Organising for Donor Effectiveness: An Analytical Framework for Improving Aid Effectiveness

Political‐Economy Analysis, Aid Effectiveness and the Art of Development Management

“…This also links with Gulrajani's (2012) examination of how different environments, governance structures, goals and levels of discretion influence donor organisations. This sets the scene for future research into the extent to which PEA may reform but ultimately reinforce a managerial process of aid intervention, or open up new romantic possibilities for interaction among PEA analysts, clients and other stakeholders and ultimately contribute to enhanced development effectiveness.…”

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. They are effectively repeating one of the 12 recommendations of the OECD's (, p. 14) review of the aid management policies of 22 of its member states: “decentralize aid delivery to the field.”…”

“…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.…”

The Social Construction of Development Cooperation Success and Failure

“…How did you fare from the benchmarks set at the time of project initiation? In the same vein, effectiveness is determined by studying the impact of particular projects on the ground, whether it is on economic, social, human or other forms of development (Copestake and Williams, 2014;Gulrajani, 2014).…”