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

Victoria Honeyman; Balázs Szent-Iványi; Simon Lightfoot

doi:10.1057/s41293-025-00289-2

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

Victoria Honeyman, Balázs Szent-Iványi, Simon Lightfoot

University of Leeds

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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.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	499-519
Number of pages	21
Journal	British Politics
Volume	20
Issue number	4
Early online date	2 Jul 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-025-00289-2
Publication status	Published - Dec 2025

Bibliographical note

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/

Keywords

Foreign aid
National interest
Conservative government FCDO

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10.1057/s41293-025-00289-2Licence: CC BY 4.0

Honeyman Svent-Ivanyi and Lightfoot_Taking back control of foreign aid_question_National interest and conservative reframings
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/
Final published version, 735 KBLicence: CC BY 4.0

Cite this

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title = "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 {\textquoteleft}national interest{\textquoteright} 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 {\textquoteleft}enlightened{\textquoteright} narrative relatively aligned with global poverty reduction; one focused on enhancing British leadership and influence by {\textquoteleft}taking back control{\textquoteright}; 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. ",

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

Abstract

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Keywords

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