Aid in Conflict:

Book Summary

Aid in Conflict tells the story of the international community’s provision of foreign aid to war-torn countries. It is a tale of donors’ commitments to global priorities that sometimes succeed, but often contribute to instability. The title, Aid in Conflict, references three crucial dimensions of the aid-conflict relationship, eschewing notions that aid is either good or bad for recipient countries. First, donors now give the majority of their international aid to conflict-affected countries. Far from the side business of international aid; aid to conflict-affected countries is now the main business. Second, donors make different choices about how to allocate aid in conflict: some choose to reinforce the state, others choose to empower the society, and still others attempt both. How donors engage with the conflict-affected state is shaped by their relative prioritization of the country and the degree of authority that donors give to their country offices, leading to different degrees of responsiveness to conflict and cooperation dynamics. Yet, even the most responsive among these donors are deeply conflicted about the consequences of their aid allocation choices, particularly when using blunt aid instruments that are ill-matched with the country’s complex conflict and peace dynamics. Third, the aid industry itself is in conflict as an ever-expanding and diverse set of donors employ divergent aid allocation strategies and jockey for influence and impact, often to the detriment of recipient countries.

To evaluate our argument, Aid in Conflict uses a sub-national statistical analysis of donor aid allocation patterns across more than 70 donors -- traditional donors such as the US and the World Bank, and also non-traditional donors, including China and Qatar -- operating in the DRC, Nepal, South Sudan, and Sudan (1990 to 2016). Aid in Conflict also uses over 180 elite interviews to describe how donors use their aid to jockey for influence over the post-conflict state and society, and the strategies the post-conflict state uses to contain donor attempts at influence.

Even though the use of aid for peace and stability is one of the most prominent foreign policy agendas shaping aid, Aid in Conflict is the first comprehensive study of donor aid allocation behavior in conflict-affected countries. By examining the behavior of all donors operating in four protracted conflicts, this book shows that scholarship’s traditional classifications of donors as Western, non-Western, multilateral, or bilateral ignore the variation in their aid decision-making structure and the implications for aid to conflict-affected countries. The findings presented in this book also have significant policy implications. Even though aid donors have invested billions of dollars in conflict-affected countries, they lack objective assessments of their effectiveness. Instead, they have become entrenched in replicating their own ‘best practices’ without investigating whether they lead to real results on the ground. By improving policy makers' understanding of how different donors give aid to conflict-affected countries, this book can help to shape the effectiveness of aid in conflict.

Chapter List

1. Introduction

2. A Theory of Aid in Conflict-Affected Countries

3. Mixed-Method Research Design

4. The Democratic Republic of the Congo: Disaster, Diamonds, and Development

5. Sudan and South Sudan: Statebuilding and Suberfuge

6. Nepal: From Informed to Blind Aid

7. Aid in Conflict: An Uneasy Path