The recent enthusiasm of Western donors for linking aid cuts to political circumstances in developing states has led to a revival of discussions of ‘political conditionality’ among donors and commentators. Though never wholly abandoned, the donor practice of suspending aid in response to recipient political transgressions largely fell into abeyance during the late 1990s/early 2000s ownership era having enjoyed a brief period of popularity in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. Current debates on the design, employment and effectiveness of the instrument, quite understandably, have therefore taken conclusions drawn from this first wave of political conditionality as their point of departure.
Such comparisons are, however, problematic, as this paper will argue. In the early 1990s, it will be suggested, donors rationalized this form of political conditionality primarily on the basis of external considerations. Aid cuts between c.1990-1995 were generally intended to pressure recalcitrant regimes into legalizing opposition parties, abolishing one-party states, holding multi-party elections and ending systematic human rights abuses. Aid cuts since the mid-2000s, however, have more often been premised on internal, reputational concerns. In the age of austerity and ‘Value for Money’, donors are increasingly wary of being seen as supporters of semi-authoritarian regimes by Western taxpayers.
This paper will therefore explore the varying donor motivations for imposing political conditionality in the 1990s and 2000s, distinguishing between ‘mission conditionality’ in the former decade and ‘PR conditionality’ in the latter. In making this argument, which will be based around analyses of multiple case studies, it will be argued that discussions of the effectiveness of conditionality must start with considerations of the political economy of donor agencies themselves.
