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February 17, 2010

Nancy Birdsall on Cash on Delivery Aid

Posted by Lawrence MacDonald in Aid Effectiveness, Education, Global Development Tags: , , , ,

Nancy Birdsall

Can aid donors find a better way to deliver aid? My guest this week is Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development. Along with William Savedoff and Ayah Mahgoub, Nancy is working on a potential new way of disbursing foreign assistance called Cash on Delivery Aid. COD Aid seeks to devise simple, results-based contracts that reward developing countries for making progress towards previously agreed goals—such as increased primary school completion rates, vaccination coverage, or access to clean water.

In the podcast, Nancy explains that the traditional mode of giving aid, in which donors often take an active role in prescribing which actions recipient governments should take, can undermine incentives for governments to identify problems and design and implement locally appropriate solutions. “We have to create a system in which outside resources actually help the developing country governments find out what works in their particular setting,” says Nancy.

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February 10, 2010

Development and Obama’s Budget; Interview with CGD’s Sarah Jane Staats

Posted by Lawrence MacDonald in Rethinking US Foreign Assistance Tags: , , ,

Sarah Jane StaatsI’m joined for this week’s CGD Wonkcast by Sarah Jane Staats, director of policy outreach here at the Center for Global Development. Last week, President Obama released his proposed budget for the next fiscal year. Sarah Jane and others here at the Center have been poring over the budget request, examining what signals the budget sends on the administration’s approach to development.

$3.8 trillion is a number a little too large to comprehend; Sarah Jane and I break down some of the numbers in the budget and have some fun comparing development and diplomacy programs with some of the government’s big ticket spending items.

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January 19, 2010

Fragile States: Development in the World’s Basket Cases

Posted by Lawrence MacDonald in Fragile States, Global Development Tags: , ,

Vijaya RamachandranMy guest this week is Vijaya Ramachandran, a senior fellow here at the Center for Global Development. Vij directs the Center’s research on fragile states—countries where, often due to recent or ongoing conflict, the basic functions of government are weak or nonexistent. These states present special challenges to aid donors and practitioners, both in planning how to give aid effectively and in delivering it. Read More…

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January 11, 2010

Birdsall on Clinton, Elevating Development, Taking Stock in 2010

Posted by Lawrence MacDonald in Aid Effectiveness, Global Development, Rethinking US Foreign Assistance Tags: , , , , ,

Nancy BirdsallI’m joined this week by Nancy Birdsall, president of the Center for Global Development. Nancy introduced Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when Clinton came to speak to CGD last week. On the Wonkcast, she shares her impressions of Clinton’s speech and places it in the broader context of U.S. development policy reform—including two ongoing assessments, the White House Presidential Study Directive or PSD and the State Department’s first Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review or QDDR.

In the second half of the interview, Nancy reviews the past year in development and offers a policy wish for 2010.
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January 5, 2010

Bases, Bullets, and Ballots: U.S. Military Aid and Conflict in Colombia

Posted by Lawrence MacDonald in Global Development, Latin America, Rethinking US Foreign Assistance Tags: , , , , ,

Oeindrila DubeMy guest this week is Oeindrila Dube, a postdoctoral fellow here at the Center for Global Development and an assistant professor of politics and economics at New York University. She is the author, along with Suresh Naidu, of a new paper that examines the relationships between U.S. military aid to Colombia and paramilitary violence and electoral participation in that country. Her paper reaches the unsettling conclusion that U.S. military assistance dollars may in fact be responsible for raising the levels of political violence.
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