Taking Back Control of Foreign Aid? National Interest and the Conservative Reframings of UK Development Policy

Abstract

The paper explores the national interest turn in the rhetoric associated with UK foreign aid policy under Conservative governments between 2016 and 2024. The ‘national interest’ has figured prominently in the literature on donor motivations for aid, which has shown how different interpretations of the concept may co-exist, and undermine each other through their impacts on aid allocation and effectiveness. The paper identifies three framings of the national interest put forward by Conservative governments: an ‘enlightened’ narrative relatively aligned with global poverty reduction; one focused on enhancing British leadership and influence by ‘taking back control’; and the final narrative emphasising trade, investments, and UK job creation. The three narratives represent policy progression between successive Conservative governments, who were constantly faced with the need to adapt their messaging on aid to changing political circumstances. However, this constant reframing of the national interest around foreign aid led to significant ambiguity. Furthermore, the latter two narratives and their implementation (such as the merger between the Foreign Office and DFID) carried a number of inconsistencies, partially undermining the national interest which they claimed to serve.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-025-00289-2
Divisions: College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities
College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Politics, History and International Relations
College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Aston Centre for Europe
Aston University (General)
Additional Information: Copyright © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Uncontrolled Keywords: Foreign aid,National interest,Conservative government FCDO
Publication ISSN: 1746-9198
Last Modified: 01 Aug 2025 16:01
Date Deposited: 28 Jul 2025 11:05
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: https://link.sp ... 293-025-00289-2 (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2025-07-02
Published Online Date: 2025-07-02
Accepted Date: 2025-06-12
Authors: Honeyman, Victoria
Szent-Iványi, Balázs (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-5883-4601)
Lightfoot, Simon

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License: Creative Commons Attribution


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