In CCAPS Research Brief No. 34, Pathways of Governance Aid Effectiveness: The Case of Rwanda and Burundi, CCAPS researcher Brooke Escobar analyzes aid programming in post-conflict situations using a case study of Rwanda and Burundi. The study considers the causal mechanisms through which democracy promotion programs impact democratic development in a post-conflict context, seeking to identify whether building formal institutions or fostering informal democratic norms contributes more effectively to democratic development after conflict.
The case study is part of the CCAPS program’s Democratic Governance project, which is led by the Strauss Center’s state fragility initiative director Ashley Moran.
Based on their similarities on a range of conditions, Rwanda and Burundi were chosen as highly comparable case studies. However, the two countries also experienced substantially different democratic development trajectories over the study period from 1990 through 2010. By analyzing how varied aid programs—those focused on building formal institutions versus those focused on building informal democratic norms—contributed to democratic development, the study finds that aid programs focused on building informal democratic norms were most effective in these post-conflict countries during the study period.
More on this Rwanda-Burundi governance case study is available in this brief, and the full report will be available later this year.
Additional CCAPS Democratic Governance publications are available here.
Additional CCAPS briefs and publications are available here.
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