Beyond Pragmatism: Appraising UN-Business Partnerships

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UNRISD PROGRAMME ON MARKETS, BUSINESS AND REGULATION PAPER NUMBER 1 The World Bank’s evaluation of the global health programmes in which it is involved has also drawn attention to similar concerns. For example, for several of the global initiatives, the lack of continued grant aid commitment on an assured, predictable and long-term basis is a clear problem, as is the timely supply of quality, affordable drugs and an appropriate diagnostic and treatment regime. In connection with UNAIDS, the report noted that “While considerable progress has been achieved through advocacy, global programs in communicable diseases also underscore that the weakest links are the health system and financial capacities of developing countries to sustain the programs, particularly in the poorest countries” (Lele et al. 2004:xix, xx). These strong qualifications regarding the effectiveness and implications of some of the newest global health partnerships pose the question whether the increased involvement of the private sector on present lines was the most fruitful way toward achieving WHO’s goal of Health for All, of rebuilding healthcare systems, and advancing a coherent and properly funded global health system. 55 The findings above suggest that in establishing global public-private health partnerships in recent years, little heed has been given to wider development experiences and debates, as well the lessons from past development strategies. Parallels have been drawn, for example, between global health partnerships such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) and the integrated rural development approach of the 1970s. The latter was the supposed panacea for broad rural development that has long since been abandoned. Like such schemes, some health partnerships continue to reflect the organizational preferences of the main donors rather than the institutional needs of partner states. Country ownership and local decision making remain tenuous, and partnership projects run parallel to existing health systems, diverting scarce human resources to the global partnership schemes. In sum, such partnerships have significant, though largely unintended, system-wide effects (Mkandawire forthcoming). Seeing the bigger picture There is a danger that impact assessment will become the new mantra in policy circles and that an impact assessment industry, akin to that associated with corporate sustainability reporting and CSR monitoring, will develop. Just as there are concerns about the substantive value of these CSR tools (Utting 2005b, Financial Times 2006), similar concerns arise in relation to impact assessment. Part of the problem relates to the methodologies used. Whether or not the ex-ante or ex-post assessment tools achieve their analytical objectives will depend partly on the questions asked, which in turn relate to the conceptual frameworks that shape the understanding of development. Focusing mainly on the contribution of partnerships to the achievement of the MDGs, for example, will not necessarily say much about either the sustainability of partnerships or economic and social sustainability. OECD (2006:12–13) lists some of the most prominent assessment frameworks and methodologies for evaluating partnerships and points to the fact that “most focus largely on procedural aspects of partnerships. Not all examine the impact of partnerships and fewer still look at the efficiency aspects”. However, other dimensions may also need to be considered to assess key contributions, contradictions and trade-offs associated with inclusive and equitable development, as the following study makes clear. An evaluation of a PPP in the tannery industry in Pakistan, which involves UNIDO and UNDP, identifies various limitations regarding the use of “classical effect” evaluation methods, such as those advocated by the OECD for evaluating aid interventions (Lund-Thomsen 2006). These focus on criteria associated with relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability. Such methods need to be complemented by others. These include both “realist” approaches, which emphasize the importance of theory and context in explaining the dynamics and 55 Beigbeder 2004; Buse and Walt 2000; Richter 2004b. 24
BEYOND PRAGMATISM: APPRAISING UN-BUSINESS PARTNERSHIPS PETER UTTING AND ANN ZAMMIT outcomes of PPPs, and “participatory” approaches, which focus attention on the inclusion or exclusion of poor or weaker stakeholders and actors in design, monitoring and evaluation. Engaging with such perspectives ensures that attention is paid to other evaluation criteria connected to equity and procedural rules that relate to accountability, regulation and compliance (Lund-Thomsen 2006). Such perspectives would also likely draw attention to a prominent feature of many PPPs, namely their top-down character. The latter run the risk of not only limiting participation, but also fostering the design and implementation of methods and procedures that ignore important dimensions of local and national institutional and political contexts. As mentioned above, a more comprehensive development-oriented assessment framework suggests the need to go beyond assessing the outcomes related to the immediate objectives of partnerships and to throw light on the wider implications for the economy and national policy. The IFPMA’s estimation of their contribution to achieving the MDGs referred to earlier 56 left out of the picture such matters as the extent to which these efforts helped build the local health infrastructure, and the nature of the contractual terms regarding intellectual property rights, licensing and parallel imports on which such partnerships were based. These issues, among others, are judged to be of considerable importance for developing countries in the assessments of global health partnerships. Furthermore, assessing partnerships in terms of their contribution to MDGs or other similar targets diverts attention away from the macroeconomic policies and processes that underpin the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), that are themselves intended to help achieve the MDGs. McKinley (2004, 2005) and ActionAid International (2005a, 2005b), among others, have shown how supposedly locally owned PRSPs are in fact tied firmly to International Monetary Fund (IMF) policy prescriptions and fiscal disciplines. 57 It is perhaps insufficiently appreciated that the neoliberal regime favoured by the International Financial Institutions (IFIs), and also by big business, has not shown itself to be widely successful in reducing poverty or in inducing pro-poor structural change. It is, therefore, not surprising that reports indicate that it will be a difficult, if not impossible, task to meet the MDGs on time. Increasingly, alternative policy frameworks that involve a very different macroeconomic regime are being proposed, including from within the United Nations. 58 Focusing on FDI and on TNC–SME linkages per se as an objective or outcome of partnerships is problematic from the perspective of equitable development. As one of the authors of this paper argued previously, one also needs to consider the implications related to corporate social and environmental responsibility, net balance-of-payment flows, value-added, retention of profits in the host country and transfer pricing, the crowding out of domestic competitors, the nature of incentives for TNCs, and so forth (Zammit 2003). As a recent UNCTAD report has noted, there is a need to rethink the role of FDI (UNCTAD 2005c). Methodologies are now being developed to examine the implications of FDI and TNC activities in host countries from a broad-based developmental perspective. An example of this is a report by Oxfam and Unilever, which examined in some depth the impacts of the company’s activities in Indonesia (Clay 2005). The Millennium Declaration Resolution affirms the responsibilities of states to their societies for upholding the basic principles of human dignity, equality and equity. It would therefore seem incumbent on all partnerships to observe this injunction. Yet many partnerships fail to live up to the equity challenge, particularly in the field of privatization. A number of research documents provide strong substantial evidence that involvement of the private sector in energy, and water and sanitation projects, through the contracting of infrastructure, commercialization 56 57 58 IFPMA indicated that over the period 2000–2005 the industry provided “enough health interventions to help up to 539 million people, or more than two-thirds the population of sub-Saharan Africa, with a conservatively calculated value of US$4.4 billion” (IFPMA 2006:5). See also Easterly (2004). UNDP 2005; UNCTAD 2005b; UNDESA 2005; Gottschalk 2005. 25
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Page 3 and 4: Contents Acronyms Acknowledgements
Page 5 and 6: UNIFEM UNFIP UNRISD UNU US WBCSD WE
Page 7 and 8: While impact assessment has not bee
Page 9 and 10: onnes pratiques et se mette à mene
Page 11 and 12: Introduction In the field of intern
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