Aid Relations and State Reforms in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

The Politics of Mutual Accommodation and Administrative Neglect

Since 2001 The Democratic Republic of Congo has been engaged in a three-fold transition process towards liberalisation, democratisation, and peace. Throughout this process, external actors (donors, international financial institutions, the UN system, aid agencies) have played a leading role, effectively setting the orientations and modalities of this transition, including their institutional dimension. Congolese actors have not been passively subjected to this process, however, but have potently shaped it in various ways. This book investigates the relationship between international aid partners and various Congolese actors since 2001. It examines this relationship as an aspect of the state reform process, with particular reference to the administration.

Stylianos Moshonas argues that the pace and nature of reform has been compromised by the contradictions inherent within the process itself, as advocated by international partners, and by the ability of Congolese power holders to accommodate and co-opt such reforms in line with their own political strategies. Rather than framing aid relations as the outcome of the oppositional points of view of donors and Congolese actors, this book presents a systematic focus on the compromises and accommodative characteristics that aid politics have coalesced around, as well as the contradictory positions donors have found themselves in.