Pusat Pendidikan & Pelatihan Industri

The question of whether foreign aid works continues to occupy centre stage in the development debate. There is a lot of controversy in this debate but there is agreement that the key issue is hether aid helps the recipients to help themselves. This calls for a focus on state capacity. Aood deal of recent discussion has centred on how the ‘aid architecture’ affects this state apacity, paying particular attention to donor proliferation and its effects on state capacity. here are two views on this connection: one says that more donors means more choices forecipients and coordination amongst donors risks reducing such choices.The alternative view is that donor proliferation fragments state capacity and greater coordination offers the hope of reducing this fragmentation. Donor agencies themselves have recognised that the proliferation of foreign agencies and projects can undermine the capacities they are expected to support. This recognition is enshrined in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness which commits donor agencies to greater coordination amongst themselves and subordination of their projects and programmes to the recipient governments priorities and systems.

While the policy debate on this issue has moved fast, evidence-based research has progressed
only slowly. There is little systematic in-depth research on how donor proliferation and donor
coordination affect state capacity. This is why the Centre for the Future has included this issue
on its agenda for research. The question driving this line of research is not whether but under
what conditions donor proliferation fragments state capacity and donor coordination augments
state capacity.