What are the effects of high aid dependence on state-society relations? Can governments that obtain most of their income from overseas be accountable or responsive to their own citizens? This study, from the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, concludes that aid has become a problem in some countries because of a conjunction of circumstances: high levels of dependence; an inheritance of weak states relatively independent of their citizens for political or fiscal support; modes of dispersing aid that fragment fiscal sovereignty and undermine budgetary accountability. However, aid does not necessarily undermine democracy.
Editors
