Budget Support and Democracy: a twist in the conditionality tale

Rachel Hayman

Third World Quarterly, 2011, vol. 32, issue 4, 673-688

Abstract: Budget support—aid delivered directly to developing country government budgets—accounts for a growing proportion of overseas development assistance. In theory it has multiple benefits over other forms of aid in terms of attaining poverty reduction and development objectives. However, recent years have seen several incidents of budget support being frozen, halted or redirected because of slippage in the democratic credentials of certain countries, including Ethiopia, Uganda, Nicaragua, Honduras, Madagascar and Rwanda. This article analyses these incidents in relation to debates over aid conditionality. It finds that donors are willing to apply political conditionality when otherwise good performing governments go politically astray, but it questions whether budget support is a viable instrument for pushing for democratic change. Co-ordinated donor action appears to be increasing, but aid flows to the countries discussed remain high and the governments in question tend to be dismissive in the face of such pressure.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01436597.2011.566998 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:ctwqxx:v:32:y:2011:i:4:p:673-688

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/ctwq20

DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2011.566998

Access Statistics for this article

Third World Quarterly is currently edited by Shahid Qadir

More articles in Third World Quarterly from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().