Pawns On A Chessboard The role of donor organizations during the transition process

This paper discusses the role of donor organizations during the transition process of CEE countries. Previous research pointed to them as the ones to blame for the failure of many assistance projects. This paper investigates what those donor organizations have to say themselves. It departs form the theory of social exchange which focuses on situations of imbalance of costs and rewards which is characteristic for the work of donor organizations. This theory provides an answer to the question how the motives explain the variance in the effectiveness of aid programs. Subsequently this paper presents the results of a case study on Swedish donor organizations. This is an extreme case, because the Swedish ones were seen in the previous investigations as the most properly