Development Aid and Institutional Design

Abstract

Abstract The chapter engages qualitative research design to understand interests of actors in pooled funds and power games played in the institutional design of pooled funds with reference to the Local Development Fund (LDF) in Malawi. Furthermore, the chapter examines how formal and informal power games are played by actors in the development aid sector and how these games have shaped, and seek to shape, the institutional design of the LDF as a pooled fund. The chapter establishes that cooperation between and among development partners and domestic institutions is limited in terms of the extent to which they can work together without hindering each other in the process as they work to satisfy their respective formal and silent interests. The chapter argues that local actors play both formal and informal power games to influence institutional design, and development partners dominate through formal power games, but ultimately engage in informal power games too.