European official development assistance to Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries increased sharply after 2011, ostensibly in support of the social, economic, and above all political changes demanded by the Arab uprisings. The subsequent turn to development policies driven by...

The European Union’s ambitious Mediterranean policy has the declared goal of bringing about economic and political transformation by explicitly linking reform with rewards. Drawing on mechanism design theory, we argue that the EU’s Mediterranean policy has the potential to reveal...