Aid Effectiveness
Get Aid Effectiveness Updates
More on Aid Effectiveness
Impact and Influence
Related Experts
Related Working Groups
Parent Topic
Related Aid Effectiveness Content
Pages
The Commitment to Development Index ranks 27 of the world’s richest countries on their dedication to policies that benefit the 5.5 billion people living in poorer nations.
The immediate aftermath of a natural disaster, such as that the typhoon which devastated part of the Phillipines on Friday, can bring out the best of the global community. There will come a time to discuss how we can do more to prevent the environmental changes which make such events more likely; but the immediate priority is to get water, food and shelter to people who urgently need it.
One of the questions reportedly from the Presidential transition team to the State Department was: “With so much corruption in Africa, how much of our funding is stolen?” During the nomination hearings for Rex Tillerson to be Secretary of State, Senator Rand Paul provided one answer: seventy percent of aid is “stolen off the top.” The question is a fair one to ask. The bad news is that the short answer is “we don’t know.” The better news is that the slightly longer answer is “nowhere near 70 percent.” And the best news is that if we spent more time tracking the results of aid projects, we’d have a much better idea of where corruption was a problem and if our efforts to reduce it were working.
The authors argue that many reform initiatives in developing countries fail to achieve sustained improvements in performance because they are merely isomorphic mimicry. They present a new framework for breaking out of capability traps.
Economic growth is one aspect of development; state capability is another. This paper shows that many countries remain in “state capability traps” and suggests ways to sabotage persistent techniques of failure.
The Economist has called the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID) "a model for other rich countries." CGD Senior Program Associate Owen Barder, a former director of information, communications, and knowledge at DFID, provides an insider's account in:
Nancy Birdsall, Augusto de la Torre, and Felipe Valencia Caicedo analyze the Washington Consensus, from its early beginnings to failure as a reform agenda.
Commentary Menu