Recipient Ownership Research Articles

Development assistance, donor–recipient dynamic, and domestic policy: a case study of two health interventions supported by World Bank–UK and Global Fund in China

BackgroundThis study views sustainability after the exit of development assistance for health (DAH) as a shared responsibility between donors and recipients and sees transitioning DAH-supported interventions into domestic health policy as a pathway to this sustainability. It aims to uncover and understand the reemergent aspects of the donor–recipient dynamic in DAH and how they contribute to formulating domestic health policy and post-DAH sustainability.MethodsWe conducted a case study on two DAH-supported interventions: medical financial assistance in the Basic Health Services Project supported by the World Bank and UK (1998–2007) and civil society engagement in the HIV/AIDS Rolling Continuation Channel supported by the Global Fund (2010–2013) in China. From December 2021 to December 2022, we analyzed 129 documents and interviewed 46 key informants. Our data collection and coding were guided by a conceptual framework based on Walt and Gilson’s health policy analysis model and the World Health Organization’s health system building blocks. We used process tracing for analysis.ResultsAccording to the collected data, our case study identified three reemergent, interrelated aspects of donor–recipient dynamics: different preferences and compromise, partnership dialogues, and responsiveness to the changing context. In the case of medical financial assistance, the dynamic was characterized by long-term commitment to addressing local needs, on-site mutual learning and understanding, and local expertise cultivation and knowledge generation, enabling proactive responses to the changing context. In contrast, the dynamic in the case of HIV/AIDS civil society engagement marginalized genuine civil society engagement, lacked sufficient dialogue, and exhibited a passive response to the context. These differences led to varying outcomes in transnational policy diffusion and sustainability of DAH-supported interventions between the cases.ConclusionsGiven the similarities in potential alternative factors observed in the two cases, we emphasize the significance of the donor–recipient dynamic in transnational policy diffusion through DAH. The study implies that achieving post-DAH sustainability requires a balance between donor priorities and recipient ownership to address local needs, partnership dialogues for mutual understanding and learning, and collaborative international–domestic expert partnerships to identify and respond to contextual enablers and barriers.

Small north and big South: the ownership-donorship nexus in the Amazon Fund

The Amazon Fund is a Brazilian creation with the aim of raising funds to implement national strategies for the reduction of deforestation and sustainable development in the Legal Amazon. This article explains the governing structure of the Amazon Fund and argues that it is an example of an innovative instrument for sustainable development which to a large extent secures national ownership. The innovative elements include pay-for-performance funding, participatory governance and independent monitoring. The fund differentiates itself from traditional development aid by avoiding economic and political conditionalities, emphasizing recipient ownership and responsibility, yet it involves donations from the North to the South. The article further investigates the donors’ scope of influence, focussing on the largest donor, Norway. Notwithstanding the institutional safeguards from donor influence, the article shows that donors remain in power to withhold disbursements if breaches occur, which is illustrated by the example of the 2019 donor freeze of donations and funds use to new projects, and that donors use their partnership with Brazil to discuss how sustainable forest management contributes to the climate and to income generation for local peoples.

Rethinking recipient agency: what can we learn from Haitian accounts?

Development settings have always been uneven fields of power where recipient agency is limited. However, since the late 1990s, ideas of recipient participation and ownership gained popularity among international financial institutions, donor and recipient governments and aid practitioners. At the same time, with the ‘rise of the South’, the development cooperation landscape became much more polycentric. At least in theory, there is more choice, giving recipients more bargaining power and thus more agency. ‘Emerging’ donors talk about horizontality, sovereignty and shared identities, but what are the actual practices on the ground? How do recipients see themselves in interactions with different Northern/Southern donors? Are North/South categories relevant when analysing recipient agency, or are there other factors that are more analytically useful? This paper approaches recipient agency by looking at agricultural cooperation in Haiti. It is based on interviews conducted with an extended spectrum of Haitian actors involved in projects with four donors/partners: the United States, France, Brazil and Cuba. It looks into recipient perceptions and experiences of agency in relation to Northern donors and Southern partners by exploring project conceptualisation, execution, financing and everyday interactions.

