Development cooperation at a tipping point: How, why and through what mechanisms do policy norms break?

Sumner, Andrew; Klingebiel, Stephan Working Paper Development cooperation at a tipping point: How, why and through what mechanisms do policy norms break? IDOS Discussion Paper, No. 29/2025 Provided in Cooperation with: German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), Bonn Suggested Citation: Sumner, Andrew; Klingebiel, Stephan (2025) : Development cooperation at a tipping point: How, why and through what mechanisms do policy norms break?, IDOS Discussion Paper, No. 29/2025, ISBN 978-3-96021-274-4, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), Bonn, https://doi.org/10.23661/idp29.2025 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/327981 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Development Cooperation at a Tipping Point How, Why and Through What Mechanisms Do Policy Norms Break? Andy Sumner & Stephan Klingebiel IDOS DISCUSSION PAPER 29/2025 Development cooperation at a tipping point How, why and through what mechanisms do policy norms break? Andy Sumner & Stephan Klingebiel Bonn 2025 Andy Sumner is Professor of International Development at King’s College in London and President of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes. Email: [email protected] Stephan Klingebiel is Head of the department “Interand Transnational Cooperation” at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) in Bonn. He is Visiting Professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Visiting Professor at the University of Turin and Honorary Distinguished Fellow at the Jindal School of Government and Public Policy. Email: [email protected] The German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) is institutionally financed by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), based on a resolution of the German Bundestag, and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) as a member of the Johannes-Rau-Forschungsgemeinschaft (JRF). Suggested citation: Sumner, A., & Klingebiel, S. (2025). Development cooperation at a tipping point: How, why and through what mechanisms do policy norms break? (IDOS Discussion Paper 29/2025). German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS). https://doi.org/10.23661/idp29.2025 Disclaimer: The analyses expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS). Except otherwise noted, this publication is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0). You are free to copy, communicate and adapt this work, as long as you attribute the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) gGmbH and the author(s). IDOS Discussion Paper / German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) gGmbH ISSN 2751-4439 (Print) ISSN 2751-4447 (Online) ISBN 978-3-96021-274-4 (Print) DOI: https://doi.org/10.23661/idp29.2025 © German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) gGmbH Tulpenfeld 6, 53113 Bonn Email: [email protected] https://www.idos-research.de Printed on eco-friendly, certified paper. IDOS Discussion Paper 29/2025 III Abstract This paper applies the concepts and theories of “policy norms” to the disruptive effects of the second Trump administration on global development cooperation. We argue that recent US actions represent more than a domestic political shift. They signal a tipping point to longstanding norms of the development cooperation system and specifically multilateralism as well as notions of global solidarity. This paper’s objective is to explain how, why and through which political and institutional mechanisms policy norms break down or are reconstituted in global development cooperation. It uses the current moment as a case study of “norm antipreneurship”, potentially even “norm imperialism” illustrating the political and institutional strategies through which policy norms are currently been contested, dismantled or displaced. This paper addresses a set of questions: (i) What are the core mechanisms through which development cooperation norms are formed, contested and fragmented? (ii) How is the second Trump administration seeking to reshape normative regimes in development cooperation? (iii) What research agenda is needed to understand norm change in a multipolar and contested development cooperation landscape? Keywords: development cooperation, norm contestation, policy norms, global (dis)order, nationalist conditionality regime, New Washington Dissensus IDOS Discussion Paper 29/2025 IV Contents Abstract Abbreviations 1 Introduction 1 2 Policy norms and development cooperation 2 2.1 The concept of policy norms 2 2.2 Theories of policy norm change 3 3 The Trump 2.0 tipping point: normative disruption and development cooperation 8 3.1 The context of global (dis)order 8 3.2 Normative disruption in development cooperation and the New Washington Dissensus 9 3.3 Norm contagion, emulation and global reverberations 14 4 Competing normative regimes in global development cooperation 15 5 Conclusion 18 References 20 Tables Table 1: Political processes of policy norm contestation in development cooperation 7 Table 2: The New Washington Dissensus: five principles of the Trump administration’s nationalist conditionality regime 11 Table 3: Characteristics of competing normative regimes of development cooperation 17 IDOS Discussion Paper 29/2025 V Abbreviations AIIB Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank DAC Development Assistance Committee DEI diversity, equity and inclusion GPEDC Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation ODA official development assistance MDG millennium development goal NDB New Development Bank NWD New Washington Dissensus OECD Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development SDG sustainable development goal IDOS Discussion Paper 29/2025 1 1 Introduction Malcolm Gladwell (2000, p. 12) describes a “tipping point” as the moment when an idea or trend crosses a threshold and spreads quickly. The book’s discussion was about consumer trends, yet the same concept holds for global development cooperation today, which is facing accumulated political and institutional pressure and seemingly approaching its tipping point (see also Sumner & Klingebiel, 2025).1 Development cooperation appears to be undergoing a fundamental paradigmatic shift. Long-gestating political, institutional and normative forces are reordering development cooperation’s ideational architecture. The future of global development cooperation might not be determined by technical coordination