Exploring donor trade-offs in semi-authoritarian regimes: political consequences of cash assistance programs in Egypt, Ethiopia, and Uganda

Cash assistance programs have gained significant popularity in recent years, particularly in the international aid sector, as an effective strategy for development and poverty reduction in low-income countries. Whilst in many cases these programs are implemented without state involvement, donors also aim to persuade governments to take more ownership. Recent literature has shed light on the political dimensions of implementing cash assistance reform in collaboration with semi-authoritarian regimes. Semi-authoritarian regimes, which can be defined as having characteristics of both liberal-democratic and authoritarian regimes, tend to follow the political imperative of regime survival, and are likely to only implement policies that align to this imperative. In response, the aid sector is increasingly employing more politically engaged approaches to aid delivery to persuade semi-authoritarian regimes to implement cash assistance programs. These types of approaches aim to understand the political economy context, and work within its constraints to find politically viable options for policy reform. This has led to a number of success cases. However, in judging the merits of these cash assistance programs, too much focus has been on concrete, short term results, particularly the buy-in from semi-authoritarian regimes and the livelihood-related outcomes for beneficiaries. But the compromises that had to be struck in the process, as well as the broader political consequences of donor-funded, state-led cash assistance programs, remain under-explored. This paper engages with the above issues through three case studies of cash assistance programs in semi-authoritarian regimes in Africa: Egypt, Ethiopia, and Uganda. It asks the questions: how does donors' engagement in supporting cash assistance programs impact the political landscape in semi-authoritarian hybrid regimes? And what are the trade-offs and dilemmas faced by donors in these processes? It finds that politically engaged strategies by donors around the political survival imperatives of ruling elites in each country were crucial in securing the needed commitment to implement the cash assistance programs. However, this political pragmatism came with inevitable trade-offs and dilemmas that have resulted in both pro- and anti-poor outcomes. It concludes that while the political-engagement agenda has been instrumental in reshaping how donors approach the early stages of program adoption in intractable contexts, there’s still a significant political blind-spot in approaching the broader, downstream outcomes of these strategies.