Samenvatting

Traditionally, development cooperation has been composed of 'three pillars' and has been the playing field of governments (first pillar), multilateral institutions (second pillar) and established development NGOs (third pillar). In the last decade, however, other actors in Northern countries (such as trade unions, groups of friends, schools, business, migrant organisations) have actively shown interest in development related activities and in developing and implementing development orientated initiatives in the South. Although they do not belong to the community of development specialists and are often overlooked in the discourse on and studies about development cooperation, their number and importance within the development field may not be underestimated. These other actors are defined as the fourth pillar of development cooperation that constitutes mainly Private Initiatives. Friends of the Khong District Foundation is a Dutch rooted Private Initiative active in Lao PDR.
Over the last few years, traditional development cooperation is being criticized for being too-little-too-late, ineffective, inefficient, incoherent, uncoordinated, non-transparent, unaccountable and even illegitimate. Simultaneously, the new fourth pillar of private initiatives is emerging and is seriously challenging the traditional actors of development cooperation. The development cooperation sector knows plenty of latent contradictions and conflicts. This diversity implies that traditional development cooperation has never been able to define what good development cooperation is. Even the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness is not very helpful in the search for a definition of the term 'good development cooperation'. Still, continuous public support depends on a clear understanding of what good development cooperation is.
In our quest to find the answer to what 'good development cooperation' is, analysis on all four pillars based on a case study indicates that traditional development cooperation has a better chance to contribute a high social performance than the new fourth pillar of Private Initiatives and that researchers in general favour traditional development cooperation. In addition, Critical Discourse Analysis, guided by the theory of Norman Fairclough, shows that the Dutch media seem to stay loyal to traditional development cooperation. Moreover, the Dutch media influence donor opinion. The outcome of this report is to make people aware of the fact that Private Initiatives still seem to be in transparent compared to their traditional counterparts. As for the future of Private Initiatives in the Netherlands, it would be somewhat premature to say what is to become of them.