SOAS Research Online

Abstract

In this short paper, I attempt to find what theoretical grounds might support the term ownership as used in aid relations and critically to discuss these grounds. Three possible sources for thinking through the concept are: property rights, relationships made or sustained through gifts, and principal-agent theory. After setting the concept of ownership in development aid within the context of its origins, the paper explores the relevance and implications of seeing ownership as the effect of a gift, and then, in more detail, explores the way in which principal-agent theory has been applied to the analysis of ownership. Where this has been done, a particular controversy emerges around the relationship between ownership and conditionality: some regard these notions as fully compatible while others highlight the tension between them.