Leader,Protester, Enabler,Spoiler: Aid Strategies and Donor Politics in Institutional Assistance

Aid co‐ordination has come to be seen as a miracle cure for the ills of donor proliferation. However, in weak states where aid conditionality may be a catalyst for institutional change, the ideal of aid co‐ordination is conceptually suspect, and in some instances politically counterproductive. Co‐ordination is one of the two solutions to the collective‐action problem that the public good of effective institutional conditionality generates; donor leadership is the other. The desirability of each solution depends on every donor's commitment and presence, which together generate a four‐fold typology: leader, protester, enabler, and spoiler. As long as there is at least one enabler or spoiler donor present, aid co‐ordination will be less effective than donor leadership.     

Organising for Donor Effectiveness: An Analytical Framework for Improving Aid Effectiveness

Donors have lagged behind aid recipients in adhering to the principles of aid effectiveness. Explaining the reasons for this demands greater awareness of organisational attributes within donor entities. To date, there have been only limited attempts to relate donor organisational factors to aid‐effectiveness goals. This article elaborates on a number of such relationships based on an empirical examination of donor dynamics in Norway, the UK and Canada. Donor effectiveness provides an important lens through which to build a robust post‐Busan global partnership.     

Newcomers to Like‐Minded Aid and Donor Darlings: The Strange Case of Spain in Vietnam

This article analyses the motives behind the relations between Spain as a donor and Vietnam as a recipient of international aid. The main hypothesis is that this relationship does not respond to the traditional causes for international aid, as identified by the academic literature. On the basis of qualitative data collected in interviews with elites, the article suggests instead that a ‘learning factor’ and an ‘image factor’ might be at play in the Spanish presence, as well as herd behaviour on the part of the donor community.     

Donor co‐ordination or donor confusion? How disputed facts and problem framing affect the prospects for aid harmonization

A declared commitment in international development assistance is to promote donor co‐ordination. Yet, how this objective plays out in practice, or how feasible and realistic it is, have rarely been evaluated. Using the fisheries sector as a critical case, this article explores whether two major international actors, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Bank, meet the demands of policy harmonization as spelled out in the Paris Declaration on aid effectiveness. Through a systematic qualitative analysis, the article investigates whether the policies of these actors are complementary or contradictory. It also assesses how the potential challenges to harmonization can be understood and what the broader implications for aid and development policies in general might be.     

Financing for Development: The Gap between Words and Deeds since Monterrey

The Monterrey Consensus agreed at the UN summit on Financing for Development in 2002 promised a breakthrough in terms of donor generosity, aid effectiveness and new means of financing. However, the development orientation of world leaders proved to be short‐lived. This is even though our evaluation reveals progress since Monterrey in some areas, notably debt relief and private (FDI) flows. Calls for substantially scaling‐up regular aid had less effect than envisaged, and financial innovations have contributed only marginally to overall development financing so far. Nor is there much progress from the perspective of critics focusing on the quality of aid. In particular, the targeting of aid according to need and merit leaves much to be desired. The gap between words and deeds continues to be wide with regard to aid proliferation and donor co‐ordination as well.     

Do Aid Donors Specialize and Coordinate within Recipient Countries? The case of Malawi

Acknowledging that aid proliferation and a lack of coordination impair aid effectiveness, donors have repeatedly promised to specialize and better coordinate their aid activities, notably in the Paris Declaration of 2005. We exploit data on the exact location of aid projects in Malawi to assess whether the country's bilateral and multilateral donors have acted accordingly at the district and sector level. We do not find compelling evidence for increased aid specialization after the Paris Declaration, and the regional division of labour among donors may even have deteriorated. Our within‐country evidence thus broadly corroborates what previous studies have found at the national level of recipient countries.     

Losing concentration? Lessons from a Swedish aid policy reform

Sweden is one of the donor countries that signed up for the Paris Agenda, which among other things advocated reducing aid dispersion. It also adopted its own geographical concentration policy in 2007. My empirical analysis shows that Sweden managed to achieve this goal only for two years following the reform and that this was followed by backsliding. Moreover, its current aid policy framework barely mentions the topic. I argue that a major reason was the failure to institutionalize the policy. This left it vulnerable to the regular politics of aid, which tend to generate both geographic and thematic spread. Reduced peer pressure, as the international community has moved away from the Paris Agenda, might also have contributed.     

