“Is Foreign Aid Dead? The Political Economy of International Development Assistance as Populism Rises and Multilateralism Shrinks”

Nearly eighty years after the Marshall Plan initiated a modern notion of foreign aid, the landscape of international development assistance is considerably different. How has foreign aid changed, in amounts, modalities, and objectives? And how has the premier international organization tasked with setting standards for good practice in effective aid-giving –– the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee –– evolved to remain relevant in collecting data and monitoring donor compliance with those standards? My work seeks to answer these broad questions in light of two key phenomena: the emergence of new donors, who may not subscribe to the same norms of traditional aid-giving; and the rise of populist and nationalist sentiment in traditional donors, culminating in the drastic shifts in foreign aid policy the United States government undertook in early 2025.

Alice IANNANTUONI is Assistant Professor of International Political Economy at ESPOL, Université catholique de Lille.