or best practice transfer or more trust or better narratives, but by struggles over meaning, power and legitimacy. Understanding how norms break is not simply an academic exercise. It is central to understanding the reordering of global development cooperation in the mid-2020s. In this paper, we consider the tipping point in terms of the policy norms of global development cooperation. Our core argument is that the Trump administration marks a normative tipping point in global development cooperation. However, the Trump administration is not treated here as a national aberration. Rather, it is understood as a transnational political project. It is rooted in sovereigntism, transactionalism and anti-multilateralism. It crystallises and amplifies wider trends already in motion. These include a shift from collective to self-interested framings of development cooperation, the instrumentalisation of aid for ideological policing and migration control and the proliferation of institutional forums that contest or sidestep established norms. In other words, the Trump administration is triggering a tipping point that accelerates normative contestation, institutional fragmentation and the pluralisation of development cooperation regimes. Drawing retrospectively on Gladwell’s original framework (2000), we use three analogies: first, the influence of powerful norm antipreneurs (“the Law of the Few”); second, a compelling, if polarising, ideological message (“the Stickiness Factor”); and third, a permissive context of weakened multilateralism and rising geopolitical rivalry (“the Power of Context”). Yet, where Gladwell once saw these forces as enablers of positive social contagion, his later reflections reconsider such dynamics as mechanisms of systemic breakdown (2024). In this sense, the Trump administration era marks a tipping point. It is also a breaking point. Accumulated normative strain and disillusionment now converge into open fragmentation and the reconstitution of development norms under rival geopolitical logics. Long-held assumptions about what constitutes legitimate aid, how it should be delivered and in whose interest are being openly contested. These shifts are not merely about funding levels or donor fatigue; they signal a deeper fracture in the normative foundations of the system. What was once perceived as an incremental evolution of aid norms toward alignment, effectiveness and partnership is now subject to fragmentation, ideological contestation and institutional bypass. This paper seeks to explain how and why norms in the areas of development and development policy break, with attention to contestation and strategic reconfiguration. Norms are treated not as stable end points but as artefacts of political contestation. This paper addresses a set of questions: (i) What are the core mechanisms through which development cooperation norms are formed, contested and fragmented? (ii) How is the second Trump administration seeking to reshape 1 We define the system of development cooperation as the broader architecture of actors, norms, instruments and institutions that mobilise and coordinate resources, knowledge and political support for development goals. Within this system, official development assistance (ODA) is a core financial instrument, primarily provided by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) members, and functioning alongside other modalities such as SouthSouth cooperation, climate finance, philanthropic aid and impact-oriented private-sector engagement. IDOS Discussion Paper 29/2025 2 normative regimes in development cooperation? (iii) What research agenda is needed to understand norm change in a multipolar and contested development cooperation landscape? In addressing these questions, this paper makes four contributions. First, it is a survey of international relations, sociology, development studies and public policy on the conceptualisation of policy norms and the mechanisms of norm emergence, contestation and fragmentation. Second, it is an empirically grounded analysis of the Trump administration as a case study of “norm antipreneurship”, potentially even “norm imperialism”, illustrating the political and institutional strategies through which policy norms are currently being contested, dismantled or displaced. Third, it presents the competing normative regimes in development cooperation. And fourth, it proposes a research agenda. The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 surveys the conceptual and theoretical study of policy norms. Section 3 applies those concepts and theories to analyse shifts in development cooperation under the second Trump administration. Section 4 presents a typology of competing development cooperation regimes within the development cooperation system. Section 5 concludes with a forward-looking research agenda. 2 Policy norms and development cooperation 2.1 The concept of policy norms In international relations, sociology, development studies and public policy, “policy norms” are often defined as “collective expectations for the proper behaviour of actors with a given identity” (Katzenstein, 1996, p. 5). By contrast, Finnemore and Sikkink (1998, p. 891) describe norms as “a standard of appropriate behaviour for actors with a given identity”. They also operate as procedural expectations about how authority should be exercised and how organisations are expected to operate (Barnett & Finnemore, 2004; Eyben, 2010). They are not merely technical rules. They are value-laden principles that specify who sets standards, how compliance is assessed and who bears responsibility (e.g., donor-recipient models vs. mutual partnership). What conditions are legitimate is a separate normative question (e.g., alignment vs. autonomy). Examples of development cooperation policy norms are numerous and include the Paris principles on aid effectiveness (ownership, alignment, harmonisation, results and mutual accountability), as well as more recent norms around policy coherence, gender equality and climate responsibility. These norms evolve historically and are often embedded in institutional arrangements such as the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) peer reviews, the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC) and multilateral lending practices (Honig & Gulrajani, 2020). The crisis of the development cooperation system today is a crisis of these norms. Longstanding assumptions about what aid is for – and how it should be delivered – are being