Comments on: Why is fragmentation a problem? http://www.owen.org/blog/3062 Thoughts on development and beyond Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:50:24 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Sam Gardner http://www.owen.org/blog/3062/comment-page-1#comment-5381 Sam Gardner Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:40:11 +0000 http://www.owen.org/blog/3062#comment-5381 Very good point. This debate touches on the "networks and markets" approach. A tender procedure, according to agreed standards might be simpler than creating all these new monopolies. I would like to expand on Ranil's remark: The Good Donor initiatives do NOT include direct effectiveness indicators, as this would be seen as micro-management. Instead they use the participation in the aid monopolies with little or no oversight (flexible funding), meaning with little leverage to get evidence of results. The current process leads to donors to be shamed in more of the same behavior. Very good point. This debate touches on the “networks and markets” approach. A tender procedure, according to agreed standards might be simpler than creating all these new monopolies.
I would like to expand on Ranil’s remark: The Good Donor initiatives do NOT include direct effectiveness indicators, as this would be seen as micro-management. Instead they use the participation in the aid monopolies with little or no oversight (flexible funding), meaning with little leverage to get evidence of results.
The current process leads to donors to be shamed in more of the same behavior.

]]> By: Ranil Dissanayake http://www.owen.org/blog/3062/comment-page-1#comment-5378 Ranil Dissanayake Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:26:20 +0000 http://www.owen.org/blog/3062#comment-5378 Yes, this is great. They've totally nailed it. I talked about incentives in a similar fashion a while ago, again getting into why donors cluster: http://aidthoughts.org/?p=323 One final thought. For many donors one of their incentives is to maintain their reputation as a 'good donor' in order to get preferential access to the 'best' sectors and projects. As such, naming-and-shaming will have some impact, *so long as a donor wants to do this with Government cooperation*. thus naming and shaming has a bigger impact on the donors like Norway and DfID who care about this than those who patently don't in practice, like USAID and the EU. Maintenance of reputation is one incentive. However, as the authors imply, there are many other, bigger incentives. Yes, this is great. They’ve totally nailed it. I talked about incentives in a similar fashion a while ago, again getting into why donors cluster: http://aidthoughts.org/?p=323

One final thought. For many donors one of their incentives is to maintain their reputation as a ‘good donor’ in order to get preferential access to the ‘best’ sectors and projects. As such, naming-and-shaming will have some impact, *so long as a donor wants to do this with Government cooperation*. thus naming and shaming has a bigger impact on the donors like Norway and DfID who care about this than those who patently don’t in practice, like USAID and the EU.

Maintenance of reputation is one incentive. However, as the authors imply, there are many other, bigger incentives.

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