The Samaritan's Dilemma: The Political Economy of Development Aid. By Clark C. Gibson, Krister Andersson, Elinor Ostrom, and Sujai Shivakumar. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 288p. $99.00 cloth, $35.00 paper.

The authors of this book start from the premise that there is something “wrong with development aid” (p. 3). They point to a number of studies that were conducted in the 1990s and found little consonance between foreign aid levels and changes in macrolevel indicators like economic growth and poverty reduction in recipient developing countries. Their aim is to explore the “perverse incentives” within the current aid system that militate against aid's success.