Paul Clements

Reducing World Poverty by Improving Evaluation of Development Aid

This article argues that given its structural conditions, development aid bears a particularly heavy burden of learning and accountability. Unfortunately, however, the organization of evaluation guarantees that evaluations will be inconsistent and it creates incentives for positive bias. This article presents evidence from organizational studies of aid agencies, from the public choice literature, from eight development projects in Africa, and from one in India, that demonstrates positive bias and inconsistency in monitoring and evaluation. It proposes that the evaluation function should be professionalized through an approach titled “monitoring and evaluation for cost effectiveness,” and it compares this approach to the World Banks results-based monitoring and evaluation, the Development Assistance Committees five evaluation criteria, and evaluations based on randomized trials. This article explains the analytics of the proposed approach and suggests directions for further research.

A Rawlsian analysis of the plight of Bihar

This article presents an analysis of the plight of Bihar, India’s poorest state, based on Rawlsian microfoundations as contrasted with those underlying neoclassical economics and rational choice theory. While these two disciplines, conceive of the individual as a rationally self-interested utility-maximizing agent, Rawls credits the individual with a reasonable as well as a rational capacity. A Rawlsian analysis, therefore, identifies and explains the principles upon which political action in Bihar has been based. Rather than focus on the failure to establish conditions for competitive markets or the maximizing strategies of political actors, this article identifies conflicts between democratic principles of equality and hierarchical principles of caste as central causes for Bihar’s stark conditions.

Informational Standards in Development Agency Management

Abstract How well do international development agencies support development in poor countries? Idealist, legal-bureaucratic, and populist views insist that they often do a good job, and documentary evidence suggests that aid generally works (Cassen and Associates, 1994, Does Aid Work? Report to an Intergovernmental Task Force, second edition. Oxford University Press, New York). Realist, neomarxist and neoliberal critiques, however, suggest that documents may not be reliable. This paper presents evidence of informational standards and development impacts from four US Agency for International Development (USAID) and four World Bank projects in Africa. We find significant positive bias in project documents; promotional and analytical purposes often collide. Weak informational standards undermine incentives to manage for impact and reduce the prospects for bureaucratic learning.

An approach to poverty alleviation for large international development agencies

Abstract This essay explores the nature of the poverty alleviation problem from the perspective of international development funding agencies. These agencies have been poorly structured to promote the interests of the poor. Agencies such as the World Bank and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) can achieve better results by creating independent units devoted exclusively to poverty alleviation. These units should immerse their staff more completely in local societies, with lower pay scales and longer tours of duty. A revised form of cost-benefit analysis around which these units should orient their work is presented. Previous analyses of poverty alleviation opportunities and failures have neglected funding agency influences.

Book Review: A Handbook for Development Practitioners: Ten Steps to a Results-Based Monitoring and Evaluation System

In this section, recent books applicable to the broad field of program evaluation are reviewed. In most cases, a single book will be considered in a review, but in some instances, multiple books may be jointly reviewed to illuminate similarities and differences in intent, philosophy, and usefulness. In most cases, a single review will be commissioned for each book. Two or more reviews may be commissioned for books judged by the Editor and/or Book Review Editor to be especially noteworthy works in evaluation. Persons with suggestions of books to be reviewed, or those who wish to submit a review, should contact Lori Wingate at lori.wingate@wmich.edu.

Multilateral development banks and the International Monetary Fund

The fairness of institutions of global economic governance ranks among the most pressing issues of our time. Most approaches to understanding the complex structure of treaties and intergovernmental organizations such as the WTO tend to uncritically accept an economic focus, highlighting gains from trade and the merits of progressive trade and investment liberalization. While the economic arguments are compelling, other ways of thinking about the roles of these institutions have received less attention. The Research Handbook fills this gap by offering a substantial interdisciplinary examination of the normative and policy underpinnings of the international economic order.

The World Bank for Africa or the World Bank for the World Bank

Sub-Saharan Africa saw faster economic growth in the years immediately preceding the 2009 world economic crisis than ever before in history. From 2003 to 2008 the economies of Sub-Saharan Africa grew at an average annual per capita rate of 4 percent,1 compared with averages in the preceding decades (going back in time) of -0.5 percent, -0.8 percent, 0.9 percent, and 1 percent.2 Nevertheless, in 2009 there were 265 million hungry people in Africa,3 32 percent of the region’s population,4 also more than ever before in history. The region’s per capita gross domestic product (GDP) was only

Book Reviews Africa : Peter Uvin, Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1998), 238 pp. Cloth

669 a year, or

59.00, paper

405 excluding Nigeria and South Africa.5 Moreover, the continent was maintaining a reputation for terrible atrocities and enormous human suffering—from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda in the 1990s to the Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Sudan in the 2000s. In two of Africa’s leading economies, Botswana and South Africa, 24 percent and 18 percent of their respective adult populations were infected with the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) virus,6 and Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, with 150 million people, had squandered a fortune in oil revenue through corruption and mismanagement.

24.95

The development community had provided so much aid to the government of Rwanda for so long that it cannot avoid complicity in the genocide this government perpetrated in 1994. When one’s partner has caused the deaths of perhaps a million people, one is well advised to reflect on the nature of the relationship and to reconsider one’s priorities and frame of mind in supporting this partner. In this case the partners are institutions, the multilateral, bilateral and nongovernmental aid organizations on one side and the sovereign government of a nation on the other, engaged in a venture with humanistic intentions. Given