How Adaptive and Maladaptive Evolution Coincide: Transparency and the International Aid Regime Complex

Abstract

This paper explores the evolution of the international aid regime complex and how regime actors (development donors) are responding to the dual challenges of proliferation of donor organizations and a visible increase in problems related to aid fragmentation. Since 2008, an international movement has promoted aid transparency as an adaptive response to these challenges, guided by a theory of change that purports transparency as the means to renewing the legitimacy and relevance of legacy institutions and the critical ingredient in strengthening donor cooperation, aid effectiveness and regime coherence. The movement’s evolution, however, has produced both adaptation with respect to improved aid transparency among Global North (DAC) donors and maladaptation in the form of growing differences in the data ecosystems of DAC and non-DAC donors, who have largely opted or resisted the transparency movement. To unpack this puzzle, I use 134 key informant interviews and participant observation in the transparency movement over 14 years to identify the endogenous and exogenous factors that together can explain this curious case of mixed adaptation in the aid regime complex.