Losing Concentration? Lessons from a Swedish Aid Policy Reform

Sweden is one of the donor countries that signed on to the Paris Agenda, which amongst other things advocated reducing aid dispersion. It also adopted its own geographical concentration policy in 2007. My empirical analysis shows that Sweden only managed to achieve this goal for two years following the reform and that the episode was followed by backsliding. Moreover, its current aid policy framework barely mentions the topic. I argue that a major reason was the failure to institutionalise the policy. This left it vulnerable to the regular politics of aid, which tend to generate both geographic and thematic spread. Reduced peer pressure as the international community has moved away from the Paris Agenda might also have contributed.