Debating Development Research

21/05/202421/05/2024

Aid Business as Usual? How Austria’s Development Cooperation has, so far, Dodged the Populist Bullet

By Lukas Schlögl / Part of the European Development Policy Outlook Series

Austria plays an unassuming midfield position in international development cooperation: stable institutions, a stagnant budget, incremental policy change and a multilateralist orientation. Taking a step back, such ‘aid business as usual’ is surprising. Why, despite tumultuous domestic political change and a strong political influence of right-wing populism, has Austria’s development cooperation remained shielded from politicisation? And: will this last?

14/05/2024

Imagining Global Development Policy after 2030: What is the EU’s Role and How Will it Sit with Competing Geo-Political Paradigms?

By Andy Sumner and Stephan Klingebiel / Part of the European Development Policy Outlook Series

The EU has been particularly important in championing Agenda 2030 and keeping the SDGs on the global development policy agenda. What should happen after the deadline passes?

Development won’t end in 2030. Even if – what is extremely unlikely – the headline SDGs were met, at least a billion people would live just above extreme poverty. What are the options for a unifying framework after 2030, and what should the EU’s role be amid competing geo-political paradigms on global development.

07/05/2024

Uneven Decommodification Geographies and Global Structural Inequalities

By Geoff Goodwin

When Covid-19 ground the world economy to a halt in early 2020, governments from across the political spectrum took measures to shield sectors of society from the full impact of the socioeconomic crisis. Yet the scale and form of these responses varied enormously between countries and regions. What explains this unevenness? What does it tell us about capitalism today? I take up these questions in a new article in EPA: Economy and Space.

30/04/2024

EADI at Fifty: Time for Looking Back and Understanding the Sea Change of World History

By Jürgen Wiemann

This year, 2024, global peace, prosperity and the environment are threatened by a cumulation of geopolitical crises, and we do not know yet whether this will lead to a final breakdown of international cooperation and more wars, or whether it will be possible to turn history around towards a brighter future. Looking back at the half century since EADI’s foundation in 1974 may help us to understand how we have arrived at this dramatic moment.

23/04/202429/04/2024

Rethinking Indigeneity

By María Fernanda Córdova Suxo

The Indigenous subject has been positioned as a key player in alternatives to development. These alternatives refer to Indigenous People’s struggles and knowledge as distinct ways of facing current crises – including environmental, food, and capitalist crises. This positioning can be interpreted as a result of different indigenous movements working together across borders, in search of self-determination and the fulfillment of their human rights. However, this indigenous subject, within academia and other spheres from which power emerges, tends to be framed in abstract characteristics and is dissociated from the complexity of its context. Therefore, the evocation of indigeneities does not necessarily correspond to the stance that these groups currently demonstrate.