Comments

Hi Matthew, As I noted in my earlier comment, the public attention given to the Review by Leaders in their communiqué, and by the Secretary General in his recent media release, are responses in the public domain that indicate the Review report isn't being ignored. The Review was commissioned by Forum Secretariat Members, and accordingly it is a matter for the Members to decide whether to make the report from the Review publicly available (or direct the Secretariat to do so). I can't speak to their positions, so you may wish to contact the Governments involved to seek their informed views. Best, Seini

Of course WASH is an essential element of the battle against HIV/AIDS and it was great to see such positive support for it in DC this year.

Hi Colin, Thanks for the interesting article, do you see any hope in the new provincial governor, Gary Juffa speaking that he will review the SABLs awareded in Oro Province? Thanks

Stephen, I enjoyed reading these three posts which provide a clear case for aid. I particularly enjoyed the example of the Indonesian tax payers' unit. After working for 3 years (2009-2011) in the Asian Development Bank Institute's capacity building team, I am convinced of the need for capacity building in many Asian countries -- even if it is just policy dialogue which helps Asian policy makers be better informed of policy trends in their area. All countries have pro- and anti-reform groups, and it is important to foster the reform process. In his comment, Dr DG Blight refers to the loss of cooperative partnerships when Korea transitioned out of aid. This confirms my belief that Asia needs a serious policy analysis and policy dialogue organisation like the OECD. Robert Cannon makes some useful points in his comments above. There is a genuine problem in emerging Asia in that gaps between rich and poor are increasing, and corruption and capital flight are enormous, and Asia's elites seem not to care for their own poor.

Seini and Pacific Watcher Thank you both for your intriguing “insider” perspectives on the Review. I’m still unclear why the Review has not been made public though. Regardless of its quality or the decision to postpone its consideration, I would have thought public disclosure (together with a response – possibly from FoC?) would pre-empt comments that the Review is simply being ignored. On that matter, I’d be interested in finding out whether it is a simple matter of a delay, or whether a decision been made to actually keep it confidential.

Hi Mathew, It’s great that you took this opportunity to look beyond the excitement of Clinton’s visit to consider other highlights of the recent Leaders’ Forum in Rarotonga. Your post touches on two important review processes that were discussed at the Forum—one completed earlier this year (the Review of the Forum Secretariat), and one just beginning (the Pacific Plan Review). It’s also important to encourage discussion of these Reviews from an informed position, and on that basis I feel the need to comment and address a few of the inaccuracies in your article. Firstly, it is incorrect that the Review of the Forum Secretariat was largely ignored by Leaders at the Forum. There were many pressing (and competing) issues that could have been considered in Rarotonga; not all could be covered, yet the Review of the Forum Secretariat featured on the agenda of several of the meetings held. And as you noted, that Review had a special mention in the Leaders’ Communiqué, which captures the issues Leaders felt most important to comment on. Nor has the Review been largely ignored by the Forum Secretariat. Prior to the Leaders’ meeting, the report from the Review was discussed in depth by the Forum Officials’ Committee, which considered each of the recommendations in turn, and agreed with Forum Secretariat on a path forward. As the Secretary General noted in a recent media release, he has committed to “press ahead with on-going reforms of our corporate and budgets systems in-line with the recommendations of the recent organisational review”. He emphasised that “Reform and improvement of the Secretariat is ongoing business; and the Secretariat is moving ahead with many of the recommendations of its review”. The report hasn’t been swept under the mat—it is being seriously considered. I will leave it to other readers to follow the link you provided and determine if your assessment of the Review report’s content is fair. You also asserted that “There is no good reason for tying recommendations to improve the effectiveness of PIFS to a review of the Pacific Plan”. Actually, I agree with the Leaders of the region that there is a good reason for holding off on a few of the suggested changes until we know the outcome of the Pacific Plan Review. The Review will be a comprehensive evaluation of the Plan’s success thus far and an assessment of where it should lead. The Review may lead to revisions to the Plan that have implications for the strategic direction of the Forum Secretariat (perhaps even for our regional architecture as a whole). Doesn’t it make sense to have an up-to-date and robust regional strategy clear before deciding that indeed the Secretariat needs three Deputy Secretary Generals, for instance, instead of the current two (a recommendation that would have obvious costs but as yet uncertain benefits)? The good news is that we will not have long to wait until the outcomes of the Pacific Plan Review are on the table. The first stages of the Review process have already begun, and it will be completed by the time of the Leaders’ meeting next year. It is planned to be a much more consultative process than the Review of the Forum Secretariat, involving visits to all countries in the region to talk not only with officials but with a range of non-state actors and other regional agencies. And there will be an online portal to allow public submissions and enable people to follow the progress of the Review team. There are opportunities for us all to get involved in the weaving of future Pacific strategies, which in turn may determine the future patterns of our region’s institutions. http://www.forumsec.org/pages.cfm/newsroom/press-statements/2012/preparations-underway-for-pacific-plan-review.html These are exciting times for the Pacific—and not just because important dignitaries have been visiting and donor pledges have been made – but also because genuine efforts are underway, through an open and consultative process, to review the strategic underpinnings of regional cooperation. Both the past Review of the Forum Secretariat and the upcoming Pacific Plan Review will play a role in what lies ahead. Seini (Disclaimer: I am currently employed as the Pacific Plan Adviser at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, but am commenting here as an individual, not as a representative of other Secretariat staff or Forum members).

