Global Public Goods in international developmental aid: A conceptual review

The modalities of international development aid have formed one of the central themes of international governance discourses, since the historical provision of development aid to the recipient countries has been closely interlinked with governance conditionalities calling for structural changes in these countries. Since the past decade, the governance modalities of developmental aid have assumed new dimensions, shaped by the emergence of the ‘Global Public Goods’ approach in the international development discourse. The purpose of this paper is to explore the conceptualization of international developmental aid as essentialized through such an approach. It seeks to analyze whether the Global Public Goods approach provides an alternative to the hierarchical and unequal structure of the existing development aid discourse or reinforces it in new ways. This paper will thematically address three broad areas –re-framing the international developmental aid question through a public goods approach to examine the manner in which this issue is conceived in a global public goods framework; the extent to which this approach can be seen as an alternative by assessing the modalities of the relationship between development aid and global public goods and; finally, to interrogate the politics underpinning such an approach itself to problematize its ability to counter the traditional governance discourses.