BRICS and Foreign Aid
Gerda Asmus, Andreas Fuchs and Angelika Müller
Published in: BRICS and the Global Economy (which is part of a three-volume series on The Political Economy of the BRICS Countries and edited by Edward Mansfield and Nita Rudra), World Scientific, December 2019
Abstract
This paper provides an overview of the small but growing literature on the bilateral foreign aid activities carried out by the five BRICS countries. While these so-called emerging donors are steadily gaining prominence in international development, they are certainly not new to the field, with foreign aid programs dating back as far as the 1950s. The recent increase in both the size and scope of their development activities around the globe is regarded by some as a threat to the international aid architecture dominated by the United States and its allies in Western Europe and Japan. What do we know about the size, scope and institutional design of the BRICS countries’ aid activities? What can we learn about these donors’ aid motives by analyzing the pattern of their aid recipients and focal sectors? Does the existing qualitative and quantitative literature allow us to draw conclusions about the effects of BRICS aid on economic growth, other development outcomes, governance and conflict in recipient countries? Moreover, how will BRICS aid affect the DAC-centered international aid architecture and the way the so-called traditional donors provide aid? While our examination of existing scholarly work allows us to draw some tentative conclusions, it also underscores the considerable variation BRICS donors show in their aid approaches; they rarely act as a group in international development cooperation. We also highlight the major avenues and challenges for future research.
Published chapter
Working paper (August 2017)
Presentations at conferences and workshops
See also
[Photo attribution: By Roberto Stuckert Filho [CC BY 3.0 br (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/br/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons]
Gerda Asmus, Andreas Fuchs and Angelika Müller
Published in: BRICS and the Global Economy (which is part of a three-volume series on The Political Economy of the BRICS Countries and edited by Edward Mansfield and Nita Rudra), World Scientific, December 2019
Abstract
This paper provides an overview of the small but growing literature on the bilateral foreign aid activities carried out by the five BRICS countries. While these so-called emerging donors are steadily gaining prominence in international development, they are certainly not new to the field, with foreign aid programs dating back as far as the 1950s. The recent increase in both the size and scope of their development activities around the globe is regarded by some as a threat to the international aid architecture dominated by the United States and its allies in Western Europe and Japan. What do we know about the size, scope and institutional design of the BRICS countries’ aid activities? What can we learn about these donors’ aid motives by analyzing the pattern of their aid recipients and focal sectors? Does the existing qualitative and quantitative literature allow us to draw conclusions about the effects of BRICS aid on economic growth, other development outcomes, governance and conflict in recipient countries? Moreover, how will BRICS aid affect the DAC-centered international aid architecture and the way the so-called traditional donors provide aid? While our examination of existing scholarly work allows us to draw some tentative conclusions, it also underscores the considerable variation BRICS donors show in their aid approaches; they rarely act as a group in international development cooperation. We also highlight the major avenues and challenges for future research.
Published chapter
Working paper (August 2017)
Presentations at conferences and workshops
- Conference on BRICS and the Global Economy, National University of Singapore (03/2017)
See also
[Photo attribution: By Roberto Stuckert Filho [CC BY 3.0 br (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/br/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons]
