Nadia Molenaers

The World Bank, Participation and PRSP: The Bolivian Case Revisited

Abstract‘Highly Indebted Poor Countries’ can receive debt relief from bilateral and multilateral donors if, among other things, they produce a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). Civil society must be involved in the formulation of the PRSP. It is expected that the participation of civil society will increase ownership, accountability, effectiveness and political performance. We argue that participation, as imposed by donors, is too ambitious to be workable and too vague to be monitored. The participation conditionality should be moulded to the specific history and institutional context of every country. We use Bolivia, generally regarded as an example of successful civil society participation in the PRSP, to make our point.

Associations or Informal Networks? Social Capital and Local Development Practices

In Western contexts, associational life is mostly thought of as the historical and almost natural outcome of the accumulated experiences of bottom-up, horizontal cooperation among citizens. The attitudinal disposition to trust, reciprocate and cooperate is closely linked to the existence of certain structures, like associations and associational membership, which exactly indicate the overcoming of the collective action dilemma. Both attitudes and structures, thus, form the two main components within the social capital debate. As such, large numbers of associations and elevated levels of associational membership tend to go hand in hand with high generalized trust scores. Taken together they point to the existence of a vibrant civil society with large social capital stocks (Putnam 1993). Social capital, understood as the presence of dense, horizontal networks of civic engagement and generalized norms of trust and reciprocity, seems to be the driving force for democratic performance and economic prosperity (Putnam 1993; Knack and Keefer 1997; Harrison and Huntington 2000).

Evaluating NGO-capacity development interventions: Enhancing frameworks, fitting the (Belgian) context

Capacity development support of Southern partners has become a cornerstone of the work of many Northern development NGOs. While there is a growing consensus in the aid sector about the importance of capacity development (CD), the support base among the general public and policy makers for these kinds of activities is weak. This is linked with the observed difficulties of demonstrating the relevance and effects of CD efforts. In 2008, the Belgian Special Evaluation Office commissioned a large-scale evaluation focusing on CD support within NGO partnerships, including 31 partnerships of 21 Belgian NGOs in six countries. Important methodological challenges emerged, related to (1) the large diversity in actors, projects, themes and contexts that had to be assessed, (2) the dynamic nature and non-linearity of CD processes, (3) and the implicit character of NGO practice in this area. This article argues that the eclectic use of different frameworks – including more recently developed ones related to the nature of CD, support for CD, and organizational change – supports the production of comprehensive evaluation results.

Who Takes a Seat at the Pro-Poor Table?: Civil Society Participation in the Honduran Poverty Reduction Strategy

Although much has been written on civil society participation in the formulation and monitoring of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), very little systematic and scientific evidence exists on the kind of organizations that participate and the elements that explain their involvement in these processes. This article considers one country case, Honduras, for which survey data were gathered from 101 civil society organizations (CSOs) in 2006. This study examines the characteristics these organizations display which explain (non)participation in the next participatory round of the PRSPs. The findings challenge some of the by now widely accepted ideas relating to the kinds of organizations involved in PRSP processes. The idea that predominantly urban-based, highly professional, well-funded, donor-bred-and-fed nongovernmental organizations participate is too blunt. The Honduran case shows that the players in participative processes are more diversified than much of the current literature on PRSPs suggests.

The rise and demise of European budget support: political economy of collective European Union donor action

This article uses the example of European budget support to show the differences in applying principal–agent and collective action analysis to the donor–recipient relationship and the incentives of European donors. Our results show that the Paris Declaration, while formulating the ‘right’ principles, carries a number of assumptions regarding the (cap)ability of donors to act collectively. This assumption, however, fails to include the political economy of European donors and their own political, institutional and individual incentives that undermined this capability substantially. In other words, the domestic political costs and incentives for European donors to implement the Paris agenda, and in particular aid modalities such as budget support, were not given enough consideration when the aid effectiveness agenda was formulated.

The Europeanisation of budget support: do government capacity and autonomy matter?

ABSTRACT In the last decade, budget support (BS) has become one of the most popular and controversial aid modalities. The tensions between the EU and member states regarding the use of this modality set in motion interesting policy influencing dynamics. We reconstruct these processes looking at two turning-points (the inception and the subsequent reform of the BS policy) and compare over time the positions, capacities and policies of three EU member states with varying positions towards BS: Germany, the UK and Belgium. We find no evidence that the EU has been able to download its BS policies. Instead we find some evidence of limited delegation to the EU level, and strong indications of member states uploading policy preferences to the EU level. We further argue that domestic politics in member states matters more than EU aid policy prescriptions, and that the EUs policy space is crucially influenced by its own and member states capacities and autonomy to build political alliances around policy preferences.

Look Who's Talking. Explaining Water-Related Information Sharing and Demand for Action Among Ugandan Villagers.

Many national water policies propagate community-based participatory approaches to overcome weaknesses in supply-driven rural water provision, operation, and maintenance. Citizen involvement is thought to stimulate bottom-up accountability and broaden the information base, which may enrich design and implementation processes and foster improved water accessibility and sustainability. Practices on the ground, however, are embedded in socio-political realities which mediate possible beneficial effects of participatory approaches. This paper builds on full social network data collected in a Ugandan village to study the social and political reality of two distinct levels of participation, i.e. local information sharing among citizens and a more active appeal to fellow citizens to improve water services. We use Logistic Regression Quadratic Assignment Procedure to explore what type of actor and network traits influence information sharing and whether the same factors are in play in the demand for action to remedy water-related problems. Whereas social aspects (social support relations) and homophily (using the same water source, the same gender) play an important role in information sharing, it is the educational level, in particular, of the villager who is called upon that is important when villagers demand action. Our findings also demonstrate that those most in need of safe water do not mobilize their information sharing ties to demand for action. This indicates that building local water policies and practice exclusively on locally existing demand for action may fail to capture the needs of the most deprived citizens.

Determinants of the flow of bilateral adaptation-related climate change financing to Sub-Saharan African Countries

The apparent mismatch between countries receiving Adaptation-related Climate Change Financing (ACCF) and those most vulnerable to climate change is a concern which is the motivation for this research. This paper examines the determining factors of receiving ACCF for sub-Saharan African countries and finds that the recipient policy and an existing aid relationship are significant determinants of funding. ACCF therefore appears to be contingent on democratic characteristics of the recipient and prevailing a donor-recipient relationship, with vulnerability not being a factor. Our research draws a parallel between ACCF and traditional, bilateral aid allocation, and stresses the importance of accurate climate finance allocation practices.

Responsibility, capacity, greenness or vulnerability? What explains the levels of climate aid provided by bilateral donors?

ABSTRACT At the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit, donors pledged to ‘jointly mobilize’

Mapping the Belgian NGDO Landscape in Relation to Development Cooperation: Dealing with Fragmentation and Emerging Complexities

100 billion/year for climate finance by 2020. The Copenhagen Accord and other agreements do not specify who should provide how much of this collective target beyond the general principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR&RC), according to which the more responsible a country is for climate change and/or the more capable of paying, the more climate finance it should provide. Two additional burden-sharing mechanisms may explain how much climate finance donors provide: willingness to pay or ‘greenness’ and self-interest. These mechanisms are tested to determine which best explains current patterns in climate finance commitments by analysing bilateral climate aid. There is evidence for capability—richer countries provide more climate aid. In contrast, responsibility, greenness or self-interest do not induce more climate aid commitments. Better understanding the drivers of climate aid helps to mobilize more climate finance, and advances understanding of (sectoral) aid allocation.