Using foreign aid contracts to pursue participatory approaches to development within large foreign aid agencies

Participatory development has become, ‘development orthodoxy’, receiving widespread proclamations of support from foreign aid agencies. engages international beneficiaries in making decisions about project activity selection and design. Yet, many donors deliver assistance through top-down, highly controlled systems that may constrain the flexibility needed to delegate decision-making power beneficiaries. This paper explores whether under which conditions these agencies beneficiaries, focusing on key mechanism for delivering aid: government contracts. The analysis relies a novel dataset U.S. Agency International Development (USAID) projects incorporates contract specifications beneficiary during implementation. Despite an expectation delivery system constraints would prohibitively exclude decision-making, are found commonly use contracts but within pre-determined parameters. results suggest USAID is using engage bounded delegation, providing some boundaries ensure right ‘fit’ with institutional goals constraints. By variation specifications, this study identifies ‘middle ground’ how motivate participatory development.