Re-Framing Foreign Aid History and Politics: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the Covid-19 Outbreak

Re-framing Foreign Aid History and Politics presents an integrated analysis, at once conceptual, historical, and political, of the growing impact of State Funded Aid on international relations, particularly after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the end of the bipolar system.

In order to observe aid as an emerging instrument of foreign policy, the book develops an original approach which puts donors and recipients on the same level, and examines the political dynamics of their relationship. The focus shifts from looking at the needs covered by aid interventions to the political motivations of donors and recipients. Aid is reconceptualized to include any transaction on favorable terms between these two parties, regardless of the object of that aid. This framework of analysis is applied to several historical cases, from the post-conflict transition in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the post-Soviet one in Russia in the 90s to the medical aid to Italy and Russian vaccine diplomacy to the Republic of San Marino during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the end, the book identifies ten major trends that have shaped the dynamics of the relationship between donors and recipients over the last few decades, and on a more general level, traces the impact that State Funded Aid has had on the international system.

By arguing that, on the whole, donors have had greater political interests than recipients, the book takes a fresh and original look at aid as instrument of power politics. It will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners of foreign aid and foreign policy, and to all those interested in analyzing how they have been affected by the global pandemic.