Réformes, groupes d'intérêt et dépendance à l'aide : théorie et estimation économétrique

In this paper, we try to establish a connection between the political economy of the reform process and the issue of external aid. We therefore stress the vicious circle brought about by the aid dependency of the actors implicated in economic reforms. Two levels of dependency are thus identified : (i) immediate aid dependency of the government in order to implement adjustment policies, (ii) short term dependency of interest groups willing to survive during and following the reform period. The statistical and econometric analyses carried out show the following results: first, a positive relation does exist between quality of macro economic policy and the level of aid received for the five years before; second, aid can be captured by interest groups.