Aid Effectiveness Explorer

Did governance support work?

For each of 138 countries, cumulative governance-targeted ODA per capita (2010–2023) plotted against the change in Governance Compass score over the same period. Adding Chinese development finance as a comparator. The simple version of a hard question: where did donor governance support correspond to governance improvements, and where did it not? This is not a causal analysis. It is a description of co-movement, with the limits that implies.

Governance ODA: OECD Creditor Reporting System purpose codes 15110–15199 (Public Sector Management, Legal & Judicial Development, Democratic Participation, Anti-Corruption, Women’s Rights), cumulative 2010–2023, compiled from OECD published aggregates and AidData core research releases. Chinese finance: AidData Global Chinese Development Finance Dataset v3.0 (2000–2021 cumulative), Parks et al. 2023. Governance scores: Governance Compass composite (CPI, WGI, Freedom House, RSF, WJP, Mo Ibrahim, BTI, OBI). Figures are per capita to enable cross-country comparison and are approximate aggregates, not exact OECD downloads.
r = 0.062
Governance ODA per capita ↔ Change in governance score (n=88 ODA recipients)
r = 0.027
Chinese finance per capita ↔ Change in governance score
32
High-aid recipients whose governance scores improved
15
High-aid recipients whose governance scores declined
Aid intensity vs governance change — the scatter

Each dot is a country. X-axis: governance ODA per capita 2010–2023 (or Chinese finance, toggleable). Y-axis: change in Governance Compass composite 2015→2024 (positive = improved). Dashed lines mark the medians, dividing the chart into four quadrants. The story is not in the correlation. It is in the quadrant distribution.

X-axis
Dot size: Western governance ODA Ring: Chinese finance volume Median lines = quadrant boundaries

The four quadrants — what the data sorts countries into

Median governance ODA per capita across ODA-eligible recipients was $55. The two columns below show the cases where governance ODA was above or below that median, against whether the country’s governance score improved or declined between 2015 and 2024.

Country-by-country table

All 138 countries. Sortable by any column. Filter by region or by income group.

Country Region Gov. ODA per cap. • China finance per cap. • Gov. 2015 Gov. 2024 Change