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Independent research & practical ideas for global prosperity
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Independent research & practical ideas for global prosperity
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 Owen Barder is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and the Director for Europe. He is establishing a European program for CGD. He writes a personal blog at http://www.owen.org/blog and hosts a development podcast at http://DevelopmentDrums.org. He also writes about running. Full Bio Follow @owenbarder
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Showing posts on the Views from the Center blog. View author posts on: EBRD Raises the Bar for International AppointmentsMay 21, 2012By Owen Barder in Economic Development, International Financial Institutions Tags: EBRD, Economic Development, IMF, International Financial Institutions, World Bank
On Friday evening, the governors of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) selected a new president: British civil servant Sir Suma Chakrabarti. The decision is important because the EBRD has recently taken on a major global challenge: assisting the countries of the Arab Spring. It also matters because the selection process raised the bar for open, transparent and merit-based leadership selection at other international institutions, including the World Bank, IMF and the other regional development banks. 1 Comment »Interviews with EBRD CandidatesMay 14, 2012By Owen Barder in Economic Development, International Financial Institutions Tags: Economic Development, Europe, International Financial Institutions
On Friday the Governors of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will decide who will be the Bank’s next President. Today we are publishing interviews with four of the candidates. In September 2009, the leaders of the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh called for the “the heads and senior leadership of all international institutions [to] be appointed through an open, transparent and merit-based process.” Despite this commitment, over last few months European Ministers have been horse-trading behind closed doors to try to get one of their nationals into a number of jobs which are up for grabs: as well as the Presidency of the EBRD, Ministers have to find a new Chair of the Eurogroup, someone to head the Eurozone’s permanent bail-out fund, and a new member of the board of the European Central Bank. But European Ministers have not been able to reach agreement, so for the first time ever the EBRD Governors have not been presented with a fait accompli. Comment »CGD Europe Asks: Who Should Be the EBRD’s Next President?May 10, 2012By Owen Barder in Economic Development, International Financial Institutions Tags: Economic Development, International Financial Institutions
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will appoint its next president in ten days, after months of deliberation. Many in the international development community are pushing for the process to be open, transparent and merit-based–a rallying cry you’ll recall from the recent World Bank presidential selection process. On behalf of CGD Europe, We’ve invited each of the five EBRD presidential candidates to join me for podcast interviews on their vision for the bank’s future. 1 Comment »It’s (Still) Time to Try Something New to Pressure Assad in SyriaApril 16, 2012By Owen Barder in Global Development, Human Rights, Regions, United Nations Tags: Assad, Syria
This is a joint post with Kimberly Elliott The April 12 deadline for a complete ceasefire in Syria seems to have slightly damped the violence in Syria for now, but alone it will do nothing to ensure a peaceful transition to a democratic government. President Bashar Assad’s government is still not complying with other parts of the UN brokered peace plan aimed at ending more than a year of deadly violence, and world leaders are insisting that a credible political transition must take place quickly for this fragile progress to hold any weight. Comment »The World Bank Gets OpenMarch 30, 2012By Owen Barder in International Financial Institutions, World Bank Tags: Data Transparency, International Financial Institutions, World Bank
The World Bank has responded to concerns about its recent agreement with Google with a welcome announcement that it will only support mapping collaborations which make crowd-sourced data publicly available – and that means not collaborating this way with Google. This is important because the World Bank is a leader in the use of maps and geospatial data for both humanitarian relief and for longer-term development. It aims eventually to map the world’s social infrastructure, and it is a leading member of the Open Aid Partnership. The World Bank’s announcement that it will not work with closed systems is a big boost for advocates for open mapping. 1 Comment »Don’t Be Evil (World Bank & Google Edition)February 27, 2012By Owen Barder in World Bank Tags: Data Transparency, World Bank
This post first appeared on Owen Abroad, along with a list of suggested further readings. Please post any comments on the original version. I am a generally a fan of both the World Bank and of Google, but we should all be worried about their recent deal. The intention is good: it is to promote crowd-sourcing of maps, to improve planning in disasters and to improve the planning, management and monitoring of public services. This is an important goal, which is now being made possible by new technologies and the spread of the internet. The deal is sufficiently important for World Bank Managing Director Caroline Anstey to write about it in the opinion pages of the New York Times: Comment »Brian Atwood (OECD-DAC Chair) Reflects on Busan ProgressDecember 8, 2011By Owen Barder in Aid Effectiveness Tags: Aid Effectiveness, OECD DAC
Brian Atwood, the chair of the Development Assistance Committee at the OECD (and administrator of USAID from 1992 to 1998), was one of the key figures at last week’s Busan High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness. He had to help find a balance between broadening the alliance to include new and emerging donors with pushing for further and faster reforms among the main existing donors and multilateral institutions. He has shared with us his reflections on the progress made in Busan, and I encourage you to read them below. He argues that the agreement reached there has set a new direction in the effort to rationalize the global architecture for development. 2 Comments »How the Open Government Partnership May Have Contributed to BusanDecember 5, 2011By Owen Barder in Aid Effectiveness Tags: Aid Effectiveness
This is a joint post with Stephanie Majerowicz “The defining division these days is increasingly: open or closed? Are we open to the changing world? Or do we see its menace, but not its possibilities?” —Tony Blair, A Global Alliance for Global Values, September 2006 It is easy to be cynical about international summits and their carefully drafted communiqués. But they sometimes matter more than people expect. (If they didn’t, why would government officials put so much time and effort into negotiating the text?) Even if the text is often a bland compromise, these meetings can help to move an issue forward, by locking in a new consensus which forms the platform for further progress. 4 Comments »Will Donors Hide behind China?November 28, 2011By Owen Barder in Aid Effectiveness, China, Transparency Tags: Aid Effectiveness, China, iati, OECD DAC, Transparency
