Today, I foist a new blog called Aid Watch on the blogosphere. The objective is to be brutally honest when aid is not helping the poor, but also praising it when it is.
Alas, there is far to go. Take World Bank President Robert Zoellick’s oped (A Stimulus Package for the World) in last Friday’s New York Times and another one in today’s Financial Times (It is Time to Herald the Age of Responsibility).
The more you promise, the more you are telling us you don’t expect to be accountable for promises
In the NYT, President Zoellick requests an additional $6 billion from the US in foreign aid, which will “speed up global recovery, help the world’s poor and bolster [America’s] foreign policy influence…facilitate fast and flexible aid delivery…create jobs while building a foundation for productivity and growth…increase demand for American-made equipment…[and] limit the depth and length of the international downturn, prevent the contagion of social unrest and help save a generation from a new poverty trap.”
The more actions you list, the less you are serious about each action
Right after saying “priorities” for actions in poor countries (NYT), President Zoellick manages to touch on agriculture, health, education, nutrition, infrastructure, banking systems, small-and-medium-enterprise development, microcredit, global warming, and private sector development. Mr. Zoellick (FT) also wishes for international action on the Millennium Development Goals, the Doha trade round, the Copenhagen climate change agreement, humanitarian food supplies, energy conservation, and more G20 meetings to agree on fiscal expansion and reopening credit market agreements.
It’s not about aid money to reach objectives, aid money IS the objective
NYT: “The United States could begin by pledging some $6 billion…0.7 percent of its stimulus package.” FT: “How we respond to the crisis…will set the course.” The “first step” is to give more aid.
President Zoellick does mention briefly the critical issue in both the NYT and FT: some “safeguards to ensure that the money is well spent,” which don’t currently exist. In the FT, he makes the inspirational call for an “Age of Responsibility,” but the Responsibility seems to apply only to rich donors, there is nothing about holding the World Bank responsible.
If you are not accountable for promises, if you try to do everything and focus on nothing, and if you obsess about aid money raised rather than results achieved, haven’t you already told us that the money will not be “well spent”?
41 Comments
I would probably prefer Zoellick doesn’t deliver on some of those promises. It isn’t clear “we” should want to bolster America’s foreign policy influence. Also, being able to develop “fast and flexible delivery” speaks little as to what outcomes will be delivered, just that the money will be used. Perhaps it is not the number of promises, but the vagueness of them.
Hmmm… 0.7%… haven’t I heard of that number before? One wonders whether Mr. Zoellick chose it based on the exhaustive research that should be demanded of such a colossal expenditure, or whether it is simply unreflective recitation of a mantra whose hollowness I’ve documented.
Spot on!
Excellent analysis.
Spot on x2!
About time you started blogging – glad to see it and looking forward to more.-
Implying that Robert Zoellick doesn’t care about the results of aid is a cheap shot, and a bad one. Here’s hoping you spend less time obsessing over what people say (it’s not exactly difficult to find inconsistencies in quotes from politicians) and more time evaluating the impact of aid, which I thought was meant to be the object of your blog.
Bill,
Glad to see you have started a Blog. (I saw mention of it today on Greg Mankiw’s blog.) Your introductory theme is right on.
I look forward to reading your commentaries.
Del
Bill,
Glad to read your blog. I hope you also address the bailouts and the stimulus packages as aid to the rich, rich politicians in particular.
Suerte. Un abrazo,
Edgardo
Fantastic! Chris Blattman sent me over — very pleased to see you join the blogroll sir.
All best.
Mr Easterly,
Are you just interested evaluating US Dollars used for Aid? Assuming you are serious about finding examples of successful aid to be praised,let me suggest Gawad Kalinga in the Philippines. I think you will find this organization is one that has a lot of Philipino government dollars flow to it, and it remains very successful at helping the poor.
“If it saves one child…” always seems to win the argument, even if those resources could be used elsewhere to save 10 children!
http://intentionalsoftware.typepad.com/intentional_politics/
God to know you have started a blog. We know that most aid has been aiding not the people who needs it but the autocrats to buy guns to muzzle dissent by the people asking for nothing more than the basic justice and the right to better administration, and even worse aid money has been helping countries to invade another country when millions of people are starving at home, a classic case being Ethiopia. It is a pity that most of the economists and celebrities have closed their eyes on what the money is doing and shamelessly ask for more aid to aid these butchers to butcher the already fine and poverty stricken citizens.
