The World Bank's Use of Country Systems for Procurement: A Good Idea Gone Bad?

The World Bank's newest country‐systems policy, adopted in 2008, allows borrowers to use their national systems to conduct procurement and manage finances for Bank‐funded projects. In principle, it will incentivise institutional reform, increase local ownership, and facilitate donor harmonisation. In practice, its content and the handling of stakeholder input seem to indicate that the Bank's dominant desire has been to preserve its market share. This article demonstrates (i) how deficiencies in the policy may reverse the Bank's work on governance and undercut aid efficiency, and (ii) how its handling of public consultations on the policy ignored the Bank's best practices. It concludes with steps for improving the policy, including re‐opening dialogue with key stakeholders.     

Putting promises into practice: The New Aid Architecture in Uganda

Via the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action the international donor community has delivered a set of promises on ownership, harmonization and co‐ordination. Uganda is an interesting case for assessing progress on Paris Principles and seeing the New Aid Architecture in practice. This article provides a historical overview of the implementation of ‘Paris’ in Uganda from the late 1990s up to 2010, showing that implementation is laggardly and, in more recent years, that earlier progress has been reversed. This is due to donors’ perceptions of Uganda's political structure, and particularly its rampant corruption, and also to different views among donors and their internal adaptability in terms of truly measuring up to the Paris Principles.     

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.     

Can Donor PIUs Support Country Systems?

The OECD's Paris Declaration (2005) discouraged donor project implementation units (PIUs) which are not integrated into government. But little is known about the behaviour and effects of PIUs integrated into government. Are they efficient? Do they support country systems? This article responds to these questions using research comparing two streams of implementation of schools investments in Malaysia's Eighth Plan 2001–2005, one via government alone and the other via a World Bank PIU integrated into government. It emphasises the conflicts which can exist within country systems, and how these affect the choices which a donor faces in seeking efficient implementation of a project while supporting country systems.     

Paris in Bogotá: The Aid Effectiveness Agenda and Aid Relations in Colombia

This article uses an aid‐relationships perspective to explore the application of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness in Colombia. It argues that aid donors were subjected to an attempt to push them (back) into a technocratic corner, and that social actors' advocacy outcomes were put under threat. Both are worrying developments in a politically complex context marked by internal armed conflict and human‐rights abuses. Analysis of the Colombia case offers some useful insights into applying the Paris Declaration, and other global aid‐policy frameworks, to diverse settings.     

From Rome to Accra via Kigali: ‘Aid Effectiveness’ in Rwanda

Since the mid‐2000s, significant strides have been made in Rwanda to implement the ‘aid effectiveness’ agenda as captured in the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. This article explores the historical evolution of this process since 1994, exposing the complex manoeuvring to establish workable practices, and the less visible political implications of this agenda. The Rwandan government is considered to have strong ‘ownership’ of aid strategies. However, the article demonstrates that the concept of progressive ownership implicit within ‘aid effectiveness’ discourse is misleading. The evidence points rather to joint ownership between donor and recipient, reflecting limitations to the amount of control over aid that donors will cede.     

World Bank technical assistance: Locating and cultivating sympathetic interlocutors

International development agencies have need of sympathetic interlocutors in developing countries who are receptive to and capable of sustainably implementing global policy norms. This article analyses World Bank technical assistance (TA) as a tool used to stack the policy deck in its favour by identifying and cultivating those government officials receptive to its ideas. Pairing its analysis with the policy mobilities literature, the article considers two questions: how does the World Bank locate receptive actors and how does it socialize new actors into accepting its ideas and practices? Observing the World Bank's four main TA pillars, the article reviews the different strengths and weaknesses of these pillars in garnering domestic support. In critiquing the World Bank's attempts to identify and cultivate sympathetic interlocutors, the article provides new insights into the mechanisms that facilitate the transnational movement of policy.     

Gender and Infrastructure in the World Bank

This article conducts a critical analysis of the World Bank's current infrastructure strategy from a feminist perspective, arguing that failures to define gender and set meaningful targets and indicators have meant that gender has not been integrated into the implementation of infrastructure projects. It sets out three limitations to the Bank's approach to gender and infrastructure: lack of awareness of gender in the four sectors that comprise infrastructure; the Bank's narrow approach to gender equality and women's empowerment; and the failure of the Bank to mainstream gender in its current infrastructure strategy.     

