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Foreign aid is foreign policy, but it was not always treated as such by international relations (IR) scholars. A literature that once took a purely state-centric approach to research is increasingly finding that an actor-centric approach provides new insights on decisions by aid donors, recipients, and implementers. Approaches from the foreign policy analysis (FPA) literature are relevant to the study of foreign aid and development, and the potential for the two literatures to speak to one other is high.

In a new chapter in the Oxford Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis, SIS Professor Susanna Campbell and her co-author Shannon Carcelli (University of Maryland) point to areas of foreign aid and development research that have benefitted from the ideas of FPA. Aid scholars find richer interpretation and understanding of phenomena associated with aid and development when they are able to consider the actions of leaders, bureaucrats, and other individual decision-makers. They suggest further areas of overlap that could support for important advancements in both FPA and IR.

Campbell, Susanna P., and Shannon P. Carcelli, 'Foreign Policy and Development', in Juliet Kaarbo, and Cameron G. Thies (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis, Oxford Handbooks (2024; online edn, Oxford Academic, 22 Feb. 2024)