DAC donors, Chinese engagement and the effectiveness of democracy assistance

This research aimed at determining whether Chinese engagement has an impact on the effectiveness of DAC donors’ democracy assistance in Sub-Saharan Africa. Earlier studies have argued that Chinese development assistance undermines Western efforts in terms of good governance. Democracy assistance in this study is not considered as condition for aid, rather it is perceived as an objective of aid. Studying the effectiveness of democracy assistance is a complicated process. The establishment of a causal link between democracy activities of DAC donors and the improvement of the quality of democracies is limited by context-specific factors. Based on the examined literature, it was expected that the presence of Chinese development assistance would weaken the effectiveness of DAC democracy assistance. A covariational case study method was applied to study the effectiveness of democracy assistance. To be included into the case study, a country should be a recipient of DAC democracy assistance and should either have a high or low level of Chinese engagement. Based on the literature review, economic performance, aid dependence, regime type, political stability and regional spill-over effects need to be considered to reduce the influence on the effectiveness of democracy assistance. DAC democracy assistance was defined as projects and programs aimed at improving the quality of democracy in the recipient country. Chinese engagement refers to Chinese development assistance based on the 2000-2014 AidData set. The level of Chinese engagement was related to the recipients GNI over a period from 2000 to 2014. The final sample consisted of Mozambique and Zambia with high-level Chinese engagement, and Malawi and Tanzania with low-level of Chinese engagement. After the case selection, the projects and programs from top DAC donors were selected. The project and program evaluation reports of these donors were the main source of data. The effectiveness of democracy assistance was measured based on the State of Democracy (SoD) framework from IDEA. The SoD framework from IDEA is a global approach to assess the state of democracy in a country. The final adopted framework consisted of the thematic areas: citizenship, law, and rights; responsive and accountable government; and civil society and popular participation. The results of this study were mixed. It could not be concluded whether democracy assistance is more effective in countries with low Chinese development assistance than in countries with high Chinese development assistance. All countries did show some form of regression in terms of the space for civil society and political freedoms. This suggest that the effectiveness of DAC donors’ democracy assistance was influenced by context-specific factors rather than Chinese engagement.