Edward Cavanough

Edward Cavanough joined The McKell Institute as Manager of Policy in August 2015. He has authored major reports into a variety of issues, including economic inequality, international trade, retirement adequacy, industrial relations, indigenous policy, workplace entitlements, tax reform, infrastructure provision and more. In addition to his policy work, Edward’s analysis and journalism has been published in Foreign Policy, Al Jazeera, ABC News, the South China Morning Post, The Hill, The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Huffington Post, The Diplomat, The Lowy Interpreter, and others, and includes reporting from Afghanistan, China, Cuba, East Timor, Mongolia, and Vanuatu. He holds a BA in History & Politics from the University of Adelaide, and a Master of International Relations from the University of Sydney.
Big Elephants and Small Islands: getting beyond the New Aid Orthodoxy

Big Elephants and Small Islands: getting beyond the New Aid Orthodoxy

Official development assistance (ODA) – or aid – is a small but conspicuous pillar of the international order, and its frailties are being exposed by COVID as surely as those of the other foundations of this order. The assumptions underpinning aid and its management have long drawn fire from a broad range of critics, but this has been particularly acute in recent years. This has resulted in dwindling confidence in aid as an instrument of development, giving rise to a series of sensible, if slow-moving, initiatives to address some of its systemic flaws. We argue that these initiatives are welcome but, in and of themselves, are incapable of lifting aid effectiveness to meet the lofty rhetoric of the expectations that it is burdened by.

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