contested, reframed, eroded or rejected altogether. Sociological theories, especially those grounded in practice theory (Bourdieu, 1977; Giddens, 1984), conceptualise norms as embedded in and reproduced through social practices.2 Norms are not exogenous constraints but, as noted, are constitutive of identity and action: they are internalised, habituated and enacted in everyday institutional and professional routines (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). Public policy research adds a further lens. It examines how problems are defined and how solutions become acceptable. This happens within “policy paradigms” (Hall, 2 Practice-oriented social theory explains how social order is structured and reproduced through everyday action (see also Bourdieu, 1977; Giddens, 1984). IDOS Discussion Paper 29/2025 9 3.2 Normative disruption in development cooperation and the New Washington Dissensus Development cooperation is more than material redistribution. It constructs and reshapes global norms and political orders (Chaturvedi et al., 2021; Eyben, 2010; Mawdsley et al., 2014). The concept operates as a normative tool of global governance, shaping how development, legitimacy and power are understood and negotiated. Historically, US development cooperation has played a leading role in shaping global order. During the Cold War, it served as an instrument of containment, embedding capitalist models and securing alliances (Engerman, 2003; Latham, 2011). US development cooperation projected Washington’s influence in the Global South. After 2000, development cooperation policy partially shifted toward global public goods and multilateral norms, particularly under the Obama and Biden administrations, though strategic interests remained central (Carothers & Brechenmacher, 2014). Conceptually, development cooperation can be understood through three overlapping lenses: as soft power (Nye, 2004), as a legitimacy device (Sending, 2015) and as a strategic ordering mechanism (Gill, 1995; Li, 2007). The soft power lens frames development cooperation as a means of shaping preferences through attraction rather than coercion. Development cooperation under this logic enhances a donor’s international standing, builds goodwill and diffuses values such as democracy and sustainability. The second perspective treats development cooperation as a legitimacy device. This means donors and recipients participate in a performative architecture together that signals normative alignment and technocratic modernity (Sending, 2015). Here, development cooperation helps sustain reputational credibility in global arenas, irrespective of domestic outcomes. The third and most relevant to the Trump administration frames development cooperation as a strategic ordering mechanism through norm-setting and structural dependence. This perspective draws on Gramscian notions of hegemony and Foucauldian governmentality to foreground development cooperation’s role in structuring the rules and norms of global governance (Gill, 1995; Li, 2007). Development cooperation in this framing is a means of embedding institutional logics, economic models and governance templates that favour the donor’s preferences. Rather than relying solely on persuasion (i.e., soft power), it works through structural dependence to push new norms and their diffusion. Trump’s second presidency marks a shift within this from hegemonic consentbuilding to transactional coercion (Haug et al., 2025). Under the Trump administration, development cooperation is no longer a vehicle for universal norms but an ideologically policed instrument of national interest. The Trump administration set out an instrumental and exclusionary logic for development cooperation that prioritises national objectives. This stance uses development cooperation as a lever of global influence and further seeks to weaken multilateral norms. Where Cold War development cooperation emphasised alliances and capitalism, and postCold War development cooperation focussed on millennium development goals (MDGs) and global public goods, the Trump administration shifts the paradigm from consent-based hegemony to transactional coercion. The Trump administration’s policies exemplify norm antipreneurship: active dismantling, displacement and conversion of existing norms (Klingebiel & Sumner, 2025). The ideological architecture of the Trump administration’s development policy is explicit, not latent. It appears in the 2025 questionnaire sent to ODA recipients during the aid review, in reporting by Yourish et al. (2025), and in the 2026 budget requests and rescissions, which together articulate five principles we term the “New Washington Dissensus” (NWD) or an exemplar of a “Nationalist Conditionality Regime” (see Table 2) (Sumner & Klingebiel, 2025). The NWD’s first principle reframes development cooperation as a tool to weaken, rather than strengthen, global cooperation. US ODA recipients are asked to confirm that their programmes do not rely on international organisations such as the United Nations. This reflects a broader effort to delegitimise multilateralism and to erode the normative authority of institutions perceived as constraining US IDOS Discussion Paper 29/2025 10 sovereignty. In effect, development cooperation is repurposed to disrupt rather than support rulesbased international governance and to weaken norms around multilateralism as a global public good (Haug et al., 2025; Mawdsley, 2019). The second principle of the NWD is to place ideological vetting at the core of development cooperation. Recipients of ODA must certify that they do not engage with “communist, socialist or totalitarian parties” or express “anti-American beliefs”. Certification functions as political screening; in effect, flows depend on ideological loyalty, not effectiveness or need. The Trump administration extends the domestic culture war into development cooperation, targeting China, left-aligned movements and non-aligned actors. The third principle of the NWD is the instrumentalisation of development cooperation for donor countries’ domestic migration control. Projects are assessed on their role in deterring irregular migration and enhancing border security. Traditional aims, such as reducing poverty, advancing rights and transforming economies, have given way to domestic political objectives and restrictive conditionality; in practice, governments use development cooperation to extend immigration enforcement. The fourth principle of the NWD is that development cooperation