Targeted Development: Industrialized Country Strat Format: Paperback

In a globalizing world, the world's wealthiest nations have found it increasingly difficult to insulate themselves from the residual impacts associated with underdevelopment abroad. Many of the ills associated with, and exacerbated by, underdevelopment cannot be confined within national borders. In Targeted Development, Sarah Blodgett Bermeo shows how wealthy states have responded to this problem by transforming the very nature of development policy. Instead of funding development projects that enhance human well-being in the most general sense, they now pursue a "targeted" strategy: advocating development abroad when and where it serves their own interests. In an era in which the ideology of "globalism" is in decline, targeted development represents a fundamental shift toward a realpolitik approach to foreign aid. Devising development plans that ultimately protect and benefit industrialized donor states now drives the agenda, while crafting effective solutions for deep-seated problems in the neediest nations is increasingly an afterthought.

Sarah Bermeo (PhD, Princeton) is a political economist whose work focuses on understanding relations between industrialized and developing countries. Bermeo is currently Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at the Sanford School at Duke University and a faculty affiliate of the Duke Center for International Development. Her published work on foreign aid and trade institutions has appeared in International Organization, Journal of Politics, and World Development.