Governance beyond the European Consensus on Development: What Drives EU Aid Selectivity?

This paper focuses on the ‘governance turn’ in the development policies of the European Union, represented in particular by the adoption of the ‘European Consensus on Development’ in 2005. The main assumption inherent in the EU approach to development is that the quality of governance in developing countries is a crucial (co-) determinant of development outcomes. The paper sets up an analysis of the allocation of funds (over €50 billion during the 2007-13 period) through the EU’s main policy instruments: the European Development Fund, the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument, and the Development Cooperation Instrument. The paper attempts to establish whether any dominant explanation, or combination of explanations, given in the literature on development assistance, is able to account for the allocation of those parts of the funds that are meant to be spent on governance reform. Three sets of hypotheses are tested, each derived from one of the dominant explanatory models of development assistance: donor interest, recipient need and constructivist models. The findings of the empirical analyses emphasise the role of donor-interest variables, but show that recipient needs play a (seemingly subordinate) role in decisions on EU aid allocation.