systematically excludes climate action and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. ODA recipients should disavow environmental justice and inclusion agendas. This marks a deliberate rollback of prior commitments and aligns with domestic opposition to “woke” policies. Large areas of socially transformative work are disqualified from US support. Finally, the fifth principle of the NWD is that development cooperation is explicitly transactional. development cooperation must show economic benefits for the US either via cost-sharing or gains to US industries and workers. The survey demands evidence of return on investment, aligning development cooperation with trade and industrial strategy. Foreign development cooperation becomes an export and job-creation tool. The erasure of humanitarian or justice-based vocabulary reflects a broader shift toward instrumental and security-driven justifications. The NWD marks a deliberate rupture with multilateralist norms. It entails defunding global institutions, ideological vetting of recipients and rejection of climate and equity agendas. The SDGs, which were once a unifying framework, are explicitly denounced (US Mission to the United Nations, 2025). While this may not resemble traditional development cooperation, it now defines US engagement in the area of development cooperation. When actors see Agenda 2030 and the SDGs as threats to sovereignty, the issue is not credibility but competing worldviews. The Trump administration’s development cooperation thus reflects a strategy of what has been termed “norm antipreneurship” (Bloomfield & Scott, 2018), rejecting key tenets of what has been an implicit consensus. Institutionally, this means defunding the United Nations Population Fund, withdrawing from the Paris Agreement and cutting contributions to the World Health Organization, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, as well as the World Food Programme, the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Children’s Fund. These were not just budgetary moves, but discursive rejections of multilateralism and “antiAmerican” globalism. The Trump administration has promoted a transactional vision of development cooperation, replacing solidarity-based frameworks with ideological conditionality. The reinstated “Mexico City Policy” (or “Global Gag Rule”) blocks funding to foreign NGOs involved in abortion services. This exported domestic culture wars via development cooperation, contesting gender and health norms and constructing a conservative normative order (Walt, 2025). Executive orders under the Trump administration reshaped policy instruments on migration, trade and religion (see also Haug et al., 2025). Several orders redirected or conditioned development cooperation through these domains. IDOS Discussion Paper 29/2025 11 Table 2: The New Washington Dissensus: five principles of the Trump administration’s nationalist conditionality regime Principle Questionnaire sent to ODA recipients Disappearing words in federal documents Budget FY 2026 requests Dismantling global governance – antiUN, anti-SDGs Does this project reinforce US sovereignty by limiting reliance on international organisations or global governance structures (e.g., UN, World Health Organization)? Removal of SDG-related terms (e.g., climate crisis, equity, person-centred care); DEI terminology (e.g., inclusion, underrepresented) Major cuts or elimination of contributions to multilateral institutions (UN, Global Environment Facility, World Health Organization) Global health programs cut by 62%: USD 10bn/year to USD 3.8bn/year Ideological policing – loyalty tests against “antiAmericanism” Can you confirm that your organisation does not work with entities … [that] espouse anti-American beliefs? Does your organisation have a clear policy prohibiting any collaboration, funding or support for entities that advocate or implement policies contrary to US government interests, national security and sovereignty? Elimination of activism and social justice terms (e.g., advocacy, feminism, intersectionality, antiracism) Elimination of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) accused of supporting anti-Trump or leftist organisations Defunding of educational exchanges with perceived ideological bias Border securitisation – aid and migration deterrent Does this project directly contribute to limiting illegal immigration or strengthening US border security? To what extent does this project strengthen partner and ally security assistance by contributing to securing US borders, protecting American sovereignty and upholding national security? What impact does this project have on preventing illegal immigration to the US? Removal of migration and humanitarian terms (e.g., immigrants, marginalised, trauma, vulnerable populations) Border security-oriented and migrationdeterrence programmes prioritised Cuts to migrationrelated assistance Humanitarian funding tied to domestic enforcement priorities Economic support and development assistance zeroed out (from approx. USD 8bn in FY 2025) IDOS Discussion Paper 29/2025 12 Principle Questionnaire sent to ODA recipients Disappearing words in federal documents Budget FY 2026 requests Erasure of climate and DEI – disqualification of “woke” projects Can you confirm that this project contains no DEI elements? Can you confirm this is not a climate or “environmental justice” project or include such elements? Does this project take appropriate measures to protect women and to defend against gender ideology as defined in …Executive Order? Is your organisation compliant with the latest Mexico City Policy? Elimination of DEI, gender identity and environmental terms (e.g., trans, climate science, diversity, equity) Funding eliminated for Global Environment Facility, climate investment funds and DEI-related programmes No funding of family planning Transactional nationalism – aid as return on investment for US economy Does this project create measurable benefits for US domestic industries, workforce or economic sectors? What is the specific financial return of this project, including measurable dividends, cost benefit analysis and economic impact? What impact does this project have in increasing American influence, trust and reputation within foreign governments? And among foreign publics? Removal of humanitarian/altruistic justification for aid; shift toward instrumental language Creation of the America First Opportunity Fund (USD 2.9bn) Sources: Sources: Based on USAID (2025) and Yourish