AN EXERCISE IN WORLDMAKING 2009 - ISS

74 SABRINA BRANDT
tigue shaped the circumstances for a paradigm shift (Pender 2001: 397).
It led to a debate on aid effectiveness with a focus on the moral obligation
to reduce poverty (World Bank 1998).
The World Bank director James Wolfensohn responded to this with
the Comprehensive Development Framework (1999). Following the importance
of poverty reduction and ownership of development policies,
the concept of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers entered the stage.
Since these development strategies are written by the recipient government
they are assumed to be nationally owned. Poverty reduction is the
umbrella under which the development strategy is supposed to function.
The factual changes in the aid landscape were that the volumes of aid
donations as well as the number of actors involved increased. Aid had
become more complex and the need for an aid architect was expressed
(Meyer and Schulz op cit: 1). Especially the recipient countries challenged
the fact that aid issues were mainly discussed by the donor community.
This led to the constitution of the High Level Committee for
Aid Effectiveness by the OECD, which includes members from both
donor and recipient countries. Their meeting in Paris in 2005 led to the
formulation of the Paris Declaration (PD) by which ‘aid’ allegedly entered
a new era.
The focus of this essay is the principle of ownership that the PD introduced,
meaning that the design and the implementation of aid and the
development strategy should be in the hands of the recipient:
Partner countries exercise effective leadership over their development
policies and strategies and co-ordinate development actions (OECD 2005:
3).
3 OLD HABITS DIE HARD
Did the Paris Declaration indeed formalise the paradigm shift in development
aid? The focus on poverty reduction is of course a striking feature.
The principles of ownership and participation also signify a change
away from the universalistic approaches of SAPs. The implication of nationally
owned development strategies would probably mean a lesser focus
on macroeconomic stability, and more focus on context specific solutions.
However, in recent years many of these principles have been criticised
for their – covert – neoliberal foundations. The PRSP programme has
been identified as “old wine in new bottles”, referring to its remarkable