ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a broad socio-political critique of the neoliberal world order within a context of foreign aid. Starting from the Global Economic Crisis (GFC) the discussion proceeds along the lines of a Gramscian perspective focussing on the Western foreign aid hegemony in crisis. The basic arguments presented are that the hegemonic ideologies guiding the Western-led international finance institutions (IFCs) are facing peer competitors from institutions of the Global South. Thus, the former institutions find themselves ideologically in a multipolar foreign aid world. It is shown that this shift away from a unipolar environment is further exacerbated by the European monetary crisis and the European migration crisis, followed by the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic and Ukraine war which, in conjunction with the escalating climate crisis, created a wide range of other subsequent crises, such as the health crisis, the food crises and the humanitarian crises. In conclusion an analysis of the flow-on crises demonstrates that all these crises have the tendency to show the false illusions of neoliberalism as an ideology to deal with foreign aid which benefits the social, political and economic needs of aid recipient developing countries.