et al. (2025) (see also Kine, 2025) Together, the principles reflect a coherent ideological departure from the liberal norms that have underpinned development cooperation for decades. They redefine the purpose, beneficiaries and conditions of development cooperation in ways that elevate nationalism over multilateralism, compliance over collaboration and short-term political gain over long-term development partnership. The Trump administration’s approach is not simply a disruption. It represents a deliberate construction of an alternative logic. Basic assumptions about international politics are not shared, as values play no role and underlying concepts like “soft power” are not taken into consideration (Klingebiel & Sumner, 2025). And it is not only evident in the US as discussed in the next section. It constitutes an emergent and ideologically coherent mode of (re)ordering. Through this lens, development cooperation is no longer framed as a broadly shared public good. It functions instead as an ideologically policed tool to assert national dominance. It is a strategic ordering mechanism constituting a novel and informal ordering project, one that departs from consent-based hegemony and embraces transactional nationalism. Conditionality has long been a central feature of development cooperation, historically used by donors to influence recipient IDOS Discussion Paper 29/2025 13 countries’ policies and governance frameworks. The Trump administration’s approach, however, marks a departure from previous iterations of conditionality in both form and intent. Understanding this departure requires situating it within a longer genealogy of conditionality regimes. This nationalist conditionality regime breaks with the Washington Consensus era, when donors tied development cooperation to neoliberal reforms. Second-generation conditionality (2000s) focussed on governance, democracy and rights. The Trump administration’s model breaks from both, replacing economic or liberal benchmarks with ideological and national-interest conditions. This reflects a broader strategy of informal empire or power without rules where coercive bilateralism replaces multilateral engagement. The Trump administration uses disorder instrumentally: hollowing institutions, delegitimising norms and demanding compliance. It fragments global cooperation by asserting dominance through disruption. Development cooperation, under this logic, becomes a tool for asserting unilateral dominance rather than fostering shared (development) goals. The Trump administration’s approach eschews formal rulemaking or institutional innovation in favour of bilateral pressure, bureaucratic obstruction and discursive delegitimisation. This is our definition of a “nationalist conditionality regime”. The strategy mirrors what Flockhart (2016) has described as “order through disorder” or the deliberate weakening of multilateral norms and institutions as a means to recalibrate international order around narrower, nationalist principles. This strategy resonates with broader theoretical perspectives on how power operates in a fragmented world order. It aligns with the concept of informal empire, whereby hegemonic states exert influence via transactional tools such as development cooperation. In this view, the US abandons universalism not as retreat but as a recalibration of influence under conditions of declining legitimacy (Parmar, 2018). Second, the strategy mirrors the logic of decoupling in global economic governance and fragmentation as a means of control. Just as global production networks are being strategically reoriented toward security goals, US development cooperation is reframed as a foreign policy instrument. The aim is to privilege allies, punish adversaries and channel resources toward actors whose behaviour signals ideological allegiance and geopolitical utility (Farrell & Newman, 2019). Third, the nationalist conditionality regime may also be understood as part of a broader process of authoritarian learning, wherein states experiment with new instruments of control, replicate effective tactics and adapt to shifting global constraints. The Trump administration’s approach offers a template for illiberal or populist regimes to assert external influence while undermining liberal institutional constraints, suggesting a form of norm diffusion through disruption (Kahler, 2018). Taken together, “order through disorder” is not a paradox but a method: disorder is instrumentalised to erode rival norms and entrench an emergent, exclusionary order in the development domain. Perhaps the most evident risk of the nationalist conditionality regime is not only its immediate operational impact (i.e., ODA cuts), but its potential for normative contagion. The Trump administration’s development cooperation model provides a mode that may be attractive to other donors seeking to consolidate domestic support, discipline international partners or exit from multilateral entanglements. The logic of transactionalism or aid for loyalty and aid for economic returns may appeal to other governments. At the same time, recipient countries may strategically realign. If US assistance becomes too unreliable or coercive, states may pivot toward alternative sources of finance, particularly from China, the EU, or regional South-South mechanisms. China’s emphasis on infrastructure, credit lines and non-conditionality offers a form of stability, even if it generates debt concerns. The EU may serve as a normative counterweight by recommitting to inclusive development and multilateral channels, albeit strategically. What is at stake is not simply the future of US development cooperation, but the integrity of the broader development cooperation regime and the collapse of a positive incentive system. The erosion of inclusive, rulesbased principles undermines the multilateral fabric that has, however imperfectly, coordinated IDOS Discussion Paper 29/2025 14 collective responses to global challenges. In their place, an ad hoc and politically instrumental logic of development cooperation threatens to fragment the development landscape into competing spheres of influence. 