The Hollow Ring of Donor Commitment: Country Concentration and the Decoupling of Aid‐Effectiveness Norms from Donor Practice

A Sociology of Foreign Aid and the World Society

“…Understanding how aid ties or their absence contribute to the embeddedness of countries in World Society is a clear corollary of such an approach. While some research has used such social network ties to examine the implementation of aid policies in practice (Brown and Swiss ; Swiss and Brown ), there has only been very limited sociological research on aid as a global network of country and organizational ties (Peterson ; Swiss ). Through examining the relational ties of countries to IGO and INGO networks, we can gain a sense of how connected countries are to World Society and better understand the contours of power and inequality within it (Beckfield , ; Hughes et al ; Paxton, Hughes and Reith ).…”

“…Often labeled under the category of aid effectiveness, researchers frequently provide advice to governments, NGOs, and international actors about how best to structure aid programs for maximum efficiency and results (Acharya, de Lima and Moore 2006;Addison, Mavrotas and McGillivray 2005;Aldasoro, Nunnenkamp and Thiele 2010;Booth 2012;Brown 2012;Stokke and Hoebink 2005). Likewise, researchers have focused on how policy innovations have been implemented in the aid sector (Brown and Swiss 2013;Easterly 2007;Easterly and Williamson 2011;Engberg-Pedersen 2014;Knack, Rogers and Eubank 2011). The aid policy literature has largely overlooked the link between aid policy and the spread of global norms and institutions.…”

Make Europe happen on the ground? Enabling and constraining factors for European Union aid coordination in Africa

“…While aid coordination generates evident benefits in terms of reduced transaction costs and, most likely, maximized development impact, it also creates costs for both donors, in terms of loss of sovereignty in aid allocations, and recipients, in terms of reduced leverage vis‐à‐vis potentially more intrusive donors (Bigsten and Tengstam, ; Bourguignon and Platteau, ; Steinwand, ). Moreover, it can be expected that actors/organizations participate in the generation of global norms with the aim of enhancing or maintaining legitimacy and then may not (be able to) fulfil the commitment of which they are rhetorically supportive: ‘Especially in the case of norms with weak enforcement mechanisms or with minimal consequences for non‐compliance, the likelihood of decoupling increases’ (Brown and Swiss, : 752).…”

“…Nevertheless, empirical evidence shows that aid proliferation and aid fragmentation have increased since the adoption of the 2005 Paris Declaration (Aldasoro et al, 2010;Nunnenkamp et al, 2013). This decoupling of norms from practice, which is a well-known phenomenon in studies of norm compliance (Brown and Swiss, 2013), can be attributed not solely to the donor use of aid to pursue their political and commercial interests, but also to the increased resistance of recipients themselves. While aid coordination generates evident benefits in terms of reduced transaction costs and, most likely, maximized development impact, it also creates costs for both donors, in terms of loss of sovereignty in aid allocations, and recipients, in terms of reduced leverage vis-a-vis potentially more intrusive donors (Bigsten and Tengstam, 2015;Bourguignon and Platteau, 2015;Steinwand, 2015).…”

Foreign Aid Allocation from a Network Perspective: The Effect of Global Ties

“…Despite the fact that donors have repeatedly been encouraged to increase the size of projects and shrink the number of recipient countries in the name of effectiveness (Acharya, de Lima and Moore 2006;Annen and Kosempel 2009;Brown and Swiss 2013;Knack and Rahman 2007), aid is being provided to a greater number of countries and with smaller sized projects than ever before (Kilby 2011;Swiss and Brown 2015). The research literature on aid from the disciplines of economics and political science have conventionally offered two main interpretations for why countries provide aid: (1) aid is provided to fight poverty and promote development in support of 'international humanitarianism' (Lumsdaine 1993;Opeskin 1996); and (2) aid is provided to achieve donor national self-interest in foreign policy, trade, and other areas of donor priority (Alesina and Dollar 2000;Dreher, Nunnenkamp and Thiele 2011;Morgenthau 1962;Woods 2008).…”