The Law of Development Cooperation

Development interventions are agreed by states and international organisations which administer public development funds of huge proportions. They have done so with debatable success, but, unlike the good governance of recipients, the rules applying to donors have hitherto received little scrutiny. This analysis of the normative structures and conceptual riddles of development co-operation argues that development co-operation is increasingly structured by legal rules and is therefore no longer merely a matter of politics, economics or ethics. By focusing on the rules of development co-operation, it puts forward a new perspective on the institutional law dealing with the process, instruments and organisation of this co-operation. Placing the law in its theoretical and political context, it provides the first comparative study on the laws of foreign aid as a central field of global public policy and asks how accountability, autonomy and human rights can be preserved while combating poverty.Introduction; Part I. Institutional and Intellectual History of Development Co-operation: 1. Formative years; 2. Years of transformation; Part II. Constitutional Foundations of the Law of Development Co-operation: 3. Institutions and legal framework; 4. Principles of the law of development co-operation; Part III. Administrative Law of Development Co-operation: 5. Programming the transfer of ODA; 6. Transferring ODA through project aid; 7. Transferring ODA through budget support; 8. Transferring ODA through results-based financing; 9. Accountability in ODA transfers; Conclusions and future prospects.