ABSTRACT
This chapter explores that the implications of a relational approach to aid and how this differs from methodological individualism, a way of looking at the world that underpins the international aid system, as it has bureaucratic practice generally. A relational perspective starts from the premise that social actors be they persons or states are in turn influenced by these processes of interaction. As long as the donors spent their money as they saw fit, privileging their analysis over that of the governments, the old patron-client relationship between recipient and donor would continue. In October 2003, donors and ministers travelled to Europe to discuss the renewal of the Poverty Reduction Strategy at the World Bank office in Paris. A study of donor efforts to support health sector reform in Uganda and Tanzania concluded that donors could have done more to establish creative alliances among pro-poor reformers in the Ministry of Health and civil society groups.
