Suchergebnisse

This article provides an overview of the emergence of development aid donors in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It explores the definitions employed to characterize these donors before going on to examine the challenges faced in creating a development policy in the CEE states. It outlines how a soft acquis from the EU, weak governmental structures, low political will and low public understanding prevented the policy from acquiring strong roots. As a result, the economic crisis, which is used to frame the debate, has knocked all the states in the region off course. Finally, it situates the papers in this special issue in the wider context of the overview and the wider literature and summarizes the main questions raised by the special issue: development cooperation as an expression of foreign policy interests, the normative role of the other international and European actors, the advantages of the CEE development cooperation programmes, and their embodiment in a wider societal context. Adapted from the source document.

The decision of the Conservative‐dominated coalition to ring‐fence international development spending has been, given the economic environment, one of most intriguing decisions of the new government. Recognising the relative neglect of academic work on Conservative policy towards international development, the article seeks to provide an explanation for its new‐found prioritisation. In doing so, the article suggests that it can be attributed to four possible influences: that it can be tied to the process of modernisation and brand decontamination of the Conservatives; that it is a consequence of the personal commitment of key elites such as David Cameron, George Osborne and Andrew Mitchell; that it is by‐product of the perceived success of the Department for International Development under New Labour, which made subsuming it within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office a non‐viable (and expensive) option; and that protecting the international aid budget was actually in the British national interest.

AbstractThis article looks at the role of the Party of European Socialists (PES) in its attempts to shape social democratic parties in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) towards a West European norm. It discusses how existing views in the academic literature on the role of transnational parties are inadequate. We argue that the PES did not play a key role in encouraging the establishment and development of parties in the CEE states from the 2004 enlargement in the early stages of accession. We contend that the overall influence of party federations has been limited, and that these limitations were as much in evidence before enlargement took place as they were afterwards.