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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the effect of bypass aid on informal governance and state-society relations in Haitian slums. The paper provides evidence for two types of effects: a reduced capacity for community self-provision of public goods; and, decreased assessments of state legitimacy among residents.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines “bypass aid’s” effects on both community-level, informal governance and formal state-society relations in Haitian slums. Bypass aid eschews substantive host government involvement in aid delivery, instead routing assistance through international or national NGOs and their community-based partners. Given donors’ long-standing preoccupations with state weakness and corruption in Haiti, bypass aid remains a common method for delivery of individual assistance and community-level public goods alike. But what are the long-term implications of such an arrangement on formal and informal governance in Haiti’s politically volatile slums, and what are the mechanisms through which such effects emerge?

To explore these questions, I draw on a mixed-methods, comparative case study of the secondary cities of Les Cayes and Cap Haitien, conducted between 2021 and 2023. These cities share a number of similarities, including population size, political and economic subordination to the capital of Port-au-Prince, entrenched poverty, low state capacity, and endemic urban violence. Notably, however, Les Cayes has experienced a greater amount of per capita bypass aid delivered by humanitarian NGOs over the past decade. Capitalizing on these contrasting “aid profiles”, the paper provides evidence for two important effects resulting from more bypass aid: 1) a reduced capacity for resident-led collective action involving the self-provision of public goods within slums, and, 2) decreased perceptions of state legitimacy among slum residents.

These findings add to literatures examining consequences of public goods provision by non-state actors (including NGOs), and the complicated dynamics of statebuilding and the social contract in fragile governance contexts.