ABSTRACT
Introduction The emerging donors have become influential players in the shifting global aid architecture.1 The establishment of the G-20 and more recently of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) represents the increasing power of emerging donors in international relations as they challenge the G-7 and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), respectively. The same applies in the area of international aid. There has been a significant change in the global aid architecture in recent decades. The numbers and types of actors providing aid to developing countries have increased. There are now 263 multilateral organizations in the development field, five times the number of developing countries, and bilateral donors have increased from a handful in the 1960s to nearly 60 today (Severino and Ray 2010, p. 7). In addition, contributions that cannot be counted as Official Development Assistance (ODA) are also on the rise. The decrease in the share of ODA in economic transfers between developed and developing countries means that the conventional concept of ODA has become outdated. More importantly, emerging donors are influencing existing global aid institutions. Since its establishment in 1961, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and its members have dominated the global aid architecture. However, the rise of emerging non-DAC donors has influenced the role of the DAC in the global aid architecture. Because of the difference in the ways in which their aid is provided, it could be regarded as “rogue aid” (Naim 2007), but it has been gradually influencing traditional donors and their existing institutions in what Woods (2008) has called a “silent revolution”. In the past, the aid relationship has been divided into donors and recipients. With the change in global aid architecture, emerging donors have added a new dimension to international development cooperation. An increasing number of studies have been conducted into the aid provision of the emerging donors and their influence on the global aid architecture (see Manning 2006; Kragelund 2008; Zimmermann and Smith 2011; Sato and Shimomura 2013; Shimomura and Ohashi 2013; Watson 2014).
