Donor-Recipient Relationships in the Aid Effectiveness Debate

Abstract

The question as to how donor-recipient relationships should be configured to ensure more effective delivery of foreign aid has always constituted a critical issue for policy-makers and academics alike.1 The nature of the aid effectiveness debate has undergone some fundamental changes since the early post-war decades, and with it, the way donor-recipient relationships are perceived. Surprisingly, however, major shifts in thinking about how to enhance aid effectiveness have not resulted in a similar reconfiguration of the aid relationship. This chapter looks at the recent approach to ex-post policy conditionality and critically examines its implications for recipient ownership.