Rationality, Regularity and Rule ? Juridical Governance of/by Official Development Assistance

Abstract

Powerful yet hidden juridical dimensions to Official Development Assistance (ODA) exist whose quality and relationship to law remain overlooked. Donors’ reliance on bureaucratic and technocratic governance instruments to govern ODA, institutionalises permanent co-governance within aid-recipient states in ways that remain invisible to recipient states’ ordinary laws and institutions (governance of ODA). Meanwhile, ODA-leveraged, donor-led legal and institutional reform, provides donors with opportunity for executive intervention in aid-recipient domestic affairs (governance by ODA). Approaching ODA as a juridical field through a meso-Tanzania-level analysis of donor governance, this article contributes new conceptual and empirical insights to the relationship between law, governance, and ODA.