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.     

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’.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Criteria for Assessing the Case for Overseas Aid: A Note

This note derives minimum appraisal criteria for foreign aid consistent with those used by donor governments for domestic spending, and discusses implications for the level, allocation and financing of aid programmes. One finding is that aid is only welfare‐enhancing when the recipient country's social time preference rate is higher than the donor's, as will normally be the case. This implies that endowment financing is inferior to funding aid from current income, though borrowing against future aid as proposed by the International Financing Facility can be worthwhile provided returns exceed the borrowing cost.     

Funding Civil Society? Bilateral Government Support for Development NGOs

Research on the determinants of foreign aid tends to focus on the relationship between donor country priorities and recipient state characteristics, but donors also make decisions about which organizations and programs within countries will receive assistance. Although NGOs increasingly have been recipients of foreign aid, few data are available to investigate which organizations within a given country receive that funding. Donors may prioritize structural characteristics of NGOs or their local ties—or they may seek a combination that blends concern about efficiency and accountability with an interest in developing national civil society. We use original data from Cambodia to explore whether aid is likely to go to managerial organizations (professionalized NGOs and NGOs that utilize modern management tools) or to organizations that are embedded in the domestic context. We argue that managerialism provides legitimacy for NGOs by signaling capacity and accountability to donors, increasing the likelihood of government funding. We argue that local embeddedness also confers legitimacy by aligning community ties and networks to rights-based development, increasing the likelihood of government funding. We find general support for the managerialism argument, but donor agencies do not prioritize direct funding for “indigenous” NGOs—not even among those with high levels of managerialism.     

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.     

Why Do Aid Agencies Exist?

This article seeks to explain the organisational set‐up of foreign aid delivery from a Coasian perspective: Why are there many and different aid organisations and not just one? Why is foreign aid not transferred directly from donor to beneficiary? With zero transaction costs and fully shared preferences between donors and beneficiaries, there would be no need for aid agencies. Their role is not so much to transfer funds or goods and services to developing countries, but (a) to reduce ex‐ante transaction costs and (b) to mediate between the diverging preferences of donors and recipients, and package aid flows in a contract that reduces ex‐post uncertainties for donors. Outcomes differ according to types of agencies and aid delivery instruments.     

The Hollow Ring of Donor Commitment: Country Concentration and the Decoupling of Aid‐Effectiveness Norms from Donor Practice

The fragmentation of a donor's foreign aid across too many recipient countries is widely believed to be detrimental to aid effectiveness. This article explores the origins of a new norm – recipient concentration – and assesses the extent to which it can be expected to improve aid effectiveness. It also examines 23 donors' actual record of country concentration, and finds that, though there are some potential explanations for donors' behaviour, their collective failure to implement country concentration has very little consequence in theory or in practice.     

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.     

DONOR PREFERENCES AND RECIPIENT FISCAL BEHAVIOR: A SIMULTANEOUS ANALYSIS OF FOREIGN AID

We theoretically develop and empirically estimate a preference model determining foreign aid donor behavior. Aid access and levels are separately determined by endogenous budgetary allocations, the international economic environment, the distribution of income between countries, basic human needs, the small country effect, and regional bias. We find fungibility of aid in recipient budgets is due to donor and recipient preferences. Despite the importance of other economic influences, we find a significant pro-poor country bias in aid allocations, although little aggregate influence of basic human needs or regional bias. The small country effect is significant for two (of six) donors. (JEL F35, O19, H 77)     

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.     

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.     

INFORMATION TRANSMISSION AND OWNERSHIP CONSOLIDATION IN AID PROGRAMS

We investigate the degree of leeway donors of foreign aid should grant to recipient governments when their preferences over how to implement the aid are different, and both the donor and recipient possess some private information about the most effective policies. Intuitively, our model shows that donors should stay in control of how their aid is spent when their own private information is more important than the private information of the recipient. Less obviously, an increase in the difference of preferences between donors and recipients can increase rather than decrease the leeway that donors should grant the recipients, as the recipients' information gains in importance relative to those of the donors, and recipients become less likely to communicate truthfully. We test the model using dyadic data for 28 bilateral aid donors and 112 recipients, over the 1995–2010 period. Our proxy for “centralized” aid is project aid, while budget aid leaves more leeway to the recipient and thus proxies for “decentralized” aid. In line with the model, misaligned interests and informational asymmetries indeed influence the shares of aid given as budget and project aid. (JEL C23, D82, F33,O1)     

Aid Reduction and Local Civil Society: Causes,Comparisons, and Consequences

Questions about aid reduction and its implications are crucial to understanding the future of civil society in many low- and middle-income countries and in post-conflict states. Local civil society in these contexts is often heavily influenced by foreign donors. This article provides an introduction to this theme issue about aid reduction and local civil society. The objective of the introduction and issue articles is to examine the causes of aid reduction and donor withdrawal, the impacts on local civil society organizations (CSOs), and any resulting change in local civil society. We ask: What are the global trends in aid reduction? What impacts does aid reduction have on local CSOs? How do local CSOs respond and adapt? The contributions in this issue demonstrate that aid reduction is indeed global in scale and that impacts and adaptations are often strikingly similar across countries and regions. These similarities form the basis for building new theory but also prompt new questions about the global effects of aid on civil society.     

A Sociology of Foreign Aid and the World Society

This article highlights an emerging research agenda for the study of foreign aid through a World Society theory lens. First, it briefly summarizes the social scientific literature on aid and sociologists' earlier contributions to this research. Next, it reviews the contours of world society research and the place of aid within this body of literature. Finally, it outlines three emergent threads of research on foreign aid that comprise a new research agenda for the sociology of foreign aid and its role in world society globalization.     

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.     

Is Nigeria a soft power state?

ABSTRACT

The increasing relevance given to soft power by Western and Chinese academics and more importantly their public officials has prompted some African scholars to examine the utility of soft power in the African context. Whilst the literature on South African foreign policy and regional powerhood has paid attention to this issue in recent years, there are few studies on Nigeria’s soft power. Against this backdrop, this article examines whether or not Nigeria is a soft power state. It argues that whilst the country possesses remarkable soft power resources, particularly in Africa, this has not been optimally deployed to achieve the desired outcomes. The article highlights the constraints to Nigeria’s soft power capacity and concludes that Nigeria is at best a potential soft power state. It therefore, urges public officials to pay more attention to the utility of soft power in their foreign policy process and challenges Nigerian academics to take a cue from their counterparts abroad and begin to engage their country’s soft power.