Keywords

Knowledge cooperation is crucial to addressing global challenges and to achieving international agendas (Akude & Keijzer, 2014; Ayala Martínez, 2017; Freistein et al., 2022; Radhakrishnan, 2007). The COVID-19 pandemic has shown how relevant effective knowledge interactions are to enabling a quick response to emerging crises.

Knowledge cooperation has been used for decades as a modality in development cooperation. As such, it has often been framed as technical assistance and capacity development (Bandstein, 2007; ECLAC and OECD, 2018, p. 42). In contrast, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) considers its own knowledge cooperation as the third pillar of development cooperation “complementing finance and technical assistance” (OECD, 2011). We, however, understand knowledge cooperation as the sum of different modalities of knowledge interaction, which serve as a toolbox to co-create, share and communicate knowledge among actors. The lack of a concise definition and stringent understanding of knowledge cooperation scatters the evidence base on the effectiveness of different modalities in knowledge-related activities. At the same time, there is an increasing need and interest in proving the effectiveness of development cooperation.

Knowledge cooperation increasingly attracts attention due to the rise of South–South cooperation (SSC). Some observers regard knowledge cooperation as the core of SSC or describe it at least as, to a very large extent, a main feature of what SSC agencies do (Chaturvedi et al., 2021; Costa Leite et al., 2021). Through SSC, there has also been a greater emphasis on, and call for, horizontal and demand-driven partnerships. Despite a concomitant shift in rhetoric, it remains open to question whether modalities of knowledge interaction have changed over time to achieve more equal power dynamics in international cooperation. We observe that the toolbox of modalities mainly remains the same (Ayala Martínez, 2017). This is why partners in the Global South are often not convinced that knowledge cooperation in the context of Official Development Assistance (ODA) is the most effective approach and why there is much more to learn from actors in the Global South (Klingebiel, 2014).

Therefore, following a collaborative research design, we want to contribute to this debate by creating case-by-case evidence with our partners: Rwanda Cooperation Initiative (RCI), Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS, India), UNDP Seoul Policy Centre (USPC) as well as three projects of the German Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in Rwanda and India. The partners share similar mandates, such as the fostering of SSC and the idea that they can offer advice to stakeholders in other countries based on narratives of their own “development successes”.

Our partners were established at different times and in different contexts. While GIZ can be regarded as a traditional ODA development agency, USPC shares knowledge on facets of the Republic of Korea’s socio-economic development since the 1960s. RIS pursues SSC in the context of India as an emerging power, while Rwanda Cooperation Initiative is a newly established SSC agency based in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The collaborative validation of our findings with our partners was and is important to us for several reasons. Firstly, the power to define and interpret related topics is at the core of the issue itself and related to the question of who sets standards and norms in international relations. Secondly, taking this into account is an integral part of our understanding of how effectiveness dimensions should be developed jointly. Thirdly, this can build the basis for future engagement in inclusive fora towards a shared understanding of good practices. For these relevant processes, our book provides insights into the nature of modalities and indications for quality dimensions. We do so by answering the following research question and sub-questions:

  1. 1.

    How do our partners realise modalities of knowledge interaction?

    1. (a)

      What are and what constitutes the different modalities of knowledge interaction of our partners?

    2. (b)

      What do we know about the effectiveness of knowledge cooperation of our partners?

    3. (c)

      How are modalities of knowledge interactions used by partners?

In answering these questions, our book’s contribution is two-fold: it makes both a conceptual and an empirical contribution. Chapter 2 lays the conceptual foundation by summarising the relationship between knowledge and power structures, defining knowledge interactions, and explaining our understanding of modalities of knowledge interaction, including the typology of modalities we have developed. Chapter 3 sets out the focus of our empirical work by delineating debates around the impact, effectiveness and evaluation of development cooperation, and by presenting the analytical framework we developed as our sensitising concept. In addition, we outline our collaborative case-study approach and explain our case selection. In Chapter 4, we introduce the methodological approach we took to data collection and analysis, before presenting our empirical findings in Chapter 5, on a case-by-case basis for RCI, RIS, USPC and the GIZ organisations. In Chapter 6 we summarise our empirical findings across all cases, regarding the constitution of the modalities of knowledge interactions, the effectiveness of knowledge cooperation, and the functions of modalities of knowledge interaction. In our conclusion (Chapter 7) we summarise the overall learnings and provide an overarching perspective on knowledge interactions and power on the micro- and macro-levels, on the effectiveness framework and on knowledge cooperation as such—as a new pillar of international cooperation.

Throughout the research process, we ascribe an important role to critical (self-)reflection. We provide more details about this dimension of the study in Appendix 1.