ABSTRACT
After the Second World War, at least for many years, foreign aid became the main instrument to achieve stability in global governance, in reaction to the economic and financial disintegration of the 1930s, the moral and political obligation to help countries ravaged by war or emerging from colonial status, and the strategic need to contain the contagion of communism as well as the expansionist policy of the USSR. The amount of resources mobilised through this instrument has been huge: around US$1 trillion in finance, contributed multilaterally by international agencies, such as the World Bank, the International Development Association (IDA), and a score of multilateral development banks (MDBs), and bilaterally by dozens of the wealthiest economies, was poured into one hundred countries or so and into tens of thousands of projects and activities.
