The European Union (EU) is the world’s leading development donor, playing a pivotal role in shaping development norms. This paper aims to investigate the extent to which the EU has been effective in its external aid actorness towards global poverty eradication during the post-Cotonou negotiation period (2000-2020). The theoretical framework of Sjöstedt’s (1977) Actorness Theory  is constructed upon the premises of Social Constructivism. To operationalize “actorness”, Brattberg and Rhinard’s (2012) criteria of context, coherence, consistency, and  capability are utilized. The research triangulates the methods of Discourse Historical Analysis and Thematic Content Analysis to assess the EU’s nom-setting policy discourse. The analysis suggests that the Union scores highly in the context and capability criteria, as it is recognized as a legitimate development actor and possesses mechanisms to reach aid agreements, while lacks  coherence  and  consistency  due to inadequate policy implementation and commitment to McKee et al.’s (2020) Aid Quality Index. The thesis concludes that the EU’s aid effectiveness has decreased due to its actorness being increasingly linked to foreign policy considerations in response to emerging challenges in development cooperation. The research underlines the significance of analysing the empirical linkage between EU’s actorness and effectiveness for the field of International Relations.

Development cooperation is nowadays a highly discussed topic, especially in the context of its effectiveness. In the past years the European Union and the Organization for economic cooperation and development adopted several documents concerning aid effectiveness and possible ways of its improvement. The aim of this thesis is to find out, in the case of selected states (France, Sweden, and the Czech Republic), if they implement the commitments resulting from these documents into their national development policies and if they carry out their development cooperation in compliance with them. Since the commitments in this area overlap between the two organizations and both of them are trying to influence the states to fulfill their commitments, this thesis will also try to identify which of these organizations has a greater influence on the chosen states. Keywords EU development policy, Council Conclusions, Member States, OECD, aid effectiveness, financial commitments

In an analysis of the development of the Czech foreign aid policy, I use the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) to examine what policy change towards aid effectiveness has occurred from the mid-1990's to the present. Using this explanatory framework, I suggest that the changes towards aid effectiveness, which have occurred during this period, are minor rather than major ones. I argue that during this time the Czech foreign aid policy has been dominated by a belief system of the majority coalition that represents a realistic approach to foreign aid policy based on self-interested interests such as mutual interests, commercial motives or political and strategic interests. By the application of the ACF, I attempt to explain the policy process and the reasons why a major policy change has not occurred. In this analysis, I argue that in spite of the processes external to the policy subsystem (e.g. the occurrence of aid effectiveness movement), the minority coalition, whose belief system is mainly represented by altruistic motives and the support for increasing aid effectiveness, has not had enough policy-relevant resources to press for a major policy change. I argue that the conflict between the coalitions is driven by normative beliefs and that it is more likely that there will be incremental policy...

Foreign aid is publicly motivated by a moral obligation to help the poor and develop underdeveloped countries. Donors have invested more than US$2.3 trillion in foreign aid, but despite this significant investment, 3 billion people are still living on less than $2 a day, 840 million are hungry, 10 million children die from preventable disease, and 1 billion adults are illiterate. This study focuses on the impact of foreign aid on economic growth and development of underdeveloped countries. It was found that many variables influence growth and development and that cross-country regression analysis is an inappropriate method to measure the effectiveness of aid. The methodology is too generalist, and treats foreign aid as a homogenous entity that works equally in all countries in all types of environment and across all times. There is an urgent need to develop a new methodology for measuring the effectiveness of foreign aid. / Development Studies / M. A. (Development Studies)