Many thanks Colin for the report. Many local landowners are waiting and wanting to see the outcome of it. Many think the national government should do away with SABLs and or restructure it in a way that local people who own the land should benefit more on that without being on the loosing end. Just this month on the 11th I organize an landowners' Forum in Wewak town the capital of East Sepik. More than 50 landowners (both genders) took part. The outcome of the forum was good and people are calling on the authorities to really see how people feel about the SABLs granted nationwide and do something in their favour. Thanks Jimmy Wewak

Those with experience in Pacific politics know that nothing - NOTHING - is ever as it seems on the surface. There are very good reasons why very few in the region are taking this report seriously. Perhaps you need to do some investigation into Peter Winder's relationship to Murray McCully, particularly his role in the reorganisation of MFAT/NZAID, and do a bit of research into how the report was written. Then you may find the reason why eminent, highly knowledgeable people are responding in a way you feel is "unfortunate."

I have enjoyed reading this set of interesting and constructive reviews. Thank you, Neil. I thought your point about our failure to ask why things are the way that they are, and to put sufficient effort into the analysis of the politics of countries receiving assistance, compared to the technical aspects of the development problem alone, especially important. This point about analysis echoes the views of Gerard Guthrie in his book 'The Progressive Education Fallacy in Developing Countries' (Springer, 2011) that evident failures in education in development likely reflect insufficient analysis of local cultures and their impact on learning and teaching. The case for better analysis in public policy formation has also been very well-made by Gary Bank’s, Chairman, Productivity Commission, in his 2009 address to the Australia New Zealand School of Government in February 2009 available at: http://www.pc.gov.au/speeches/cs20090204

Margaret, thanks very much for this research. I think it's interesting to see that EITI has progressed as well as it has, and that there are still very great accountability gaps even when initiatives like EITI are operating. I think this is where the developmental part of Mining for Development really has to be in lights, not least through monitoring and evaluation systems. I hope we will see a developmental impact as a result of this very significant investment from AusAID in mining - would that not be inspiring? I'd be keen to know whether the kinds of accountability gaps you describe also exists for mining companies in remoter parts of Australia, for example in the Kimberly. I know that colleagues at UQ's Sustainable Minerals Institute have done some really good work on the interaction of mines and indigenous communities in WA - I wonder if this research might be mutually supporting?

Your title suggest that he has previously given us "pie in the sky" ideas. In fact, if you do your homework, you will learn that the Millennium Development Goals have actually achieved significant drops in poverty (about half in most developing countries) from 1990 to 2010. This is NOT "Pie in the Sky." People act like things never work, even when they actually do for a change.

Hi Tobias, Thank you for your comment. If I understand you correctly you are describing a system where: 1. Solomons politicians are deciding the projects that go into the national development plan. And, in many instances, they are choosing these projects based on their own individual political interests. 2. Donors are choosing projects to fund solely based on what is in the national development plan and how it has been prioritised. 3. Donors are then implementing projects generally avoiding SIG systems. If this is how the majority of donor funding is currently being delivered to Solomons then I agree the system is deeply flawed (and somewhat different from how I understood aid delivery to take place there). And I agree that it would be conducive to clientelist politics. However, I don't see a shift to budget support doing anything to improve the situation. Either budget support is heavily constrained, in which case the odds of clientelist spending and corrupt practices are reduced but so to is budget supports potential to foster national politics (if such potential actually exists). Or budget support is unconstrained, in which case the money will, it is true, enter the arena of political contestation but would not, in my opinion, change the collective action dilemmas underpinning clientelism in Solomons at present. And, because of this, achieve little other than adding more fuel to the flames. Personally, I think the optimal approach to aid delivery in Solomons is for: 1. Donors ascertain the key binding constraints on welfare in the country. Constraints could be determined through different means depending on geographical scope: locally through participatory community processes (as the RDP currently does); or nationally, through study and consultation. In doing this I would place very little weight on the opinions of local political actors - their interests are often their own, and the incentive structures that they work under at odds with development for the country as a whole. 2. Donors act to relieve these constraints using the optimal means for this task chosen based on a weighting that places considerably higher emphasis on lifting the constraints themselves than on other desired outcomes such as strengthening partner systems for their own sake. The optimal means may, of course, still be using partner systems (obviously, the Ministry of Education is the only possible means of running schools in Solomons). And strengthening partner systems may be an integral part of actually attaining the welfare improvements that have been prioritised. However, where government systems are used, I would suggest we need to be very careful about unintended consequences, and need to strive to avoid the trap of isomorphic mimicry. And that we need to be very realistic about what these systems can achieve and about our ability to influence how they may run. 3. Engage in an ongoing manner to assist in holding key institutions (electoral commission, parliament, central bank, courts, police) together in spite of the centrifugal pull of the country's clientelist politics. 4. Undertake research to learn all that we still don't know about governance and politics (a lot) in Solomon Islands. And from this, maybe consider interventions that target these areas directly, but also be open to the idea that there's little we can do directly. What would this achieve: It would not directly solve the problems of governance and politics in Solomon Islands but: 1. It would improve the quality of people's lives (And would be a more efficient means of doing this than any approach to aid that mixes this objective with a range of other overly ambitious desired outcomes associated with institution building for its own sake). 2. Hopefully, would -- through improving education outcomes, and affording the possibility of economic change and the social change that comes with it -- aid in the possible growth of cross-cutting social and political movements that ultimately change the nature of politics in Solomon Islands. To me this seems like a better approach than the status quo or any shift to higher order aid modalities made solely on the hope that they will give birth to national politics. I could be wrong though, and definitely appreciate hearing your insights as someone with on the ground aid experience in Solomons. Thanks again for the comment. Terence