Official Development Assistance (ODA) or international development aid (defined as the transfer of official financing to promote the development and welfare of developing countries), is a highly influential and politically sensitive area of international relations. Though it is not governed by any international legal agreement, it displays remarkable cohesion across the major Northern donors in its modalities of governance, the coherence in its normative aims and in its institutional reform agenda. In order to understand why, this project focuses on the central, if overlooked, role of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and its Development Assistance Committee (DAC) as the key institutional locus of the international governance of ODA by donors. This project examines the legal nature of the international governance of ODA, tracing and critically analysing the link between the governance of ODA and governance by ODA. It demonstrates how the legal form of the international governance of ODA is central to the reach and effectiveness of the legal and institutional reform agenda promoted via ODA at national and international levels, and to contouring the legal and political subjectivities of donors and aid-recipient states in ways that escape formal legal and democratic recognition. Finding that mainstream legal analytical methods fail to fully capture the legal-juridical quality of the international governance framework of ODA, and the particular role of law therein, I develop a new analytical lens based on the concepts of ‘jurisdiction’ (as juris dictio) and the ‘signature.’ This lens reveals how ODA creates a distinct jurisdiction with its own internal legal logic, where donor and aid-recipient subjectivities and relations of authority are continually constructed and maintained by international governance instruments and practices developed during colonial and imperial governance eras under the League of Nations and Marshall Plan institutions. I demonstrate how this jurisdictional space is augmented by key legal, policy, bureaucratic and technocratic instruments of governance by the OECD and DAC, through patterns of juridification and reiteration.

Bibliographic note Ertürk, Saadet (2019). The Rise of China and its Implications for Western Development Cooperation Policy. Master Thesis. Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Political Studies, Supervisors: Dr. Michal Parízek & Dr. Sebastian Ziaja. Abstract Recently new donors are beginning to challenge the international aid architecture of traditional Western donors by providing huge amounts of foreign aid to Sub-Sahara African (SSA) countries without political conditions attached, thereby undermining the bargaining power and influence of OECD DAC donors. Especially Chinas new role as aid donor causes a lot of scepticism among researchers. This master thesis investigates whether OECD DAC donors changed their aid allocation policies and patterns in response to rising Chinese foreign aid activities in SSA countries. So far, the literature investigating the relationship between foreign aid provided by traditional Western donors and aid by the Chinese government has been limited mostly due to the lack of accurate data on Chinese foreign aid. This study makes use of a new dataset on Chinese foreign aid flows in order to examine the response of OECD DAC donors to Chinese foreign aid activities in SSA between 2000 to 2014. It finds that contrary to current assumptions OECD DAC donors do...

New Public Management has been the prevailing governance model in public sector administration since the late 1980s. In 2005, OECD-DAC member states adopted the resultsbased management model ‘Paris Agenda for Aid Effectiveness’, building on new public management theory and values. The aim was to achieve more effective aid by coordinatingand harmonising donor efforts, aligning development interventions and funding, supporting national ownership and propelling a result- and accountability culture by demonstrating achievements.Despite its worthy ambitions the Aid Effectiveness Agenda has paradoxically failed todeliver on its own outcomes. The results-based management framework underpinning theagenda has proven to be highly complex in methodology, interpretation and application. The framework is laborious and burdensome, diverting time from ‘ordinary’ work and risking a bureaucratization of the development aid sector. The ‘measurement fever’ has grippeddonors and agencies alike, and is now mainly driven by donors’ domestic accountability concerns, rather than the real needs of developing countries. More alarmingly, it has not onlyhad numerous unintended consequences but also outright adverse effects. This in turnen dangers long-term human development.This study sets out to explore to what extent the results-based management framework, based on new public management theory, has been a suitable management model to achieve aid effectiveness in the development aid sector. It departs from the governance theories of Denhardt and Denhardt (2000) and assesses whether New Public Service couldbe a fitting alternative governance model. The study utilizes the realist review methodology,specifically the CMO-configuration, in order to explore how context and mechanisms interact and how this affects the outcome. This study has through its aggregative and configurativeambition explored 26 scholarly articles in the time frame of 2011 to 2021 in order to draw conclusions.The review has found that the results-based management framework does not support the underlying theory of change that is imperative to achieve the Aid Effectiveness Agenda.Contextual factors are found to impede implementation, although due to being under research edit is difficult to determine to what extent. Further, none of the five mechanisms ofthe Paris Declaration can neither fully nor partially be said to contribute to ‘aid effectiveness’as defined in the Aid Effectiveness Agenda. Rather, the review has found that the literatureall point to numerous adverse effects of its implementation.This study concludes that the New Public Service governance model, at least intheory, could prove to be a more suitable management model for the development aidsector. Since the sector is neither linear nor predictable as the business sector for whichthe framework was developed, it is not surprising that adverse effects abound. Especiallysince the development aid sector is highly complex with a multitude of actors, politicalincentives and not least challenging implementational environments. In contrast, New Public Service places the citizen at the centre and aspire at buildingdemocratic citizenship and community through citizen participation and dialogue. Such analternative governance model built on democratic theory and participative epistemologyhas the potential to democratize governance practices by replacing the vertical top-downprincipal-agent dynamics of new public management with more horizontal forms of citizeninvolvement, co-determination and mutual accountability. New Public Service stresses the‘serving not steering’ aspect of governance, which would open up for a more authenticdiscourse of recipients owning development in their own society and setting the direction.No systematic review has previously been carried out to assess governance models inrelation to achieving the Aid Effectiveness Agenda. In fact, there is very little research onwhat has worked or not regarding the agenda. This thesis sets out to fill this gap and tocontribute to the discussion of governance models on a theoretical level. It is also anempirical contribution to applied development management regarding insights about whatcontexts and mechanisms affect aid effectiveness.

Czech foreign development cooperation represents important part of the Czech foreign policy. It also demonstrates adoption of its own part of responsibility for resolution of current global problems. Together with becoming part of organisations such as European Union or Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development importance of Czech foreign development cooperation is growing. Next to the main goal which is reduction of poverty in third-world countries, development cooperation has also another goals: it is also contributing to construction of good relations with developing countries and it helps ensure economic, security and environmental interests of the Czech republic. Current system of the Czech foreign development cooperation has grown up from the foundations, which have been lawn before 1989. From that time Czech Republic has made a great effort to improve its system of development cooperation and become an effective and responsible donor. As a key step in the direction of desired changes can be considered process of transformation of the Czech foreign development cooperation, initiated in 2007. Transformation was officially crowned when the Fundamentals documents were adopted. These documents present the Conception of the Czech foreign development cooperation and the Law (Act) of the...