Chapter 3 elucidates the link between national structures and foreign aid delivery. To that end, the chapter traces how national aid organizations vary in their bureaucratic structures and practices and how this variation maps onto my binary donor typology of neoliberal and traditional public sector donors. By tracing the link between particular institutional environments and aid delivery decisions, the chapter shows how bureaucratic structures and practices influence priorities of aid officials and authorize, enable, and justify particular delivery tactics and donor–recipient interactions, while precluding others. That is, I lay out why and how institutions of different ideological orientation constrain donor officials differently, and how they influence aid officials' decision-making.

This chapter investigates the ways in which neoliberal transformations in Kenya have been gendered and how those processes have contributed to increasing gendered precarity. It treats changes in formal economic structures together with informal dynamics to demonstrate the gendered outcomes of neoliberal reforms. First, it interrogates the ways in which the restructuring of the economy since the 1990s has had different effects on men's and women’s positions in the labour markets. The decreasing male ability to earn money and the ways in which these processes have affected informal safety nets are discussed before moving on to explore new ways in which women have been targeted for certain jobs because of their cheap labour. Second, the chapter focuses on a specific disadvantaged group of women – those who fall through the cracks in the informal safety nets and struggle to make a living – to demonstrate the gendered, informal and precarious nature of jobs available to women in such situations, with sex work as one of the alternatives. Finally, the chapter turns to demonstrate the ways in which neoliberal economy and society relies on such gendered precarity and the income generated in this way for social reproduction.

The chapter presents the setting in which the FA was born and in which it developed over the years. The combination of the exhaustion of the ISI model, increasing political polarization and the height of the Cold War dramatically determined the political dynamics of the late 1960s and 1970s and engendered a context of increasing authoritarianism and political violence. The fight against increasingly repressive governments was a significant incentive for the new party. Public opposition to the neoliberal agenda of the different governments that succeeded the authoritarian regime (1971–1985) also contributed to the FA’s increasingly successful electoral. In 2005, the FA gained office and won three consecutive national elections with an absolute majority in parliament. It was one of the most successful parties of the so-called “left turn.” During its time in government, the party enacted structural reforms in various policy areas. In terms of socioeconomic reforms, the FA approved a tax reform, a health-care reform, and was one of the two parties of the “left turn” that enacted deep labor market reforms. The FA also pursued a distinctive progressive agenda in the region that led to the legalization of abortion, same-sex marriage, and the liberalization of cannabis use.