By Nadia Molenaers
Development cooperation is not simply facing another cyclical debate about effectiveness. It is facing something deeper: a crisis of the very roles through which it has historically been justified. For decades, development cooperation drew its legitimacy from two overlapping functions. First, it was seen as an instrument of international influence: a way for states to build relations, project (democratic, human rights) values, and shape the international environment. Second, it was presented as a symbol of international solidarity: an expression of moral responsibility, redistribution, and a concern for global inequality.
These two functions were partially overlapping. Development cooperation has never been purely altruistic, but neither was it merely a cynical instrument of statecraft. Its legitimacy rested precisely on the coexistence of both logics.
What is changing today is not that interests have suddenly entered or captured development cooperation. They’ve always been there. I argue that the break lies elsewhere: for the first time in the history of development cooperation, both legitimizing functions are eroding at the same time. Development cooperation is becoming less convincing as a benign instrument of international influence, and less persuasive as a broadly shared expression of solidarity. Budget cuts, rising earmarking, declining trust in multilateral institutions, strategic competition, migration bargains, sanctions, and domestic political backlash all point in the same direction. Recent work by Sumner and Klingebiel captures this broader moment well by describing development cooperation as being at a tipping point and by outlining four possible futures for global development cooperation. This blog is in conversation with that scenario-based debate, but it begins from a different analytical entry point: the simultaneous erosion of the two classical sources of legitimacy through which development cooperation has historically been justified, namely international influence and international solidarity. It also develops a different scenario architecture, centred on fragmented multi-partnering, bloc competition and deals, repaired multilateralism, and global public investment. We dig deeper into these scenarios below.
1. Fragmented multi-partnering
The first and perhaps most visible scenario is one of fragmented multi-partnering. In this world, no coherent new order replaces the old one. Instead, development cooperation becomes increasingly dispersed across a crowded ecosystem of bilateral donors, non-DAC providers, multilateral agencies, vertical funds, NGOs, foundations, private actors, and hybrid financing mechanisms. There is still cooperation, but it is less coordinated, less pooled, and less anchored in a shared multilateral logic.
For development cooperation, this means a loss of coherence rather than total disappearance. It becomes one finance stream among many. Ministries of foreign affairs lose parts of their monopoly over what counts as development cooperation, which is not being replaced by an emerging strong alternative centre. Multilateral institutions still remain important, yet they are weakened as coordinating hubs when core funding declines and earmarked resources rise. This broader trend has been documented in work on fragmented multilateralism and in the OECD’s analysis of earmarked funding to multilateral organisations.
For partner countries, this scenario offers both opportunity and burden. The opportunity lies in the greater room to manoeuvre among multiple providers. The burden lies in the high transaction costs of dealing with parallel systems, overlapping priorities, and fragmented accountability chains. This is why fragmented multi-partnering should not be confused with greater freedom. It may mean greater room for tactical choice, but it also means a more crowded and less governable development landscape.
2. Bloc competition and deals
The second scenario is more geopolitical: bloc competition and deals. Here, the erosion of the old aid order does not simply produce dispersion. It produces strategic ordering around rival power centres. Development cooperation becomes increasingly tied to geopolitical alignment, migration control, sanctions, trade, supply chains, and security concerns. In this scenario, aid is no longer merely fragmented. It is increasingly instrumentalized.
This is not necessarily a world of neat Cold War-style blocs. It is more likely a world of two or three major poles, surrounded by middle powers and swing states pursuing pragmatic multi-alignment. The United States, China, and perhaps a more autonomous or contested European Union may function as competing centres of gravity. Russia matters in this world, but more as a revisionist and disruptive force than as a fully-fledged institutional pole in its own right.
For development cooperation, the consequences are profound. Its relative autonomy shrinks. It becomes more explicitly tied to foreign policy, security agendas, migration bargains, and strategic influence. In scenario one, development cooperation is fragmented. In scenario two, it is instrumentalized.
For partner countries, this can create tactical room for bargaining, but also exposes them to stronger forms of pressure and conditionality. Aid, investment, and political recognition become more tightly linked.
