This blog post is contributed by Quy-Toan Do and Jishnu Das.

A recent article in the Pakistani newspaper, Dawn, pointed to a potentially disturbing aspect of World Bank lending in the country. The World Bank has undertaken many more projects when the country has had a dictator at the helm rather than a democratically elected representative. But the number of projects doesn't necessarily reflect the volume of lending. What do the data say about multilateral lending and dictatorial regimes?

The graph on the left plots  Multilateral ODA (Official Development Assistance) obtained from  the OECD DAC database and an index of democracy in the country for the years 1960-2002. The index of democracy combines several features, including political rights and the freedom of expression and ranges from -10 (very autocratic) to +10 (very democratic). The graph also plots the increasing trend in ODA to Pakistan over time.