This post was originally featured on Owen Barder’s Owen Abroad: Thoughts on Development and Beyond blog. Will the largest aid donors hide behind China to excuse their inability to make substantial improvements in foreign aid? How can Busan balance the desire to be more universal with the pressing need for real changes in the way aid is given? Comment »Effective and Transparent DonorsNovember 17, 2011By Owen Barder in Aid Effectiveness, Transparency Tags: Aid Effectiveness, Transparency
This post was originally featured on Owen Barder’s Owen Abroad: Thoughts on Development and Beyond blog. In two weeks there will be a huge international meeting on aid effectiveness in Busan, South Korea. Ban Ki-moon and Hillary Clinton will be among the two thousand delegates who gather together to discuss improvements in how aid is delivered. Though David Cameron and Barack Obama said (in a joint statement) that they would ensure that Busan “transforms the way bilateral aid is delivered around the world”, it looks increasingly as if the meeting will, as Simon Maxwell notes on his blog, produce “a bark but no bite.” Though it is full of worthy intent, there is little in the latest (fourth) draft of the Busan Outcome Document which suggests that it will result in more changes in donor behaviour than did the communiques from previous summits in Rome (2003), Paris (2005) and Accra (2008). Comment »What Happens When Donors Fail to Meet Their Commitments?September 27, 2011By Owen Barder in Global Development, International Financial Institutions Tags: DAC, International Financial Institutions, OECD
This is a joint post with Rita Perakis. Has the aid industry introduced the reforms it agreed in 2005 to make aid more effective? No, according to the survey published last week by the OECD DAC. In this blog post we reflect on why this matters, and what it means for the forthcoming summit in Busan. Related Podcast The development sector is in a mess. Developing countries have to deal with a large and growing number of partners, each with separate agendas, priorities, and requirements. Meetings, reports, milestones and systems multiply. Skilled staff are hired away from governments and from business to serve in local agency offices or NGOs. Funding is fragmented and unpredictable, which means that developing countries are often unable to bring together the scale of long-term, predictable finance needed to undertake significant institutional reform and service delivery. As just one example – in Vietnam, it took 18 months and the involvement of 150 government workers to purchase just five vehicles for a donor-funded project, because of differences in procurement policies among aid agencies. 7 Comments »Can Aid Work? Written Testimony Submitted to the House of LordsJuly 13, 2011By Owen Barder in Aid Effectiveness, Poverty Tags: Aid Effectiveness, Poverty
Living in Ethiopia for the last three years, I saw aid working every day. I saw children going to school, health workers in rural villages, and food or cash preventing hunger for the poorest people. The academic debates about aid effectiveness seem surreal when you are surrounded by tangible, visible evidence of the huge difference aid makes to people’s lives. But on the whole the sceptics are not disputing that kids are going to school because of aid. They are asking what effect that has on the country as a whole. Does it lead to economic growth? Does it drive up the exchange rate and so damage competitiveness? Do governments become dependent on donors and so less accountable to their own citizens? Does aid keep the bad guys in power? 1 Comment »In School Not LearningJuly 5, 2011By Owen Barder in Education, Global Development
This post originally appeared on Owen Abroad. George Bush famously asked, ‘Is our children learning?’. That’s also the question by Uwezo, a coalition of NGOs working in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Their report published today makes dismal reading about the quality of schools. First, a word about the report. This is not a study by the World Bank, or a group of donors. It is a study by Uwezo, an East African initiative hosted by three NGO networks: TEN/MET in Tanzania, WERK in Kenya and UNNGOF in Uganda, with overall quality assurance and management support from Twaweza. They conducted their own survey (standardized across the countries) to test the literacy and numeracy of more than 100,000 children, the largest ever survey of its kind in the region. When citizens themselves are telling us about whether their public services work, we should be paying attention. Comment »Appointing the Next Managing Director of the IMFMay 16, 2011By Owen Barder in Global Development, International Monetary Fund Tags: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, IMF, Managing Director, Owen Barder
Dominique Strauss-Kahn has been accused of a horrible crime. Like everyone else he is entitled to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. We may, however, soon find ourselves looking for a new Managing Director of the IMF, either because DSK is involved in a legal case or because he has declared himself a candidate to be President of the French Republic. Comment »Pulling Up the Ladder (A Development Critique of Changes in UK Migration Policy)November 30, 2010By Owen Barder in Global Development, Migration, Migration and Labor Mobility Tags: Migration, Migration and Population
This post is originally appeared on Owen Abroad: Thoughts from Owen in Africa. During the mass migration between the middle of the nineteenth century and the outbreak of the first world war, about a third of Europeans migrated from their country of birth, mainly to America. Today levels of migration are proportionately lower, because nation states have imposed much tighter restrictions on the movement of people than at any time in human history. Earlier this year, Lant Pritchett and Michael Clemens laid down a challenge to development policy thinking:
Comment »UK Spending Plans Protect Development SpendingOctober 22, 2010By Owen Barder in Global Development Tags: development, DIFID, Spending Plans, UK
The UK coalition government yesterday announced its spending plans for the next four financial years (to 2014-15). These spending plans are subject to scrutiny and approval by Parliament, though the tradition in Britain is that the spending plans are usually approved without significant amendment. Overall, this spending review is a seismic political event, which will be talked about for many years to come. It will reduce planned spending by £81 billion ($130 billion) a year, and remove about half a million public sector workers from the government payroll. 1 Comment »
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