La fin de l'aide publique au développement : les enjeux de l'action hypercollective

The last decade has seen a radical transformation in the number and kind of actors involved in the development aid, international relief and global public goods industries ? in both donor and recipient nations. This double trend of proliferation (i.e. the increase in the number of actors) and fragmentation (i.e. the scattering of donor activity) of international cooperation is characteristic of the shift from collective to ?hypercollective? action. While this evolution should be greeted with enthusiasm for the energy and additional resources it brings to global public policies, it carries important efficiency costs. In this paper, we argue that steering complexity towards efficiency is one of the prime challenges for the governance of global public policies in the decades to come. The Paris Declaration is the first large-scale effort to harness the ?hypercollective? in the development aid ecosystem. But it does not provide solid enough ground on which to build the kind of hypercollective action that is required by the burgeoning global public policies. We argue that is time for a new conceptual framework to emerge, one which will help shape processes of local multi-actor convergence.