Applied ethics and allocation of foreign aid: disparity in pretensions and practice

We explore the applied ethics of development aid and humanitarian assistance, and juxtapose these with claimed objectives and factors that influence the choice of recipients. Despite some diversity among donors, ethical considerations appear not to be a prominent factor for allocation of aid. Although recipients’ need is not entirely ignored, donors’ self‐interest and herd behaviour, and recipients’ merits and voting in the United Nations, play crucial roles in allocation decisions. Likely to be shunned are complex emergencies and fragile states, the overlapping settings for action of development and humanitarian aid. Donors should take to heart and put into practice that allocation of aid is an ethical endeavour that should rest on proper needs assessment, established objectives and adopted agreements.     

An analysis of donor engagement with education policy development in Lao PDR from 1991 to 2000

This paper describes the relationship between donor agencies and government during the development of Lao basic education policy in the post‐Cold War period, 1991‐2000. We argue that Laos had only recently been ‘re‐ born’ from colonial regimes, and was thus unable to resist or mediate donor policy agendas and donors who acted on behalf of economically developed nations. The nature of the power relationship between donor and government is explored through an analysis of policy developed at that time as well as the perceptions of aid conditionalities, as recalled by government officials and those working in the aid sector at that time. These perceptions were gathered through interviews conducted by one of the authors.     

Easy to Declare,Difficult to Implement: The Disconnect Between the Aspirations of the Paris Declaration and Donor Practice in Nigeria

The arguments in academia over the effectiveness of foreign aid fall into two broad categories: those grounded in political economy and those focused on donor conduct and aid effectiveness. There have been policy attempts within the donor community to reconcile them, including the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. This article examines the key features of foreign aid to Nigeria between 1999 and 2007. Using the Declaration as a framework, it looks for ways of making foreign aid in Nigeria more effective.     

Adolescents Conceived through Donor Insemination in Mother‐Headed Families: A Qualitative Study of Motivations and Experiences of Contacting and Meeting Same‐donor Offspring

This study interviewed adolescents conceived using sperm donation to examine their experiences of contacting and meeting ‘same‐donor offspring’ (i.e. donor‐conceived offspring raised in different families who share the same donor), their motivations for this contact, and how they make meaning of these relationships. This in‐depth qualitative study involved semi‐structured interviews with 23 young people aged 12–19 years (mean = 14 years). Interviewees were motivated by curiosity about their biological relations and by wanting to extend their family. Contact with same‐donor offspring was described as being either normal/neutral or as a unique experience that was integrated into their identity. This study highlights the importance of contact between same donor offspring, particularly during adolescence, a developmental stage associated with identity formation. The findings have important policy implications as they suggest that donor‐conceived individuals may benefit from contact with others conceived using the same donor prior to the age of 18 years.     

The Quest for Aid Complementarity: Reforming Co‐operation between Nordic+ Donors and NGOs

Aid fragmentation is a maddening problem in the aid business. NGOs are part and parcel of this fragmentation problem; hence calls for more complementarity between Northern NGOs and (their) governments have led to a series of co‐funding reforms. This article analyses the co‐funding reforms of the Nordic+ donors and situates them within the broader evolutions that have taken place in donor‐NGO relations in these countries. It finds that these donors have interpreted complementarity in very different and even contradictory ways. Where some require NGOs to develop activities within the confines of the official bilateral strategy (intensive complementarity), others allow NGOs to do very different things (extensive complementarity).     

The real East Asian Aid model: Development assistance as an instrument of comprehensive security in Japan,South Korea and Taiwan

Discussion of East Asian aid modes has remained superficial. And one donor, Taiwan, has been overlooked. This article reconsiders East Asian donorship, and places Taiwan within this category. It argues that East Asian donors are insecure, and see aid as part of a wider security policy. Aid policy pursues two main goals: economic strength and international influence. The aid apparatus is insulated from legislative and public pressure. Due to the nature of the goals pursued, relations with recipient governments in general are good, and recipient publics bad, relative to other Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors. Relations with other donors are ambivalent; good relations are important, but can interfere with other goals. As such, Taiwan is a quintessential East Asian donor.     

