A Decade Since Busan: Towards Legitimacy or a ‘New Tyranny’ of Global Development Partnership?

In 2011, the Busan Forum on Development Effectiveness announced creation of Global Partnership for Effective Cooperation (GPEDC). The GPEDC promised to replace old donor–recipient dynamic in international development with ‘an equator-less landscape multistakeholder global partnership’ (Eyben & Savage, 2013). Multistakeholder partnerships (MSPs) have since become governance modality choice UN Sustainable Goals. Advocates maintain that MSPs provide more legitimate and effective than interstate multilateralism. But critics contend co-opt subaltern voices reinscribe power asymmetries: may, thus, constitute a ‘New Tyranny’ within (Cooke Kothari, 2001). Drawing extensive empirical research, this article examines extent which provides or effects akin Tyranny’. Against dichotomous portrayals as either inherently ‘legitimate’ ‘tyrannical’, finds such spaces wherein normative principles world order are negotiated. Nevertheless, we no closer partnership were at Busan.