New partnerships in development cooperation

Given the increasing number of serious global crises such as global warming, epidemics and violent conflicts, and the significant pressure on public budgets in rich countries, development cooperation is more and more concerned about resource mobilisation among different private actors and the use of their particular skills for development purposes.

This DIIS Report provides a discussion of three issues related to the growing concern with partnerships.

First, the relationship between the public and private sectors is changing these years as there are indications that the two sectors get closer to each other. This entails new roles of the public sector and these roles are to varying degrees mirrored in recent development policies in the Netherlands, the UK and the US.

Secondly, philanthropic foundations are increasingly important in international development cooperation, but little is known about how Danish philanthropic foundations develop in this respect. However, a clear, albeit careful, professionalization and internationalization of Danish foundations is taking place these years.

Thirdly, multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) have gained traction since the turn of the Millennium. These institutional innovations in international cooperation are typically voluntary arrangements where different actors affected by a development problem go together and seek to solve it by undertaking concrete activities or by setting norms for appropriate behavior. As two such MSIs the Global Compact and the Sustainable Energy for All (SE4ALL) are discussed in some detail.

The report has been commissioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as part of the grant ‘Tendencies in Development Policies’ with five themes: new partnerships, the results agenda, foreign aid in fragile regions, financing economic development, and new social movements.