Exploring the complexity of partnerships in development policy and practice: Upstairs and downstairs

AbstractMotivationThe term partnership, and the balance of ownership within it, significantly influence the direction of the development field and whether it will be able to address increasingly complicated global challenges such as climate change, peace and security and growing inequality.PurposeThe article explores the nature of government donor–recipient partnerships, the struggle over ownership, and the possibility of transitioning from top‐down aid policy to genuine development co‐operation.Approach and MethodsThe discussion is based on the lead author’s doctoral research and the authors’ experiences of working with the Coady International Institute and the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative.FindingsThe research revealed ample evidence that proclamations of more equitable partnerships or recipient ownership of aid policy are undermined by historical power dynamics and coherency to dominant development narratives. However, a closer examination also found some room to create change as policy is negotiated and interpreted in a multitude of smaller policy spaces, including influences from networks of civil society organizations (CSOs). The article looks at two CSOs that use their “downstairs” position to act as interlocutors with Southern partners. In some cases, they fostered more equitable partnerships and support South–South networks by applying an emancipatory learning approach and adapting aid modalities. This points to the potential for slow—and often reluctant—progress towards more equitable global partnerships and innovative practices.Policy ImplicationsThe findings suggest that the asymmetrical nature of government donor–recipient partnerships can be addressed through a more nuanced learning approach and increased engagement with CSOs that can experiment with project modalities and support for CSO networks.

The Ownership Paradox: Continuity and Change

This article introduces the special section on The Ownership Paradox: Continuity and Change. In the text, we discuss how the principle and requirement of ownership is accommodated and how this may affect international development cooperation, drawing upon the various contributions in the section. The article is structured around the three crosscutting themes of who is to ‘own’, what is to be owned, and how are donor-recipient relations and approaches affected by the urge to demonstrate recipient ownership. Among the issues discussed are variations across aid modalities and groups of donors and recipients, an excessive focus on the organisation of aid at the expense of its contents, and the emergence a of a shared ownership related vocabulary.

Relevant knowledge and recipient ownership: Chinese MNCS’ knowledge transfer in Africa

This paper examines emerging market multinational corporations’ (EMNCs’) knowledge transfer (KT) in emerging markets using case studies of Chinese MNCs (CMNCs) in Africa. CMNCs are found to transfer “relevant knowledge”, existing knowledge reconfigured so that recipients can apply it more effectively with less effort in the new context. Relevance is ensured through recipients exerting ownership of the KT process, influencing what knowledge is transferred and how it is transferred. We summarise EMNCs’ KT process in a “relevant knowledge recipient ownership model”. The model contributes to KT theory by refining and empirically testing a new type of knowledge – relevant knowledge – and a new transfer model – recipient ownership – associated with EMNCs. It leads to a “relevance-based view” in which EMNCs’ competitive advantage in emerging markets is significantly enhanced by knowledge relevance rather than superiority. This contributes to a better understanding of EMNCs’ competitiveness in emerging markets as created from distinct characteristics of their relevant knowledge (applicability, assimilability, affordability) and recipient-driven transfer (selection, scrutiny and synthesis).

Having, Giving, Taking: Lessons on Ownership in China's Domestic Development and Contributions of its Engagement

During recent years, the impact of China's engagement with Africa has gained increased attention. Discussions have revolved around the negative impact China potentially has on governance, human rights and debt sustainability, as well as the positive impacts of increased aid, trade and investment in Africa, especially the construction of much needed infrastructure. A number of researchers have also looked at some of the lessons of China's development that can be applied in Africa. One of the most important lessons from China for Africa is that countries should be responsible for their own development, and not rely on foreign donors. However, recipients are often restricted in their development strategies by donor requirements. The article will then analyse how China's engagement with Africa contributes to increasing the negotiating capital of countries in Africa helping them to take ownership of their own development processes. It will conclude that China's foreign aid programme is not geared specifically towards increasing recipient ownership, although there are a number of direct and indirect contributions. In addition, its international relations principles prevent more direct involvement in improving recipient ownership. For China to make a greater contribution to recipient ownership, a number of principles need to be revised.

