The Aid Effectiveness Myth in the Context of the Paris Declaration

The Paris Declaration emerged in the DAC-context and reaffirmed the DAC’s position as a focal actor and agenda-setter in international aid. Following the debates on the ‘lost decade’ of development cooperation and the future of aid, an international consensus on aid effectiveness was proclaimed in the Paris Declaration, which was endorsed at the DAC’s Second High-Level Forum in 2005.

New qualities of the Paris Declaration lie in its integrative role, as it strives to coordinate efforts to make aid more effective. The five core principles are presented as a coherent body of concepts organising social relationships and practices in the field of international development coop­eration under the umbrella of ownership and partnership. The oECD- DAC depicts the principles in an aid effectiveness pyramid which implies a hierarchical order of the principles. The ultimate goal is ownership, while

Table 13.1 Core principles of the Paris declaration

1. Ownership: Developing countries set their own strategies for poverty reduction, improve their institutions and tackle corruption

2. Alignment. Donor countries align behind these objectives and use local systems

3. Harmonisation: Donor countries coordinate, simplify procedures and share information to avoid duplication

4. Managing for Results'. Developing countries and donors shift focus to development results and results get measured

5.

Source: Adapted from OECD (2005) harmonisation of donor policies and alignment with recipient countries’ strategies are necessary preconditions and processes towards ownership. Managing for results describes the organisation of the overall process along which aid is distributed and development cooperation projects are designed, operationalised, and implemented. Results-based development cooperation puts focus on the outcome and impact of said projects and assumes that while political objectives and norms may vary, the interest in solid results and successful projects can and should be shared by all development partners. In the Paris Declaration, mutual accountability serves as another principle which reorganises the relations between donor and recipient governments. Whilst partner countries are called upon to enhance the role of parliaments and endorse participatory approaches (increasing domestic accountability), from a donor’s perspective it is sup­posed to mean that aid effectiveness endeavours are scrutinised not only by the already well-established OECD-DAC peer-review process but by ‘partners’ as well.

In a nutshell, the Paris Principles reflect a consensus of the donor com­munity and tell a specific tale of development aid, which is evoked by the language it uses: cooperation, partner countries, harmonisation, owner­ship, accountability. The careful and universalising composition of these terms, their highly abstract content and the meaning that is ascribed to each of them update the development myth and rewrite it as a myth that speaks of effective aid flows between equals:

Donors and recipients are partners. They participate in an open and transparent dialogue, agree on development goals, share their ideas and thoughts, and hold each other to account. This ensures that development aid is safe, sound and effective. Development aid as such is a normality, a uni-directional transfer without reciprocal exchange.

In a first reading, the function of the aid effectiveness myth is a har­monising one. The myth tells us that after the ‘lost decade’ and the Washington Consensus, the very idea of development aid can be saved from former shortcomings and exuberant ideological aims. Good devel­opment aid is possible. Development aid can be objective, result-oriented, and free from contradictions if only donors and recipients commit them­selves to the Paris Declaration’s norms and operate according to them. Yet harmonisation also means a loss of political alternatives for the sake of an apparent consensus among ‘development partners’ (Hyden 2008). This kind of consensus is preventive and pragmatic, as it rules out ideological conflicts over development aid and thereby assumes that a non-ideological standpoint towards development is possible. Furthermore, it works in a functional manner, as it allows for effective aid governance, although the donors’ aims and ideologies may differ. Thus, the harmonising function of the myth is also productive inasmuch as it creates storylines which allow political consensus among donors on an abstract level.

Thus, the myth also bears various depoliticising notions. The Paris Principles—at least conceptually—move the final decision power over aid flows to recipient governments. Apparently breaking with the long his­tory of clearly identifiable and unequal power relations that pervaded the donor-recipient relationship, the Paris Declaration blurs this understand­ing of power. Despite the fact that the boundaries between donors and aid recipients remain stable, power becomes a force that is no longer clearly located but is accessible for every actor. In that way, politicised aspects of this relationship, such as the historicity, the inequality of the donor­recipient relationship, and the divergences in interests get obscured as they are replaced by a relationship among equals.

As the myth unfolds, it also creates some silencing and naturalising effects.

Counterfactually though, we also need to ask for emancipatory or empowering functions of this myth. While talking of partnership can in a postcolonial reading imply the denial of material differences, this term could at least be used to demand equal forms of participation and delib­eration, which could be claimed e.g. from donors who promote budget­ary support. Thus a critical appropriation or subversion of the term seems possible. Also the demand for accountability can, to a certain degree, involve the possibility of articulating discontent with aid. Yet this reading of accountability still takes for granted sufficient capacities of all actors involved—hence the empowering potential of this term seems limited. A compelling example for a subversion of the Paris Declaration’s terminol­ogy is the case of Bolivia. Here, the claim for ownership was used to partly reverse donor-recipient relations and ‘re-own’ the control over aid policy objectives. Conditionality of aid programmes is prohibited, and all pro­grams need to pass through the Foreign Ministry. While this—together with action taken on other policy fields—led to the break of US-Bolivian relations, other traditional donors such as Spain kept to Bolivia’s provi­sions (cf. Wolff 2012; see also McGee and Heredia 2012). To be success­ful, however, such rereadings depend on certain material and discursive/ normative preconditions: strategic alternatives and exit options, robust and interdependent aid relations, sufficient economic interests on both sides, and stable and sound (alternative) belief systems on the recipient’s side, as only then the power to redefine policies can be exerted.