Accountability in Development Aid Law: The World Bank, UNDP and Emerging Structures of Transnational Oversight

Abstract

This paper analyzes accountability mechanisms in development aid law. It defines development aid law as the legal regime regulating the transfer of official development assistance. The paper focuses on the rules and regulations of two multilateral global donor institutions, the World Bank1 and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). It also examines the transnational mechanisms of accountability governing the recipients of aid, since the transfer of aid involves not only a donor but also a recipient. The paper will argue that there is a (perhaps surprising) plenitude of accountability mechanisms that go beyond the conventional mechanisms of supervisory control by member states. The paper will describe these mechanisms which involve several actors, standards and types of sanctions, but it will also ask whether they add up to a coherent system, give voice and access to the relevant constituencies and thus achieve a satisfactory standard of accountability. Or to put it into a little picture: the question is whether the trees form a sheltering forest, maybe even an eye-pleasing Tuscan avenue, or whether they are only some crooked, ineffective wind breakers on a wide and sandy Prussian plain.