Aid Patterns in Central Eastern Europe. EUMA Special Series Vol. 5 No. 19, December 2008

Central-Eastern European (CEE) and Baltic countries have undergone significant political and economic transformations since the 1990s. One transition that has not yet received sufficient scholarly attention is the shift in regional aid flows. Starting in the mid 1990s, this trend saw CEE and Baltic countries emerge as donors of foreign aid from a prior condition as net recipients. Why have these new democracies strived to make that change, to systematically begin to give foreign aid? What are the patterns of aid giving that they follow? Evidence suggests that all the donor countries in the CEE and Baltic regions behaved similarly to each other as they institutionalized their own aid flows patterns. This research hypothesizes that: 1) national governments have determined their overall levels of aid spending in response to pressures and incentives from international organizations; 2) political and economic interests play a key role in determining top recipients of bilateral aid. Thus, donor interest overrides recipient need