The politics of contract allocation in the World Bank

Elena V. McLean ()
Additional contact information
Elena V. McLean: University at Buffalo, SUNY

The Review of International Organizations, 2017, vol. 12, issue 2, No 5, 255-279

Abstract: Abstract Scholarship on informal politics in multilateral aid organizations investigates all stages of the allocation process - from project identification to aid disbursement and project evaluation. Yet, one area remains almost entirely overlooked in the literature - allocation of aid-financed contracts. This article aims to address the shortcoming of the existing research and develops a theory of contract allocation in a prominent multilateral aid organization – the World Bank. The theoretical argument explores the relationship between formal procurement arrangements and recipients’ control over contract allocation, and the role of this relationship in explaining patterns of contract allocation. My empirical analyses using data on the World Bank’s contracts provide evidence of recipients’ ability to allocate contracts in favor of domestic companies, as well as bilateral aid donors.

Keywords: World Bank; Multilateral aid; Procurement; F35; F53; F55; F59 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11558-017-9272-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:revint:v:12:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s11558-017-9272-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... iology/journal/11558

DOI: 10.1007/s11558-017-9272-5

Access Statistics for this article

The Review of International Organizations is currently edited by A. Dreher

More articles in The Review of International Organizations from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().