Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRSs) are the new buzzwords in development aid. Some 70 countries have already elaborated them in response to World Bank and bilateral aid agency requirements. This book presents detailed, field-level research on the application of PRSs in three countries: Tanzania, Vietnam and Honduras It describes the changing relations between the governments of these countries, donor agencies, and civic organizations that have taken part in formulating the new generation of PRSs. Poverty Reduction Strategies run up against a central paradox: in giving decisive policymaking powers to external agencies, the very process of drawing up development strategies to prioritise reducing poverty can gravely undermine the consolidation of democratic forces, structures and ideas in developing countries.

Foreign aid has increasingly become subject to political conditionality. In the 1980s some institutions made aid dependent upon the recipient countries' economic policy reforms. Market liberalisation was the primary instrument and objective. In the 1990s such conditionality was brought one step further; aid was now linked to political reforms, affecting recipient countries' governing systems, requiring democracy, human rights and 'good governance'. This volume looks at these developments and considers the conditionality policies of several European aid donors. Such policies are also considered from recipient perspectives, both from the Third World and Russia, and the issue is also considered from a historical perspective.

Welfare conditionality has become an idea of global significance in recent years. A ‘hot topic’ in North America, Australia, and across Europe, it has been linked to austerity politics, and the rise of foodbanks and destitution. In the Global South, where publicly funded welfare protection systems are often absent, conditional approaches have become a key tool employed by organisations pursuing human development goals. The essence of welfare conditionality lies in requirements for people to behave in prescribed ways in order to access cash benefits or other welfare support. These conditions are typically enforced through benefit ‘sanctions’ of various kinds, reflecting a new vision of ‘welfare’, focused more on promoting ‘pro-social’ behaviour than on protecting people against classic ‘social risks’ like unemployment. This new book in Routledge’s Key Ideas series charts the rise of behavioural conditionality in welfare systems across the globe, its appeal to politicians of Right and Left, and its application to a growing range of social problems. Crucially it explores why, in the context of widespread use of conditional approaches as well as apparently strong public support, both the efficacy and the ethics of welfare conditionality remain so controversial. As such, Welfare Conditionality is essential reading for students, researchers, and commentators in social and public policy, as well as those designing and implementing welfare policies.

Among the criteria for accession to the European Union are democracy and the Rule of Law. In the insightful analysis offered by the author of this book, these concepts - while admirable and even necessary criteria in principle - are almost impossible to measure, and any judgement grounded in them will always be difficult to justify. In his words, 'by including analysis of democracy and the Rule of Law within the field of the EU enlargement law, the Union entered an unstable terrain of vague causal connections and blurred definitions.' Dr Kochenov addresses this problem by proceeding as follows: 1. Outlining EU enlargement law in general, including the principle of conditionality and the role played by the analysis of democracy and the Rule of Law in enlargement preparation; 2. Focusing on the role actually played by the monitoring of democracy and the Rule of Law in ten candidate countries, scrutinizing the way the EU used the legal tools and competences outlined in its enlargement law. The book adopts the EU's own understanding of democracy and the Rule of Law, as derived directly from the substance of the numerous legal and political instruments issued by the Community Institutions and especially the Commission in the course of the pre-accession process. In this way it demonstrates the actual - as opposed to the officially announced - role played by the assessment of democracy and the Rule of Law in the candidate countries in the regulation of enlargement. Many formidable inconsistencies in the application of the conditionality principle are thus laid bare. This leads the author to a series of recommendations on policy and procedure that he demonstrates could be profitably applied to the regulation of current and future accessions, using the Commission's own structure of monitoring pre-accession reforms in the three areas of the legislature, executive, and judiciary in candidate countries. The probity and soundness of these recommendations, firmly grounded as they are in the actual pre-accession monitoring and its consequences for the pre-accession progress of ten Eastern European countries admitted to the EU in 2004 and 2007, will greatly interest policymakers and scholars concerned with the future of European integration.

Political conditionality involves the linking of development aid to certain standards of observance of human rights and (liberal) democracy in recipient countries. Although this may seem to be an innocent policy, it has the potential to bring about a dramatic change in the basic principles of the international system: putting human rights first means putting respect for individuals and rights before respect for the sovereignty of states.

The book provides the first comprehensive comparative analysis of the development of EU enlargement conditionality across four different enlargement waves - the first (2004) and the second (2007) phase of the Eastern enlargement, the EU enlargement to Croatia (2013), and the ongoing enlargement round involving Turkey and the Western Balkans.

This book examines the ways in which the European Union and its policy of conditionality has shaped the post-conflict reconstruction of the Western Balkans. This book was published as a special issue of Europe-Asia Studies.