ABSTRACT
Speaking to the Economic Club of Chicago in April 1999, Tony Blair announced ‘We need a new Marshall Plan for Kosovo, Montenegro, Macedonia, Albania and Serbia too, if it turns to democracy.’1 Although the ambitions for a new Marshall Plan were not realized, the Western Balkan countries have been host to an enormous inflow of humanitarian and developmental aid over the last decade and a half. International assistance peaked in 2002 and has been declining since then, mainly because aid from bilateral donors has fallen sharply. Aid was not always effective due to the difficulty of donor coordination and the reactions of the recipient countries to the aid programmes. Established in 2000, the Stability Pact attempted to address the problem of donor coordination. In doing so, it acted as a policy broker between various advocacy coalitions composed of donor organizations which promoted distinct approaches to transition, development and post-conflict reconstruction. The reactions of the recipient countries to the aid programmes proved to be more difficult to manage, and various conditions were laid down by donors to ensure the implementation of their programmes. As a consequence, the influence of the domestic elites over key elements of institutional reform diminished in those countries that became more dependent on aid. Among the late reformers, aid inflows sometimes substituted for effective reforms, while the early reformers developed a greater capacity to design their own reform programmes and had less need of international assistance.
