ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a model for understanding aid policy decision making in the East Central European (ECE) countries, where due to the low profile of foreign aid policy, actors, their interests, and their interactions are easier to model in a parsimonious and insightful way. The model builds on the governmental politics model of foreign policy analysis, but also incorporates two sets of actors which have had profound influence on shaping ECE foreign aid policies: international organizations like the European Union (EU) and the OECD DAC, and domestic non-governmental organizations. The chapter argues that the governmental politics model is suitable for explaining foreign aid policy-making. The theoretical model can be grouped into rational or cognitive approaches. Rational models emphasize actors making rational decisions based on cost-benefit analysis, while cognitive models focus more on the psychological side of decision-making. The three basic and influential models of the rational school were formulated by Allison in his classic works on the Cuban missile crisis.
