Although the impact of foreign aid on governance and development has been widely debated, its effect on bureaucracies remains underexplored. This is significant as bureaucracies play a vital role in key functions of the state and can affect development and growth. CDDRL postdoctoral scholar Maria Nagawa addressed this gap in a recent research seminar examining how project aid impacts the incentives and efforts of bureaucrats in aid-receiving countries.

Aid projects have predetermined objectives, activities, timelines, and budgets that rely heavily on bureaucrats for implementation. Consequently, they can lead to a reallocation of bureaucrats’ time and effort away from core government duties. To explore these dynamics, it is important to consider bureaucrats’ preferences for work and how they allocate effort. In the context of aid, these preferences can relate to specific projects and organizational characteristics. Project preferences may include financial incentives, ownership over priorities, and discretion in implementation, while organizational preferences include exposure to donor funding, pay inequities, and coordination with peers. With these factors in mind, Nagawa conducted her study in Uganda, one of the top foreign aid recipients in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The study takes a mixed-methods approach, utilizing interviews, surveys, and survey experiments. Because data on bureaucrats who work on aid projects is virtually non-existent, primary data collection was vital to generating evidence on how aid reshapes bureaucracies. Nagawa conducted 64 semi-structured interviews across 14 central government ministries and agencies, finding that although bureaucrats are pro-socially motivated when they join government, donor-funded projects amplify the importance of financial incentives. These projects provide attractive allowances and other benefits, and while such rewards can drive bureaucrats’ effort on projects, they also create tensions among colleagues to the point of eroding collaboration within departments. This is in part because projects are selectively allocated under unclear criteria. Bureaucrats also highlighted how donor priorities often took precedence, making it harder for them to advance contextually appropriate policies.

Results from the survey of 559 mid-level bureaucrats across six ministries reinforced these findings. Nearly 70 percent of bureaucrats had worked on aid projects, and many observed that such projects increased inequalities in pay and opportunity within ministries. To further explore these dynamics, Nagawa conducted conjoint survey experiments, which confirmed that monetary gain was the strongest driver of effort on projects. Although bureaucrats had strong preferences for ownership and discretion, these factors did not influence their willingness to increase effort on projects.

Nagawa’s findings highlight how aid projects reshape bureaucrats’ incentives in ways that can negatively impact state capacity. Many civil servants value government service and prefer the autonomy of government funding, but the structure of project aid often pushes them to prioritize donor-funded projects over their governmental duties. This weakens the internal cohesion and collaboration necessary to maintain a robust government.

Nagawa underscored the need for increased donor coordination to reduce bureaucratic burden, alignment of aid with the budget cycle to ensure synergy between aid projects and government work, and focusing funding on scaling local priorities. The findings from this research provide an important roadmap for how to reform aid delivery and ensure aid supports rather than undermines government effectiveness as international development assistance undergoes unprecedented changes. 

On September 25, 2025, FSI Senior Fellow Claire Adida presented her team’s research at a CDDRL Research Seminar Series talk under the title, “Overcoming Barriers to Women’s Political Participation: Evidence from Nigeria.” The seminar addressed a central paradox in global politics: although women’s legal formal right to vote is nearly universal, deep gender gaps remain in informal forms of political participation, such as contacting a local government official or attending a community meeting. This lack of engagement means women’s voices are underrepresented in governance and policies are less likely to reflect their priorities. This is particularly salient in hybrid democracies, where informal political participation may matter more than casting a vote.

Adida situated the study in the context of Nigeria, a large and diverse democracy that remains heavily patriarchal. Surveys highlight these disparities starkly: nearly half of Nigerian men believe men make better leaders than women; two in five women report never discussing politics with friends or family; and women are consistently less likely than men to attend meetings or contact community leaders. Against this backdrop, the project tested interventions designed to reduce barriers that discourage women’s participation.

The research team identified three categories of constraints: resource-based (a lack of time, skills, or information), norms-based (social expectations that women should remain outside the public sphere), and psychological (feelings of disempowerment and doubt about one’s capacity to create change). The study focused on the last two. To explore these, the team partnered with ActionAid Nigeria to conduct a randomized control trial (RCT) across 450 rural wards in three southwestern states. Local leaders identified groups of economically active women, aged 21 to 50, who were permitted by their spouses to join.

All communities began with an informational session on local governance. Beyond that, two types of training were introduced. The first, targeted at women, consisted of five sessions over five months designed to build leadership, organizing, and advocacy skills. These emphasized group-based learning and aimed to foster collective efficacy — the belief that a group can act together to achieve change. The second, targeted at men, encouraged husbands to act as allies in supporting women’s participation. After the initial informational session, communities were randomly assigned to no longer receive further training, to receive the 5 sessions of women’s training, or to receive the 5 sessions of women’s training and the 5 sessions of men’s training.

The findings were striking. Women’s trainings had clear positive effects: participants were more likely to engage in politics, attend meetings, and contact local leaders. The quality of their participation also improved, suggesting greater confidence and effectiveness. There was also evidence that these women’s trainings activated collective and self-efficacy, lending credence to the Social Identity Model of Collective Action (SIMCA), a framework explaining how a sense of shared identity, group-based injustice, and group efficacy build political engagement. By contrast, men’s trainings produced modest results. They did not increase women’s participation beyond the women’s trainings and, in some cases, had small negative effects, such as on grant applications. Still, men’s trainings reduced opposition to women’s involvement, improved beliefs about women in leadership, and increased perceptions of more permissive community norms, even if they did not translate into an increase in women’s political participation.

Adida noted that these limited effects may reflect “ceiling effects” — many men in the sample were already relatively supportive compared to national averages, or lower attendance rates. It is also possible that changes in men’s attitudes take longer to manifest in behavior. The seminar concluded that advocacy trainings for women show strong promise in boosting participation, while efforts to reshape patriarchal norms among men may require longer-term strategies.

In 2025, the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) celebrated the 20th year of its Fisher Family Summer Fellows on Democracy and Development Program. This summer, 27 democracy leaders from across the developing world convened at Stanford for an intensive three-week training focused on democracy, good governance, and rule of law reform. Chosen from a highly competitive applicant pool, the fellows represent a diverse range of professional backgrounds and geographical regions, spanning civil society, public service, social enterprise, media, and technology. Launched in 2005, the program was previously known as the Draper Hills Summer Fellows Program. It was renamed in 2023 in recognition of a gift from the Fisher family — Sakurako (Sako), ‘82, and William (Bill), MBA ‘84 — that endowed the program and secured its future.

Fellows were instructed by a leading Stanford faculty team composed of FSI Director and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul; CDDRL Mosbacher Director Kathryn Stoner; Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow Francis Fukuyama; Senior Fellow in Global Democracy Larry Diamond; and Erik Jensen, Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School on new institutional models and frameworks to enhance their ability to promote good governance, accountable politics, and find new ways to achieve economic development in their home countries.

Esteemed guest lectures were also presented by individuals from the greater FSI and Stanford communities, as well as by Damon Wilson, President of the National Endowment for Democracy; Joshua Achiam, Head of Mission Alignment at OpenAI; Austin Mejia, Product Manager and Head of AI for Wearables at Google and a founding member of the AI for Developing Countries Forum, which advocates for equitable AI development globally; and various speakers from the Bay Area Council Economic Institute, the leading think tank focused on the most critical economic and policy issues facing the nine-county Bay Area region.

During the program, the fellows delivered "TED"-style talks during our Fellow Spotlight Series, sharing personal stories about the struggles in their home countries, stories of their fight for justice, equality, and democracy, and stories of optimism and endurance. You can watch their talks in the playlist below: