Comments

Thanks Stephen for this. Without giving away anything of what will appear tomorrow(!) I would add 2 further items here. One is how PNG and Fiji will position themselves both within the MSG and the region more widely. On the one hand, there are indications that PNG is moving to leverage off its economic strength to gain greater diplomatic influence and on the other there are instances of these 2 collaborating yet more closely (possible investment in bemobile from Fiji is an example). And the Australia-PNG relationship whilst very warm at the moment will have a number of hotspots to negotiate including (but not limited to) pressure from elsewhere in relation to decolonisation issues, especially in relation to West Papua which then adds Indonesia into the mix.

Thanks MJ, I sort of agree with the direction of your comment, but wouldn't necessarily take it so far. I agree that it can be hard for donors to tackle malpractice or corruption head on, because this jeopardises relationships with partner governments. Yet at the same time there's reasonably good evidence to show that well intended aid reduces corruption, so it's not as if we get nothing for our buck here. I suspect though that most of this reduction, along with many of the improvements that we do sometimes see as a result of aid funded public service strengthening only occurs as a result of aid functioning as a countervailing force pulling against the destructive forces of local politics, which has a positive impact while it's there, but little by means of a positive legacy (with rare exceptions) after it is gone. I also agree that there are times when donors really do need to abandon efforts to 'strengthen partner systems' and try alternate mechanisms of service delivery, and that we don't do this enough. On the other hand I'd want to add to that statement that such alternatives are always second best: in the medium to long run there's no alternative to having the state provide health and education services and *if* we can use aid to achieve this, even if it's painfully slow an inefficient in the short term it's still a long term win. Whereas alternate delivery mechanisms are only really band aids. That being said, when you're bleeding a band aid is a very helpful thing. And in circumstances where we're achieving nothing or next to nothing through our strengthening partner system work then I'm all for abandoning this and then doing our best to make sure our aid delivers welfare benefits to the poor by finding alternate means of delivery. Thanks again for an interesting comment.

Nice typology. I would add two points to the general analysis. Firstly, in my experience developing country bureaucracies love to highlight the lack of capacity because they can then get lots of perks along side the capacity building that follows, and, moreover, because it implicitly gets them off the hook for corruption and apathy. Since in the development industry we spend a lot of time having to cooperate with the bureaucracies we often go along with this. It is one of the great euphemisms of international development, and one of the most unhelpful. Secondly all the big donors operate primarily through the local government as the implementing agency. So with huge dollops of cash to spend they throw a lot of money at the one thing that (almost) everyone can agree is a problem, without considering whether it is the primary constraint to improvements. At least some donor representatives around here recognise this problem, but any attempt to introduce competition in service delivery through the private sector or NGOs rarely gets anywhere for all the obvious reasons. And without local government agreement their hands are tied by head office's rules. Better not to spend the money, then, imho, but with domestic constituencies focused myopically on 0.7% GDP etc the tap stays open, pouring cash into the least effective pipe of them all.

Hi Tobias, Thanks for a very good comment. I agree that capacity is a significant problem in many cases, and I certainly wouldn't want to be seen to be downplaying it. And yet at the same time I think that if there are also serious problems with the incentive structure that trickles down from the political sphere improving capacity still won't change things that much, at least if we're not doing what we can to improve the incentive environment at the same time too. Surely if capacity building was a magic bullet would would have seen better sustained results from our work in this area? On the case of structures - excellent point. I wrote a post on Andrews and Pritchett's paper on this a couple of years ago: https://devpolicy.org/isomorphic-mimicry/ And I agree entirely with: "One approach that might help avoid both capacity problems and some political economy issues is ensuring that bureaucratic reform is informed by what can work to achieve the relevant outcome within constraints, rather then attempting to impose hugely ambitious imported models (accompanied by endless capacity-building programs) regardless of their appropriateness." Thanks for adding considerably to my original post.

The International Donors and Clients Community (especially in Africa) must deployed ICT and provide the appropriate Training, and used ICT like the business community has, to be able to have Return On Investments -ROIs. Gadema K. Quoquoi

You are absolutely right Terence - it is very hard for aid agencies, advisers, NGOs etc to do not least because it does not fit easily if at all into project design and delivery plans and it is also very hard to quantify. If and when it does happen it is almost always because the stars have somehow self-aligned rather than having been project-managed into it. I guess it is about remembering the importance and value of this and then having your (individual and institutional) antennae attuned in order to be able to contribute when the time is right.