3. Repaired multilateralism
A third scenario is possible, though it currently runs against prevailing trends: repaired multilateralism. This is not a radically new order. It is an attempt to stabilize and repair the old one. States would choose to strengthen multilateral institutions, restore some trust, increase core funding, and re-centre development cooperation around coordination, predictability, and global public goods.
In this scenario, development cooperation remains recognizable as both a foreign policy tool and an expression of solidarity, although both would be reframed in a more sober and politically realistic way. The goal would not be to revive the old aid optimism of the 1990s or early 2000s, but to preserve a functioning multilateral architecture under new conditions.
For partner countries, repaired multilateralism would reduce transaction costs and increase predictability. But it would not remove power asymmetries. It would remain a corrected version of the existing system, not a post-hierarchical one.
The problem, of course, is political. Repaired multilateralism is institutionally thinkable, but currently difficult. It would require going against major tendencies of the present: declining aid budgets, rising earmarking, domestic backlash against international commitments, and the strategic re-nationalization of development policy.
4. Global public investment
The fourth scenario is the most ambitious and least consolidated, but also the most normatively interesting: global public investment. This scenario moves beyond the classic donor-recipient model. Instead of treating development cooperation as a transfer from rich countries to poor countries, it reimagines international public finance as a system of shared contributions, shared governance, and shared benefits oriented around global public goods. The OECD’s work on development co-operation and global public goods helps frame this shift, while the Expert Working Group on Global Public Investment offers one of the clearest normative formulations of the idea.
Climate stability, pandemic preparedness, financial stability, biodiversity, digital governance, and knowledge production cannot be meaningfully organized within the old language of aid alone. They require a broader framework in which all countries are part of a shared system, though not on equal terms. Contributions would vary according to capacity. Benefits and priorities would be shaped by need, vulnerability, and collective risk.
For development cooperation, this would mean a profound shift. “Aid” as a category would become less central. Foreign ministries would no longer be the natural centre of gravity. Finance, climate, health, and multilateral governance institutions would play a much larger role.
For partner countries, this scenario could offer more voice and less paternalistic framing. But it would also come with new expectations, new governance demands, and new struggles over representation and burden-sharing.
At present, global public investment remains more visible as a normative horizon than as an actual political reality. Still, it offers an important reminder that the future of development cooperation does not have to be limited to a choice between fragmentation and geopolitical instrumentalization.
Which future is emerging?
The four scenarios are not equally plausible. If we position them against two dimensions, current plausibility and normative attractiveness, a clearer pattern emerges.
Fragmented multi-partnering currently appears to be the most accurate baseline description of the system. The proliferation of providers, the weakening of core multilateral funding, and the rise of earmarked and parallel channels all point in that direction. Bloc competition and deals is also increasingly plausible, as strategic rivalry, sanctions, migration politics, and geopolitical hardening continue to reshape international cooperation.
By contrast, repaired multilateralism remains conceivable, but only as a deliberate political correction against current trends. It would require renewed trust in multilateral institutions, more core funding, and a willingness to reverse the erosion of collective development commitments. Global public investment is normatively the most ambitious and attractive scenario, but it remains the least plausible in the short term. At present, it is better understood as a horizon for institutional imagination than as an imminent political reality.
The figure below summarizes this argument. It does not claim scientific precision. It is a heuristic device to show where the present seems to be pushing development cooperation, and which alternative futures would require much stronger political choice.
The real question
The most important question, then, is not whether development cooperation still “works.” That remains relevant, especially in sectors such as health, where gains have often been real and measurable. But effectiveness alone no longer captures the political moment.
The deeper question is this: in what kind of world order will development cooperation continue to exist, and what role will it play there?
Will it survive as a fragmented stream in a crowded ecosystem? Will it be absorbed into geopolitical bargaining? Will it be partially repaired within a renewed multilateralism? Or can it be reimagined within a broader architecture of global public investment?
These are not merely technical questions. They are political and normative choices about what kind of international order remains possible.
Nadia Molenaers is associate professor at the Institute of Development Policy (IOB) at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Her research focuses on the political economy of aid, donor-recipient interactions, conditionalities and sanctions.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of the EADI Debating Development Blog or the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes