Comments

After many years working in development and feeling increasingly despondent at the disconnect between aspiration and money on one hand, and engagement and sustainable help on the other, reading your message was refreshing. I entirely agree on the need for more time - more time to learn about the country and its culture and history, and more time to engage with people there. Otherwise we don't know the starting point or what is likely to work. Country leaders and also consultants often like to appear at the cutting edge, and the consequent helicoptering in of models such as NPM - that depend on an institutional environment which isn't actually there - has been damaging. Evaluation is of course a good idea, even essential, but it can often deteriorate into putting excessive time and focus on specification in advance of objectives and final impact with little regard to what happens in between. Process is crucial. Not to mention the problems of measurement and attribution that performance evaluation often bypasses.

Thanks Marc, Interesting comment. I was unaware Natsios was a religious conservative (not that it matters either way of course -- but interesting.) The paper you mention is fascinating too. I side with Nastios up to a point. A crude approach to trying to quantify everything (and to M&E more generally) means enhanced admin burden while at the same time generating relatively little learning. OTOH -- there is still a lot to learn in aid, and so coupling work with much more genuine learning-inducing M&E and research is what I'd advocate, as well as giving aid staff time to do it properly, and to learn from it. Cheers Terence

Hi Terence, this is a great post and I definitely get behind the value of "small ideas and accumulated learning." I recently took a class with the former Director of the USAID programme under G.W. Bush, Andrew Natsios. He confirmed your suspicion that conservatives would seek more measurement of aid. In fact Republican politicians pushed so much for numbers that Natsios himself turned on this ideology to try and give aid workers some room to do their work. I think Natsios' essay is at least an valuable contribution to the ongoing debate on quantifying development: http://international.cgdev.org/publication/clash-counter-bureaucracy-and-development Religious conservatives in the US (Natsios included) do tend to give a decent amount of fiscal support for the charity of foreign aid. In contrast, conservatives here in NZ and now in Australia have become ironically isolationist in their crusade for fiscal discipline. As an agnostic perhaps I'm not the best to judge the place of religion in foreign aid, but Christian values certainly shaped the way Professor Natsios approached issues in USAID's work. A book he assigned, 'The Central Liberal Truth' by Larry Harrison is essentially a veiled attempt to promote the Protestant work ethic in the developing world. Some may see sense in it... I call it cultural imperialism. I was impressed by Natsios' genuine desire to run as effective of an aid programme as he could. To him this meant serious spending priorities. This brings us full circle to your point Terence, where conservative priorities are squarely fixed on areas where we know aid works. This is why Natsios' budget favoured public health, even when we know that there are far more areas that need attention for development to be sustained.

Thanks Stephen. At least we know now where the cuts will come from in terms of regions. But not sure we all have the detail as to which exact programs will be cut and by how much. I guess that will trickle out. Even as a strong supporter of the Africa program, an effort to streamline and focus the African engagement to fewer countries and fewer sectors would be welcome. And this was the direction that the program was moving in anyway (well, fewer countries, but not less money). The environment cuts reek of ideology over anything to do with aid effectiveness.

Stephen what is your take on the almost halving of spending for governance as a cross regional item? Also, the Minister made no mention in her release on aid-for-trade? What's your view on the significance of that, giver her numerous previous statements about the importance of aid-for-trade?

Thanks guys. Political philosophy is complicated!

