Sympathy or Self-Interest? The Development Agendas of the European Union and Japan in the 2000s

This chapter compares the evolution of the development policies of the European Union and Japan since the turn of the millennium. The analysis focuses on how official development activities play into the ambitions of both of these self-proclaimed civilian powers to increase their regional and global presence. The ultimate question thus concerns the extent to which the fusion – or should we rather talk of fission? – of instrumental and idealistic development policies differs in the case of those two actors, and what the consequences of these differences are.