In the 1990s, a widely shared conviction emerged among aid donors that their policies should be more coherent than in the past. The drive towards increased policy coherence came as a response to a state of policy incoherence. The shifting grounds of policy coherence in development co-operation are outlined. The policies of some selected donor countries - Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland - are scrutinised and analysed, with particular reference to the 1990s. Spotlights are also directed towards the European Union, with particular reference to the internal coherence of its development co-operation policy and the common foreign and security policy, and the coherence of EU policies and the bilateral policies of its member states. Some perspectives are highlighted in separate contributions: one analyses the coherence and incoherence of aid and trade policies, another the challenge of policy coherence in the new global order.
Governance and coherence in development co-operation are also given particular focus as are coherent approaches to so-called complex emergencies, taking Belgium's policies towards the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa as the point of departure. The volume starts off with a state-of-the-art contribution by its editors.