Burundi and its development partners: navigating the turbulent tides of governance setbacks

Nadia Molenaers, Gervais Rufyikiri and Stef Vandeginste

No 2017.14, IOB Working Papers from Universiteit Antwerpen, Institute of Development Policy (IOB)

Abstract: Between the first post-conflict elections (2005) and the crisis that was occasioned by the 2015 electoral process, Burundi underwent evolutions of both remarkable progress and substantial setbacks in different dimensions of governance. For international development partners it was challenging to deal with these subsequent – and partly parallel - ups and downs. They used financial and non-financial means to incentivise, signal, constrain and sanction the Burundian government into desirable policies and actions. We discern three patterns in donor behavior. Immediately after the transition, donors heavily inclined towards optimism with a large margin of tolerance for perceived ad hoc setbacks (here referred to as ‘good enough governance’ strategy). When setbacks however became systematic, donors increasingly expressed unease and used various means to voice their concerns: statements, policy and political dialogue, aid as a carrot and stick. Finally, when setbacks evolved into a crisis, donors started sanctioning, albeit in uncoordinated and sometimes contradicting manners.

Keywords: Burundi; aid; governance; political dialogue (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 24 pages
Date: 2017-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://medialibrary.uantwerpen.be/oldcontent/cont ... P/2017/wp-201714.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iob:wpaper:201714

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IOB Working Papers from Universiteit Antwerpen, Institute of Development Policy (IOB) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Hans De Backer ().