I followed the link here from Marginal Revolution and look forward to reading. As for the premise of this blog—that aid agencies can be made more responsible—I’m somewhat skeptical that it will happen given the perverse incentives many nonprofits and others face (I talk about some in my post, The Worse it is, the Better it is: Your Grant Story Needs to Get the Money, and there are other examples at the link).
Still, I hope you succeed even if I’m not confident that you can.
Yours was one of the better books I read on international development in college. I look forward to being a regular reader.
I am looking forward to this blog, especially the diffusion and discussion of empirical results.
Thank you for taking the time for this blog. I look forward to the ideas and comments you spark.
I’m glad you’re blogging. I too will be a regular reader.
Welcome to the blogosphere. I have enjoyed your books, reviews of which I will post on my blog.
This “the more you are responsible for the less you are accountable for” approach appears elsewhere. I can remember Bernie Fraser, the then Governor of the Reserve Bank (Australia), arguing why it was terribly important that the Reserve Bank target both inflation and unemployment. Thereby, of course, havng a permanent “out”. If inflation goes up, it is because they are worrying about unemployment: if unemployment goes up, it is because they are worrying about inflation.
Fortunately, his view has not prevailed.
Hey Bill, good to see you here. Will be watching this space and forwarding to relevant IMF/WB watching listservs. Also wondering if you can convince other WB staffers turned critics (I’m thinking of Mr. Ellerman) to join you here.
Great start for this blog… proposing, I suppose, paying the aid agencies “cash on delivery” of the promises.
It reminds me of two things I said as an Executive Director of the World Bank, 2002-2004, when debating the issue of the IDA ratings disclosure, namely:
About our own accountability
Of course I agree with the recommendation that the disclosures of any results should always include a statement indicating that the ratings are the product of “staff judgment.” That said, and given the importance of checks and balances, and accountability, we would like to know a little about the foreseen consequences to staff. This is no minor issue as their judgments, if wrong, and even if right, could foreseeable bring down governments and also stoke anti–World Bank sentiments.
What if they rank us?
Finally, as we see in the documents on the IDA disclosure policy that this exercise generates a normal distribution curve where we can point out the best and the worst performers, I cannot but reflect on the fact that within the Bank, for its own internal evaluation purposes, it seems impossible to gain acceptance for this sort of useful ranking tool. In fact, in most internal evaluations that are presented to the Board, we have not even reached a name disclosure by quintiles and have been basically limited to a binary grading, satisfactory or not, mostly without really even knowing who belongs to any of those groups.
Just think about our reactions if some NGO would start to rank the performance of our own country teams and to disclose the results on the www, with three-decimal precision, and arguing that, given the utmost importance of the WB’s poverty-fighting mission, this should be quite helpful
Dear Mr. Easterly:
Thank you for “The White Man’s Burden.” To date, I know of you solely through a mind-enriching read of that work. Welcome to the “blogosphere.” I look forward to learning and being challenged by your future observations here.
Derek Simmons
Perhaps you should think about including Congressional earmarks as a caveat.
Thanks for sparking this much needed public discussion. I am a staunch supporter of Trade not AID. Forget asking for $6 billion in aid, ask for $6 billion in direct trade and investments. Trade will produce faster, accountable results than simply handing out cash.
World Bank, et al, have been “handing out” cash to Africa for over 30 years now, can I get some accountability for the $650 billion in aid checks during those 3 decades?
I thought so…
Now they want another $6 billion!
Talk about learning from history…
I look foward to following this blog.
Even “safeguards to ensure that the money is well spent” is subject to the law of unintended consequences. An example can be found in Honduras. It is hard to divert and subvert aid from the US, so Hugo’s offer of opaque cash from Petrocaribe had strong appeal. Under Petrocaribe, Honduras could buy 1 barrel of oil, pay cash for half, and the other half was financed over 25 years at a very minimal interest rate. Because the government controls the fuel market, it sold the barrel at a monopoly price, pocketed the 50% and is rumored to be using it for nefarious political purposes. Incentives.
Aid assumes a shared goal of actually helping people.
What are the best studies of the iatrogenic effects of foreign aid?
My compliments on starting a blog on aid.
Yes thats true accountability is needed. But before that its essential that aid flow to be effective need to customize tools being promoted by WB kind of donor istitutions.Most of the time aid is given to try out an ‘idea’ in the name of reform with hope of success. Very less time is spent is piloting the idea and customizing it. This has been the case with most of PFM reforms, especially in India.
I’m so glad you’ve started this blog.
Your book, W-M-B, was a real eye opener for me and I regularly visit your nyu homepage to keep up with developments.
Even a film in the offing, I see.
