Peer-to-peer accountability and knowledge production in OECD DAC peer reviews

Abstract

The OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) relies on peer reviews to promote accountability in development cooperation. For peer review to function as an accountability mechanism, it must first satisfy a core requirement: peer review evaluations must accurately reflect donor practices. We examine whether DAC peer reviews interpret donor behavior on tied aid in ways that are consistent with observable aid-tying practices and shared DAC standards. Using a newly collected corpus of 143 DAC peer reviews from 1994 to 2020, we find a strong, systematic relationship between the reviewed donor’s aid-tying practices and the resulting content of the review documents. This linkage is driven primarily by explicit recommendations to untie aid and discussions of the standard, rather than by positive recognition of aid tying. Contrary to concerns that peer reviewers may intentionally soften evaluations and criticism to protect their own interests, we find no evidence that reviewers who themselves exhibit higher levels of aid tying produce evaluations that deviate from actual practice. Our findings demonstrate that DAC peer reviews generate credible peer evaluations that strengthen accountability dynamics in development cooperation. These insights contribute to literatures on peer reviews in global governance, the politics of international organizations, and foreign aid.