I agree the IDA17 and Global Fund pledges don't seem to rest on any objective basis, whether it's the findings of the Australian Multilateral Assessment (possibly skewed in the case of the Global Fund by a passing storm about the misappropriation of funds in Africa), or something else. However, I don't see any real cutting going on, or any singling out of the World Bank, and am surprised by this in light of the Treasurer’s pre-election comments about funding to multilateral organisations. While friends of the Global Fund might have hoped for a large increase in Australia's contribution to the fourth replenishment, a same-nominal contribution of $200 million over three years was not to be sneezed at in the context of a flatlined Australian aid budget. As for IDA17, a government truly intent on reaping savings from the multilateral part of the aid budget could well have chosen to revert to the pre-2007 burden share of 1.46 per cent. This would have yielded further savings of perhaps $130 million. Instead, the government maintained the higher burden share adopted by Labor for IDA15 and IDA16. Failing to repeat Labor's IDA16 supplementary contribution of $100 million didn't in any real sense constitute a cut, given that the whole point of describing a contribution as 'supplementary' is to convey that it will not necessarily be repeated. In fact I doubt Labor would have repeated it if re-elected, given their own large cuts, in 2012 and 2013, to the forward estimates for the aid budget, as well as reallocations within the aid budget for asylum-seeker costs. World Bank management should be well pleased that Australia maintained its 1.8 per cent share. By the way, I’m not sure we can yet evaluate the significance of the fall in Australia's share of the total replenishment, from 1.4 to 1.26 per cent, as we don't know whether certain other donors' contributions, provided for the first time as 'concessional partner loans', have been included in the headline total on a gross or net basis (see <a href="http://international.cgdev.org/blog/world-bank%E2%80%99s-got-talent-or-why-read-fine-print-ida%E2%80%99s-52-billion-record" rel="nofollow">this </a>piece from CGD's Todd Moss). I think that what we are really seeing here is decision-making on a default basis, not particularly constrained at this stage by the new aid budget environment and certainly not informed by any strategic framework for the allocation of resources to multilateral organisations—or to anything much. That’s good for the organisations or causes that pass through the door early. It’s not so good for those whose turn comes around when the cupboard is empty.

I love the philosophy of Give What You Can, and think everyone can benefit from taking a good, objective look at how they live, and how that affects others. Simple changes in what we eat, drink and wear, as well as how we get around, heat/cool our homes and making conscious choices about where our money goes can make a big difference. I strongly believe our dollar is our vote - how we use it influences the kind of world we end up with.

Yes, there are a few amber fluid sub-cultures in Australia. The well-off urbane conservatives tend to drink imported lagers from the big global breweries, while the lefty intellectuals drink local craft beers and exotic pale ales. The VB drinkers probably don't self-affiliate with either the left or right, but in previous eras would have been in favour of workers' rights and protectionism (left-leaning), but today they are more associated with the 'mortgage belt' in the outer suburbs of our big cities and tend to vote conservative.

I suspected as much, just didn't want to be accused of other-side-of-the-pond discrimination! Next time you probably want to go for a nice South Australian shiraz.

Thanks Garth and Stephen Sometimes I ponder on how much Australians have become self-focussed - as in, someone with an annual family income of over $150,000 can still (recently) claim "entitlement" to government support. By contrast, the arguments for giving foreign aid are focussed on the "other" - those around our world who do not have our riches and life opportunities. These arguments no longer seem to resonate with those who can give. And especially how sharing what we have in (relative) abundance can give these people - men women and children - some of those necessities of life that we in Australia now take for granted. There seems to be a fundamental dichotomy between "Australia" and the billions trying to live on US$1.25 each day, as Australians attempt to pass on by, on the other side of the road. To make a concrete example, relating to the people of Afghanistan after 2015 and the current public priority of our troops returning "home". That country remains one of the worst places in the world to be a woman. Girls' schools are frequently attacked, high-profile women’s rights activists have been killed, and violence against girls and women continues to be a major problem. 87 per cent of women in Afghanistan have experienced at least one form of domestic violence; including physical, sexual, or psychological violence or forced marriage. After the withdrawal of most western military forces in 2014, Afghanistan’s men, women and children will remain at risk. I have put money into several projects providing long-term support of Afghan civilians. Their future safety should also be our governments’ present priority.

Thanks Mel good point - to be clear, I definitely mean aid worker to mean all those working in aid (including contractors, NGO staff, and the like). cheers Terence