Democracy aid is a significant component of development cooperation. As a share of total aid, it has increased steadily since the mid-1990s. In 2018, countries in the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) devoted roughly 10 per cent of overseas...
Democracy is having a hard time. In India, once the world’s largest democracy, the pandemic has hastened the country’s slide toward authoritarianism...
Foreign aid is a core component of peacebuilding and among the largest external financial flows to fragile states and conflict-affected areas. Nevertheless, troubling critiques have been raised about its overall impact and effectiveness. Some of the...
While significant amounts of foreign aid have been allocated to the group of so-called fragile and conflict-affected states in recent years, it is not clear whether that aid is targeted to where it is most needed. This paper extends recent work by...
This paper critically reviews evidence on ‘thinking and working politically’ in development. Scholars and practitioners have increasingly recognised that development is fundamentally political, and efforts are underway to develop more politically...
Many practical and action-oriented international roadmaps to improve the quality of aid and its delivery and impact on development—including the Paris Declaration, Accra Agenda for Action, and Busan Partnership—emphasize a more active involvement of...
In recent years, donor countries have increasingly used different aid allocation channels to boost aid effectiveness. One delivery channel that has grown tremendously is ‘multi-bi aid’—contributions to multilateral organizations earmarked for...
The total funding envelope for World Bank projects is often divided among various state and non-state actors, each of which can have competing ideas about or interests in the project. How does the division of financing relate to overall project...
The UNU-WIDER research programme on foreign aid (ReCom) began in 2010, in a period of strong aid scepticism. Dambisa Moyo’s well-known book, Dead Aid...
Demonstrating empirically the Aid Effectiveness Principles' global impact on development is a challenge. But according to Rachel M. Gisselquist...
Elaborated in their current form in Busan in 2011, and reiterated in Geneva in 2022, the four Principles of Effective Development Co-operation comprise country ownership, focus on results, inclusive partnerships, and transparency and mutual...
Fragile and least developed countries have had their development assistance cut drastically, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation...
The questions of whether aid has impact and is effective have been the subject of considerable attention. This thematic issue brings together nine studies that speak to the diverse ways in which aid affects development outcomes including, but not...
As a sovereign country, Mozambique initially relied on international solidarity and managed its donor relations well. Donor dependency entailed some loss of agency for the government as it allowed donors to challenge its capacity but never its...
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid Impact and Effectiveness
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid Impact and Effectiveness
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid Impact and Effectiveness
Part of Journal Special Issue Aid Impact and Effectiveness
Empirical studies on the effectiveness of aid to the water, sanitation, and hygiene sector (WASH aid) have focused primarily on access to these services as the benchmark for evaluating the effectiveness of aid in this sector. Given the importance of...
This paper investigates whether the current effectiveness agenda—agreed during the 2011 Busan High Level Forum on Development Effectiveness—continues to define best practice in development amidst a rapidly changing development landscape. To do so, we...
This paper argues that the crisis facing the development effectiveness agenda is fundamentally derived from limited collective commitment to a singular model of development, one where a developed North serves as model and funder for a developing...
This working paper provides a summary of three systematic reviews on the effectiveness of aid in Afghanistan, Mali, and South Sudan between 2008 and 2021. These three countries, like all other highly fragile countries, suffer from bad governance...
The objective of this paper is to focus on fragility research findings and examine what works or does not work in development aid and development cooperation in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. We draw on our own research findings as well as...
This policy brief draws on the studies presented at the International Research Conference on the Effectiveness of Development Cooperation on 17–18 November 2022, in Brussels, Belgium and jointly organized by UNU-WIDER and the European Commission (DG...
There exists a burgeoning empirical literature on the impact of aid fragmentation on development outcomes in aid-receiving countries, with it being widely recognized that aid fragmentation is deleterious. This paper adds to the existing literature by...
International development cooperation has evolved since the 1960s. The effectiveness of aid is still topical, but studies have not paid adequate attention to the relationship between sectoral aid, politics, institutions, and aid effectiveness in...
The Principles of Effective Development Co-operation provide an important reference point for foreign aid and international development assistance. Although the principles—country ownership, focus on results, inclusive partnerships, and transparency...
The aid effectiveness principles have limits if the recipient is fragile. The problem of relevance exists if the recipient has an authoritarian or totalitarian regime. In situations of weak statehood and fragility, a large portion of aid would likely...
Part of Book Mozambique at a Fork in the Road
This paper examines the application of the first two principles of the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, namely ownership and alignment, to the cases of Mali and Ghana. It argues that Western donors and recipient governments have adopted...
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