3.3 Norm contagion, emulation and global reverberations Although these developments originated in US development cooperation, their influence extends beyond US policy. The Trump administration has catalysed a broader normative recalibration to differing extents among a range of donors, multilateral institutions and development actors. Among a number of traditional donors, elements of the Trump administration’s logic can be found. For example, the United Kingdom merged the Department for International Development into the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in 2020. The merger reoriented development policy toward foreign-policy objectives, and the change has not been reversed by the government elected in 2024. Further, the UK government will reduce ODA from 0.5 per cent to 0.3 per cent of gross national income by 2027 (or 0.17 per cent excluding in-donor refugee cost), citing the need to increase UK defence spending. The previous UK government’s Integrated Review (Cabinet Office, 2021) framed aid in terms of national interest, development finance for trade and security priorities, including the externalisation of migration control to partner countries. This shift aligns with the transactional and securitised development paradigm evident in the Trump administration. Although the government has changed, this framing is still evident. Further, although in principle climate change is a core theme shaping priorities, the Foreign Secretary has made reference to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office creating UK jobs and UK growth (FCDO, 2024). Similarly, the European Union’s external action strategy increasingly ties aid to migration deterrence, especially through the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (European Commission, 2021). This represents a normative hybrid: blending development objectives with security, surveillance and control agendas. While rhetorically distinct from the Trump administration’s “America First”, the underlying normative logic is similar in the sense of instrumentalising development for domestic priorities. Multilateral institutions, though not originators of such shifts, have also adapted to changing normative terrain. To maintain donor support, organisations like the World Bank have incrementally adjusted their framing and discourse (not least because the US appoints the World Bank president by historical precedence). These changes were not driven solely by the second Trump administration. Yet they contributed to a shift toward transactional goals and away from redistribution or rights-based agendas. In this context, non-Western actors have been empowered to contest norms over the past two decades. For instance, China’s development cooperation, which is organised primarily through bilateral channels and the Belt and Road Initiative, promotes a sovereignty-based, mutual benefit narrative. By challenging the legitimacy of long-standing Western development norms and institutions, the US creates space for alternative approaches to take hold. Recipient countries increasingly engage in “forum shopping”, seeking institutional arenas and partners that confer recognition, resources, or status in terms of concessional finance, infrastructure investment, or even symbolic recognition (Zürn, 2018). Southern-led institutions, such as the New Development Bank (NDB), Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and China’s South-South Cooperation Fund, have further contributed to this diversification. These institutions promote distinct normative logics such as demand-responsiveness, infrastructure-led growth and state-led development that stand in contrast to the governance and rights-based norms of traditional donors (Esteves & Klingebiel, 2021). The result is not the wholesale displacement of existing norms, but the IDOS Discussion Paper 29/2025 15 emergence of a polycentric and pluralist norm environment in which multiple, and sometimes contradictory, standards coexist. This fragmentation is further exacerbated by coalitions of norm antipreneurs. Within multilateral settings, alliances between the US, Argentina, Hungary and others have challenged sexual and reproductive health norms, gender language and climate targets. Such coalitions can effectively block consensus, introduce alternative language and demand “sovereignty clauses” in outcome documents. This effectively institutionalises contestation within global governance. Even where consensus is achieved, the resulting texts are diluted. These changes have had a marked effect on development cooperation. The narratives of “Agenda 2030” or “global solidarity”, which were once hegemonic, are now competing with narratives of self-reliance, managed migration and economic returns. Although the development cooperation system has not collapsed, its normative architecture is increasingly polycentric and contested. Norm fragmentation has arisen not only from normative decay but also from the proliferation of institutional alternatives, discursive rearticulations and political realignments. The Trump administration, in this context, is both a cause and a catalyst by actively undermining existing norms and thus opening space for alternative ones. Its legacy may be the broader realignment of development cooperation as a field of geopolitical strategy and domestic political signalling. The implications for norms are thus long-term and may shape the development cooperation well beyond the second Trump presidency though it competes with several other regimes of development cooperation, which we turn to next. 4 Competing normative regimes in global development cooperation The Trump administration’s NWD is a form of a nationalist conditionality regime and is one of a set of competing regimes of development cooperation within the development cooperation system as a whole. To map this landscape, we propose a typology of four contemporary regimes, each reflecting distinct logics. Drawing on recent comparative scholarship (Chaturvedi et al., 2021; Esteves & Klingebiel, 2021; Mawdsley, 2019), we use examples from the US, EU and South-South cooperation. We group the four regimes along two dimensions: how much international coordination they seek and how far they commit to development in the Global South. These generate four ideal types, which are summarised in Table 3. The typology enables an analytical framing of ongoing shifts in the normative architecture of global development cooperation. Each regime exhibits distinct assumptions regarding the purpose of development cooperation, the basis of legitimacy and the appropriate role of norms. First, the “liberal multilateralism regime” reflects high coordination and high commitment, grounded in shared rules, pooled resources and inclusive governance. It is exemplified by the post-2000 development cooperation effectiveness agenda. In contrast, the “nationalist conditionality regime” represents a fragmented and low-commitment logic, where development cooperation is deployed transactionally and conditioned in alignment with donor interests, often subordinating development goals to domestic political imperatives. The “pluralist development cooperation regime” reflects high commitment but low coordination, often seen in South-South cooperation or differentiated bilateral initiatives that respect national sovereignty while still pursuing developmental goals. The “strategic multilateralism regime” involves coordinated action but low developmental commitment and typically instrumentalised for geopolitical or commercial ends. We can elucidate each regime further. The “liberal multilateralism regime” represents the continuation of post-2000 normative architectures, including the MDGs, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the broader development cooperation effectiveness agenda. Rooted in a IDOS Discussion Paper 29/2025 16 universalist logic, this regime promotes collective action, peer accountability and development conceived as a global public good. It is institutionalised through bodies such as the United Nations Development Programme and the OECD-DAC. Other fora include the United Nations Economic and Social Council Development Cooperation Forum and the GPEDC. Key normative features include a strong commitment to multilateralism, pooled resources, an emphasis on transparency, evaluation and coherence and rhetorical alignment with principles such as “leave no one behind”. Norm change occurs primarily through layering, whereby new priorities (e.g., digital inclusion, climate finance) are added without displacing existing ones, and drift, whereby principles are retained rhetorically but weakened in practice as political priorities and budgetary allocations shift. An illustrative case is the OECD-DAC peer review system, which formally continues but has seen its influence diminish as donors increasingly bypass multilateral mechanisms in favour of earmarked or bilateral arrangements (Honig & Gulrajani, 2018). The “nationalist conditionality regime” narrowly reframes development cooperation as an instrument of foreign policy leverage. It is bilateral, purely interest-driven and conditional in nature. The second Trump administration exemplifies its key features: ideological or security-based conditionalities, emphasis on national sovereignty and explicit rejection of multilateralism as inefficient or politicised. Here, norm change or “norm imperialism” manifests through displacement and conversion: older norms are reinterpreted or crowded out as new priorities take hold. Domestic political entrepreneurs and sympathetic think tanks then translate these shifts into operational guidance used by development cooperation agencies to advance domestic ideological agendas. For example, US development policy under Trump (both administrations, the second even more so) has involved defunding multilateral institutions, reinstating the Global Gag Rule and conditioning development cooperation on support of US migration and ideological goals. The “pluralist development cooperation regime” is driven by emerging powers, such as China, India, Brazil and the entire BRICS+ group, and regional platforms, including the NDB, the AIIB and the India, Brazil, South Africa Dialogue Forum. These actors reject DAC norms, particularly conditionality, and promote alternative values based on sovereignty, mutual benefit and strategic alignment. Norm change occurs through localisation and institutional displacement whereby new organisations are created with their own reporting and evaluation systems. The NDB offers a clear example: it supports climate and infrastructure finance based on performance criteria, rather than DAC-style procedural compliance (Gray & Gills, 2018). Finally, the “strategic multilateralism regime” reflects a mode of cooperation in which multilateral instruments are retained, but their use is increasingly subordinated to the geopolitical or commercial priorities. Unlike liberal multilateralism, where cooperation is framed as a collective ethical obligation, strategic multilateralism leverages multilateral platforms to serve selective national or regional interests often through earmarked funding, governance influence and donordominated agenda-setting. This regime retains formal multilateralism but with weaker normative commitment to shared goals. Institutions like the World Bank remain central but are increasingly shaped by shareholder geopolitics. In this regime, norm change occurs mainly through conversion and drift: universalist commitments remain on paper but lose substance in practice. For example, initiatives such as the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment and the EU’s Global Gateway are framed as alternatives to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (Strupczewski, 2021). Their narratives emphasise transparency, debt sustainability and strategic alignment with partners. Strategic multilateralism realigns norms and steers cooperation toward competition, containment and transactional alignment. Each regime has distinct mechanisms and institutional actors that uphold or contest norms. In liberal multilateralism, norm drift and layering are driven primarily by technical agencies and development ministries. The nationalist conditionality regime is characterised by antipreneurship and displacement, often led by executive branches and foreign policy apparatuses. In the pluralist development cooperation regime, actors localise and differentiate instruments while keeping IDOS Discussion Paper 29/2025 17 modalities flexible; they coordinate and standardise weakly, and finance ministries and regional development banks lead decisions on allocation, instrument choice and implementation. Strategic multilateralism is shaped by major donor governments working through multilateral institutions to advance selective geopolitical or commercial objectives. Norm change in this regime occurs through conversion and drift, as traditional development norms are repurposed or deprioritised within existing institutional frameworks. Narrative contestation cuts across them: terms like “mutual benefit” or “strategic partnership” compete with universalist SDG discourses. Multilateral norms are not rejected outright but rendered contingent and subordinate to national or geopolitical priorities. This normative fragmentation may open space for more inclusive and co-developed standards. Whether