Promoting ownership in a “post‐aid effectiveness” world: Evidence from Rwanda and Liberia

Motivation: Budget support is the form of aid most commonly associated with recipient-country ownership. However, a number of scholars and practitioners have criticized the approach as masking new forms of conditionality. Was budget support simply a guise for increasing donor influence in recipient countries? How can we explain the rapid shift towards budget support, as well as the rapid decline in its popularity after only a few years? Purpose: We use a bargaining framework to explain the rise and fall of budget support. Contrary to explanations that suggest that budget support was a normative decision by donors designed to increase aid effectiveness by fostering ownership, a bargaining framework emphasizes that aid policy is the result of sustained negotiations between donors and recipients. These negotiations, however, are constrained by donors' inability to deliver aid as promised. Approach: We use a Nash bargaining framework to formalize the predictions of a bargaining model. From the model, two testable predictions emerge: (1) in exchange for more credible commitments, recipient governments are willing to selectively offer donor agencies greater access to and influence over domestic policy decision-making; and (2) in exchange for such influence, donor agencies are willing to exert less pressure on recipients to be politically inclusive. We then test the implications of the model using case-study evidence from Rwanda and Tanzania. Findings: The empirical data, based on over 80 interviews with practitioners over several periods of research in both countries, provide substantial evidence in support of the model's core assumptions and predictions. Contrary to claims that budget support increased recipient-country ownership, interviews (identified as personal communications) suggest that, in exchange for more credible commitments, recipient governments were willing to grant donors greater access and influence. In return, donor agencies reduced demands on the recipient government regarding political inclusivity, tacitly accepting arrangements that centralized decision-making and excluded civil society. When donor agencies could no longer provide budget support as promised, these negotiated arrangements broke down. Policy Implications: The findings challenge a common narrative that donors embraced budget support because of a normative commitment to ownership. They also demonstrate the value of a bargaining framework.

Section: Budget Support In Rwanda and Tanzaniamentioning

confidence: 99%

The rise and fall of budget support: Ownership, bargaining and donor commitment problems in foreign aid

Swedlund¹,

Lierl

2020

“…As illustrated, and thoroughly discussed by other contributors to this Special Issue (Brown, 2020; Black, 2020; Keijzer et al, 2020), problems associated with national ownership in terms of government leadership, have resulted in pleas for deeper, democratic, substantive, inclusive, balanced, shared, multi‐stakeholder and broad‐based forms of ownership. Official documents, too, have gradually included calls for a broader definition of ownership (OECD/UNDP, 2019).…”

Section: Concepts and Confusionsmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Throughout, scholars have also been critical of a binary understanding of ownership, as either existing or not, as reflected in the endorsement (or not) of development plans (Keijzer et al, 2020). Despite consensus that countries should “own” their development strategies, donors have become closely involved in the policy process—through technical assistance and stipulated “policy dialogue”—which has subsequently been interpreted as an instance of negotiation.…”

Section: Concepts and Confusionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Until 2012, the government also provided privileged access to information and to more comprehensive dialogue for donors that used the government’s preferred aid modality, i.e. general budget support (GBS) (Keijzer et al, 2018, 2020). By then, several bilateral donors had suspended their GBS, partly as a reaction to Rwanda’s involvement in DRC, and that way of directing donors was abandoned.…”

Section: Ownership and Participation In Rwanda And Cambodiamentioning

confidence: 99%

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What happens to local participation when national ownership gets stronger? Initiating an exploration in Rwanda and Cambodia

Hasselskog

2020

Motivation: "Local participation" and "national ownership" are widely endorsed ideals in development discourse and practice. With the former referring to people's active involvement in development-related activities with some form of external input, and the latter to aid-recipient countries' policy independence in relation to foreign funders, both are concerned with the inherent inequality of aid relationships. In development policy, the two also tend to be used interchangeably and in combination, apparently assumed to go hand in hand, with increased national ownership expected to be conducive to local participation.

“…In their contribution, Keijzer, Klingebiel, and Scholtes (2020) present an analysis of how ownership is understood and promoted in Liberia and Rwanda, two post‐conflict states previously at the forefront of the aid effectiveness agenda. Whereas international partners laud Rwanda’s development progress, while expressing concerns over governance, the opposite is the case with Liberia.…”

Section: Comparing Findings and Insights Of The Seven Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Special issue introduction Ownership in a post‐aid effectiveness era: Comparative perspectives

Keijzer

Black

2020

Self Cite

Motivation: Close to 15 years have passed since the adoption of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, which generated unprecedented efforts to advance effective development co-operation with a central focus on developing country ownership. Under today's international development co-operation realities, involving inclusive agendas, strategic divergence and increasing competition, discussions on ownership, harmonization and alignment have lost traction. Yet the practices of development co-operation relationships show strong continuities. Purpose: This special issue examines how the principle of ownership may be understood and advanced under these new conditions. National ownership is prioritized in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development yet has so far been marginalized by a predominantly piecemeal response and by the rise of "mutual benefit" co-operation. Approach and Methods: This special issue takes an inductive approach to studying specific cases and actors bearing on the challenge of understanding and advancing ownership today, in order to inform future policy and research. The contributions to this special issue mainly draw from qualitative research designs that present detailed research inquiries into specific country and actor cases, drawing from interviews, structured desk reviews of policy documents and the rich body of literature on development effectiveness. They are complemented by two contributions that respectively present quantitative research and probe the critical and post-development literature for additional insights. Findings: Findings point to an increasing prevalence of pragmatism and self-interest among all actors, to the detriment of national ownership. Broad co-operation agendas, a sense of urgency interpreted as a search for quick results, and more diverse, interest-and outcome-driven forms of multistakeholder partnerships all entail a more assertive and proactive approach on the part of external actors. Under these conditions, local initiative may either become stifled or be reasoned away. Given this, today's dominant approaches to co-operation raise concerns about their ethics and sustainability. Policy implications: Ownership remains both a requirement and a desired outcome of international co-operation and is key to the effective O2 | KEIJZER and BLaCK