The Second Wave of Independence: Shopping for Solutions

Abstract

The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/World Bank and its affiliated organizations, or those of the Executive Directors of the World Bank or the governments they represent.

Aid at the frontier: building knowledge collectively

“…The working group cited three main reasons for this: a classic 'public goods' problem, in which the benefits of the investment by a few would accrue to many others; the imperative to get programmes implemented rather than to take the time to build in evaluation; and the difficulty of large bureaucracies to take in and act on news about disappointing results. Other reasons advanced to explain the underinvestment in impact evaluations include that 'it pays to be ignorant' (Pritchett 2002) and that charitable motives and national political interests are of greater significance than aid effectiveness to policy decisions (Gaarder and Bartsch 2014).…”

“…Impact evaluations are always going to be subject to concerns that their findings may not be generalisable and that countries may be less likely to absorb lessons from studies financed, let alone conducted, by other countries. Collective financing of impact evaluations that are commissioned through an independent organisation runs the risk of losing opportunities to improve projects when evaluators can engage with project designers and implementers (Jacquet 2006;Gaarder and Bartsch 2014). The relevance of impact evaluations is also a regular concern, one which requires the institutions commissioning impact evaluations to be open to an exchange of views between policymakers, managers, implementers, researchers and beneficiaries about which questions are important to public policy decisions.…”

Beginning with the end in mind: implications for project design

“…That mistakenly assumes that without the project everything else would have remained the same. Targets should be set against a 'without project' scenario so as to more explicitly ensure that thought and evidence is brought to bear on other factors affecting the project (Gaarder and Bartsch 2014).…”