ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 employs a qualitative micro-level case study with an analysis of interviews conducted with individuals working in the aid sector in Canada, Sweden, and the United States. These donors share commonalities in their approaches to various aid priorities, including gender and security. In this chapter, several common processes and mechanisms of globalization evident in all three country cases are identified despite the apparent differences between donors. The commonalities that emerge – the globalization of foreign aid policy – are a result of social processes and mechanisms dedicated to mediating the interface of nation-state institutions with the world society and directly influence the degree of uptake of world cultural models like donor approaches to gender. The processes of internalization and certification, embeddedness within civil society, and bureaucratic activism are shown to account for the influence of world society on donor uptake of gender and development models in the bilateral aid sector.
