Political Institutions, Human Rights, and Aid Donors: Dirty Hands Dilemmas in Development Assistance

It is widely recognised that political institutions are closely associated with development outcomes. However, there is still considerable debate on the nature of this relationship. For some, political institutions are the major driver of development outcomes. From this perspective, inclusive institutions that broadly promote human rights lead generate sustained economic growth, while extractive institutions that perpetuate violations of people’s rights prevent such sustained equitable economic growth. However, others argue that association is because sustained economic growth that enables societies to establish and maintain inclusive political institutions that promote human rights (not the other way around). In this paper, we consider the implications of this debate for aid donors working in contexts with weak and/or extractive political institutions. Those that posit political institutions drive development outcomes often argue that in supporting governments with development aid in such contexts, donors are complicit in the human rights violations committed by these governments and undermine development progress by helping these repressive regimes remain in power. In contrast, those that view economic growth as shaping political institutions argue that donor efforts to promote inclusive human rights-promoting institutions are seeking to force Western institutions and norms onto these countries, and in doing so undermine development processes in these countries. In this paper, we examine this debate in more detail. We argue that the debate on the causal direction between institutions and development, together with the uncertainty about how to transform extractive institutions into inclusive ones, means that donors face with a dilemma in providing development aid in such contexts. On the one hand providing aid can support improvements in development outcomes in such context, but on the other hand providing aid to governments that commit human rights abuses may make donors complicit in these rights abuses and end up undermining development progress in the long term. Drawing on the evidence on political institutions, human rights, and development, together with the political theory literature on dilemmas, we develop a framework on how aid donors should operate in such contexts to avoid complicity in human rights abuses while supporting positive development outcomes.