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The New Disciplinary Framework: Conditionality, New Aid Architecture and Global Economic Governance

‘Country ownership,’ ‘partnership’ and ‘participation’ are key pillars of what has become increasingly referred to as the ‘new aid architecture.’ Catalysed primarily by the inception of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) framework, introduced in 1999 as preconditions for debt relief under the enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative and for concessional financing from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), this new blueprint for official development assistance (ODA) claims to move away from the prescriptive legacy of conditionality which has traditionally characterised the relationship between parties to such financing. In this respect, the principles underpinning the new aid architecture are regarded as the opposite of the doctrine of ‘conditionality’, operating as a conceptually and operationally divergent framework for regulating relationships between the disbursers and recipients of development financing. This chapter examines the impact of this new regime of aid governance in the context of the evolution of conditionality as a regulatory instrument. It contends that changes to the policies and modalities of development financing in recent years have had the effect of entrenching rather than retiring the use of conditionality in development financing. This, in turn, impacts significantly on recipient countries’ engagement with and obligations under international law. The chapter argues that the new architecture of aid has extended and refined this regulatory role of conditionality. Instead of departing from the policies of the past, the new modalities of conditionality have been altered to serve as a deeper and more intrusive form of disciplinary control over the developing countries subject to them. Aside from reinforcing the asymmetrical nature of international economic law, this new regime exacerbates the fracture of domestic legal and constitutional frameworks in developing countries in the wake of globalization.