| Sumario: | This book is the one of the first—if not the first one—to address aid effectiveness from a comparative economics perspective. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transition of its republics to market structures and representative forms of government, the European Commission had recognized the necessity of a closer economic cooperation with Russia and Eurasia. EU development aid provided a set of reform incentives to post-Soviet planners. It created the grounds for the institutional transformation of central and regional bureaucracies by integrating them into the aid delivery process. In the former Soviet Union, the subordination of civil society to the developmental choices of recipient bureaucracies occurred at the expense of diversity and political openness. Nevertheless, it led to the emergence of transnational sovereignty partnerships (TSPs) between recipient bureaucracies and donor-financed NGOs or business consortia. Multiple definitions of aid effectiveness are provided in the course of the book chapters. Those include the soft budget constraint, contractual completeness under imperfect monitoring, optimization of donor policy preferences, and ex-post evaluation of aid programs. The effectiveness of development aid is contested. Here Theocharis Grigoriadis provides a careful new analysis of aid to Russia and Eurasia following the collapse of the Soviet Bloc that sheds light on both its politics and economics. Must reading for anyone who wishes to think hard about development aid. — Barry Eichengreen, George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Political Science, University of California, Berkeley. Aid in Transition: EU Development Cooperation with Russia and Eurasia provides a wealth of analysis and knowledge for scholars and policy-makers seeking to understand the role of EU assistance to the European and Eurasian transition economies. The author finds that strong institutions of civil society complement aid effectiveness by concentrating on the micro-foundations of aid delivery and implementation. This volume should be in the libraries of all social scientists and policy-makers studying the causes and consequences of economic modernization and the role of institutions in development. It will have lasting value. — Judith Thornton, Professor of Economics, University of Washington. A unique comparison of the EU aid effectiveness to the countries such as Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan. An important analysis of the workings of aid systems, essential for the understanding of the models and the implications of foreign aid. — Professor Alena Ledeneva, University College London.
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