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Barder on Post-Bureaucratic Aid . . . and the Complexity Motive Behind Cash on Delivery
February 10, 2012
Owen Barder unpacks the results agenda, now so much discussed in the aid and development community, here. It’s brilliant. He sets out four different motivations of various parties in the community for their recent focus on the “results agenda”. I asked myself which motivation has driven my devotion to the idea of Cash on Delivery Aid (COD Aid). (If you are new to COD Aid, see this short video for a start.)
Here’s a quick rundown using Owen’s taxonomy.
Using results to justify aid to taxpayers. Yes, that’s one reason why COD Aid makes sense though it’s a byproduct not the main motivation. Taxpayers in donor countries want to know if their tax dollars made a difference. In surveys and in support for different kinds of aid programs, they are clear that “made a difference” mostly means made a difference in peoples’ lives. Thus the tremendous support for President Bush’s PEPFAR program. Legislators could endorse saving lives and explain it to their constituents. A big benefit of COD Aid is that disbursements of aid are triggered by the recipient government’s annual report of measured and independently verified progress on some “result” like declining infant mortality, increased learning of children, or reductions in rates of deforestation.
Using results to improve aid, ie that development professionals want more aid to be allocated to projects and programs that have already been shown to work – where the connection between inputs financed by aid and some output. No not in itself a big motivation for COD Aid. I’ll explain below.
Using results to manage aid agencies. No, not a motivation for COD Aid – at least not in the way Owen frames it, which has to do with managers of aid agencies want to achieve more focus – across countries and sectors.
Using results to manage complexity. Yes yes yes. This is the point. Owen’s explanation of this motivation is so clear and compelling and succinct that I repeat it here in its entirety:
Many of the problems we are trying to solve involve supporting the emergence of successful complex systems – social and political institutions, economic change and the formation of various kinds of social capital. These complex processes cannot easily be broken down into a series of steps which will predictably lead to the outcomes we want to see. Instead these solutions evolve: taking small steps, finding out what moves in the right direction, and building on progress. The aid industry’s habit of reducing everything into a series of processes and activities which can be planned, tracked and reported not only fails to support this evolution, it can stifle it by preventing both the innovation and the adaptation that evolution requires. Focusing mainly on results can enable the aid business to resist the tendency to plan and prescribe, and so create space for the emergence of sustainable local institutions and systems.
This last motivation is fundamental to the idea of COD Aid. It is why #2 above — using results to improve aid — is not a key motivation of COD Aid. #2 puts the focus on what the aid industry does about development and not on what countries and countries’ citizens choose to do given their local setting. It risks the aid industry, with its “lessons” about what works in general (inputs associated with outputs – schools and teachers associated with higher enrollment) imposing those lessons everywhere, reducing instead of enlarging local space to experiment, stumble, recover and build. This last motivation also clarifies why COD Aid would not invite short-termism and would potentially support long-run institution building. Development is a complex process; a key motivation of COD Aid is to make space and allow time (say over five years) for a country and a government to fail, learn, adjust and recalibrate. Again quoting from Owen:
. . . .we should be thinking about ‘post-bureaucratic aid’. Our existing systems have tended to lead to excessive outside prescription and micromanagement; and in principle they should not be needed if we can observe directly the results about which we really care.
Possibly Related Posts
- Guest Post: Five Reasons I Am a Fan of Cash on Delivery, and Five Ways to Make It Sharper
- More Demand for Cash on Delivery
- Cash on Delivery Aid: A Good Idea for America Too
3 Responses to “Barder on Post-Bureaucratic Aid . . . and the Complexity Motive Behind Cash on Delivery”
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February 11th, 2012 at 9:16 pm
When using results to manage complexity, the data generated can be used to improve aid, to manage aid agencies and to generate the justification for tax payers.
It does not work the other way round. The main objective should be number 4, with the other 3 being positive externalities.
Important insight, I hope it gets traction. It should enter also the IATI-debates.
PS. did you see the reference to COD in the Dictator’s Handbook? It seems to be a ringing endorsement.
February 17th, 2012 at 2:41 pm
Thanks to you and Owen for an excellent set of comments on the multiple meanings – and divergent implications – the so-called results Agenda, a topic near to my heart as the former manager of the so-called Results Secretariat at the World Bank. I strongly agree with you that the use of information on results and evidence to steer through the complexity and non-linearity of most development problems is the most important, and not surprisingly – the most difficult of the four meanings to promote and develop.
The Bank’s approach, during my time anyway, to the Results Agenda, had three major ‘pillars’ (all initiatives apparently have to have pillars), the first was to ensure that the Bank itself was strongly focused on results – which we promoted by changes in the Bank’s internal business practices such as insisting on baselines in all projects, and ensuring that the Bank’s budget included space for financing impact evaluations. The second was to try to encourage the Bank to use its various financial and knowledge instruments to encourage countries to manage for results, and the third was to ‘harmonize and align’ our approach to the results agenda with those of other multilateral and development agencies – very much as part of the aid effectiveness agenda.
We saw some progress on all three fronts, but it was often a struggle to get attention on the most crucial piece – helping countries to develop systems and approaches to using results and evidence in their own decision making. This too often fell victim to enormous pressures to use ‘results’ as a marketing tool – in particular to justify and rationalize donor contributions to IDA – still a dominant focus to my dismay.
But the recent approval of the P4R instrument as well as the deepening focus on governance and accountability — are hopeful signs. Perhaps going forward we will see some real movement on the need for all of us to concentrate resources on building stronger results measurement and learning systems at the country level – where it matters. But seeing this happen will mean that those of us that recognize that information on results can help learning about ‘what works’ will need to pay close attention to the question of who is doing the learning.
February 18th, 2012 at 6:34 am
In all honesty, I fail to see the foundation of the CGD’s enthusiasm for using results to manage complexity in the way OB suggests and, more particularly, its link to COD Aid.
To my understanding, the core of COD is precisely “reducing everything [i.e. “social and political institutions, economic change and the formation of various kinds of social capital”] into a series of processes and activities which can be planned, tracked and reported.” The only difference with the situation OB describes is that in the case of COD the aid industry is no longer doing this unilaterally but in negotiations with the recipient. Is this a step forward? It may well be, although we should never forget two (interrelated) things. One. The power balance between a donor – who has the money – and a local partner – who is dependent on it – is always very asymmetric. Two. To say that COD will be based on “what countries and countries’ citizens choose to do” is to hypothesize the existence of participative decision-making processes which are extremely rare (even in donor countries).
Any aid tool that reduces the relationship between funder and recipient to a contract misses the essence of what development really is, unless the counting and measuring that goes with it is part of a dynamic process among partners, of joint learning and adjusting, continuous communication and interaction that goes well beyond the measurable indicators of COD.