Development Aid and the Democratic Process in the OSCE Region

Abstract

Despite a great deal of scholarly debate, the impact of traditional and emerging development aid on recipient countries is still under heavy academic scrutiny. Certain authors have highlighted how said financial support often leads to an increase in corruption and/or inequality, while others find no correlation whatsoever. In the same vein, the literature has also underlined how development aid provided by traditional donors has a higher chance of improving democratic openness than aid provided by emerging countries, which instead seems to be more effective in terms of economic development. Despite those relevant insights, the literature seems to have mostly set its focus on inquiries that explore the topic at either the global or the regional level. For those reasons, I opted to observe the above trends at the national level by analysing the impact of development aid in 15 OSCE recipient countries. In particular, I seek to either confirm or refute the literature’s notion that emerging countries’ contributions are expected to improve the recipients’ economies, although said achievements also come with higher corruption levels. At the same time, I also postulate that development aid coming from traditional donors is more likely to foster democratic progress. To fulfil both these goals, I rely on OECD and Aiddata data sets in order to track the aid flows from two traditional donors (the US and the EU) and two emerging providers (Russia and China) over the 2012–2019 period.

Securitization and Democracy in Eurasia: Transformation and Development in the OSCE Region, edited by Anja Mihr, Paolo Sorbello, and Brigitte Weiffen. Springer, Cham. 2023. XVII, 411 pp. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16659-4.

“…2023;Rice 2023). The development of conceptual foundations for understanding these problems can become the basis for a comparative analysis of the specifics of similar phenomena in other regions, as well as for a theoretical understanding of modern interregional processes in Eurasia in the field of security and trends in regional transformations (Schade 2023;Ghioldi 2023;Anghelescu and Dzardanova 2023;Malikbayeva and Gabdullin 2023;Kilichova 2023;Zhirukhina 2023;Lamçe 2023;Mahmutaj 2023;Szeląg 2023).…”

“…Development aid and the democratic process in the OSCE region is a political and social responsibility towards states (Ghioldi 2023). In the context of globalization, democracy as a way of political governance of society faces unprecedented challenges that call into question some of its very essential characteristics.…”

“…Fundamental shifts in world politics and the economy, as well as the rise of China and India, the return of Russia to the orbit of geopolitically significant forces, another round of escalation of contradictions in the Middle East gave impetus to the formation of a new architecture of international relations, which, most likely, will be built on alliances of mobile configuration (Schatz 2023;Schade 2023;Burgers 2023). Under these conditions, the study of the experience of interaction between the EU and countries that are geographically united in one space, but at the same time have completely different traditions of state, political, social and economic construction, is of particular importance (Ghioldi 2023). Understanding the integration policy of the European Union in Southeast Europe is relevant not only for understanding the regional subjects of international relations and directions for the development of European integration, but also for assessing global trends in the EU's relations with global actors.…”