Does foreign aid really work? / Roger C. Riddell.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Riddell, Roger.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Economic assistance.

Economic assistance--Evaluation.

Physical Description:

xxvi, 505 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007.

Summary:

Foreign aid is now a $100bn business and is expanding more rapidly today than it has for a generation. But does it work? Indeed, is it needed at all? In this first-ever attempt to provide an overall assessment of aid, Roger Riddell presents a rigorous but highly readable account of aid, warts and all.

Contents:

1 'A good thing?' 1

The aid revival 2

A different book on aid 4

Part I The Complex Worlds of Foreign Aid 15

2 The origins and early decades of aid-giving 17

Defining aid 17

A snapshot of the history of aid 21

The origins of aid: the pre-1949 era 24

The 1950s to the 1960s 26

3 Aid-giving from the 1970s to the present 31

The 1970s and 1980s 31

From the 1990s to today 38

4 The growing web of bilateral aid donors 51

The ever-increasing number of donors 51

The explosion in the numbers of non-governmental organizations 53

The main bilateral donors 55

The smaller bilateral donors 69

5 The complexities of multilateral aid 77

What is multilateral aid and how much of it is there? 77

The international financial institutions 81

The United Nations, development and aid 82

Other multilateral agencies 85

Systemic issues 86

Part II Why is Aid Given? 89

6 The political and commercial dimensions of aid 91

Why governments give aid 91

Politics and national self-interest in aid-giving 94

Commercial interests in aid-giving 98

The overall impact of political and commercial influences on aid 101

7 Public support for aid 107

Trends in public support 107

The reliability of public opinion surveys 113

Public support for aid and public perception of its effectiveness 114

8 Charity or duty? The moral case for aid 119

Facts on the ground 120

Ethical theories and approaches 129

9 The moral case for governments and individuals to provide aid 139

Donor governments: current and evolving views 139

Aid and the nature of governments' moral obligations 142

Ethics, voluntary aid-giving and the world of NGOs 154

Part III Does Aid Really Work? 163

10 Assessing and measuring the impact of aid 165

Methodological challenges and data-gaps 166

Judging the impact and performance of aid: what questions need to be asked? 170

Understanding how aid contributes to growth and development 173

Expectations about the impact of aid 175

11 The impact of official development aid projects 179

Project aid: an overview 180

Detailed project performance 183

Data quality and the sustainability of official aid projects 186

The wider picture 187

12 The impact of programme aid, technical assistance and aid for capacity development 195

Programme aid 195

Technical assistance 202

Aid for capacity building 207

13 The impact of aid at the country and cross-country level 213

The country-level impact of aid 213

The impact of official development aid across countries 222

14 Assessing the impact of aid conditionality 231

Aggregate aid impact and the policy environment 231

Official donor conditionality and recipient response 235

Does policy conditionality produce the results intended? 241

15 Does official development aid really work? A summing up 253

The search for sustainability 253

Effectiveness does matter 256

16 NGOs in development and the impact of discrete NGO development interventions 259

NGOs: an overview 259

Methodological challenges 265

The impact of NGO development projects and programmes 269

Cost-effectiveness, quality, innovation and replication 276

Capacity development and institutional strengthening 282

17 The wider impact of non-governmental and civil society organizations 287

NGO advocacy, lobbying, awareness-raising and campaigning 288

Strengthening NGOs and strengthening civil society 301

The contribution of NGOs to development: a summing up 306

18 The growth of emergencies and the humanitarian response 311

Emergencies and disasters: an overview 311

The humanitarian aid response 315

19 The impact of emergency and humanitarian aid 325

Assessing humanitarian aid 325

The impact of humanitarian action and humanitarian aid 336

Advocacy in humanitarian action 349

Emergency and humanitarian aid: a summing up 352

Part IV Towards a Different Future for Aid 355

20 Why aid isn't working 357

Systematic impediments to aid effectiveness: problems caused by donors 358

Problems at the recipient end: aid dilemmas 369

21 Making aid work better by implementing agreed reforms 381

The discrete individual-donor approach 382

The step-change international cooperative approach 383

Taking stock 385

22 Making aid work better by recasting aid relationships 389

Confronting the politics of aid-giving 390

Recasting aid relationships 391

Making aid work better: addressing five key problem areas 398

Bridging the divide between ideas and implementation 411.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [457]-487) and index.

ISBN:

9780199295654

0199295654

OCLC:

77520612