The Great Divide? Donor perceptions of budget support, eligibility and policy dialogue

Budget Support (bs) has been considered the aid modality that best realises the Paris Declaration principles of alignment, harmonisation and respect for recipient ownership. In design the modality has a very strong technocratic focus, and the oecd/dac has endorsed the idea that bs should be delinked from broader political concerns. In reality, however, donors do use bs to leverage more and better democratic governance. This political use of bs is not limited to exceptional moments when the political situation seriously deteriorates in certain countries. This article shows that such use is grounded in fundamentally different visions and policies that donors hold regarding the scope of leverage for bs. Such starkly diverging interpretations of which reforms bs can ‘buy’ undermine the objectives the modality was designed to achieve.

An assessment of debt‐for‐education swaps. Case studies on swap initiatives between Germany and Indonesia and between Spain and El Salvador

A decade has passed since participants in the World Education Forum committed themselves to achieve, by 2015, the six Education for All (EFA) goals under the Dakar Framework for Action. Despite significant progress, some of the goals are likely to be missed by a large margin. Besides the absence of a well co‐ordinated multi‐donor approach in education, another major problem is the lack of funds: the EFA financing gap in low‐income countries is now estimated at around $16 billion annually. This article zooms in on debt swaps as one particular instrument of innovative financing. More specifically it assesses the macro‐economic impacts of debt‐for‐education swaps and their relation to the aid approach now advocated by the donor community. It does so on the basis of theoretical insights from debt relief and case studies on recent swap initiatives between Germany and Indonesia and between Spain and El Salvador. Our conclusions are mixed. On the one hand, typical debt swaps suffer from macro‐economic flaws and, in view of competition amongst sectors, have limited potential in narrowing the EFA deficit. On the other hand, our case studies suggest that debt‐for‐education swaps can be engineered to better comply with the needs of recipient ownership and could in the future address deserving niche problems.

Projects and programmes: a development practitioner's critique of the transition to a sector-wide approach to educational development in Nepal

This article utilises the main principles of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness as one conceptual and methodological strategy for making sense of Nepal's recent experiences of educational reform, primarily an increasing loss in ownership in the transition from a project to programme (SWAp) aid delivery paradigm. Whilst drawing on theoretical ideas and concepts from a range of fields, my orientation to the object of Nepal is particular: from 1994 to 2000 I served as Danida's Chief Technical Adviser to the Basic and Primary Education Project (BPEP), allowing me to witness first-hand the shift from the ‘project’ BPEP I (1993–1997) to the ‘programme’ BPEP II (1999–2004). The article argues that despite repeated international declarations and new ‘solutions’ for recipient ownership of aid processes, the reality is a continued loss of ownership in places like Nepal, suggesting a further politics of domination and marginalisation likely to accentuate that country's mixed record of educational development and progress.

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 formula- tion and monitoring of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), very little system- atic and scientifi c 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 organiza- tions display which explain (non)participation in the next participatory round of the PRSPs. The fi ndings 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 organiza- tions participate is too blunt. The Honduran case shows that the players in participative processes are more diversifi ed than much of the current literature on PRSPs suggests. CIVIL SOCIETY PARTICIPATION UNDER THE NEW AID APPROACH: RATIONALE AND STATE OF THE ART The World Bank launched the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) in 1999, and it soon became the linchpin of a new aid approach. The principles of this new aid approach emphasize the importance of recipient ownership over national development strategies, pro-poor results, and civil society involvement in draft- ing and monitoring poverty reduction strategies. The production of such a PRSP gave access to debt relief, concessional assistance from the international fi nancial institutions (IFIs), and more aid from the larger donor community. Moreover, the PRSP was promoted as a medium- and long-term national economic and social policy planning instrument (Lazarus 2008). The new aid approach indicates a de- sire to move away from donor-driven development to give more room to home- grown, government-led, and nationally owned poverty reduction strategies. One of the most remarkable issues in the PRSP was the participation condi- tionality. Governments had to consult civil society during the formulation of the fi rst PRSP draft, and participation had to become institutionalized through

