How the Institutional Context Creates a Neoliberal Politics of Aid: An Italian Case Study

Transnational ‘helping’ today relies upon partnerships with private companies as enshrined in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, creating Faustian bargains of neoliberalism. However, a knowledge gap remains over how state institutional structures produce these neoliberal solutions. This article explores the case of Italy, an under-researched development actor, to analyse the interactions between its development institutions and their politics to better understand the role of for-profit actors in transnational helping. As in other donor countries, there has been a weakening of public trust in the traditional aid sector of Italian non-profits, combined with recent decreases in national funding for assistance abroad. The article is based on review of state, NGO and private sector documents, including laws and policies, as well as participant observation and review of academic literature in Italian and English. Using an historical institutional approach, the author demonstrates how Italian helping has been characterized by a strategic co-mingling of public and private aid, development and humanitarian aid, and of helping abroad and within Italy. In a changing institutional context for Italian NGOs characterized by reduced public solidarity, negative discursive framing and the need to diversify fund-raising channels, Italian businesses are being sought out for partnerships between for-profit and non-profit actors.