Paper short abstract:

This paper argues for a reassessment of the role of external pressure and coercion by donors involved in the dissemination of the social protection agenda in developing countries. Emphasis is given to structural and institutional factors conditioning the exercise of power in the aid relations.

Paper long abstract:

External pressure by donors is acknowledged to have played a part in the rapid dissemination of social protection programmes across developing countries. However, there is also a general consensus that such pressures have amounted to just one among many intersecting contributing factors, to the extent that coercion exercised by donors within such agendas is often dismissed or relegated to a minor causal role, in contrast to contextually-specific domestic political economy and ideational factors. While such research has made important contributions to understand how various aid-dependent countries can maneuver within the constraints of dependence, it has nonetheless discouraged more systemic assessments of coercion operating within aid relations, in ways that condition maneuverability in fundamental ways. Moreover, most of the regression analysis testing for external pressure has been conducted on the basis of obtuse, inappropriate and/or poorly conceived variables. This paper argues for an urgent reassessment, particularly at a time when many developing countries are experiencing virulent reassertions of external constraints, which reinforce the leverage of donors even in situations where aid might only amount to a marginal addition to overall external financing needs. Structural and institutional insights are central to this reassessment. The particular contributions of this study are to highlight more nuanced understandings of how power is exercised through strategic marginal financial contributions within broader patterns of financial integration, and notions of institutional embeddedness, whereby the insertion of donors into domestic policy making becomes increasingly normalised, even where donors have little or no obvious financial clout.