Re-mapping Foreign Aid Literature: How Do We Understand East Asian Emerging Donorship?

• Published in: 국제개발협력연구, 7(1) pp. 1 - 40
• Main Author: 이지선
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 국제개발협력학회 01.06.2015
• Subjects: 사회과학일반
• ISSN: 2005-9620; 2635-7135

This study attempts to capture on-going academic efforts to understand the emergence of East Asian foreign aid givers. Among various attempts to grasp aid policies and practices of these Northeast Asian economies (China, South Korea, and Taiwan), two approaches–the emerging donor perspective and the foreign policy analysis perspective–are identified to constitute a mainstream discourse. More recently, these two threads of literature grow but continuously question as to why aid giving is considered ‘divergent’ between those of the advanced Western community and the emergent East Asian counterparts. Despite the expanding academic efforts, however, such views have yet to fully explain the features and origins of East Asian donorship leaving them under-theorised and marginalised from the existing discussions of international development cooperation. Recognising such shortcomings of the previous approaches, this study also introduces an alternative, so called organisational process approach (OPA)-rooted in the neo-institutionalist tradition. In order to properly understand the rapid growth and vibrant initiatives of the new Asian aid flows, due attention must be given to a particular role of the government and aid policy making processes of the Asian aid giving countries. KCI Citation Count: 0