The project addresses the question ‘how and when does the EU have an impact on its member states’ development cooperation’. While the emergent literature in this domain does not find evidence in support of an ‘EU factor’, we challenge this claim. The point of departure is that existing studies fall short in several ways. Putting aside methodological shortcomings, studies have only focused on the ‘policy’, ignoring the ‘politics’ and ‘polity’. Furthermore, their case selection is outdated (mostly pre-2011) and too narrow (ignoring realist perspectives). Finally, only a selected group of member states have been examined and comparative studies are lacking. This project provides the first systematic, comparative and comprehensive study on this topic. Four hypotheses are put forward, covering all aspects of the research topic. Adopting a mixed method research design, we examine the EU’s impact on four member states (i.e. Belgium, Germany, Sweden and France) related to three topical cases (the migration-development nexus, the security-development nexus and private sector development), combining quantitative (i.e. univariate and time series analysis) and qualitative (i.e. process-tracing) methods. Data will be collected from the OECD and CGD’s database and through document analysis and semi-structured expert interviews. - 1 - Applicant: Jan Orbie | Application number