Table Of ContentGiving Aid Effectively
i
Giving Aid Effectively
The Politics of Environmental Performance
and Selectivity at Multilateral
Development Banks
Mark T. Buntaine
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1
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Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Buntaine, Mark T., author.
Title: Giving aid effectively : the politics of environmental performance and selectivity at multilateral
development banks / Mark T. Buntaine.
Description: Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015034920 | ISBN 978–0–19–046745–6 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Economic development projects— Environmental aspects— Developing countries. |
Economic assistance— Environmental aspects— Developing countries. | Environmental policy—
Economic aspects— Developing countries.
Classification: LCC HC59.72.E44 B86 2016 | DDC 332.1/ 53— dc23 LC record available at http:// lccn.
loc.gov/ 2015034920
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Printed by Sheridan, USA
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Contents
Preface vii
1. The Problem of Performance 1
2. The Politics of Aid Effectiveness 25
3. Addressing the Problem of Performance 46
4. Administrative Procedures: Avoiding Delays with Environmentally
Risky Projects 68
5. Accountability Mechanisms: Civil Society Claims for Environmental
Performance 110
6. Project Evaluations: Learning What Works 142
7. S trategic Planning: Integrating Evaluation into High- Level
Decision-M aking 182
8. Conclusions and Implications 213
Appendix 1: Data Collection Procedures 235
Appendix 2: A Brief History of Evaluation
at the Multilateral Development Banks 244
Notes 247
References 257
Index 283
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Preface
i
This project began with a rather simple observation: very little evidence was
available to assess whether investments in evaluation and learning make interna-
tional organizations more effective. This book is an attempt to understand how
project evaluation, strategic planning, citizen complaint mechanisms, and adminis-
trative procedures can be used to steer international organizations toward decisions
that more effectively achieve their mandates. I focus specifically on the environmen-
tal performance of the multilateral development banks, since activities related to
preventing environmental harm and promoting good environmental management
have faced intense scrutiny over the past three decades. My purpose is not to retell
a history about performance diverging from mandate; I seek instead to understand
when and why environmental performance can be improved by producing better
information about the outcomes of the development and environmental activities
of the multilateral development banks.
The other purpose of this book is to propose a better way to give development
assistance. Researchers and the development community have converged around
the idea that development assistance is most effective when it is provided to recipi-
ent countries that have the capacity and incentives to use it well. Most scholarly
and practical effort has focused on identifying capacity and aligned incentives at
the level of countries, often through indices of the quality of governance or policy.
The challenge with this approach is that it tends to shift development assistance
toward the middle- income countries that have the least need for it. I argue that by
vii
viii i Preface
producing better information about the outcomes of development and environ-
mental assistance, organizations that allocate development assistance can be more
focused and move toward the projects that have a successful record and away from
projects that have an unsuccessful record for individual countries. This book dem-
onstrates that a focused approach can work.
I could not have completed this project without the assistance and support of
numerous people. Over the several years that it took to complete this project, our
research team poured through hundreds of thousands of pages of more than 1,000
evaluations and compiled primary documentation for a number of case studies that
appear in this book. More than 50 staff members and managers at the multilateral
development banks provided me interviews. I also received invaluable advice and
support from mentors and colleagues as I pulled together the evidence in this book.
I gratefully acknowledge these various contributions.
I have benefited greatly from the research assistance of Sarah Freitas, Susan
Carter, Selim Selimi, Jacob Wolff, Hannah Freedman, and Varun Kumar. Coding
hundreds of documents that are each hundreds of pages long is an arduous and
unseen task. This book would not have been possible without their diligent work.
I am also grateful to Rahul Madhusudanan, who helped compile the primary docu-
mentation for many of the case studies that appear in this book. His keen eye for
relevant evidence has been a valuable asset.
I benefited from the time of numerous staff members at the World Bank, Asian
Development Bank, African Development Bank, and Inter- American Development
Bank, who for reasons of confidentiality must remain anonymous. The interviews
that these staff provided assisted me in understanding the incentives at multilateral
development banks to use information about performance. The interviewees greatly
influenced many of the conclusions reported in this book and I hope will bring to
life many of the findings from the statistical analyses.
Many people have offered guidance and suggestion in the design of this research
and writing this book. Like many books, the seed of this book was a dissertation.
Erika Weinthal was an excellent dissertation supervisor, even when I was not sure
of my direction. She has been a steadfast advocate and has always encouraged me
to think broadly about the implications of this research. Judith Kelley, through
her consistent engagement with the core theoretical issues of this project and her
constructive approach to the research process, has shaped my intellectual journey
in lasting ways. Chris Gelpi and Meg McKean provided important comments
about this research at various points, and this book is surely better for their efforts.
I received other important support for this project while I was completing doctoral
studies at Duke University, including comments from seminar participants and sev-
eral travel and fellowship grants. A National Science Foundation Decision, Risk,
Preface j ix
and Management Sciences Doctoral Research Grant (#0962436) supported this
work, without which it would have been impossible to collect the evaluation and
interview data that I use as the basis of this book.
I expanded and began refining the dissertation into a book while I was a fac-
ulty member in the Department of Government at the College of William &
Mary. I owe a special debt to Mike Tierney, who has been one of my greatest
advocates as I turned this project into a book. He organized an extremely helpful
book workshop, where I received exhaustive comments from Tamar Gutner, Joe
Jupille, Christopher Kilby, Paula Manna, Amy Oakes, Brad Parks, Sue Peterson,
and Maurits van der Veen. These comments shaped the development of this book
greatly and assisted me in honing the arguments and presentation of evidence.
I also received excellent and helpful comments on the penultimate version of this
book from Sarah Bush and Ron Mitchell. The reviewers for this manuscript took
their jobs very seriously and offered insightful comments that have shaped the final
product, particularly regarding the presentation of qualitative evidence.
Finally, the long road that is a book project would not have been nearly as enjoy-
able without the support of friends and family. I would like to extend a special
thanks to my parents, Robbie and Jim Buntaine, for always supporting my educa-
tion and to my wife, Ryoko Oono, who has endured many years of living separately
and countless late evenings so that I could complete this project. To them, and a
large number of supportive friends, I am forever grateful.