pluralism of development cooperation approaches leads to renewal or incoherence remains unresolved. The coexistence of competing regimes reduces predictability for recipient countries, who face divergent expectations and reporting obligations. Further, institutional weakening occurs as parallel systems erode the agenda-setting capacity of traditional multilateral frameworks and accountability gaps widen as normative pluralism makes it more difficult to enforce common standards. At the same time the fragmentation contributes to geopolitical polarisation, as development norms become entangled with bloc competition. The decline of DAC norm hegemony may open potential space for more inclusive and negotiated standards. Whether this pluralism will ultimately support a fairer normative order or exacerbate institutional incoherence remains an unresolved question. Table 3 summarises the four development cooperation regimes and their normative orientation, key characteristics and dominant policy narratives. Table 3: Characteristics of competing normative regimes of development cooperation Regime type Normative orientation Key characteristics Dominant policy narratives Liberal multilateralism Universalism, global public goods, mutual accountability Pooled funding, peer reviews, SDG alignment, resultsbased management “Leave no one behind”; global solidarity Nationalist conditionality regime Strategic interest, ideological conditionality, national sovereignty Development cooperation tied to migration control, trade deals or political alignment “America First”; “development cooperation as leverage” Pluralist development cooperation Mutual benefit, noninterference, horizontal partnerships Infrastructure and trade focus; no standardised ODA; performance over procedure “Development through partnership”; “respect for sovereignty” Strategic multilateralism Selective multilateralism; geostrategic alignment; instrumental use of global institutions Earmarked funding; governance influence; securitised and commercial logics within multilateral settings “Values-based partnerships”; “Secure and open development” UK and EU’s new focus on own interests and maintenance of multilateral approaches Source: Authors IDOS Discussion Paper 29/2025 18 5 Conclusion We have argued that global development cooperation has reached a tipping point, driven by the Trump administration’s policies and a wider decline in consensus-based multilateralism. In short, the return of Donald Trump to the presidency marks a profound disruption in the normative architecture of development cooperation. But this disruption is not simply a departure or a retreat; it constitutes a deliberate act of normative reordering or “norm imperialism”. The Trump administration is seeking to define the purpose, content and conditions of development cooperation along nationalist lines. It reframes development cooperation as an extension of domestic political priorities and foreign policy leverage, dismantling multilateral norms in favour of coercive bilateralism, ideological loyalty and transactionalism. The implications extend well beyond US foreign development cooperation. What we also term the NWD signals a move away from the liberal multilateral consensus of the post-2000 period and toward a fractured global development landscape. This landscape is shaped by competing normative regimes, each grounded in different assumptions about what development cooperation is for, who it serves and how it should be governed. The Trump administration is both a symptom and an accelerator of this fragmentation. It exemplifies how disorder can be instrumentalised as a mechanism of global (dis)order-making. In fact, although the Trump administration may be unusual in its bluntness, it is not unique. The diffusion of nationalist and transactional norms whether from the US or other countries poses a systemic test for the area of development cooperation. How development cooperation actors respond in this moment of contestation will shape the trajectory of global order itself. The norms that have historically governed development cooperation, such as the aid effectiveness agenda, multilateral solidarity and SDG-aligned coherence, are no longer merely eroding through drift or institutional fatigue. Instead, they are being actively contested, displaced and reconstituted through new political coalitions, institutional forums and discursive frames. The implications of these shifts are profound for the governance of development cooperation. First, normative fragmentation undermines the very idea of a shared development agenda. If “ownership” means strategic alignment in one context, and subordination in another and if “results” refer to developmental outcomes in some cases and donor political dividends in others, then policy coordination becomes increasingly difficult. Second, the diffusion of power across rising Southern donors, populist governments and alternative institutions challenges the normative monopoly once held by OECD-DAC donors and the UN system. Governance becomes increasingly negotiated, with shifting alliances and competing standards. Third, as norm contestation intensifies, so too does the political nature of development cooperation. Questions of whose norms prevail, how they are enforced and through which institutions are no longer implicit but openly debated. For the broad field of development cooperation, the challenge is not simply to restore trust or funding levels, but to grapple with the deeper norm divergence emerging within international cooperation. In this context, normative pluralism may lead to either adaptive reinvention or to incoherence and disengagement. Development actors, whether multilateral, bilateral ODA providers or South-South providers, must navigate this contested terrain by articulating and defending the normative assumptions embedded in their own practices. Further, what is at stake is the future meaning of international cooperation itself. If development cooperation becomes narrowly defined as leverage or loyalty enforcement, the space for inclusive, rights-based and public goods-oriented cooperation contracts. Yet fragmentation may also open room for negotiated alternatives, especially from actors in the Global South and parts of the EU seeking to reaffirm development as a global public endeavour. This moment calls for a re-theorisation of global development cooperation not as a domain governed by consensus, but as one structured by normative conflict. The paper’s typology of