Governance Agendas

Much official development assistance comes with conditions attached, whether the aid be in the form of grants, soft loans, mixed credits or technical assistance, and whether the donors be bilateral (nation-states such as the USA and the UK) or multilateral (international agencies such as the World Bank or the European Development Fund). Conditionalities have included requirements to target the aid at specified social groups (such as the poor), the tying of aid to the purchase of goods and services from the donor country, and structural adjustments to the recipient economy (notably public sector reform and trade liberalization). Even before the introduction of specifically political conditionalities, government in the recipient country has always been heavily influenced by the presence of aid if only through its effects on public policy.