Thanks for blogging
Thank you very much for launching this blog! I am looking forward to following it, because: 1) The way ODA works today is deeply flawed 2) You´re to my knowledge the best and most rigouros critic, because you really care!
Great to see the blog…in the spirit of debate…
Zoellig isn’t just making “promises”: he is trying to do two things: offer rationales for development spending and suggest priorities for that spending–there is an important difference between explaining why development matters (which we should do expansively) and identifying what our priorities ought to be (which we should do more judiciously).
Why do we need more rationales for development in the US, not less?
Because two huge leaps of faith are involved…that development investments will make a lasting difference for the poor, and that that difference will further US national interests. Congress and many US taxpayers are skeptical on both fronts. We need all the rationales we can muster…we should explain why good development can further US national security (e.g. by making the world safer) benefit the US economy (by strengthening economies that will one day want US goods) strengthen our diplomacy (by improving America’s standing and relationships), reflect the best American values–and throw in any other rationale you can think of that will build support for effective development.
For my money, Zoellig is a wise spendthrift with rationales, but should be a bit more frugal with his priorities.
Glad to have found you here. Yours was the best book on development that I read during my masters. Please keep up the good work and I look forward to further discussions in this space.
All the best.
Voices from the South?
Has anybody in the Aid/Development industry really asked the South what they really want? And why are voices from the south normally drowned in the loud debates? I hope this forum will highlight some of the work done by mostly southerners to help the situation their countries.
Have a look at some of the work done by mere students from Kenya – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rwhULl-rcQ and http://lwalacommunityalliance.org/the-alliance/sons-of-lwala/…I hope as we debate we are aware of the real needs and not get involved in meaningless rhetorics.
Thanks, Jennifer
I’m really looking forward to reading this blog, and particularly the elements that relate to the transparency and accountability of development aid institutions.
I work as a researcher on the Global Administrative Law project at NYU, which seeks precisely to frame and promote issues of accountability, etc., in global institutions; I also arun the GAL blog (http://globaladminlaw.blogspot.com/). There are clearly huge areas of overlapping interest for us here – albeit from a more legal perspective – particularly as the Institute for International Law and Justice has just launched a major “financing development” research programme, which will have a strong GAL component.
Looking forward, then, to some reading your contributions, and hopefully some inter-blog interaction in the near future!
Dr. Easterly, as a worker in/student of this field (and a returned Peace Corps volunteer) I’ve been a huge fan of yours for years. Thanks for starting this blog! I can’t wait to hear what you have to say.
To take it to the next level I think you should start your own watchdog NGO. Get private funding so you don’t have to answer to anybody, then go to the villages and measure impact by asking the poor to rate the services they receive from local NGOs. Start in Rwanda! According to USAID (I asked in 2007), they’re funding 47 NGOs and it’s a small, densely populated country with a leader who is vocal about aid accountability. I bet you could even get Rick Warren to pitch in…
I am sure you’ve seen this website, but maybe some of your readers haven’t.
Methods of monitoring and evaluating the progress and outcomes of development aid programs
http://mande.co.uk
hey bill！
love your work and incites, but could you perhaps get an rss reader link on your blog? i’m pretty busy, like most people in existence, and would love for your entries to come to me!
thanks!
peace.
devin.
Bill: I’ve posted a response to your post in my blog (http://africacan.worldbank.org/responsible-aid-in-a-time-of-crisis). Welcome to the blogosphere! Shanta
Well done — NGOs claiming humanitarian agendas have become political and economic superpowers (Oxfam, War on Want, CARE, etc.) In contrast to governments and business, there are no checks and balances in the NGO world, and no accountability. The BBC is being attacked for rejecting demands to broadcast ads on behalf of 13 charities incld. Ofxam and Care, promoting the cause of Palestinians in Gaza, and without any info on where the money will go. For NGO Monitor’s summary — http://www.ngo-monitor.org/article/ngo_monitor_highlights_pressure_of_biased_charities_on_bbc_and_sky_over_gaza_appeal_
Perhaps your blog could have begun with something more substantial?
I, too, look forward to following this blog. When I started my blog in 2005, most of my first few posts were actually about foreign aid and I wrote about re-reading The Elusive Quest for Growth at the time. In particular, I wrote about my opinion of your use of GDP as a wealth indicator.
Now that I’m formally studying economics I’m interested to process your ideas through another filter.
See also recent blog posted on ODI website.
Beyond the Numbers: using aid to combat the crisis in poor countries requires more than just cash
http://blogs.odi.org.uk/blogs/main/archive/2009/02/26/7085.aspx