Catch me if you care: International development organizations and national corruption
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Catch me if you care: International development organizations and national corruption Lauren L. Ferry 1 & Emilie M. Hafner-Burton 2 & Christina J. Schneider 3 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Many international development organizations (IDOs) have officially mandated anticorruption criteria for aid selectivity. Substantial debate remains over whether corruption deters aid and whether anti-corruption rules are effectively implemented. We argue that the extent to which both corruption and anti-corruption mandates factor into IDO allocation depends on the composition of the donors. Using existing data on corruption alongside newly collected data on anti-corruption mandates, we demonstrate that organizations composed of corrupt donors are just as likely to adopt, but less likely to enforce, anti-corruption mandates. Organizations composed of less corrupt donors, by contrast, tend to divert aid away from corrupt states, with or without formal anticorruption rules in place. The findings have implications for the debate over whether international efforts to institutionalize “good governance” standards are sincere or cheap talk, whether multilateral strategies are in fact less politicized than bilateral aid allocation strategies, and whether international organizations should be inclusive, open to membership by many or even all states, including those with dubious track records. Keywords Corruption . Good governance . Foreign aid . International development
organizations . Anti-corruption mandates States give billions of dollars in foreign aid annually to developing countries in every region of the world, many of which are poor and highly aid dependent. They channel a significant share of these resources through intergovernmental development Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11558-01909371-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
* Lauren L. Ferry [email protected] * Emilie M. Hafner-Burton [email protected] * Christina J. Schneider [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Ferry L.L. et al.
organizations (IDOs), including global and regional agencies and development banks (OECD 2013). These organizations are rapidly increasing in number and importance and are often considered to be less politicized and more effective than bilateral aid channels, in principle making them less apt to be used for strategic or political purposes (Rodrik 1995; Winters 2010; Dietrich 2013; Milner and Tingley 2013a; Dietrich and Wright 2015; Findley et al. 2017). Many of these organizations have adopted official criteria for aid selectivity, based on the now widely held idea that development aid is most effective in promoting economic growth and poverty reduction in the absence of “the cancer of corruption” (Wolfensohn 1996). Yet, there remains substantial debate and conflicting evidence whether corruption deters aid and to date there is scant evidenc
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