Southern powers and global development: Towards a new geopolitics of accountability

In this book launch, Laura Trajber Waisbich (Instituto Igarapé and Articulação Sul) will draw on her 15 years of work as a researcher and practitioner at the forefront of South-South Cooperation (SSC) to share insights into the changing geopolitics of accountability, focusing on the experiences of Brazil, India and China.

Laura’s new book, Southern Powers and Global Development, takes ‘Global Brazil’, ‘Global China’ and ‘Global India’ as emblematic sites for understanding the new geopolitics of development cooperation, examining the politicisation of responsibility and accountability in the context of Southern-led development cooperation.

The book starts from a series of interrelated questions, namely: how and why responsibility and accountability in the context of SSC emerged as problems to be addressed; how Southern actors (including governments, development experts and civil society groups) understand and respond to these mounting calls for burden-sharing and justification; and what the growing salience of responsibility and accountability debates reveals about rising powers’ role in global development and in global governance more broadly.

Focusing on the experiences of Brazil, China and India, the book examines how questions of responsibility and accountability in Southern-led development cooperation have kept gaining visibility and political significance, becoming subjects of contestation in global arenas. At the same time, these issues have also begun to take shape in domestic contexts, amid a ‘politicized consolidation’ of development cooperation within major Southern powers.

The seminar will conclude with a discussion on the current crisis in global development cooperation and the potential for Southern powers to contribute to its transformation in a way that both mitigates its historic accountability deficits and reduces rather than increasing inequities within as well as between countries.

The seminar will conclude with a discussion on the current crisis in global development cooperation and the potential for Southern powers to contribute to its transformation in a way that both mitigates its historic accountability deficits and reduces rather than increasing inequities within as well as between countries.

Speaker
Laura Trajber Waisbich, Instituto Igarapé and South-South Cooperation Research and Policy Centre – Articulação SUL.

Discussant
Lidia Cabral, IDS Brazil Initiative & Rural Futures Cluster.

Chair
Alex Shankland, IDS Brazil Initiative & Power and Popular Politics Cluster.Laura’s new book, Southern Powers and Global Development, takes ‘Global Brazil’, ‘Global China’ and ‘Global India’ as emblematic sites for understanding the new geopolitics of development cooperation, examining the politicisation of responsibility and accountability in the context of Southern-led development cooperation.

The book starts from a series of interrelated questions, namely: how and why responsibility and accountability in the context of SSC emerged as problems to be addressed; how Southern actors (including governments, development experts and civil society groups) understand and respond to these mounting calls for burden-sharing and justification; and what the growing salience of responsibility and accountability debates reveals about rising powers’ role in global development and in global governance more broadly.

Focusing on the experiences of Brazil, China and India, the book examines how questions of responsibility and accountability in Southern-led development cooperation have kept gaining visibility and political significance, becoming subjects of contestation in global arenas. At the same time, these issues have also begun to take shape in domestic contexts, amid a ‘politicized consolidation’ of development cooperation within major Southern powers.

The seminar will conclude with a discussion on the current crisis in global development cooperation and the potential for Southern powers to contribute to its transformation in a way that both mitigates its historic accountability deficits and reduces rather than increasing inequities within as well as between countries.

Speaker
Laura Trajber Waisbich, Instituto Igarapé and South-South Cooperation Research and Policy Centre – Articulação SUL.

Discussant
Lidia Cabral, IDS Brazil Initiative & Rural Futures Cluster.

Chair
Alex Shankland, IDS Brazil Initiative & Power and Popular Politics Cluster.