Norway’s aid turning point: practical politics as a public good
Norway is asking better questions about the future of aid than almost any other donor. The next steps are to accept that the binding constraint is not money, and start paying for open political analysis that everyone can rely on.
Peter J Evans and Dan Banik | 6 October 2026
Note: A shorter version of this article was first published in Norwegian in Aftenposten on 6 October 2026.
The government’s Vendepunkt – “Turning Point” – review starts from a reality that is hard to dispute. Development has changed. Global aid is falling, geopolitical competition is rising, multilateralism is under strain and demands to demonstrate results are increasing. Norway, meanwhile, remains unusual: a country still willing to devote around one per cent of national income to development assistance. However, even Norwegian aid is too fragmented. The question the white paper must answer is what that fragmentation is a symptom of.
That gives Norway a responsibility and an opportunity to stand out, step up, and directly shape the behaviour of others.
Development Minister Åsmund Aukrust has said that the ambition of the review is to achieve “more – not less”, while stressing that “development policy is a lot more than funding” and that funding alone cannot create sustainable change. That is exactly right.
But following that argument to its logical conclusion requires putting politics much closer to the centre of development policy. This needs bolder language and new tools.
Consider many of the problems aid tries to solve. A child missing a vaccine may look like a problem of drug supply. A failing school may appear to lack teachers or textbooks. A poor household may need a cash transfer. A government short of money may need better tax administration.
All these things may be true. But whether change happens often depends on less technical questions. Who gains and loses from reform? Which groups have influence? Why are resources allocated one way rather than another? Which informal rules override official policy? What makes a technically sensible reform politically attractive – or politically impossible?
Development needs both the what and the how. And the how takes us into the practical world of politics – power, interests, influence, struggles for control. This includes what politicians promise at election time, but also the daily ‘small p’ politics inside ministries, communities, and sectors such as health and education.
Norway's emerging strategy already points in this direction. Its approach to the World Bank gives prominence not only to money but to institutions, governance, anti-corruption, domestic resource mobilisation (i.e., countries collecting their own tax, and relying less on aid), and conflict. It explicitly recognises that development financing requires more than aid, though sometimes spotting the ‘p word’ – politics – necessitates reading between the lines.
The next step should be to make good political analysis part of how Norway itself makes development choices.
That does not mean making aid partisan, or stating that everything is “political” then carrying on as usual. It means routinely testing development assumptions against the incentives, institutions and power relationships that determine whether policies actually happen. Norway already has experience of political economy analysis, including longstanding Norad guidance. Vendepunkt provides an opportunity to shift such analysis from an occasional specialist tool to the centre of mainstream strategy and delivery.
But Norway could be more ambitious, with effects beyond its own aid.
Almost all political economy analysis in development is commissioned privately. A donor, development bank or implementer buys expert analysis to inform its own programme. Reports remain private. Another organisation commissions something similar. Governments, civil society organisations and local researchers may never see either. Politics is rarely on the policy table.
That is an odd model for producing knowledge about problems that are shared by many actors – and the focus of billions of dollars of aid, private investment, debt, philanthropy, and citizens own hard earned cash.
Some organisations have good reasons not to commission politically sensitive analysis. Relations with host governments matter, mandates constrain what international organisations can say out loud, and consultants answering privately to a client have little incentive to invite public scrutiny. The result is that the sector does not lack evidence so much as it lacks usuable evidence. And the least usable of all is the kind that cannot be cited.
Norway could underwrite the alternative and help create a bolder vision that jumps over these constraints: political economy analysis as a public good.
Imagine that alongside major investments in health, education, social protection, climate or growth, a small share of resources supported independent, quality-assured political analysis of the underlying problem – published openly so that governments, international organisations, civil society, researchers and other donors could all use, challenge and improve it.
The cost would be tiny compared with the vast flows of finance whose effectiveness it might improve. Political analysis is not another intervention competing with vaccines, schools or cash transfers. It is enabling infrastructure around these – a modest side bet designed to make much larger investments work better.
Open access changes the nature of that analysis too. Politics often remains aid’s awkward secret: widely discussed privately but carefully removed from public documents. Our experience with Open PEA, an initiative developing short, plain-language, open-access political economy analysis, has repeatedly produced the reaction: we kind of knew this privately, but did not know how to discuss it publicly.
We have already done this for the politics of cash transfers in Malawi; health finance and education in Nigeria; civil service reform in Nepal; revenue in Bangladesh.
Publishing analysis also drives quality control. Arguments can be contested. Country experts can challenge outsiders. Different organisations do not need to buy the same diagnosis repeatedly. And local actors who could never commission expensive political consultancy gain access to the same information as donors. Open access democratises political analysis.
This need not mean funding any particular organisation. Norway could support a wider open-PEA ecosystem: country researchers, think tanks and networks producing regularly updated analysis to common standards, with independent peer review and strong local authorship. However, Open PEA offers one emerging model: simple analysis organised around key problems in growth and development, the players, the rules of the game, the current ‘state of play’ and politically feasible propositions for action.
Norway has unusual leverage here precisely because others are retreating. Its continuing aid commitment gives it influence not only over what development gets funded, but over the infrastructure of knowledge through which development decisions are made. This would be an incredibly powerful lever over the multi laterals but also newer entrants in development – such as the potential US 50Bn of new philanthropy that the development world is buzzing about. Norway could cofund public good political analysis that unlocks effectiveness all round.
We suggest that the Norwegian aid strategy makes two commitments. First, make political analysis even more routine in Norway's own development decision-making. Second, fund independent, open-access political analysis as a public good that everybody can use.
That would be a genuine turning point: not spending less on development, but understanding better the politics that determine whether development spending works – and unlocking effectiveness all round.
Peter J. Evans | Grunnlegger og programdirektør for Open PEA ved University of Oxford
Dan Banik | Professor ved senter for global bærekraft, Universitetet i Oslo
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