Le Nicaragua connaît un déficit en logement très préoccupant. Celui-ci est du en grande partie à l’incapacité du secteur financier à satisfaire la demande des familles à faible revenu. De nombreuses initiatives ont été mises en place par des organismes provenant des trois sphères sociétales pour pallier ce problème. Certains l’ont fait avec succès d’autres sans. Aujourd’hui bien que ces initiatives aient comme objectif de répondre au problème existant, le déficit continu de se creuser. Ce mémoire propose une analyse des causes du problème afin de comprendre pourquoi les initiatives mises en place ne fonctionnent pas comme elles le devraient. Il met en avant le manque de coordination qui existe enter les acteurs et démontre que l’ensemble du secteur fonctionne selon une organisation « en silo » révélatrice d’un manque de cohérence des politiques de financement du logement. Enfin il analyse les origines possibles d’une telle organisation et des incohérences politiques qui l’ont amenée. Par cette analyse, il tente de déterminer la part de responsabilité relative imputable à l’État nicaraguayen et à l’Aide Publique au Développement qui est la principale source de fonds de tous ces programmes. / Nicaragua suffers of a very important housing deficit. The bulk of it is due to the inability of the finance sector to attend low income families. Numerous initiatives were implemented by organization from the three societal sectors to alleviate this problem. Some were successful, others were not. Today, although the objectives set by these initiatives seems to respond the existing problem, the deficit keeps on deepening. This thesis offers to analyse the causes of the problem and to understand why the implemented initiatives are not functioning as they should. It emphasizes the lack of coordination existing and demonstrates that the whole sector functions in accordance with a silo approach which is itself indicative of a lack of housing finance policy coherence. Finally, it analyses the possible origin of such an organization and of the policy incoherence that brought it. Through this analysis it attempts to clarify the respective accountability of the Nicaraguan State and the ODA which is the main financing source of these programs.

L’« appropriation » par les pays en développement (PED) de leurs processus de développement forme la clef de voûte de la nouvelle approche de l’aide et de la coopération au développement telle que promue par la Déclaration de Paris (2005). Si ce passage vers l’« appropriation » vise à installer les PED « dans le siège du conducteur », il reste tout de même inscrit dans une relation d’aide. Or, la Déclaration de Paris pose cette « appropriation » comme le résultat d’un consensus et comme un principe devant être mis en oeuvre sur un terrain vierge via une série de mesures techniques préoccupées par une efficacité ou plutôt une efficience de l’aide. En s’intéressant à la perspective d’acteurs sociaux nationaux quant à cette question de l’ « appropriation » à partir d’une étude de cas c’est-à-dire d’un contexte précis, ici celui du Rwanda, cette thèse vise à démontrer que l’agenda et les politiques en matière de développement, dont la question de l’ « appropriation », ne peuvent être saisis dans un vide contextuel. En effet, ce que met en évidence la perspective des acteurs sociaux nationaux au Rwanda quant à cette question de l’ « appropriation », c’est leur réinscription de cette question dans le contexte du Rwanda post-génocide et dépendant de l’aide, et leur appréhension de celle-ci à partir de ce contexte. Ce contexte informe le récit de ces acteurs qui met en sens et en forme cette « appropriation ». Leur saisie de l’ « appropriation » se bâtit autour d’un double impératif dans le contexte du Rwanda post-génocide, un impératif d’une part de reconstruction socio-économique et d’autre part d’édification d’une nation, et ce, à la lumière des tensions ‘ethniques’ qui traversent et structurent historiquement l’espace politique et social rwandais et qui ont donné lieu au génocide de 1994. / As put forward in the Paris Declaration (2005), “ownership” by developing countries of their development process forms the cornerstone of a new approach to aid and development cooperation. If the aim of “ownership” is to put developing countries “in the driver’s seat” of their development, it nonetheless remains an aid relation. Indeed, the Paris Declaration claims that “ownership” is the outcome of a consensus as well as a principle to be implemented through a series of technical measures preoccupied with concerns of effectiveness (or more accurately aid efficiency). As such, it puts forward the idea that aid is implemented as if on a blank slate. Beginning with a specific case study, in this instance Rwanda, and by focusing on the perspectives of national social actors on the issue of “ownership,” this thesis demonstrates that development agenda and policies, including the question of “ownership,” cannot be adequately grasped in a contextual vacuum. Through the narratives of national social actors, the meaning of “ownership” is reconfigured within the context of post-genocide Rwanda and aid-dependency, highlighting the significance of context in giving content and form to “ownership.” In the context of a post-genocide Rwanda, the understanding of “ownership” by national social actors is articulated around a double imperative: on the one hand, the demand for socio-economic reconstruction, on the other, the imperative of nation-building in light of the ‘ethnic’ tensions that cut across and historically structure Rwandan social and political space, and which led to the 1994 genocide.

