This book is about the future of development aid. In recent years there has been increased public debate in the Netherlands, as in many other Western countries, about development cooperation – in terms of both the media attention devoted to the theme and the intensity of the positions taken. In a country which liked to see itself as one of the pioneers in the field, the self-evidence of development aid – about which there had long been broad political and social consensus – seemed to have come to a definite end. It was for this reason that the Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) undertook to examine this issue thoroughly.

The WRR is an advisory body to the Dutch government. Its task is to make proposals, based on broad analysis and scientific insights, on the strategic direction of Dutch policy. To this end, the WRR submits advisory reports to the government several times a year on issues which merit specific attention. At the start of 2010, an advisory report on development aid was published in Dutch under the title Less Pretension, More Ambition. Academics, practitioners, policymakers and politicians engaged in all manner of debate about the report's analysis and recommendations. The government started drawing up a detailed response on the consequences of the report for its policy, with the intention of debating it in parliament. In October 2010, the new Dutch government decided to use the report as the basis of a thorough modernization of the Netherlands’ policy.

To make the Dutch report accessible to an international audience, it has not only been translated into English, but also adapted and amended. Details referring to the specific Dutch organization of development aid that are irrelevant for an international audience have been removed. Only those from which wider lessons may be drawn have been retained. Secondly this publication has benefited from the responses to the report (more than 100 detailed responses were posted in the online debate organized by the website of The Broker alone; see www.thebroker online.eu). The changes made include coverage of new themes, more elaboration on specific lines of reasoning and more comprehensive analyses. The main argument has not been changed. The result is a book aimed at a wider international audience, even though the examples chosen and the emphasis laid will undoubtedly have a noticeable Dutch bias.