Despite their growing role as official development assistance (ODA) providers, the Baltic states remain underexplored in scholarship on bilateral donors—and when examined, they are often treated as a single unit despite major differences. Beginning their trajectory as aid recipients in 1990s, they gradually became donors in the early 2000s and Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have since become full members of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC). This paper traces the evolution of development assistance rollercoaster of each of the Baltic states to assess where their development cooperation paths have converged or diverged over time. It analyzes patterns in aid allocation—how much is spent, on what sectors, and in which regions—and examines the influence of the European Union on shaping their policies. Furthermore, it considers whether these states exhibit characteristics typical of small donors and interrogates the extent to which development cooperation is being reimagined and contested within their policy frameworks. The Baltic rollercoaster experience sheds light on importance of such international diplomacy elements as prestige, trustworthiness and reliability in multilateral frameworks and organizations, learning curve in development assistance, building new diplomatic relations via development cooperation, expanding popular foreign policy scope among own population.

The ‘geopolitical turn’ of the European Union and the rising influence of populist parties, particularly the radical right, have been influencing development policy at both the EU and national levels for more than a decade. Trends such as the shift to donor-led aid at the EU level and the reduction of aid volume in many national contexts challenge some of the principles of development policy that were considered inherent to the Western post-Cold War development consensus. With the ongoing politicisation and merger of development policy with foreign policy, the paper develops a novel analytical framework grounded in Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) and the (de)politicisation theory (situated in the statecraft tradition), enriching FPA with policy aspects specific to the international development agenda. The paper scrutinises the strategies adopted by various political actors to repoliticise the sedimented, ostensibly technocratic norms and institutions of development policy at the EU and national levels. Specifically, it examines how actors move policy issues from outside institutions back to the realm of high politics, relax previously binding rules, modify preferences to shape citizen expectations, and strategically allocate public resources. Drawing on case studies of the EU, specifically the formulation and implementation of the Global Gateway strategy, and Czechia, during its transition from a (neo)liberal to a populist radical-right government, the paper contributes to debates regarding the transformation of the neoliberal global development order and its purported exceptionalism.

The number of NGOs with outreach on the Global South has considerably increased in Central and Eastern Europe since the latest millennium. However, their activities, funding sources, policy environments and challenges remained significantly uncovered by academic attention. Most particularly, we see a knowledge and practice gap in the relation between research activities and civil organizations' work on the field. To initiate gathering knowledge and analysis on this topic, in this study we focus on NGOs in Hungary, active in the Global South. As methodology, we employ semi-structured interviews conducted between March and May in 2024 to scrutinize qualitative data regarding their project preparation and implementation practices, keeping the importance of a research-driven approach in focus. Our aim here is three-fold. First, we present and highlight the existence of civic responsibility and activity for the Global South in Hungary. Second, we take under scrutiny the role of research in the success of NGO projects, a priori and ex-post, to identify best-practices and improvement opportunities. Finally, we analyse the needs of these organizations to discover room to manoeuvre for research-based action and provide policy recommendation in this favour.

In a context of geopolitical fragmentation and growing contestation of global development norms, the European Union’s role as a development actor is increasingly shaped not only by common frameworks but also by the practices and priorities of its Member States. While existing research has focused predominantly on major donors and EU-level instruments, the role of smaller EU Member States and their bilateral development policies remains underexplored. This paper examines how small EU donors engage with development cooperation and assesses whether their behaviour contributes to reimagining EU development policy or primarily reflects selective adaptation to established models.

The paper focuses on the Czech Republic as a central empirical case, situated within a broader group of Central European donors to provide a comparative context. It analyses bilateral development strategies, priority regions and sectors, aid allocation patterns, and coordination with EU frameworks since EU accession. Drawing on policy documents, official data, and selected discursive materials, the paper traces how bilateral practices align with, reinterpret, or diverge from dominant EU and OECD development norms.

The analysis shows that small EU donors neither act as passive norm-takers nor as outright challengers of traditional development models. Instead, they pursue bounded, selective strategies that emphasise specific regions, partnership formats, and areas of expertise, often linked to democratic transition, institutional reform, and regional proximity. In the Czech case, this is reflected in a strong focus on neighbouring regions and pragmatic engagement with EU coordination mechanisms, alongside a preference for bilateral visibility and tailored partnerships.

The paper argues that the cumulative effect of such practices contributes to increasing differentiation and bilateralisation within EU development policy. Rather than transforming the EU model outright, small Member States subtly reshape the field through everyday policy choices that recalibrate partnership models and notions of EU development engagement. In doing so, the paper contributes to debates on the future of the EU as a global development actor in a changing global order.