Ownership and results in Busan: the risks of policy conditionality
by brendanswhitty
In the Busan High Level Forum, the attention has focused on transparency and the BRICS inclusion. However, this has distracted from what is for me the crux of the whole document: the marriage of democratic ownership with the results agenda. This ‘marriage’ is articulated in the outcomes document [pdf] as the adoption of “country-led results frameworks and platforms … based on a manageable number of indicators drawn from the development priorities and goals articulated by developing countries.”
In other words, the Busan outcomes document takes country ownership and backs it up with a focus on the delivery of results. Both are laudable goals, where there is a country-owned development vision shared by the donors – however, the outcome document’s reliance on this as a precondition for success fails to address two challenges from the literature.
First, manifestations of ‘country ownership’ have been afflicted by two key syndromes (identified in this paper by Laura Collins): some cases, as Van de Walle suggests, are exercises in ‘ventriloquism’ where governments say what they think donors want to hear, in order to secure more funds, without political interest in implementing the reforms; in others, they are a matter of resistance to a dominant donor-led narrative (see the case studies in Whitfield and Fraser 2009). Of course, there are examples where there is genuine shared ownership afflicted by neither syndrome: however, many cases are characterised by one or the other, and in neither is there shared ownership by government and donor of development results. Under such circumstances, the adoption of results frameworks will be resisted by the government or not accepted by the donor.
A second challenge is addressed to the idea of ownership itself. Booth argues that country-owned development is an outcome to be constructed, rather than an established fact: it is an end to be accomplished, and to do so will require more complex means than the mere issuance by a government of a sector plan or strategy. Country-owned development requires utterances to be development-focused and ‘owned’ by the government to the point where there is sufficient political support to generate buy-in among line-ministries and local government implementers: in some cases, this may require a long process of negotiation and support with donors. Booth argues that the means prescribed by the Paris principles – harmonisation, mutual accountability and management for results – are insufficient to achieve these ends.
The fifth outcome document for Busan does not address these challenges. Although it articulates the need to “[d]eepen, extend and operationalise the democratic ownership of development policies and processes” it fails to offer solutions to what happens when there is no shared development ownership. In such circumstances – and the literature suggests they are frequent – results frameworks are likely to become vehicles of donor-driven policy conditionality, since it is donors who have the power.
Seeking to force through results which are not shared by government risks three impacts:
- they will be ineffective in delivering the results, particularly when they are politically unpalatable (as many governance reforms are): this was the conclusion from the failed efforts of policy conditionality in the eighties and nineties, and experiences in performance assessment frameworks in many budget support mechanisms appears to confirm it;
- in their exaction of heavy consequences for failing to meet results (such as delayed disbursement), they risk damaging the long-term aid relationships between donors and governments, and thus actively undermining the necessary process Booth prescribes – that of moving towards country-owned development; and
- the use of simple indicators is subject to the wider critique of the results agenda, in that it risks the creation of perverse incentives, unforeseen impacts, and reduces opportunities to learn and improve aid delivery, two processes that are absolutely vital to effective aid.
I’m with Alison Evans @ODI on the enthusiasm for the continued commitment to ownership. Ownership is fundamental. However, coupling ownership to the results agenda without explicitly addressing some of the underlying political issues and ensuring first of all a genuine shared ownership is likely not only to be ineffective but to be actively damaging to effective aid.