Ownership and Donorship: Analytical Issues and a Tanzanian Case Study

During the 1990s development funders 1 officially incorporated into their rhetoric the ideal of passing control of the design, implementation, and monitoring of projects and programmes to recipient ‘stakeholders’, 2 a goal summarised in the term ‘national ownership’. Ownership has joined a list of funder-agency concerns that in recent years has included governance, institutions, poverty reduction, sustainable development, participation, and decentralisation. Whether or not economic performance improves with greater ownership, the move to encourage recipient country ownership represents a change in the aid relationship. Numerous and detailed policy conditionalities characterised the Washington Consensus programmes of the 1990s. The rhetoric of ownership appeared to signal a retreat from that approach to the relationship between funding agencies and recipient governments (‘development partnerships’). This article explores the implications of a commitment to recipient ownership. The conditionalities associated with loans and grants are central to the discussion, particularly in the context of the Millennium Development Goals. Most attention has focused on the seven poverty reduction goals. Less has been directed to goal eight, which calls for new partnerships for development. The article discusses these issues in the context of recent developments in aid delivery in Tanzania. The definition of ‘ownership’ is central to an analytical discussion. The meaning varies across donors, lenders and governments, in part reflecting the history of agencies and intergovernmental relations, as well as ideology. 3 For example, the interpretation by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) of ownership, which was profoundly affected by the politics of international aid in Sweden from the 1970s onwards, differs considerably from that of the World Bank. 4 Similarly, the Ethiopian government’s more literal interpretation and the more funder-accommodating approach of the Tanzanian government are influenced by the different histories of these countries. The lack of an agreed definition arises partly because recipient control of development assistance means different things in different concrete circumstances. In addition, vagueness may serve the interest of parties less willing to reform the more obvious manifestations of ‘donorship’ (a funder-driven process). Thus, one must be cautious in attributing too much meaning to the emerging consensus among development funders that ownership is central to aid policy. 5

Multilateral development aid for Africa

Inequities and inefficiencies in development aid arise from donor–recipient motivational conflicts, agency problems, and institutional deficiencies. Recent thinking on reforming official aid recommends technocratic solutions including recipient ownership, selectivity, budgetary grants, and multilateralization of aid management. Locating persistent policy failure in Africa primarily in its political institutions, this paper explores three alternative models of multilateral aid for reconciling need and effectiveness. They are the European Union's (EU's) model of regional aid, the International Development Association's (IDA's) model of concessional loans, and a synthesis model (S-model). Implications are drawn for redesigning aid to Africa that would adequately account for the peculiarities of the world's most prominent development challenge.

Towards A More Effective Conditionality: An Operational Framework

The “inducement” function of conditionality has failed. Its intrusive, shortsighted and ineffective character is now increasingly criticized, and may have contributed, at least in part, to the poor growth performance associated with adjustment programs in sub-Saharan Africa. This article proposes a new approach to conditionality attached to adjustment programs. It is built around three main features: recipient ownership of the appropriate reform program, considered to be a key factor for success; a more long-term approach to economic reform, avoiding in particular the disruptive practice of stop-go disbursements, and enhanced donor coordination as a factor for greater aid efficiency. Its implementation should lead to greater aid selectivity in favor of reforming countries, increased responsibility for aid recipients to decide on the rhythm and sequencing of reforms, and smoother aid flows with less disruptive aid suspensions.