Gendered Leadership: The Effects of Female Development Agency Leaders on Foreign Aid Spending

This article examines the effects of gender on the leadership of bilateral development aid agencies, particularly their official development assistance (ODA) allocations toward gender‐related programming. Drawing on earlier research on gendered leadership, the article tests the hypothesis that female director generals (DGs) and ministers responsible for aid agencies will allocate more ODA than their male counterparts toward gender programming. This existing literature on gendered leadership is divided: some scholars argue that women and men have distinct leadership styles on account of their gender, while others argue that the only distinguishing factor is the institutional context in which they lead. Drawing on data collected on aid flows and agency leadership within the major Western aid donors of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) over the period from 1995 through 2009, we use pooled time series analysis to examine the effects of gendered leadership on aid allocation. Our analysis reveals a tendency for female DGs and ministers to focus ODA on gender‐mainstreaming programs, while male DGs focus ODA on gender‐focused programs. We argue that these divergent priorities reflect the women's desire to reform gendered power structures within their respective aid agencies, and the men's desire to maintain existing gender power structures from which they benefit.     

Management of the international development aid system: The Case of Tanzania

This article tries to clarify Government behaviours as to how to manage aid in Tanzania. Contrary to the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donor intentions, the development aid structure, carefully constructed under the poverty reduction regime in Tanzania, has led to Tanzanian‐owned initiatives toward a national development plan (NDP). Furthermore, this article shows that, in the process of creating an international development aid system, the Tanzanian Government has learned to manage aid in a recipient‐driven manner not only from DAC donors, but also from China.     

Bringing Aid Management Closer to Reality: The Experience of Danish Bilateral Development Cooperation

In 2003, the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs undertook a decentralisation of the management of bilateral aid to the embassies in major partner countries. However, while decentralisation appears to live up to the principles of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, the specific delegation of responsibilities as well as the political context of aid management may jeopardise the intended contribution to effective development co‐operation. This article explores some factors potentially limiting the usefulness of decentralised aid management in the Danish case, and discusses certain intra‐organisational dynamics and extra‐organisational pressures influencing ‘donor effectiveness’.     

Foreign Aid Transaction Costs: What Are They and When Are They Minimised?

‘Transaction costs’ are commonly referred to in the recent literature on aid effectiveness. Aid transaction costs, however, have been neither consistently defined nor measured. This article defines aid transaction costs as all the economic costs associated with aid management that add no value to aid delivery. This enables the ‘net’ transaction costs that should be minimised to be identified. An analytical framework is then developed for assessing these costs. This allows the effectiveness of different aid modalities to be compared, according to the characteristics of the aid transaction. The article shows that the choice of aid modality should depend on these characteristics and, therefore, that the minimisation of transaction costs should not be an end in itself.     

Performance‐Based Aid: Why It Will Probably Not Meet Its Promises

Performance‐based aid (PBA) is increasingly advocated as a way to improve the effectiveness of development aid by resolving incentive issues inherent in aid relationships, and some donors use it together with performance‐based financing arrangements within partner countries. Expectations from PBA are high, but, while its rationale may look appealing, it is based on a restrictive model and is flawed when taking account of the real‐world context. A number of problems associated with PBA have already been observed, and its appropriateness to provide incentives all along the chain from recipient governments to those who are supposed to produce results is questionable. Thus believing that PBA can have a mechanistic trickle‐down incentive effect seems illusory.     

Security Sector Reform and Development Assistance: Explaining the Diffusion of Policy Priorities among Donor Agencies

This paper employs a world society theoretical framework to examine the recent trend among foreign aid donors to focus on security sector reform as an aid priority. Through a comparative qualitative case study based on interview data collected from aid officials and development workers in Canada, Sweden, and the United States (n = 41) in 2006–2007, this paper finds that the extent to which the security sector reform agenda is integrated into donor policy and programs is mediated by catalytic policy processes linked to intergovernmental organizations and the degree of donor agency autonomy from the rest of government. These findings are used to illustrate how common processes of globalization in world society shape similar approaches to foreign aid among donor agencies despite disparate domestic contexts. These processes lead to convergence of donor policy around security issues and at the same time can account for decoupling of practice from world society policy models.     

Dichotomy of development aid’s ambition and neoliberal imperatives: A case‐study of private‐sector development in Bangladesh

Development in the twenty‐first century (“neo‐liberalism”) is a tool and its success and sustainability depend on how this tool is applied on a specific grounded reality. This article investigates how this modernization process continually co‐creates globalized Bangladesh through private sector development. While this field report highlights the challenges development aid donors can face in Bangladesh’s post‐colonial culture, it also unveils the dichotomous traction between globalization and inequality as well as the friction poverty reduction, through private sector development, can generate in impoverished countries. Finally, this report attempts to reconsider the ways in which the aid development ambitions of equality and liberty can find a workable balance with the neo‐liberal Imperative for private sector development. This article calls for improving quality control to generate greater impact of development aid resources in developing private sectors.