Paper short abstract:

The increasing importance of new/emerging state and non-state actors has received attention over the last decade.This paper explores how state actors and non-state actors have interacted in shaping the field of development cooperation and identifies some of the challenges raised by this interaction.

Paper long abstract:

This paper analyses the nature of the emerging donors in the field of international development cooperation and identifies Korea as "hybrid state donor" that maintains characteristics associated with both traditional and non-traditional donors. Development cooperation by emerging state and non-state donor actors have increased in recent years and have thus drawn scholarly attention. The new actors are increasingly taking a more important role in the international development field with the need of alternative sources of financing for development and the desire for new partners for development assistance. However, these actors may present challenges to the existing international aid architecture by introducing different priorities that often clash with traditional donors' priorities. To examine Korea's hybrid position as an emerging donor, I look at how both state and non-state actors have interacted with each other in Korean development cooperation initiatives. This paper finds that an analysis of private sector cooperation in Korean ODA may be useful for highlighting some of the ways in which private firms have been used to strategically extend global value chains. As such, it can help us better understand how actors involved in Korean ODA and in other hybrid donor contexts negotiate competing pressures to adhere to normative claims and create strategic business opportunities.