Splitting the Check: Explaining Patterns of Counterpart Commitments in World Bank Projects Matthew S. Winters Department of Political Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign mwinters@illinois.edu Jaclyn D. Streitfeld Independent Scholar jaclyn.streitfeld@gmail.com Forthcoming at Review of International Political Economy The literature on the autonomy of international organizations describes how bureaucratic agents often operate with slack that allows them to pursue their preferences in the shadow of institutional mandates. We study the division of costs in World Bank projects between the Bank and its borrowers. If this is a realm in which World Bank bureaucrats exert agency, we expect to see counterpart financing vary with poverty and governance, in line with theories about aid selectivity. If, on the other hand, this is a realm in which the Bank’s state principals exert influence, we expect strategic interest measures to predict the division of financing. If counterpart commitments represent the outcome of Bank-borrower bargaining, we expect borrowers with outside options to contribute less. A 2004 rule revision at the Bank provides an opportunity to study how financing patterns changed when bureaucratic agents obtained more discretion. We show that increased flexibility within the Bank led to a deployment of resources that favored poorer countries, in line with the organizational mission of the Bank. We find less evidence of governance selectivity, and we find mixed results with regard to how a country’s strategic importance or bargaining power influenced levels of counterpart funding. Key Words: World Bank; foreign aid; development finance; international organizations; development; bureaucracy Word Count: 11,993 (excluding online appendix material and acknowledgements; including abstract and all table notes) Previous versions of this paper were presented at the 2011 Midwest Political Science Association and American Political Science Association Annual Meetings, the 2012 Political-Economy of International Organizations Conference, the 2013 Zuckerman Conference of the Mellon Interdisciplinary Fellows Program at Columbia University, the 2013 New Directions in Foreign Aid Conference at Princeton University, the University of Wisconsin, the National University of Singapore, the University of Connecticut, the University of São Paulo, and the College of William & Mary. Thanks to Mark Buntaine, Xinyuan Dai, Simone Dietrich, Andreas Fuchs, Felix Gerlsbeck, Desha Girod, Chris Humphrey, Christopher Kilby, Rick Loeza, Espen Moe, Bob Pahre and Haley Swedlund for comments and to William Bernhard for useful conversations. Thanks to Valerie Ferrin for useful research assistance.