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Widening choices through country programming
In the early 70s, the Swedish government and Sida decided to follow the
examples of UNDP and the World Bank in introducing country programming
and ‘country frames’, allocations which were to be bound through two
or three year agreements. There was strong support in the bureaucracy and
the aid constituency for giving the recipient more influence over the choice
of projects (Wohlgemuth, 1976). Introducing this new approach to my counterparts
in India, I emphasised that country programming meant that they
were now free to choose what to do with the entire country frame. India at
that time suffered a shortage of foreign exchange, and our counterparts immediately
let us know that they wanted to receive the entire country frame
in the form of untied import support. Realising that such a country
programme would not be accepted at headquarters if it did not include even
the smallest family planning project, I appealed to my counterparts in the
interest of sustainability to ask for some family planning element, which
would give the programme a ‘flavour’ of something other than just money.
This was done quoting the parallel of a famous piece of pastry known as the
‘lark pie’. The pastry cook who sold it was pressed to admit that it not only
contained lark meat, there was some horsemeat in it as well. The proportion
was said to be fifty-fifty – one horse for one lark. I could undertake to sell
such a lark pie to my principals, if only we could put in some lark among all
the import support. This was accepted by the Indians with some amusement,
but the sustainability of this approach nevertheless proved to be rather
limited, since after some years the Swedish Parliament decided to phase out
the import support programmes.
negotiating experience has in many instances produced catalysis in the form
of discussion about alternative strategies. It would be in the interest of recipient
countries to exploit this potential.
Even the donor side needs to learn to conduct a more effective dialogue.
In recent years, the management of the policy dialogue as well as of various
types of programme aid has increasingly been delegated from the donor
capitals to their offices in the capitals of recipient countries. Some donors
have either not authorised their country office staff to take decisions, or
have posted junior staff with a low capacity to manage the dialogue
(Danielsson et al., forthcoming). At the bilateral level, this reduces the effectiveness
of development aid. Multilaterally, it means that some of the
donor participants in the ‘big table’ discussion will be unable to commit
their principals to a negotiated outcome. Aid coordination has improved in
many countries with the help of partnership groups involving a wide range
of stakeholders. These efforts will also be hampered by a lack of dialogue
capacity and decision making authority on the part of some of the donor
participants.
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