Abstract
Over the course of the last decade there has been an increasing emphasis on recipient-country
ownership, or the “effective exercise of a government’s authority over development
policies and activities, including those that rely on external resources” (OECD 2007),
within the international development community. This new emphasis is not only rhetorical
but has resulted in a host of new aid programs promising increased ownership. Broadly
speaking, these aid programs are supposed to change the institutional relationships between
donors and recipient-country governments and allow aid beneficiaries to have a say over the
development policies that impact their daily lives. However, despite their prevalence, we
know relatively little about how such aid programs affect donor-government relationships
and the policy decision-making process in aid-dependent states.
In the following dissertation project, I analyze four “ownership” aid programs in post-genocide
Rwanda: the poverty reduction strategy program; budget support; the aid
coordination, harmonization, and alignment framework; and the Rwandan Joint Governance
Assessment. In each case study, I look for evidence that the aid program has resulted in the
outcomes predicted by their proponents: increased government and citizen influence, and
decreased donor influence. Data largely come from fieldwork I conducted in Rwanda during
2009 and 2010.
My analysis suggests that key Rwandan government officials use the idea of
ownership to seek influence over decision-making processes. However, the aforementioned
aid programs have not resulted in the outcomes predicted by proponents of the ownership
approach in two key ways. One, donors have not retreated nor given control over
development policy to recipient countries. Rather they have sought alternative ways of
influencing the policy process. Two, what we see emerging in Rwanda is not broad national
ownership. Instead, donors work with an elite group of government policymakers. I call this
type of aid relationship “centralized collaboration,” meaning that multilateral and bilateral
donors work with a small group of domestic actors to design and implement socio-economic
development strategies.
I conclude by arguing that this outcome is largely the result of three things: donor
preferences, the amount of leverage the GoR is able to exert over donors, and existing state-society
relationships. These three factors provide a framework for assessing and analyzing
donor-government relationships and ownership aid programs in other aid-dependent states.
