European Union Development Policy: Collective Action in Times of Global Transformation and Domestic Crisis

Abstract

This special issue of Development Policy Review reflects on European Union (EU) efforts to build a more effective global development policy amid a rapidly changing international context. As 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals have made clear, global development challenges require collective action if they are to be resolved. Contributions to the special issue explore the ways in which the EU approaches collective action challenges in different development cooperation frameworks and policy settings. Themes explored include strategies for overcoming collective action problems, the impacts of these interactions on EU and member state aid policies, coherence between development and other policy fields, relations between European and other development actors, and the reception of the EU's efforts in developing countries.

Who Cares? European Public Opinion on Foreign Aid and Political Conditionality

“…In accordance with other recent research on the importance of a donor government's ideological position for how aid is distributed (see Faust and Koch, ; Tingley, ), our results show a similar pattern of influence with regard to public opinion in terms of aid distribution in traditional EU donor countries as opposed to new EU donor countries. Our results also speak to the problem of convergence, coherence and collective action in EU development policy making (Bodenstein et al , ; Orbie and Carbone ), as they show substantial differences in public opinion between traditional and new EU donor states.…”

The Future of EU Development Policy Post-2020

“…Brexit is not the only contextual issue influencing EU development policy. The euro crisis and the rise of populist governments all work against development in that many governments wish to focus the limited spending at home (see Bodenstein et al 2017;Beringer et al 2019). Hence we need to explore whether the money in the EU budgets supports the EU's external norms.…”

Stochastic analysis of the economic growth of OECD countries

“…The approach used in this study focused on a wide range of economic growth determinants. It was geared towards a relative measure rather than an absolute measure of economic performance, considering that many factors interact to attain GDP results (Bodenstein, Faust, & Furness, 2017;De la Fuente, Vallina, & Pino, 2013;Fouquet & Broadberry, 2015;Haavio, Mendicino, & Punzi, 2014).…”