). Apart from a brief period around 2005-2011, country ownership and alignment to national policies have rarely been concerns for most donor agencies.
Klingebiel and Sumner note that practice often fell short of following the norm of multilateralism and solidarity. If this is true, we then have to ask how the normative power of these concerns materialized itself? In my reading of the history of international development cooperation, power and interests play a much more substantial role.
Disruption and tipping points
The authors continue to describe the current situation as one of normative disruption and a tipping point. An alternative interpretation could be to interpret Trump’s policy as finally catching up with the movement towards self-interested development cooperation pursued by other countries – approximately from 2011 onwards (the de facto break-down of the Paris agenda in Buzan).
Moreover, the gradual change of development cooperation is just as much a result of new South donors entering development cooperation and the graduation of many low-income countries. Thus, it is difficult to see Trump’s policy as a disruption of a well-established normative regime.
What’s more, the tipping point terminology suggests that we move irrevocably from one regime to another. As Klingebiel and Sumner themselves note, there are competing approaches to international cooperation around, so where we are heading is very much up in the air. However, it is a good point to emphasise that change is inevitable and that longing for ‘the good old days’ is little helpful.
Norm erosion or norm change?
Being interested in the norms of development cooperation, the authors identify four mechanisms of norm erosion (layering, drift, conversion and displacement). This is an interesting discussion, but whether it helps to understand the current situation is unclear. Global norms are inherently contested, and the challenges to multilateralism and solidarity are not new.
No doubt, the US is a major player and Trump’s policy is accordingly important, but apart from this, there are significant attempts to maintain international cooperation and develop it in new directions. So, it may be more interesting to explore signs of norm change than norm erosion.
Klingebiel and Sumner also refer to their proposition of a ‘New Washington Dissensus’. It refers, tongue in cheek, to the neo-liberal Washington Consensus which included a broad range of Western actors, and which was focused on economic development. The authors’ concept, however, refers to the ideas of a single country administration and to its relations with other countries.
In analogy to the Washington Consensus, the concept suggests that the Trump administration sets a new ideological paradigm for development, which seems questionable, as the significant cuts in foreign aid undertaken by other major Western countries have been explained differently (defence expenses, economic crisis).
Current normative regimes
The above leads Klingebiel and Sumner to identify a plural and fractured normative landscape for development cooperation. They suggest four competing regimes: (i) liberal multilateralism, (ii) nationalism, (iii) pluralism cooperation – read South-South cooperation – and (iv) strategic multilateralism pursuing new forms of cooperation. This may be a helpful categorization as it identifies important tendences.
However, first, it needs to be understood in a much longer historical perspective than since 20 January 2025. These tendencies are not a consequence of the Trump administration but of diverse changes over last 20-30 years. Second, the categorization seems to be based on a Western liberal perspective. From a middle-income country perspective in the Global South, current changes may be seen as liberating, or even as a long wished-for dismantling of the Western power hegemony and an opportunity for establishing a fairer multilateralism. Similarly, as seen from a critical perspective on neoliberalism, current changes could be viewed as enabling less market-dogmatic approaches.
Alternatives
Thus, there are other ways of conceptualizing the current situation. One could be as a break-through of Southern perspectives. Another could be as the latest materialization of the ongoing struggle between the three big ideologies of (i) humanitarianism and international cooperation, (ii) neoliberalism, and (iii) nationalism where the last ideological stream currently has an upper hand.
It could also be seen as a move towards a composition of big and small powers where the latter have grown in quantity and economic power making the hegemony of big powers less certain. In any case, categorizations carry their own assumptions and frame action and should therefore be critically assessed.
Overall, I am not convinced that the current situation should be necessarily depicted as a downward spiral for international cooperation. It is significantly challenged, no doubt about that, but it is important to look for opportunities as much as setbacks. The former may be difficult to identify without hindsight, but it seems too early to bury multilateralism in the graveyard of nationalism.
Lars Engberg-Pedersen is Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS). His research concentrates on international norms primarily related to gender equality and how they influence change at national and local levels. Moreover, he works on Danish and international development cooperation, its administration and its changing nature.