Development Cooperation in Times of Crisis

Leading governments undertook extraordinary measures to offset the 2008 economic crisis, shoring up financial institutions, stimulating demand to reverse recession, and rebalancing budgets to alleviate sovereign debt. While productive in and of themselves, these solutions were effective because they were coordinated internationally and were matched with sweeping global financial reforms. Unfortunately, coordination has weakened after these initial steps, indicating one of the crisis’s adverse effects will be a significant reduction in development cooperation.

Urging advanced nations to improve their support for development, the contributors to this volume revisit the causes of the 2008 collapse and the ongoing effects of recession on global and developing economies. They reevaluate the international response to crisis and suggest more effective approaches to development cooperation. Experts on international aid join together to redesign the cooperation system and its governance, so it can accept new actors and better achieve the Millennial Development Goals of 2015 within the context of severe global crisis. In their introduction, José Antonio Alonso and José Antonio Ocampo summarize different chapters and the implications of their analyses, concluding with a frank assessment of global economic imbalance and the ability of increased cooperation to rectify these inequalities.

About the Editors

José Antonio Alonso
Deputy
León province
Spanish Congress

José Antonio Alonso Suárez  is a Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) politician. Alonso was elected to the Spanish Congress in 2004, representing León Province and was re-elected in 2008. He later served as spokesman for the PSOE Parliamentary Group. From 18 April 2004 to 7 April 2006 he was the Minister of the Interior in the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Described by his ministerial colleagues as a man “driven by his strong ideological beliefs and professionalism”, Zapatero is said to have chosen Alonso on the grounds that the latter would fight terrorism without compromising human rights. Alonso served as Defence Minister until 11 April 2008. Prior to his election he had been a critic of the People’s Party’s support for George W. Bush and their alleged politicisation of judicial bodies.

José Antonio Ocampo
Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia University and former Minister of Finance of Colombia
Columbia University

Jose Antonio Ocampo is a Professor of Professional Practice in the School of International and Public Affairs and former Minister of Finance of Colombia. He is also a Fellow of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University. Prior to his appointment at Columbia, Professor Ocampo served as the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, and head of UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), as Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and has held a number of high-level posts in the Government of Colombia, including Minister of Finance and Public Credit, Director of the National Planning Department, and Minister of Agriculture . Professor Ocampo is author or editor of over 30 books and has published over 200 scholarly articles on macroeconomic theory and policy, international financial issues, economic development, international trade, and Colombian and Latin American economic history.