ABSTRACT
Introduction Taking stock of what has been written throughout this book, it has become obvious that there are radical changes taking place globally in the field of foreign aid, Official Development Assistance (ODA), or development cooperation, whichever term is used. These changes are happening in parallel in many donor countries, but also in some recipient countries; and they are happening very quickly. This book examines Japan’s ODA as it is known at least by traditional Western donors, using an array of disciplinary and methodological approaches. We have found that ODA is moving away from the traditional, West-engineered aid architecture, and towards an approach to foreign aid originally modelled by Japan in the post-Second World War era. For a long time Japan had to endure harsh criticism of this model, which contained a mix of public and private cooperation as well as loan aid to build infrastructure for industrialization. As a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC), Japan had to align itself more with Western norms on foreign aid. Now things are changing in the opposite direction, as the rest of the DAC members follow in Japan’s footsteps. What real long-and short-term consequences this ongoing shift will prove to have for global development is still too early, and too difficult, to predict. Nonetheless, this chapter attempts to integrate some of the insights provided throughout this book. In so doing, we outline some of the likely outcomes of the transition away from what may be called the Western aid paradigm to an aid architecture that is pivoting to Asia. This pivot is partly driven by a re-emerging donor, China, which has fairly effectively picked up from where Japan had to leave off when it reluctantly aligned itself with Western aid norms. For fear of becoming obsolete, Western donors are now considering providing foreign aid through “win-win” cooperative frameworks, and, to a larger extent than before, are focusing on building hard infrastructure rather than pushing institution building or norm diffusion linked to liberal democracy and human rights.
