Comments

Thanks Ben, a good post worthy of reading and contemplation, as are the comments. I am particularly interested in the closing remarks in Jo's comment. I find it interesting, possibly instructive, that Jo's comment suggests that persistent misconceptions require more to be done by NGOs and government to help 'educate'...it is the comment's silence on the role of the private sector to potentially contribute to better messaging that interests me. I agree that we probably don't know enough about what publics think (or why) about aid. Yet, what we possibly do know, from Devpolicy's own recent stakeholder survey, is that NGOs and the private sector (narrowly defined here as traditional private sector aid implementing partners) view aid/development similarly. So, maybe there needs to be a more complete picture about which actors could contribute to messaging about the aid program?

I wonder if the power price paid to Bhutan is at a concessional rather than market rate (and who owns the power generators); do local communities benefit (a seminar on this the other day suggested not); and if this ownership/beneficiary issue was factored in, would it be germain. Could be a complicated form of tied aid, so the details of the aid to Bhutan is important for comparative purposes. I suspect there is also a lot of aid to the Maldives but it is tiny the abrorptive capacity might not be that great.

This <a href="http://essentialvision.com.au/decisions-made-in-the-budget-2-by-voting-intention" rel="nofollow">opinion survey</a> also found 51% of Green voters supported the aid cut?! I would be cautious about the results of this internet panel survey.

Hi Benjamin, Thanks for this post, it is important for us in the aid sector to understand the response of the public to foreign aid cuts. I have two quibbles on your conclusion - firstly, while it is true that foreign aid can be increased without public support (e.g the U.K), the lack of public support surely means foreign aid is a vulnerable budget line, easily open to cuts prior to an election or just after? Don't we want our advocacy efforts to not just get a commitment, but have that commitment maintained? Public support is important not just for getting the political commitment, but for ensuring it remains. Secondly, while I agree that the biggest bang for our buck (particularly in the short term) is to directly target our politicians, surely the fluctuation of Australia's foreign aid depending on the party that is in Government, is an indication that we need to spend more time addressing the public's misconceptions of aid so that any fluctuations are minimal.

Great post, Ben. Thanks. I think the link between public opinion on aid and aid levels is one that needs greater examination (as you point out). Linking the two without studying the relationship between them (as some studies do) only shows a correlation, not a causal pathway. On balance, by my reading, the studies on the public-politician-foreign policy linkages (sometimes with the media added into the mix) show that politicians are wary of latent public opinion and tend to respond to activated public opinion. So while I agree the relationship may not be strong, I don't think we have a good enough understanding about what publics really think about aid and within what contexts (as you point out), and exactly how this might impact upon politicians' actions. One study (Noel and Therein 2002) argued that when there are economic problems at home, publics support action to reduce domestic poverty and income inequality first, but when things were better at home they were more supportive of addressing poverty and inequality overseas. Perhaps this is what is going on in Australia and the UK. I agree that more work needs to be done to work to build politicians' understanding. I would also argue what we do know about public opinion and aid highlights the need for greater public engagement and education activities by both NGOs and government, if only to reduce the two most prominent misunderstandings that you describe.

I sincerely want to comment on the session today on all the keynoted speakers which was inspiring and educational.Thank you and my appreciation to who ever was behind the successful program today. I will take it as challenge and look positively into a better economic outlook for the PNG boom regardless of the constraints or limitations that are stopping us from progressing. Positively, good economic growth would be our way to combat poverty in Papua New Guinea in both urban or rural population settings. The notable topic is the agricultural Dutch Disease and the question must be answered in a detailed technical approach. --Session One Participant

If we need another reason not to transition to in kind aid, below is CGD's summary of a <a href="http://www.econ.yale.edu/~nq3/NANCYS_Yale_Website/resources/papers/FAidConf_20130806_FINAL.pdf" rel="nofollow">paper </a> [pdf] concluding good aid makes conflict worse. "Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian, in their paper US Food Aid and Civil Conflict, exploit a powerful determinant of food aid that has nothing to do with the place getting the aid. It turns out that an excellent predictor of how much food aid the US sends is how big the wheat surplus is in the US. The paper shows that when there's more rain in the US, there's more wheat production, and the US sends more food aid abroad. So the authors compare places that happened to have a famine during a year of good rains in the US (therefore, more likely to get food aid) with places that happened to have a famine during a year of bad rains in the US (less likely to get food aid). They find that this aid increases both the likelihood and the duration of civil conflict."

