Eclecticism and the Study of Delegation between Global Governors: The EU, the World Bank, and Trust-Funded Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

This article looks at the literature on the microfoundations of the global political space. It compares how selected insights from the public policy, International Relations and International Political Economy (hereinafter IR and IPE) IR-IPE literatures, respectively, fare in explaining the creation of the Africa Infrastructure Trust Fund (ITF), the first blending facility to finance development under EU leadership. Based on previous research on the peculiar set of accountabilities between the EU and the World Bank, the analysis points to the conditional relevance of EU-, relational (interorganizational) and systemic factors in the explanation of the ITF launch. It concludes that meaningful research on delegation between global governors should aim at further cross-fertilizing IR-IPE and public policy literatures and that, ultimately, eclecticism holds the highest potential to improve the understanding of aid policymaking in a global setting.