The new aid approach (NAA) pays particular attention to the politico-institutional dimension of development. It is largely centred around a reform-driven governance agenda. Donors must facilitate and support reform, and this implies that they move away from micro-managed and donor-driven...

The mandatory participation of civil society in the PRSP is hardly ever questioned. It is on the contrary generally applauded by the experts inside and outside of the aid business. If only there could be more of it, things would even be better than they already are, but any start, however...

In the mid-1990s, an initiative was launched to provide special debt relief from public creditors to more than forty Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs). In 1999, this initiative was further refined and widened in what has been hailed as a new approach to development co-operation. The...

This paper gives a broad overview of the evolution of Belgian aid policies throughout the 1990s. It documents changes in stated motives and objectives, aid volumes, poverty orientation of aid, the structure and main components of the aid programme, the use of new types of aid instruments, the...

Over the last few years a remarkable shift has taken place in the aid instruments advocated for low-income countries, characterised by a conversion from project to more programme oriented aid and by the inclusion of 'broad-based civil society participation' as a form of new aid conditionality....

This paper consists of a comparative study of public financing of NGO development cooperation in selected European countries. The study encompasses the Nordic+ group (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Ireland) and Switzerland. Its main objective is to find...