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UNU-WIDER South-South Development Cooperation

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South-South Development Cooperation

Project name/title
South-South Development Cooperation
Year:
2009
Theme:
Globalization and Trade
Abstract:
Recent decades have seen a surge in South-South economic, social and political linkages. These activities have largely focused on mobilising resources in the areas of trade, finance, and the provision of development and technical assistance. While emerging southern economic giants such as China and India, have led the way, the phenomenon is widespread among developing countries generally in all regions and between continents. This emerging form of cooperation is ever more significant in international development policy. In an increasingly globalised economy, south-south cooperation should be, but is not yet well integrated in global decision making. This project seeks a better understanding of the nature and potential of two elements of emerging south-south relationships in particular. The first element of the project focuses on how south-south linkages have affected the global financial architecture. This includes activities such as private capital flows, official development assistance; and exchanges of skills and knowledge. The ultimate issue to address is the revealed effectiveness of these flows from a development perspective (ex ante as well as ex post effectiveness), largely taking into account the conditionality attached, and the forms and inter-recipient allocation of this aid. A second element of this project is regional integration and trade agreements. This element seeks a greater understanding of the changing nature of regional integration among developing countries. In particular, regional integration in the ACP countries, which is currently being tested by the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) process. This offers the opportunity to explore the place that south-south agreements have among predominantly north-south relations. In addition, increasingly south-south regional agreements are not aimed at deep integration but rather more market focused. This project will also examine the developmental impact of these agreements in comparative perspective.
Keywords:
development financing, capital flows, official development assistance, technical cooperation, preferential trade agreements, integration, European Union, ACP
Director:
Assistant:
Workshops
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