The Impact of Donor Engagement on Bureaucratic Ambition and Motivation in Aid Recipient Countries: Brief Report

Critical approaches to donor programming in non-Western settings are essential to our understanding of bilateral and multilateral development administration. Greater emphasis on political analysis of aid provision and effectiveness is welcome, but there remains little emphasis on how working with donors shapes ambitions and motivations bureaucrats working in aid-recipient countries, and a lack of evidence on how these shifts impact state capacity over time. Bringing the literature on the politics of aid in conversation with that on bureaucratic politics and motivation, this brief report argues for investigating how donor engagement impacts bureaucratic ambition and motivation by considering its impact on autonomy and ability to effect change. The report draws on fieldwork in Pakistan to operationalise these mechanisms, but advocates for more research to investigate whether engaging with donor agencies disengages bureaucrats from state politics and governance with consequences for state capacity and the success of donor programming.