Does foreign aid really work?

List of figures --
List of tables --
List of boxes --
Preface --
List of abbreviations --
1. \'A good thing?\' --
pt. 1. The complex worlds of foreign aid --
2. The origins and early decades of aid-giving --
Defining aid --
A snapshot of the history of aid --
The origins of aid : the pre-1949 era --
The 1950s to the 1960s --
3. Aid-giving from the 1970s to the present --
The 1970s and 1980s --
From the 1990s to today --
4. The growing web of bilateral aid donors --
The ever-increasing number of donors --
The explosion in the numbers of non-governmental organizations --
The main bilateral donors --
The smaller bilateral donors --
5. The complexities of multilateral aid --
What is multilateral aid and how much of it is there? --
The international financial institutions --
The United Nations, development and aid --
Other multilateral agencies --
Systemic issues. pt. 2. Why is aid given? --
6. The political and commercial dimensions of aid --
Why governments give aid --
Politics and national self-interest in aid-giving --
Commercial interests in aid-giving --
The overall impact of political and commercial influences on aid --
Concluding comments --
7. Public support for aid --
Trends in public support --
The reliability of public opinion surveys --
Public support for aid and public perception of its effectiveness --
8. Charity or duty? The moral case for aid --
Facts on the ground --
Ethical theories and approaches --
9. The moral case for governments and individuals to provide aid --
Donor governments : current and evolving views --
Aid and the nature of governments\' moral obligations --
Ethics, voluntary aid-giving and the world of NGOs --
pt. 3. Does aid really work? --
10. Assessing and measuring the impact of aid --
Methodological challenges and data-gaps --
Judging the impact and performance of aid : what questions need to be asked? --
Understanding how aid contributes to growth and development --
Expectations about the impact of aid. 11. The impact of official development aid projects --
Project aid : an overview --
Detailed project performance --
Data quality and the sustainability of official aid projects --
The wider picture --
Summing up --
12. The impact of programme aid, technical assistance and aid for capacity development --
Programme aid --
Technical assistance --
Aid for capacity building --
13. The impact of aid at the country and cross-country level --
The country-level impact of aid --
The impact of official development aid across countries --
14. Assessing the impact of aid conditionality --
Aggregate aid impact and the policy environment --
Official donor conditionality and recipient response --
Does policy conditionality produce the results intended? --
Summing up --
15. Does official development aid really work? A summing up --
The search for sustainability --
Effectiveness does matter --
16. NGOs in development and the impact of discrete NGO development interventions --
NGOs : an overview --
Methodological challenges --
The impact of NGO development projects and programmes --
Cost-effectiveness, quality, innovation and replication --
Capacity development and institutional strengthening. 17. The wider impact of non-governmental and civil society organizations --
NGO advocacy, lobbying, awareness-raising and campaigning --
Strengthening NGOs and strengthening civil society --
The contribution of NGOs to development : a summing up --
18. The growth of emergencies and the humanitarian response --
Emergencies and disasters : an overview --
The humanitarian aid response --
19. The impact of emergency and humanitarian aid --
Assessing humanitarian aid --
The impact of humanitarian action and humanitarian aid --
Advocacy in humanitarian action --
Emergency and humanitarian aid : a summing up --
pt. 4. Towards a different future for aid --
20. Why aid isn\'t working --
Systematic impediments to aid effectiveness : problems caused by donors --
Problems at the recipient end : aid dilemmas --
Conclusion --
21. Making aid work better by implementing agreed reforms --
The discrete individual-donor approach --
The step-change international cooperative approach --
Taking stock --
22. Making aid work better by recasting aid relationships --
Confronting the politics of aid-giving --
Recasting aid relationships --
Making aid work better : addressing five key problem areas --
Bridging the divide between ideas and implementation --
Notes --
References --
Index.