From Aid to Co-governance: The "Constitutive Crisis" of Global Development Cooperation and Reconstruction Paths

Introduction: The "Constitutive Crisis" of the Aid System

In 2025, a series of decisions by the Trump administration plunged international development cooperation into the deepest turmoil since the end of the Cold War: withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and UN agencies such as the World Health Organization, cutting funding to the UN Development Programme, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and the UN Children's Fund, and dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Since the United States contributes roughly 30 percent of global aid funding, the shockwaves of these moves go far beyond budget figures. Almost simultaneously, European donor countries such as France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, and Switzerland also announced aid budget cuts, with most citing fiscal balance or national strategic priorities rather than ideology. According to estimates by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC), official development assistance (ODA) may contract by 20 to 33 percent starting in 2026.

However, interpreting this crisis merely as the result of a fiscal cycle or a political shift to the right would underestimate its structural roots. Governments across the political spectrum showing indifference or even hostility toward aid at the same time suggests that the problem lies in the system itself: the historical premises underpinning the aid regime—the unipolar authority of the Western world, a clear North-South divide, the belief that capital and knowledge transfer would inevitably bring about "catch-up development," and the "neocolonial presumption" of developed countries as the development paradigm—have all failed.

Five Dimensions of Transformation

1. Restructuring of the international power system. The aid system is an institutional legacy of postwar Western hegemony. Today, the development models of emerging economies no longer depend on the DAC framework, and the diplomatic autonomy of the Global South has increased significantly. Aid is no longer a concentric circle of "rich countries giving to poor countries," but a multipolar cooperation matrix. The vacuum left by the U.S. withdrawal precisely exposes the fragility of unipolar-led aid.

2. Paradigm shift in development diagnosis. Traditional views of development attribute poverty to capital shortage and therefore focus on transfer payments. But the past three decades have proven that the marginal benefits of aid are highly dependent on the institutional capacity of recipient countries, social structures, and the asymmetries of global economic rules. Development is not simply "catching up," but an institutional evolution along multiple pathways. More and more recipient countries refuse to see themselves as "students" of Western experience.

3. Incommensurability of agendas. The contemporary cooperation agenda simultaneously includes humanitarian relief, poverty reduction, climate mitigation, public health, migration governance, digital connectivity, and other goals. These goals have inherent tensions: climate action may harm short-term growth, and migration cooperation may stir domestic politics. A single narrative cannot provide legitimizing resources for all agendas; rather, overemphasizing "mutual benefit" under political pressure can reduce aid to a transactional tool.

4. Expansion of the financing spectrum. ODA is only one segment of international development finance. Facing the financing gap for global public goods, tools such as multilateral development banks, climate funds, green bonds, and blended finance need to work in concert. If the aid system clings to the ODA metric, it will be marginalized by broader and more flexible capital flows.5. Governance Legitimacy Deficit. The current governance structure is dominated by donor countries, with low participation from recipient countries, weak technocratic culture, and weak accountability mechanisms. In an era of resurgent nationalism, such unrepresentative governance is more susceptible to politicized attacks. Strengthening multilateralism is not just a slogan; it requires a genuine rebalancing of decision-making weight, rule transparency, and shared responsibility.

Three Ideal Types: A Path Map for Future Cooperation

Faced with the above tensions, the author proposes three Weberian "ideal types" as analytical benchmarks for restructuring the future cooperation system.

The Focused Model narrows aid to the most essential urgent tasks: extreme poverty, least developed countries, humanitarian crises, and basic public services. This model advocates being "small and precise," returning to the original purpose of poverty reduction and reducing the dilution of effectiveness caused by agenda expansion. Its strength lies in clear, measurable goals that help restore public trust; its weakness is that it cannot respond to global issues such as climate change and transnational health threats, and it may also be criticized as "retreating to charity."

The International Public Goods-Oriented Model places global climate, biodiversity, public health security, peace, and financial stability at the center, transforming aid into an investment mechanism for global public goods. This model adapts to the transnational challenges of the 21st century, but its challenge lies in how to connect with traditional national development goals—when an archipelago country's climate adaptation needs conflict with global emissions reduction targets, whose priority is higher?

The Diversified Shared Model emphasizes building diverse cooperation platforms based on different issues, with different countries, multilateral institutions, foundations, and the private sector choosing to participate autonomously. It no longer pursues a unified narrative but acknowledges the institutional fact of diversity, forming a decentralized yet flexible cooperation ecosystem through "menu-based" participation. The advantage of this model is its adaptability to a complex world; the risks are fragmentation and lack of accountability.

Toward "Decolonized" Multilateral Cooperation

In the author's view, the three models are not a one-of-three choice. In fact, the future development cooperation system is likely to adopt a hybrid form: using the focused model to ensure fairness at the bottom, the public goods-oriented model to address common threats, and the diversified shared model to accommodate different needs and preferences.

But no matter which path is chosen, two more fundamental challenges must be addressed. The first is decolonization: acknowledging the plurality of development knowledge, breaking donor-centrism, and giving recipient countries and institutions of the Global South equal status in rule-making. The second is strengthened multilateralism: in an era of unilateral retreat, it is necessary to rebuild the legitimacy and capacity of multilateral institutions so that they can coordinate the interests of all parties rather than becoming a shadow of great-power games.Development cooperation is at a historic crossroads. The old aid system, like a doctor who believes in the "right prescription," can no longer diagnose the complex ailments of the new world. The future may not be the end of aid, but the rebirth of cooperation: shifting from one-way charity to joint investment, from short-term projects to long-term capacity building, and from "we help you" to "we jointly govern global risks." This is precisely the long-term trend that this research points to—a new paradigm of cooperation no longer centered on "aid" but aimed at global sustainability.