Bringing Aid Management Closer to Reality: The Experience of Danish Bilateral Development Cooperation

Abstract

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’.

A Sociology of Foreign Aid and the World Society

“…Often labeled under the category of aid effectiveness, researchers frequently provide advice to governments, NGOs, and international actors about how best to structure aid programs for maximum efficiency and results (Acharya, de Lima and Moore 2006;Addison, Mavrotas and McGillivray 2005;Aldasoro, Nunnenkamp and Thiele 2010;Booth 2012;Brown 2012;Stokke and Hoebink 2005). Likewise, researchers have focused on how policy innovations have been implemented in the aid sector (Brown and Swiss 2013;Easterly 2007;Easterly and Williamson 2011;Engberg-Pedersen 2014;Knack, Rogers and Eubank 2011). The aid policy literature has largely overlooked the link between aid policy and the spread of global norms and institutions.…”

Lost in translation: The World Bank and the Paris Declaration

“…Aid recipient weakness has been viewed as a constraint on implementation, either because recipient governments lack development‐oriented leaders (Booth, ) or because their systems for spending aid money are defective (Knack, ). On the other hand, Engberg‐Pedersen () and Gulrajani (), taking Paris at face value, focus on the other side of the aid relationship, criticizing donors, especially for their failure to delegate aid decisions to their country offices.…”

“…Engberg‐Pedersen's () explanation, in the case of Danish aid, is that Danish country staff find themselves obliged to focus on changing priorities in Denmark at the expense of country priorities. His observation that the Danish International Development Agency (Danida) country staff are more committed to the Paris Declaration than their political principals in Denmark is echoed by Booth () and Gulrajani (), both of whom argue for delegating more programme decisions to donors’ country offices.…”

“…The World Bank with its many idiosyncrasies is scarcely a representative donor agency. Whereas Engberg‐Pedersen () found the country staff of Danida to be more committed to Paris than their principals in Headquarters, the opposite is true with the Bank. Pace Booth (), Gulrajani () and OECD, further delegation at present to the Bank's country staff would not be pro‐Paris.…”

Development agencies of the future: The limits of adaptation

“…In such a system, we would consider agency country offices or embassies, as the main implementers of aid, to be the ultimate necessary point of efficiency to which all other departments and work at headquarters should provide support if the agency's work is conceived as rationally pursuing a maximization of effectiveness in aid delivery. In reality, however, country offices or embassies sometimes decide to pursue different priorities than those advanced from headquarters while maintaining a form of cooperation with headquarters that appears as negotiation or mediation rather than backing (see Engberg‐Pedersen, ). Instead of the two entities working towards increased effectiveness through a logic of instrumentality, they may gradually appear decoupled, with headquarters increasingly becoming concerned with responding to pressures from its immediate political environment rather than supporting country‐level aid implementation preferences.…”