Le Nicaragua connaît un déficit en logement très préoccupant. Celui-ci est du en grande partie à l’incapacité du secteur financier à satisfaire la demande des familles à faible revenu. De nombreuses initiatives ont été mises en place par des organismes provenant des trois sphères sociétales pour pallier ce problème. Certains l’ont fait avec succès d’autres sans. Aujourd’hui bien que ces initiatives aient comme objectif de répondre au problème existant, le déficit continu de se creuser. Ce mémoire propose une analyse des causes du problème afin de comprendre pourquoi les initiatives mises en place ne fonctionnent pas comme elles le devraient. Il met en avant le manque de coordination qui existe enter les acteurs et démontre que l’ensemble du secteur fonctionne selon une organisation « en silo » révélatrice d’un manque de cohérence des politiques de financement du logement. Enfin il analyse les origines possibles d’une telle organisation et des incohérences politiques qui l’ont amenée. Par cette analyse, il tente de déterminer la part de responsabilité relative imputable à l’État nicaraguayen et à l’Aide Publique au Développement qui est la principale source de fonds de tous ces programmes. / Nicaragua suffers of a very important housing deficit. The bulk of it is due to the inability of the finance sector to attend low income families. Numerous initiatives were implemented by organization from the three societal sectors to alleviate this problem. Some were successful, others were not. Today, although the objectives set by these initiatives seems to respond the existing problem, the deficit keeps on deepening. This thesis offers to analyse the causes of the problem and to understand why the implemented initiatives are not functioning as they should. It emphasizes the lack of coordination existing and demonstrates that the whole sector functions in accordance with a silo approach which is itself indicative of a lack of housing finance policy coherence. Finally, it analyses the possible origin of such an organization and of the policy incoherence that brought it. Through this analysis it attempts to clarify the respective accountability of the Nicaraguan State and the ODA which is the main financing source of these programs.

La tesi si incentra sulle questioni legate alla distribuzione degli aiuti multilaterali allo sviluppo; in particolare due temi sono affrontati: la selettività degli aiuti e la qualità della governance. L’elaborato si basa sulla letteratura concernente l’efficacia e la distribuzione degli aiuti ed unisce quest’ultima alla letteratura sulla political economy delle organizzazioni internazionali e sulla good governance. Attraverso un’analisi econometrica si intende capire se le organizzazioni multilaterali hanno a cuore la qualità della governance del paese ricevente al momento dell’allocazione degli aiuti. Con un modello GMM-Diff che adopera sia strumenti interni che esterni, si evidenzia come l’interesse per la governance da parte delle istituzioni multilaterali non sia solo retorica, come invece appare da uno studio preliminare. Inoltre, attraverso l’analisi di un panel a tre dimensioni, la tesi monitora l’applicazione della selettività degli aiuti. Viene rigettata l’ipotesi di un aumento della selettività e si evidenziano margini per un miglioramento dell’efficacia allocativa degli aiuti. Le agenzie multilaterali devono cercare di distribuire gli aiuti con criteri diversi da quelli di natura geopolitica. / The thesis examines the allocation of multilateral aid flows with respect to two current issues of the development agenda: the selectivity of aid and the quality of governance. The dissertation brings together three strands of the relevant literature: firstly, the reference literature relating to aid effectiveness and aid allocation, which is then followed by the literature on good governance and, lastly, on the political economy of international organizations. We carry out an econometric study to understand whether international organizations care about the recipients’ performance on governance. With a GMM-Diff methodology using both internal and external instruments we show that the focus on governance by multilateral bodies is not only rhetoric, as it appears at first glance. Moreover, we explore how the selectivity of multilateral aid varies over time by employing a three-dimensional panel. Our analysis rejects the hypothesis of increasing selectivity and confirms that there is room to improve on the allocation of aid. Multilateral institutions need to strengthen their efforts to allocate aid on criteria other than political-strategic ones.