After the Paris Declaration: Taking on the Issue of Power

The new approach to assisting developing countries inspired by the Paris Declaration emphasises greater recipient control over the funds provided, thus confining donors’influence to upstream points in the policy process, where political aspects of development co‐operation become more important. Understanding better the role that power plays in the aid relationship will be critical to the implementation of the Declaration. This article shows how the political science literature can inform this set of issues. It argues that an understanding of aspects of power illuminates the challenges involved in transforming relations between donors and recipient governments as well as between governments and civil society organisations.     

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.     

Dialogue under Occupation

This article critically examines the World Bank's report entitled The Other Half of Gender: Men's Issues in Development published in 2006. The Bank publication covers a range of topics on men and masculinities, and ultimately argues for ‘men-streaming’ development. Using an intersectional analysis, this article expands upon recent feminist scholarship in the field of Men and Development in order to take a closer look at race, culture and representation. In this article, I demonstrate how the World Bank's focus on the social construction of masculinities in the ‘men-streaming’ report places Third World men into a specific realm of visibility that renders them culpable for a wide range of development issues. In representing African men as homogenous, culturally inferior and individually culpable for the HIV/AIDS pandemic, in particular, the Bank's promotes ‘gender-adjustments’, which obscures the Bank's complicity in a variety of development disasters.     

Development,a Question of Opportunity? A Critique of the 2006 World Development Report: Equity and Development

The World Bank's World Development Report 2006 addresses equity and development, defining equity as respect for equal opportunities combined with the avoidance of absolute deprivation. Equity has up to now remained a marginal issue in development economics. This detailed analysis endeavours to place the subject within the context of the evolution of World Bank thinking and policies. The wealth of the concept is illustrated, the downside being the difficulty in defining it accurately. We also emphasise the gap between the prospects opened up by such an enlargement of development goals and the report's policy recommendations, which are generally merely an extension of the World Bank's traditional analyses.     

QUANTITATIVE EASING AND THE UK STOCK MARKET: DOES THE BANK OF ENGLAND INFORMATION DISSEMINATION STRATEGY MATTER?

We use intraday aggregate stock market data and an event‐study framework to assess the UK's equity market reaction to the unexpected element of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee's (MPC) asset purchase announcements for the 2009–2017 period. We assess the reactions of equity returns and their volatility over various time frames, both preceding and following the MPC announcements. Our results show that the UK unconventional monetary policy shocks have a significant impact on domestic equity returns and volatilities. The strength of this impact depends on the Bank's information dissemination through inflation reports and the publication of the MPC's voting records. (JEL G14, E44, E52)     

Aid,Budgets and Accountability: A Survey Article

This article surveys the recent literature relating to the rationale for scaling up aid and improving its effectiveness. Modalities such as General Budget Support (GBS) are being introduced to increase country ownership and strengthen budget systems and domestic accountability. However, recent assessments of GBS programmes and Public Financial Management (PFM) reforms highlight a number of shortcomings which call into question the role of donors in supporting institutional change. Political‐economy factors are often overlooked. Moreover, in a number of countries, donors are deeply involved in core policy processes, undermining their capacity to play a more constructive role. As a consequence, the strengthening of domestic accountability remains an elusive objective.     

The Poverty Reduction Strategy Approach Six Years On: An Examination of Principles and Practice in Uganda

It is over six years since the World Bank and the IMF started promoting a PRS approach to development management in low‐income countries. The 2005 review endorsed the approach, but highlighted the need for a renewed focus on the principles underpinning it: country ownership; results orientation; comprehensiveness; partnership focus; and long‐term outlook. Uganda is often hailed as one of the best PRS performers. This article finds that Uganda's Poverty Eradicaton Action Plan (PEAP) has brought significant gains to development management, but that its performance against several of the PRS principles is disappointing. A return to these principles could improve the practice of the government and development partners around the PEAP – a finding likely to be applicable to many countries implementing a PRS.     

DFID governance programming in Nigeria: What difference has thinking and working politically made in practice?

