According to the latest OECD data, there are only 5 wealthy industrialized democracies who meet the gabled target of 0.7% of national income contributed as development assistance: Norway (1.07%), Sweden (1.05%), Luxembourg (1.00%), Denmark (%0.85) and the United Kingdom (%0.72). In absolute terms, the UK contributes more foreign aid than the other four 0.7 percenters combined, making it the most important donor in Europe.
Planning must be viewed as an incremental process that tests propositions about the most effective means of coping with social problems, reassessing and redefining both the problems and the components of development projects as more is learned about their complexities and about the economic, social, and political factors affecting the outcome of proposed courses of action. Complex social experiments can be partially guided but never fully controlled; thus, analysis and management procedures must be flexible and incremental, facilitating social interaction so that those groups most directly affected by a problem can search for and pursue mutually acceptable objectives. Rather than providing a blueprint for action, planning should facilitate continuous learning and interaction, allowing policy-makers and managers to readjust and modify programs and projects as they learn more about the conditions with which they are trying to cope.
Dennis A. Rondinelli (1993), Development Projects as Policy Experiments (New York: Routledge).
This years marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). For those unfamiliar with it, D&D was the grandfather of tabletop roleplaying games (RPGs), which mix storytelling, improv, strategy and chance: each player assumes the role of one character with attributes and skills, vices and virtues, and together they face the challenges put forth by one of the players – the Dungeon Master or Game Master – who controls the narration and plays all other characters and creatures. It’s a simple notion, but over the last forty years D&D has had a considerable influence on a large swatch of modern pop culture.
Last week Effective-States.org made a quantum leap into the 21st century by leaving html behind and diving head first into a WordPress-powered adventure. All our projects are now included, core researchers have profile pages, and there are tags everywhere (you can find me under PEA, public sector reform and state capacity). Plus we have just launched the new ESID blog, which I will be editing with the help of our communications and editing team. My chief goal is to turn it into a platform for online commentary on the politics of development (guest posts are welcome!), as well as a window into how a research organization actually works, what the research process looks like in the months or years between proposal and peer review. Stay tuned.
Last month I gave a presentation on ESID‘s project on political economy analysis at the workshop “Making Politics Practical II: Development Politics and the Changing Aid Environment“, which was held at the University of Birmingham. The presentation introduced my work with David Hulme on the organizational challenges that the World Bank and the UK Department for International Development face in introducing political analysis into their operational work. Thanks to the folks at Birmingham you can listen to it right here:
You can find the other presentations here.
El Center for Global Development ha publicado una vez más su Índice de Compromiso con el Desarrollo (Commitment to Development Index, CDI), en el que se evalúa a los países ricos según el potencial pro-pobre y pro-desarrollo de sus políticas públicas. En el índice de 2013 España queda en la posición 16 de 27, que no está del todo mal. Pero el informe de país detalla un poco más las virtudes y vicios de nuestras relaciones con países en desarrollo:
España es recompensada por las políticas que fomentan la inversión en países pobres y la transparencia financiera. También ocupa un puesto por encima de la media por fomentar la innovación tecnológica nacional y la difusión de los avances tecnológicos en el extranjero. No obstante, la puntuación de España disminuye por sus pobres prácticas como donante, pues se encarga de una proporción muy pequeña de los refugiados durante emergencias humanitarias, elevados subsidios a la pesca y realiza pequeñas contribuciones económicas y de personal a operaciones de seguridad sancionadas internacionalmente.
Las limitaciones españolas son sospechosos habituales: en este mismo blog y en esglobal ya he escrito sobre la ineficiencia de la ayuda al desarrollo española y sobre nuestra timidez en la participación en operaciones humanitarias y de seguridad. Pero nunca esta de más recordar que es éste un debate público en el cual el país aún no se ha embarcado.