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Evaluating Country Programmes
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policies and capacity across the board, rather than concentrated in the project or
sector to which it was nominally designated. This implies that:
Since money is often fungible, the return to any particular project financed by
aid does not reveal the true effect of assistance… With fungibility, the impact
of aid is not the same as the impact of the aid-financed project.
(World Bank, 1998: 20)
The degree to which all aid is fungible is still a matter for debate (e.g. Cassen
1994: 21-2). However, if aid fungibility is as prevalent as the World Bank suggests,
this adds theoretical weight to the conclusion that country programme evaluation
is important.
Among those donors that have carried out CPEs, some have done little more
than experiment, while others use them more routinely. There is a great deal of variation
in the scope, length, cost and approach. It should be noted that some donors,
having committed at an early stage to CPEs as an integral part of their country programming
approach, have subsequently scaled down their CPE efforts. As part of an
“integrated evaluation and planning approach”, Norway carried out 10 large-scale
CPEs (each costing between USD150 000 and 350 000, or from 0.1 to 0.4% of the total
cost of the five-year country programme addressed by the report) between 1985
and 1990. In 1990, this approach was reviewed: despite its merits, it was felt to be
too slow and expensive, given that the findings tended to be historical rather than
forward-looking and “often did not provide the specific answers that were desired”.
A questionnaire survey within the organisation found that these CPEs did not
appear to have resulted in change. Norway switched to a planning-focused country
programme system, in which shorter and cheaper “country strategy” studies were
carried out on an ad hoc basis, focusing more narrowly on the information needs of
the planners and not (as previously) those of the Norwegian public and Parliament.
Similarly, the Netherlands appears to be reassessing the rationale for further
CPEs, having carried out six very comprehensive CPEs (each taking two or more
years from inception to completion and ranging in cost from around USD700 000 to
USD900 000). There is an argument that there are diminishing returns to more CPEs
on this scale in the near future. This is particularly true with regard to systemic
issues concerning relations between country programmes and agency headquarters,
which have been thoroughly explored in the six completed to date.
Specific rationale: immediate objectives of country programme evaluations
If the underlying rationale for country programme evaluation is the common
trend towards country programming, the specific rationale for specific CPEs varies
greatly between donors and, on occasion, between different CPEs carried out by
the same donor. Box 2.1 summarises some of the reasons donors give for carrying
out CPEs.
OECD 1999