The paper deals with understanding institutional change in international financial organisations operating in global environmental governance. Using the Global Environment Facility (GEF) as a qualitative case study, the paper explores the trend in recent years towards results based management and the adoption of performance based instruments in environmental assistance. By applying an integrative neo-institutionalist framework combining historical, rational choice and sociological institutionalism, the paper seeks to shed light on the actors, issues and dynamics involved in the process of change which led to the implementation of the Resource Allocation Framework (RAF) in 2005 through process tracing the causal mechanisms, scope conditions and causal agents involved.
The paper shows how an analytically ecclectic approach through the combined analysis of path dependencies, rational choice and institutional isomorphism can paint a richer picture of the GEF RAF process to comprehend how, when and why environmental IO's, especially funding mechanisms transform.
