Aid, Resource Rents and the Politics of the Budget Process

Andrés Mejía Acosta (Ph.D. University of Notre Dame, 2004) is the Kuster Family Associate Dean for Policy and Practice and associate professor of political economy of development in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame.

Prior to joining the Keough School, Mejía Acosta was a reader (professor) of political economy and founding member of the Department of International Development at King’s College London (2013-2022). Before that, he was a senior research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, where he led global research programs on state-building and state capacity (2006-2010), democracy and local government in the Western Balkans (2010-2013), and nutrition governance in low- and middle-income countries (2010-2013). He has held associate teaching and research positions at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV-Brazil), the University of British Columbia (UBC-Canada), Central European University (CEU-Hungary) and Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), Universidad de las Americas (UDLA) and Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Ecuador.

Mejia Acosta’s research looks at the formal and informal political bargaining dynamics among government elites when adopting sustainable and inclusive policies in low- and middle-income countries. He is the author of four books and numerous journal articles on comparative political institutions (including legislative coalitions, political parties, and electoral systems); transparency and accountability in the extractive industries; the political and fiscal management of natural resource revenues; and fiscal decentralization. He is the lead researcher of Analysing Nutrition Governance, a comparative project exploring the motivations of governments to invest, coordinate and implement strategies to reduce children’s under-nutrition in low- and middle-income countries such as Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Niger, Pakistan, Peru, and Zambia. More recently he co-edited Negotiating Universalism in India and Latin America (Routledge 2021), a volume exploring the link between fiscal decentralization, subnational politics, and social outcomes.

Mejía Acosta’s scholarly work has consistently gained policy-relevant recognition. He has been consulted as a thematic or regional expert to international development organizations such as the British Department for International Development, the Carter Center, Freedom House, the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Budget Partnership, the Swiss Development Cooperation Agency, and UNICEF, among others. Before joining the Keough School, he was prominently involved in the design, implementation, and success of Ecuador’s National Strategy for the Prevention and Eradication of Malnutrition (2021-23).

Paolo de Renzio joined the International Budget Partnership in October 2010 as Senior Research Fellow and is based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His research agenda covers a broad range of topics, including budget transparency and accountability, equity and justice in budgeting, taxation and tax expenditures, among others. He also supports the team producing the Open Budget Survey. Prior to joining the IBP, Paolo worked as a Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute; as an economist and policy advisor in Papua New Guinea’s Ministry of Finance; and as a UNDP public sector specialist, lecturer, and independent consultant in Mozambique. He has been a consultant for the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the European Commission, and for a number of bilateral donor agencies and international NGOs. Paolo holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Oxford, where his research focused on the impact of donor policies on budget reforms in developing countries. He also holds an MSc in Development Studies from the London School of Economics and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from ‘Bocconi’ in Milan, Italy.