Terrence – Thanks for another thought-provoking blog. I think most people would agree that problems with bureaucracies in developing countries can’t be reduced entirely to capacity constraints (the huge political economy literature, for example, supports your points about incentive compatibility). At the same time, I think there’s a logical problem with citing evidence that we aren’t good at building capacity as proof that we make too much of the problem. To me, capacity constraints are a problem especially because we aren’t particularly good at addressing them. In my experience, the severity of capacity constraints varies hugely by country and even by institution within countries (as you note) – so blanket conclusions about their relative importance are probably difficult to sustain. While of course never the only problem, I think there’s a lot of evidence (including our recent World Bank Policy Research Working Paper) that capacity constraints are a significant issue in many Pacific countries, given the inherent problem of finding enough people in small populations and small public sectors (in absolute terms) with the specialized skills required to support all of the various technical functions that states are expected to perform (provision of public goods, demonstrated compliance with fiduciary norms in management of public funds, maintenance of a sound macroeconomic and business environment, participation in various international fora, coordination of and reporting to donors). Some of the Pacific Island countries only have one or two qualified accountants in the whole country – this inevitably creates binding capacity constraints to implementing public financial management systems that meet international standards, for example. I’d also add another item to your typology of causes of bureaucratic dysfunction. This is the common donor insistence that developing countries adopt the same institutions that operate in the same ways and do the same things as institutions in developed countries, too-often without consideration of the appropriateness of these institutions given available capacity, political-economy context, affordability, or fit with existing, local institutions. Matt Andrews at the Kennedy school has written a lot about this in relation to PFM, and Rodrik also talks about the dangers of “blueprint” approaches when it comes to both policies and institutions. One approach that might help avoid both capacity problems and some political economy issues is ensuring that bureaucratic reform is informed by what can work to achieve the relevant outcome within constraints, rather then attempting to impose hugely ambitious imported models (accompanied by endless capacity-building programs) regardless of their appropriateness.

The obvious impasse between the stated intention of achieving stated national objectives and the ensuring they are met is the curse of many nations. In Melanesia, the root causes of the problem is well known. Firstly, from a cultural perspective, the imperative to meet deadlines and targets can be fluid and flexible when it comes to enforcement. Responsibility and accountability are nebulous terms that often don't translate. They are culturally disconnected from reality. Secondly, when overseas aid and stated expertise is constantly made available, local incentive to achieve results often is ameliorated to the point where any personal responsibility is dissipated and watered down as to be virtually ineffectual. Lastly, unless there is political will and the power to make it happen, it simply won't. The real problem is that no one is really prepared to face reality.

Thanks Tess. I agree entirely with your comment. Thanks for posting it, I think it's a useful partial counter to my post which could be read as being overly pessimistic. The only caveat I'd add is that identifying and supporting normative champions requires an adroitness and soft touch which, through no fault of their own, is often very hard for govt. aid agencies (and even NGOs). Hard, but not impossible though, and definitely worth doing.

Thanks for this Terence, it is a great piece. In relation to norms, I agree that they cannot easily be imported from outside and neither should they be. However, they can be supported and strengthened. Where normative champions are identified they can be supported as they develop normative communities, normative communities working in different areas of the bureaucracy can be encouraged to form supportive and developmental linkages and partnerships...

This is an interesting post but I'm not sure why Vanuatu is missing from the table as the relevant information appears in the preceding text. I agree that there has been and continues to be tension between donor priorities and actual development needs in the recipient country, and this is not something specific to the health sector. It may well account at least in part to the large proportion of funding in the areas of prevention and public health - my (non-scientific) observations are that this has never been much of a focus for governments unless and until there is an 'aid project' to drive it. As for moving to budgetary support, that is a long and tricky road to navigate - issues of influence, whether in relation to what to do or how to do it, are the key.

I agree that Asia should remain a development assistance priority for Australia but that the continent should be disaggregated in terms of detailed bilateral priorities. India and China have recently 'graduated' as did South Korea and Singapore long ago and Malaysia and Thailand more recently; Vietnam and the Philippines might be next. That would leave countries such Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, East Timor, Burma, Mongolia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, the Maldives, Bhutan, Pakistan, Afghanistan and North Korea and several others depending on where the boundaries are drawn and whether the Asian republics are included. In terms of the Asian century, therefore, there are two points to be made: we should look forward to, encourage and even insist upon further graduations as the pace of economic growth picks up - possibly by defining an end of aid timetable with the countries concerned - and focus on the poorest five or six countries and the African continent; and before graduation we should be looking to ways to ensure continuity beyond graduation so that the many human and institutional links fostered in the aid era are sustained into the Asian century. Mostly, this can be done by the institutions, companies and individuals already involved but innovative ways of government support (often by simply getting out of the way). Much is being done already. A quick scan, for example, of ongoing and self funded scientific cooperation between Australian and Asian research and training institutions will find that much of it has its origins in aid programs. Aid graduation or an end to aid might well be a vote winning issue to justify a continuing commitment to development assistance bolstered by a confidence that it will achieve its objectives of self-sustaining prosperity. Finally, in terms of refugees, Stephen seems to have missed my point (and omitted an 'n' in the spelling of my first name). I am less concerned with definitions or even transparency but in seeking to encourage thinking about how development assistance funds might be used imaginatively to help those fleeing their own countries. One way, which is already being explored is to introduce a massive program of investment in public, NGO and private education, especially of girls, in refugee camps. A few hundred million dollars might make a big difference. I think DFID may be leading the way in such an endeavour.