ABSTRACT
This chapter places various cases in this book in a broader theoretical and comparative perspective. How the politics of foreign aid intersect with economic development policies to produce different and similar outcomes in each case is explained. Further, we focus on how individuals and ideas interact in the policy arena to formulate and implement domestically sensitive policies for national development. Based on the foregoing, we argue that state effectiveness and good governance in aid recipient states are the links to the effective utilization of foreign aid for economic development. Finally, we conclude that political factors, sound policies, policy ownership, and efficient bureaucracy anchored by state effectiveness, and understanding the authority domain of various actors, illuminate South Korea’s successful utilization of foreign aid for development. In contrast, unreformed colonial state structures, weak institutions of governance, elite corruption, low-level attention to nation-building, patrimonialism, and monocultural economy, combine for the ineffectiveness of foreign aid as a catalyst for economic development in Ghana, Myanmar, Nigeria, and Zambia.
