ABSTRACT
This chapter argues the case for examining as comprehensively as is practical the domestic political effects of aid in the aid-receiving countries. Even economic conditionalities can have significant political effects, like allowing a government to deflect domestic political opposition to economic measures it might have taken anyway. It is well known that structural adjustment lending has levered economic policy changes in many countries but produced some adverse economic as well as social and political effects. The economic analysis of aid was pre-eminent precisely because it shaded into theorizing about economic development and observation of actual economic outcomes—activities that attracted financial support from the aid agencies. The study of aid has moved on from a period when economists cared most and political scientists were preoccupied with cold war concerns relating to the donors' foreign policy, to today's growing fascination with the effectiveness of democracy aid.
