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Concerns over aid effectiveness have led to calls for greater accountability in international development aid. This article examines the state of accountability within and between international development agencies: aid NGOs, the international financial institutions, and government aid ministries. The investigation finds that there is very little accountability in these agencies, and that the accountability that there is often works against poverty relief. Increasing accountability, however, is not always the solution: increased accountability may just amplify the complexities of development efforts. Only those reforms with real promise to make aid more effective in reducing poverty should be encouraged. One such proposal is set out here.

The twentieth century saw a vigorous debate over the nature of rights. Will theorists argued that the function of rights is to allocate domains of freedom. Interest theorists portrayed rights as defenders of well-being. Each side declared its conceptual analysis to be closer to an ordinary understanding of what rights there are, and to an ordinary understanding of what rights do for rightholders. Neither side could win a decisive victory, and the debate ended in a standoff. This article offers a new analysis of rights. The first half of the article sets out an analytical framework adequate for explicating all assertions of rights. This framework is an elaboration of Hohfeld's, designed around a template for displaying the often complex internal structures of rights. Those unfamiliar with Hohfeld's work should find that the exposition here presumes no prior knowledge of it. Those who know Hohfeld will find innovations in how the system is defined and presented. Any theorist wishing to specify precisely what is at stake within a controversy over some particular right may find this framework useful.The analytical framework is then deployed in the second half of the article to resolve the dispute between the will and interest theories.

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