ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an analysis of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on foreign aid amid an emerging Habermasian legitimation crisis of the existing rules-based world order. The analysis progresses from a review of the post–World War II bipolar and subsequent unipolar world order that governs foreign aid to the currently (re)emerging bipolarism and multipolarity that challenges existing foreign aid architectures. It is argued that the decline of the existing unipolar and the (re)emerging bipolar foreign aid architectures have resulted in a systemic legitimation crisis encompassing ideological, social, economic, and structural factors of the existing foreign aid world order. Subsequently, the emerging post-COVID world order contribution to the creation and continuance of asymmetries of wealth and power is addressed. The chapter compares the interaction of the legitimation procedures and the emergence of the crisis’ nexus to epistemic and ontological aspects of the political, economic, and sociocultural foreign aid systems espoused by the neoliberal rules-based world order. The conclusion advances a megatrend based on the emerging world order(s) and provides an understanding of the economic divide(s) and the existing rules-based world order, within a context of competing legitimation claims amid the impact of COVID-19 on multilateral foreign aid.