This thesis consists of three chapters. The first chapter examines empirically the relationshipbetween foreign aid and economic growth in the Least Developed Countries. Instrumentalvariables techniques are used to estimate the effect that economic growth has on foreign aidand to adjust for the reverse causal effect that growth has on aid when estimating the effect thataid has on growth. The second chapter examines the effects that fiscal expansions have on theunemployment rate. The chapter presents SVAR evidence for ten OECD countries and builds aDSGE model with a labor force participation choice and workers' heterogeneity to explain theempirical findings. The third chapter examines the effects that economic growth has on thesupport for extreme political platforms. The chapter provides a theoretical model in favor ofgrowth effects (as opposed to level effects) on the support for extreme political parties, andinvestigates empirically the relationship between growth and extremist votes for 16 OECDcountries.Esta tesis consiste en tres capítulos. El primer capítulo examina empíricamente la relación entrela ayuda exterior y crecimiento económico en los países menos adelantados. Técnicas devariables instrumentales se utilizan para estimar el efecto que el crecimiento económico tienesobre la ayuda exterior y para ajustar el efecto de causalidad inversa que el crecimiento tiene enla ayuda al estimar el efecto que la ayuda tiene sobre el crecimiento. El segundo capítuloanaliza los efectos que las expansiones fiscales tienen sobre la tasa de desempleo. El capítulopresenta pruebas SVAR para diez países de la OCDE y construye un modelo DSGE con unaparticipación en la fuerza de trabajo y heterogeneidad de los trabajadores para explicar losresultados empíricos. El tercer capítulo analiza los efectos que el crecimiento económico tieneen el apoyo a las plataformas políticas extremas. El capítulo ofrece un modelo teórico a favorde los efectos del crecimiento (en contraposición a los efectos de nivel) con el apoyo departidos políticos de extrema, e investiga empíricamente la relación entre el crecimiento devotos y extremistas para 16 países de la OCDE.

Foreign aid project exit strategies that contribute to sustainable development have been rarely considered throughout the history of development studies and practice. The philosophical underpinnings of early development were based on economic theories. Over the years initiatives have manifested themselves by investments through international aid projects. As aid projects are donor-driven, most exit strategy planning involves closing down a project without turning it over to another organization to continue implementation. This means that aid benefits end with whatever impact the project has made, leaving ill-equipped local ministries or under-resourced NGOs to meet local development needs and fill the gap of terminated services. The project cycle—a popular development tool used by multinational and bilateral organizations alike—provides a framework to induce development, but makes no accommodation for an exit strategy that perpetuates development. This is a missed opportunity that reveals a flaw in the project cycle. This flaw can be corrected by revising the project cycle implementation stage to include building the capacity of people to perform the functions the project was designed for, as well as a local implementing entity through which they can work. Once accomplished, a sponsor can transfer project activities and resources to the local implementing entity though a phase-over process to extend development post-project for ongoing impact. / The aim of this thesis is to promote a greater understanding of exit strategies and analyze an aspect of project management essential to all foreign aid projects since every project must eventually end its interventions upon completion of its goals or within prescribed financial and time constraints. What are the conditions necessary to complete a foreign aid project phase-over to a local institution successfully? How can in-country local project staff contribute to institution-building before, during, and after a phase-over? What are the appropriate ways to measure the success of a phase-over? / This thesis examines the concept of exit strategy within the context of a case study of the United States Department of Agriculture’s Marketing Assistance Project (USDA-MAP) in Armenia (1995-2005) and the innovative phase-over approach it used to establish the Center for Agribusiness & Rural Development (CARD). To do this, the writings of Levinger & McLeod (2002), Gardner et al. (2005), and Esman (1972) are drawn upon to analyze this case. The actions taken by the USDA illustrate how an emphasis on internal local project staff, over external technical interventions, furthers development. The USDA’s exit strategy incorporated collective participation, empowered local stakeholders, promoted development ownership through localization, and built individual and institutional capacity. The resulting organization that was created is evidence of a successful phase-over and an innovative institution. This phase-over model offers a paradigm that embraces and promotes social/human assets within aid projects for sustainable development, and in so doing has ramifications for policy makers, project designers, and development practitioners to rethink conventional development practices.