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Mandela was an ethical realist, who rejected confrontation both at home and internationally.

In January 2012 the Indian government formally established the Development Partnership Administration (DPA) within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with a mandate to coordinate India’s overseas development assistance. 

In 1994, the new South Africa emerged as a promising foreign policy actor. It launched ambitious plans to develop the continent and expressed a strong commitment to the global South. The country has become a legitimate voice of Africa on the world...

Dit is de blog over het voorgenomen kennisbeleid van BuZa. Laat je mening horen!

Development organizations have yet to come to terms with the inherent complexity of institutional change. Institutional change takes time, and the kind of institution best suited to a given situation depends on the context. In other words, a succe...

China’s explosive economic growth has made it a more prominent player in global development. This brings with it a host of new, multilateral responsibilities. The question is still open as to how China will respond to its new status.

There is little chance that traditional and new donors will reach an agreement on the best way to deliver aid.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) food price index increased by 3 points to 234 points last month. That’s 39% percent higher than in June 2010 but four percent below its all-time high of 238 points in February of this year...

Globalization has blurred the distinction between internal and external affairs. This is equally true for both developing countries and richer countries. Moreover, it could result in a profound reshuffling of administrative power relations within...

Phyllis Bennis is the director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, and a Fellow at the Transnational Institute (TNI) in Amsterdam. At the 2011 TNI Fellows Meeting (3-4 June) she talked about...

Salwa Ismail is professor of politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. At the TNI Fellows Meeting in Amsterdam (3-4 June), she discussed the differences between the revolutions in Egypt and Syria....

This blog is about the ‘It’s Down 2 Earth’ conference on agriculture, food security and climate change held in The Hague between 31 October and 5 November 2010.

The Broker will publish interesting publications and current affairs in de field of global development.

The Broker was present in Oslo for the 'Emerging Powers in the 21st century' seminar. The event was organized by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and the Norwegian Peacebuilding Centre (NOREF). Political and economic hegemony in today’s wo...

At the seminar 'Emerging Powers in the 21st century' in Oslo, specialists from Norway and participants from Turkey, India, China, Indonesia and Brazil discussed how political and economic hegemony in today’s world is changing to a situation of mul...

(This post is the introduction speech of Mariano Aguirre at the Seminar "Emerging Powers in the 21st Century" that took place in Oslo, Norway, 4 April 2025)This seminar is focussed on analyzing aspects of the international system’s new c...

Who would have thought of comparing or matching Turkey and Brazil? Well, illustrious Brazilian author Jorge Amado did it when he wrote a great novel about a Turk, in fact an Ottoman Arab migrant, roaming the roads of Brazil in the early years of t...

Is South Africa’s foreign policy likely to be fundamentally changed now that a new political leadership has taken over the country and the ANC since 2009? Before addressing this, it may be worthwhile explaining the fundamental shift in foreign pol...

On Monday 18 April, a crowd of 120 or so gathered in the hall of the Free University in Amsterdam for a lecture by Shi Yinhong, professor of international relations at Renmin University of China. In his lecture, the seventh in a series on ‘global...

The Broker has started a new series on Emerged States. We kicked off with the articles Turkey turns the tide and Brazil braves new waters. 

Each year, the Spring Summit of the EU is followed by the Brussels Forum of the German Marshall Fund. This is the third year that I have been invited to this meeting of politicians, public opinion leaders, diplomats and young people from the US an...

The uprising in North Africa and the Middle East calls for a thorough rethinking of the European Union's and its member states' policies towards the region. Europe’s reaction to the recent events in its backyard has been slow, ambivalent and witho...

The second day of the working group zoomed in on the identification of patterns in the dynamics of insurgencies. Wikileaks data on violent interactions between insurgents and counter-insurgency forces (CIGACTs) had been scrutinized for patterns in...

The Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico is like a Mecca for complexity science. Physicists, biologists, cosmologists, anthropologists, playwrights and even novelists spend their time here, breaking down disciplinary boundaries. This time the focus is...

Tomorrow morning I will board a flight to Santa Fe in New Mexico. I am expecting to land in a Wild West-style landscape, which seems to me particularly well suited for a conference on US foreign policy on Afghanistan. 'Foreign policy as a complex...

A global foreign policy outlook needs a radically new mindset and new forms of cooperation at both the national and international levels. Reaching truly integrated policies will inevitably imply political struggle.

Contrary to what its critics think, Turkey is not 'adrift' but shaken by the pitch and roll resulting from a fundamental rethinking of Turkishness.

The current developments in the Arab world should be a wake-up call for policy makers and opinion leaders in the West. What is happening in Tunisia, Egypt and other Arab countries puts democracy support back on the foreign policy agenda. Stability...

The United States' protracted fight against insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan have raised the spectre of the Vietnam war. Mariano Aguirre reviews recent literature on US wartime policies from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Broker organiseert een online debat over de vraag: wat is de positie van Nederland in een snel veranderende wereld, en wat moet dat betekenen voor het brede Nederlandse buitenlandbeleid en de visie ten aanzien van globalisering en ontwikk...

Whatever we think about the US or about the MDGs, a speech by an American president is always worth analyzing. Development, in the end, is about power and power relations. And the US is still the greatest power in the world.On Wednesday, the final...

The Dragon’s Gift: The Real Story of China in Africa, by Deborah Brautigam. Oxford University Press, 2009, 397 pp.A review by Daniel Large

Described as a ‘pocket-sized medium power’, the Netherlands has always struggled with its size. It has never felt satisfied, like a teenager in front of a mirror. Within NATO, the Netherlands has for years wanted to be the biggest of the small. Wh...

Norway is a generous donor and enjoys high visibility as a peace broker. Public support is high, despite criticism from some quarters. It now wants to rejuvenate the UN and work more closely with the EU.

The decisions that are made in the autumn of 2009 will shape Europe’s international role in the future.

The UK’s New Labour government has been a vocal participant in international development debates. The Conservative party, should it come to power in 2010, promises to keep up the efforts.

Denmark was among the most generous aid donors from 1960 to 2000. A new government in 2001 reduced Danish assistance considerably and put more emphasis on security issues. Denmark now has a renewed focus on aid, particularly in Africa.

Switzerland is among the world’s richest countries, yet its government has been tight-fisted with development aid contributions. In 2008, parliament increased the aid budget, but many NGOs say it’s not enough.

There is no doubt that a lot still needs to be done when to achieve the MDGs (millennium development goals) and other important development goals. There is also no doubt that Europe could play a very important role in this process. However, it is...

In the late 1990s, the development bureaucracy in Brussels was the target of heavy criticism. The different branches of European foreign policy devoted more time to infighting than to finding solutions to the new challenges in the world. Things ar...

The Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs is working to create a more knowledge-oriented organizational culture. But at the same time it is losing its internal capacity for strategic thinking, a crucial attribute in an era of globalization, inte...

China has an increasingly influential voice in global issues such as world trade, conflict management, energy supply security and sustainable development. In June 2006, the Netherlands government presented a policy memorandum, Shaping a Relationsh...