Politics of aid / Backgrounder
Harmonisation: The centre piece in the development effectiveness jigsaw
15/05/2006 By Stefan Meyer
The new regime of international aid combines a number of threads: Development studies and practice rediscovered the state as main actor in triggering development, not so much as the planner and deliverer, but as the regulator and safeguardian of the rule of law and enabling the environment for growth.
The concepts of ownership and participation have shifted upwards from their local application at community level towards concepts of national ownership of development policies and citizen involvement.
The attribution gap of development aid –the missing link between outputs and impact– was challenged by a discourse on managing for development results, that engages in measuring the outcomes of programmes and policies at the population level.
A consensus emerges that good governance and good donorship are the two sides of the same coin that will ultimately buy poverty reduction. However difficult the translation of high-level-meeting goals into actions of aid agencies and the recipients of aid, this consensus does make a difference by making donors, as well as Southern governments, accountable to agreed procedures and outcomes. Hence, the new aid architecture facilitates mutual accountability.
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Keywords
Aid effectiveness Development cooperation Division of labour HarmonizationRelated publications
- Division of labour among European donors: allotting the pie or committing to effectiveness?
- Donor harmonisation: between effectiveness and democratisation. Theoretical framework and methodology for country case studies
- Donor harmonization and democratisation: new challenges for the development agenda
- Vietnam's laboratory on donor harmonisation: between effectiveness and democratisation
Bio author: Stefan Meyer
Stefan Meyer is a Political Scientist (FU Berlin) and holds a Masters degree of the IDS Brighton, U.K. He worked as a consultant on aid instruments and in conflict impact assessment for a number of NGOs and for the German Development Cooperation (GTZ and KfW).
