External publications

The new Washington dissensus: Trump, development cooperation and global (dis)order makin

Sumner, Andy / Stephan Klingebiel
External Publications (2026)

London: The British Academy

Volltext/Full text

This paper examines the ideological and policy shifts in US development cooperation under the second Trump administration and their implications for international development and the
evolving global (dis)order. Recent US measures, we argue, amount to more than a domestic policy change. They signal a foundational challenge to longstanding norms of the development
cooperation system. We identify and discuss five principles underpinning what we term the ‘new Washington Dissensus’. These five principles shift development cooperation away from
country partnerships and the logic of global public goods and to an overtly transactional, nationalist model of cooperation. The paper situates these developments within broader debates about the fragmentation of global order, focusing on development cooperation as a site of normative contestation and (dis)order-making. We argue the second Trump administration’s approach to development cooperation constitutes a new form of coercive order. This can be termed a ‘nationalist conditionality regime’ in the sense that it seeks to assert national dominance and marginalise universal norms. Beyond the US we explore norm imperialism and the risks of normative contagion. We provide a typology of competing regimes of development cooperation to situate the Trump administration’s approach. We close with a set of implications for decision-makers in governments, multilaterals and recipient agencies.

About the IDOS authors

Further IDOS experts