ABSTRACT
The adoption of the aid selectivity principle in development assistance policies since the late 1990s was based on a distinctly political motivation. The international development community had been faced with widespread doubts about the effectiveness of aid and witnessed the decline of budgets allocated to development assistance. Several initiatives were taken in response to the prevalent scepticism about aid. At the global level, in such institutions as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the United Nations, proposals were made to reassess the core objectives of development assistance policies. These proposals ultimately led to the general acceptance of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the first few years of the new millennium. At the same time as the aims of development assistance were being rethought, the instruments of development aid were the subject of intense scrutiny in policy circles. Ideas about new aid modalities and new forms of conditionality came out of the debate about instruments.
