Miguel Niño-Zarazúa & Rachel M. Gisselquist at Democracy aid: any effects?

Global democracy is under threat. At the same time, the evidence whether development cooperation can impact democracy has been debated. Sweden is one of the countries that devotes the largest share of its development cooperation budget for democracy-related activities.

In 2019, the Swedish government initiated a “drive for democracy”, which further increases this focus in development cooperation. A new Expert Group for Aid Studies (EBA) report: Effects of Swedish and international democracy aid sets out to answer the questions: What are the effects of democracy aid on countries’ level of democracy? Under what conditions might it work better?  

This might be the most comprehensive study that has ever been conducted on the topic. It draws both on a new systematic review of the existing literature and on a new international comparative analysis using multiple advanced econometric methods. The analysis covers 148 countries during the period 1995-2018.

The webinar will include a presentation of the study by Miguel Niño-Zarazúa, Non-Resident Senior Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER, and Rachel M. Gisselquist, Senior Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER, followed by a discussion around the results and possible implications for Swedish development cooperation.

Time: 10 December 2020 at 10:00-11.30 UTC+1 (Stockholm) / 11-12.30 UTC+2 (Helsinki)

Presenters and panellists:

Miguel Niño-Zarazúa, PhD, Non-Resident Senior Research Fellow with UNU-WIDER (Author)
Rachel M. Gisselquist, PhD, Senior Research Fellow with UNU-WIDER (Author)
Torbjörn Petterson, Advisor to the Director-General, Sida
Birgitta Weibahr, Lead Policy Specialist Democracy and Human Rights, Sida
Additional panellists: TBC
Moderator: Staffan I. Lindberg, Expert Group for Aid Studies

The Expert Group for Aid Studies (EBA) is a Swedish Government committee with a mandate to evaluate and analyse Sweden’s international development assistance.

This webinar will be live streamed on www.eba.se

If you would like to ask questions during the session you need to kindly register and follow the seminar on Zoom. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.