The UK Department for International Development's country office in Nigeria (DFID Nigeria) has gradually adopted a thinking and working politically (TWP) approach in its governance programming. The initial focus on strengthening analysis has progressively been linked to discussion about the country and programme strategy, as well as programme‐management practices. Important lessons can be learned from this experience on how the TWP approach can be applied in practice. The article addresses three research questions: (1) To what extent have DFID Nigeria and its governance programmes adopted a TWP approach? (2) How has the TWP approach influenced the design and delivery of programming? (3) Has the application of the TWP approach enhanced the results of the DFID governance programming? Using project documentation and wider theoretical literature, but mainly relying on extensive participant observation within DFID Nigeria programmes, the article uses a historical perspective to outline how the TWP approach has been applied in Nigeria over 15 years of programme design, delivery, lesson‐learning and refinement . Published evaluation reports are used to provide evidence of programme results. DFID Nigeria and its programmes have progressively adopted TWP principles. This has led to clear changes in country strategy and programme design, as well as programme‐management practices. There is some evidence that the adoption of these principles has enhanced the results of DFID Nigeria programmes. By focusing on experimentation and “small bets,” TWP has proven relatively successful in generating and supporting ‘islands of effectiveness,’ but has had more limited impact in terms of generating more systemic, transformational change. The results obtained in Nigeria using the TWP approach have depended not only on Nigeria's political economy but also on the political economy of the development agency and donor country. DFID Nigeria's ability to engage in critical self‐reflection and to create an authorizing environment for risk‐taking have been vital to create enabling conditions for the TWP approach. However, other aspects of DFID and the UK's political economy are creating constraints that limit the prospects to go further and to go deeper in adopting the principles of TWP.     

Policy Experiments,Democratic Ownership and Development Assistance

In an effort to enhance the impact of development aid, recipients are called on to provide democratically sustained ‘ownership’ for development policies, and donors to align their interventions with these ownership‐dictated strategies of their partners. This article illustrates the weaknesses of such an approach. From a political‐economy perspective, severe tensions exist between concepts of democratic ownership, on the one hand, and the experimental and iterative organisation of a society's encompassing interests in democratic settings, on the other. These tensions are even more pronounced in emerging democracies, making democratic ownership as a prerequisite for aid effectiveness an illusion, and provoking the re‐emergence of traditional donor‐recipient problems.     

Neoliberal resource governance and counter-hegemonic social movement in Bangladesh

Bangladesh’s energy sector institutionalized neoliberal policies in the early 1990s after a decade long implementation of structural adjustment policies suggested by the World Bank. These policies strengthened the role of foreign private capital and reduced the role of public enterprises. In spite of the country’s success in exploring and developing petroleum resources, the World Bank pushed for policy reforms to reduce the role of state-owned companies. Bangladesh signed several production sharing contracts with multinational energy corporations during 1993–1998. This resulted in the development of a counter-hegemonic social movement, the National Committee. Its activists made the energy sector the most contested national policy domain. Its direct action programs and other mobilization tactics transformed Bangladesh’s public sphere vis-à-vis energy politics. The National Committee caused the government to reverse its decision in some cases, but is far from achieving its main goal: increasing the capability of national institutions to maintain full ownership in natural resource management. Notwithstanding this limitation, the National Committee is a fascinating case of a counter-movement in the Global South contesting neoliberal resource appropriation.     

The Feasibility of IFI‐Led Institutional Reform: Four Turkish Experiments Compared

Institutional reform has proved an enduring theme in the lending programmes of international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the IMF and the World Bank. But research harbours strong objections to the feasibility of IFI‐led institutional restructuring. This article evaluates these objections in the light of evidence from Turkey, a country with an early record of programme‐based reform initiatives in many institutional domains. Drawing on Turkey's central bank independence, banking regulation, anti‐corruption and agricultural subsidy reforms, it argues that IFI‐guided institutional restructuring may indeed encounter severe feasibility problems unless prescribed and implemented in a propitious environment marked by powerful international norms, widely accepted design templates, high levels of bureaucratic preparedness, and active endorsement from key domestic players.     

Aid Effectiveness: On the Radar and Off the Radar

Poverty is a human construct, yet the Euro‐American development assistance programmes that aim to reduce poverty remain a function of systemic problems, profit and politics. Critics argue that widened global income inequality and neoliberalism's ineffectiveness in the Global South can be reflected in recent geopolitical and epistemic tensions. China's rise as an economic and military power and its authority in setting up the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank directly threaten Euro‐American dominance in development discourse. These changes can bring multiple perspectives in the aid effectiveness debate. While these views introduce alternatives to the business approach of poverty reduction, they also make the Sustainable Development Goals appear more significant than ever.