Making Development Work: Development Learning in a World of Poverty and Wealth

Front Cover
Nagy Hanna, Robert Picciotto
Transaction Publishers - 317 pages

Worldwide, the number of poor people increased during the past decade, despite technological improvements, more open trade, and improved policy frameworks in developing countries. Regional conflicts, adverse shifts in terms of trade, and marginalization of poor countries in the new global economy explain this outcome. This highlights the need to reform development assistance and improve its effectiveness.

Making Development Work examines the four key principles of the Comprehensive-Development Framework, a World Bank initiative currently being piloted in twelve developing counties. The initiative promotes a holistic long-term vision of development, domestic ownership of development programs, and focus on results; and stronger partnership between government, the private sector, and the civil society. The first section of the volume describes the evolution in development thinking that culminated in this new consensus. The second focuses on country ownership of development policies and programs. Based on empirical evidence, it proposes a new view of the aid relationship as a mutual-learning process. The third section focuses on results and on the ways aid agencies might enhance development impact of their operations. It concludes with a preliminary assessment of strategies for scaling up from specific projects to sector and programmatic approaches, and suggests ways to adapt them to counter conditions. The experience of a bilateral aid agency, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is examined in this context. The fourth section focuses on partnership, emphasizing that aid agencies must be explicit about the kinds of partnerships they seek with countries and the kinds of strategic selectivity they will exercise. The final chapter pulls together the lessons of development experience at various levels of operation. It outlines key tensions between comprehensiveness and selectivity, ownership and conditionality, speed and broad-based ownership, focus on results and poor local evaluation capacity, and enhanced country focus and globalization. Promising approaches to manage these tensions are put forward to replace one-size-fits-all prescriptions with client empowerment and social learning.

Making Development Work offers rich lessons on improving the effectiveness of aid. It will be of particular interest to development practitioners, students and professors of development economics studies.

Nagy Hanna is a lead corporate strategist and evaluation officer at the World Bank. He has published extensively on development, management, and knowledge.

Robert Picciotto is director-general of Operations Evaluation at the World Bank.

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Contents

Toward a Comprehensive Development Strategy
Comprehensive Approaches Lessons from the Past
Conditionality and Policy Learning
5
Mainstreaming Participation in Development
13
Democratic Decentralization
Helping People Help Themselves AutonomyCompatible Assistance
Development Advisory Services From Blueprints to Learning
GovernmentDonor Partnerships in Support of Public Expenditure
7
Moving from Projects to Programmatic Aid
17
Applying the Comprehensive Development Framework to USAID Experiences
35
Perspectives on Partnership
67
The Role of International Public Goods
89
Promising Approaches to Development Challenges
115
Contributors
141
Index
143
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Page 1 - We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it may be modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to write upon ; and step by step we shall make it what it should be...
Page 80 - At worst, local people may still only be coopted to serve external goals People participate in joint analysis, development of action plans and formation or strengthening of local institutions. Participation is seen as a right, not just the means to achieve project goals. The process involves interdisciplinary methodologies that seek multiple perspectives and make use of systemic and structured learning processes.
Page 2 - If the primary causes of poverty are deficiencies in these three respects, then the alleviation of poverty depends primarily on the removal of these deficiencies. Here lies the reason why development cannot be an act of creation, why it cannot be ordered, bought, comprehensively planned: why it requires a process of evolution. Education does not 'jump'; it is a gradual process of great subtlety.

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