Why Can't We All Just Get Along? The Practical Limits to International Development Cooperation

Abstract

This paper seeks to explain the factors that inhibit greater collaboration between Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors and non-DAC donors, arguing that the problem is less about divergent values than about incentives that derive from the politics of today's aid system and architecture, and from different development experiences. It argues that even among like-minded DAC members, progress on aid coordination and cooperation has been disappointing. This augurs badly for advocates of a more harmonious aid system encompassing a broader group of development partners. On this basis, the aid community would be better off defining differential and flexible standards, which permit DAC and non-DAC donors to adhere to those elements most applicable to them. We identify two areas where more collaboration may be feasible. The first is for partner countries to push for greater transparency among donors, which would allow for greater coordination at the recipient country level. The second is to formalise and build on existing triangular cooperation initiatives, which would test the potential for interagency trust and learning. Although these areas are narrow, they are concrete ways of taking the first steps towards broader donor collaboration.

New Donors

“…They do not want to be perceived as aid donors but rather as partners. In their view, the Paris Declaration lacks legitimacy as they had no voice until recently, and also because they do not consider the DAC process to be conducive to more effective aid (Chandy and Kharas 2011;Woods 2011).…”

“…Given the inherently political nature of aid, however, there are clear limits to cooperation involving non-DAC donors like China and India (Chandy and Kharas 2011). While political rivalry renders it difficult to build trust, mutual learning suffers from the absence of a consensus concerning the conditions under which aid may be effective.…”

An Analysis of Aid Information Management Systems (AIMS) in Developing Countries: Explaining the Last Two Decades

“…A common underlying assumption is that "the comprehensive availability and accessibility of aid information in a timely, systematic and comparable manner" [14] would increase transparency and allow stakeholders to coordinate better. Opening and sharing basic aid information on the "three Ws of aid: who is doing what, where" is considered a prerequisite for better coordination [15], [16].…”

Collective Action among Non-Governmental Organizations Working in Maternal and Child Health in Haiti

“…Cooperation entails working together to achieve a common outcome, whereas coordination is about avoiding getting in each other's way (Chandy & Kharas, 2011).…”

“…Upon rigorous examination and interviews, it was discovered that the girl had actually received the measles vaccination three times, from three different organizations, and her symptoms were the result of her over-vaccination. Second, failure to cooperate and coordinate leads to resource misallocation and inefficiencies (Chandy & Kharas, 2011). An example of this would be if NGOs are notified that a certain population segment or area of a country needs an increase in medication and do not coordinate or cooperate to determine distribution, that particular population segment or area might receive too much medication at the expense of another group receiving needed and critical medication.…”