Description
Book SynopsisIn a book full of directly applicable lessons for policymakers, Haley J. Swedlund explores why foreign aid is delivered in different ways at different times, and why various approaches prove to be politically unsustainable. She finds that no aid-delivery mechanism has yet resolved commitment problems in the donor-recipient relationship; bargaining compromises break down and have to be renegotiated; frustration grows; new ways of delivering aid gain traction over existing practices; and the dance resumes.
Swedlund draws on hundreds of interviews with key decision makers representing both donor agencies and recipient governments, policy and archival documents in Ghana, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda, and an original survey of top-level donor officials working across twenty countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. This wealth of data informs Swedlund's analysis of fads and fashions in the delivery of foreign aid and the interaction between effectiveness and aid delivery. The central messag
Trade Review
The author's writing is crisp and engaging, and she weaves her central metaphor of the negotiation process as a dance between donors and recipients throughout.... Practitioners involved in the aid bargain will also almost certainly benefit from this work, which brings what I suspect many will find to be a useful, broader frame to their lived experience. Swedlund has taken a big step forward in explaining the dance of development assistance, and her book deserves to be widely read.
* Perspectives on Politics *
[French language review]
* Le Point *
Table of ContentsList of Figures and Tables
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
1. The Development Dance
2. It Takes Two to Tango
3. Studying the Dance
4. May I Have This Dance?
5. A Halfhearted Shuffle
6. Tracking a Craze
7. The Future of the Development Dance and Why We Should Care
Appendixes
Notes
Works Cited
Index
