Elegantes Telefax - JAV der TUB - TU Berlin

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ade saw then the application of the model to the aid delivery process (Martens 2002;
Ostrom et al 2001). There had been earlier applications to the study of conditionality
between donor organizations and the recipients of aid (Killick 1997; Rodrik 1995).
Martens (2002, 11) views the informational characteristics of public administrations,
including those involved in development cooperation, as central as opposed to
private companies:
Public administrations tend to have multiple objectives which mean for development
agencies the pursuit of different sectoral and regional spending priorities.
Public agencies have multiple principals – a feature they share with private enterprises
– but their principals usually do not share the same objectives while the
shareholders tend to agree on profit objectives.
The measurement of the performance of public agencies is quite difficult since
they have problems identifying the opportunity costs of alternative policies when pursuing
multiple objectives.
The process of development cooperation differs from private business transactions
and from public agencies working in the taxpaying countries by having no direct link
between the benefits as seen by the beneficiaries in the recipient countries and the
costs as seen by the paying taxpayers or by voluntary contributors in the donor countries.
To organize the transfer between the taxpayers (or individual voluntary donors)
and the beneficiaries, a process of multistage delegation takes place: First, between
the voters and taxpayers the classical delegation of indirect democracies occurs.
Second, the elected politicians are the principals to the ministries and other governmental
agencies as their performing agent. Third, the management of these agencies
is the principal to their employees delegating their task via employment contracts,
quite often on the basis of civil services type contracts. Fourth, depending on the type
of organizational structure, the management or politicians negotiate with partner
countries’ finance ministries or similar organizations the allocation of funds to be
transferred (in terms of quantity and quality, grants vs. loans). Fifth, the staffs of the
development agencies develop assess and negotiate individual projects with sectoral
ministries or agencies in the recipients’ countries and become the principal to these
ministries/agencies as they implement the projects. Sixth, in the process of this implementation
(and often quite earlier in the planning and design phase of the projects)
private commercial companies are contracted by the staff of the aid agencies in
the donor countries and/or the implementing agencies in the recipient countries and
serve as their agents. Once these projects are implemented, these resulting effects
can create benefits for the targeted group in the recipient country. As the first three
steps are common to all public organizations, the following phases and the involvement
of ministries from other countries is specific to development cooperation. For