Dialogue in Pursuit of Development - Are you looking for one of ...

need for an internal and an external dialogue without interventions which
take time. However, in practice both sides consider it more important to
receive HIPC status than to perform a time-consuming consultation and
dialogue process.
Continuity
As the dialogue requires trust, time and understanding of each other’s views,
continuity is of great importance. Turnover of personnel on either side is
therefore regarded as a complication regarding a sustained good dialogue.
On the donor side change of personnel usually takes place every second or
third year. Even if the aid agency has clear policies, which must be embraced
by any officeholder, the personal element of the dialogue should not be
underestimated. “It is very important that people have a profile of each
other to build a dialogue. I now know that no matter how many thoughts
one has put into documents, what really matters is the people who work
out the things in practice. Changes of personnel easily break down relationships
and healthy procedures painfully built over many years (Morapaya).”
Continuity coupled with good handing-over procedures is thus important
for the dialogue.
Language
Usually, the dialogue between the partners is undertaken in one of the
Western global languages – English (most common), French or Spanish. In
addition, most of the documentation used in the dialogue is written in the
same languages. This creates problems, firstly through the exclusion of most
people, particularly on the recipient side, from the discussions and secondly
because it often creates misunderstandings: “The language itself, which in
some cases is foreign to both parties, is bound by culturally dominant meanings
(Morapaya).” In the internal dialogue, large groups are excluded if written
material is not translated into local languages, a process which is very
time-consuming and expensive (Winblad, Mysliwiec).
Donor co-ordination – harmonisation
Earlier, we stressed that recipient governments often lack capacity to plan
and carry out a quality dialogue. These scarce resources are stretched due to
lack of harmony in donor approaches. If harmonisation of procedures –
monitoring and evaluation reporting, accounting, and auditing – could be
agreed upon, this would drastically reduce the transaction costs for the recipient
government. However, this harmony is far from being reached in
many countries: “Even in contexts in which there are sound government
systems, donor harmonisation does not always follow, not even amongst the
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