The political economy of local aid: a new research agenda

Five years after the Grand Bargain was signed, those in the Global North continue to control resources within the global political economy of aid while very little assistance goes directly to local and national governments or organizations. This chapter outlines a new research agenda for “local aid,” which refers to aid dollars given directly or as directly as possible to local actors, as well as resources and capacities that originate in the local community. It outlines five promising avenues for research: (1) exploring systems of exclusion that keep local actors out of the global political economy of aid, (2) the role of alternative sources of aid in financing local humanitarian response and reconstruction, (3) new regional and global players and their potential support for localization, (4) the effects of aid on state capacity and development, particularly in understudied geographic areas, and (5) the study of where aid goes sub-nationally.