Thanks for the post Robin. A backflip indeed, but at least one in the 'right' direction. It's a shame, on some levels, that it had to be the GEF, which, as you rightly point out, is widely perceived as less than effective, particularly by institutions in the global south. I agree with Jonathan that the green fund (assuming it ever manages to get its structures sorted out to ensure the majority of financing gets to the places it is most needed) would be a better investment and I hope this GEF allocation is the start of a climb back towards climate finance rather than a one off. It's interesting to note that adaptation doesn't seem to be as out of favour under the current government's approach to aid as mitigation (though I guess we will know more when the aid framework sees the light of day). Given this, I wonder if we may see a tied contribution to the GFC for a climate resilience window. That would be more inline with the government's rhetoric and would still be a useful contribution to the global effort. Under the previous government, Australia was a (if not 'the') leader on finance for adaptation. Given the current emissions trajectory and low chance of a global climate agreement making a significant dent in a timely fashion, adaptation finance flows will need to substantially scale up and a significant Australian contribution to this effort might offset international disquiet around the absence if mitigation funding (and effective domestic climate policies).

Thanks for the comment. Actually we have the impression that the report we mention at the end is still a glint in ICAI's eye and is not the report about which you blogged last year. That was a fairly limited piece about DfID's use of private contractors, and was published a good year ago. The recent report on private sector development says, on page 1, 'This is the first of two reports on PSD. ... In the second report, we will focus on how DFID works with the private sector'. And, on the following page, 'A further ICAI review of DFID’s PSD work will examine in more detail DFID’s work directly with the private sector'. A footnote implies this will look at partnerships of the kind previously examined in a single-country ICAI evaluation of <a href="http://icai.independent.gov.uk/reports/icai-report-department-international-developments-bilateral-aid-pakistan/" rel="nofollow">DfID's work in Pakistan</a>. Among other things, that evaluation examined and welcomed 'experiments in working with the low-cost private sector as a potentially cost-effective way of reaching out-of-school children' and recommended that 'DfID should increase its support for promoting affordable and equitable private sector delivery of health and education services to poor communities'. So it appears ICAI will be looking at PPPs for international development writ large, not merely those that take the form of commercial contracting relationships. No <a href="http://icai.independent.gov.uk/reports/terms-reference-forthcoming-reports/" rel="nofollow">draft ToRs</a> have yet been made available for comment.

An interesting blog, and thanks for the citation! We actually <a href="http://aidleap.wordpress.com/2013/06/05/new-report-aims-to-scrutinise-spending-on-contractors-and-fails-miserably/" rel="nofollow">also blogged</a> about the ICAI report on public-private partnerships for development, that you mention at the end. We took quite a different line on it - the title of the blog was 'New report aims to scrutinise spending on contractors – and fails miserably'.

Thanks for your post Robin - the announcement is a welcome affirmation that Australia remains willing to fund at least some global priorities for environmental protection. Still, any funding that would go specifically towards climate change via the GEF pledge would go only a very modest way towards restoring Australia's previous levels of climate change financing. Even if a third of the GEF pledge (say around $31m over four years, or around $8 million a year) supported climate change, this would be far less than Australia's climate change financing of around $200 million a year under the previous government. Now that the UN Green Climate Fund is newly '<a href="http://theenergycollective.com/jakeschmidt/387311/new-global-fund-help-combat-climate-change-open-business" rel="nofollow">open for business</a>', other countries will be looking to Australia to make a substantially larger pledge. Perhaps Australia is keeping its powder dry for a Green Climate Fund pledge (let's hope so, at least), but supporting a fund specifically dedicated to climate could require a rather more elaborate backflip.

The real juice. The critical question. Well said Robert Cannon. We all need to ponder the question “On what matters should we remain detached?” Readers might like to look at David Rieff’s review of William Easterly’s book "The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor" in the latest New York Review of Books. The message is clear. Agencies of change like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank that offer uncritical support for corrupt and autocratic regimes such as those running Cambodia, Ethiopia and Uganda and continue to ignore sustainable development by implementing and strengthening representational governance must take the larger part of the responsibility for the failure of aid. They and other big donors, working to some fantasy that development is solely a technical issue endemically fail to take into account the sociological, ethical and political realities on the ground. Where is the concern for the structural issues of democratic representation and individual rights? On the matter of their pragmatic stupidity we cannot remain either detached or silent.