Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I analyze the effect of interventions of international donors on subnational state capacity building in the context of a newly decentralized country: the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Paper long abstract:

International donors support decentralization to increase the autonomy of subnational governments and to increase their capacity and responsiveness towards the population (Dickovick, 2014). However, it seems that most of the aid programs tend to deal mainly with the governments at the national level, thus reducing the capacity of the newly-created subnational units. This paper aims to empirically measure up to what degree international donors have supported the development of the sub-national governments in the DRC after the découpage process that took place in 2016. To test this hypothesis, GIS analysis at the national level and case-study of the provinces that compose the former Katanga province are used.