Opening the black box of international aid: understanding delivery actors and democratization

Abstract

Donor states may delegate to other actors to deliver aid through partnerships. We ask whether some partnerships are more effective than others with democratization aid. We identify five actors, arguing that they can affect the recipient’s democracy outcomes via the fungibility of the funds. We hypothesize that organizations that have relationships of accountability and dependency to the donor are most likely to use aid for its intended purposes (least fungible), making them the most likely to see positive effects on democratization. Those that do not have these relationships may use the money for other purposes, making them the least likely to see positive effects on democratization. We test these with data from 32 OECD countries and 126 recipients from 2004 to 2018. Using the electoral indicator from the Varieties of Democracy project, we find that NGO- and IGO-delivered aid is associated with significantly larger increases in a democracy than aid delivered by corporations.