has swedish aid injected realism into public financial management reforms in development? matt...
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What can be done? Change the process of aid and support – More adaptive processes Anchoring reform in context, allowing reforms to emerge and adapt to contextual realities – Doing Development Differently, PDIA A greater emphasis on learning about the realities of doing reform – Peer learning IN PFM through PEMPAL, CABRI, ESAAG, and more – Donors who leverage their own country experience?TRANSCRIPT
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Has Swedish aid injected realism into public financial management reforms in development?
Matt AndrewsHarvard Kennedy School
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Observations informing this work
• Many reforms in development are limited• Clear to see in PFM domain– Three D’s: De facto, Downstream, Deconcentrated gaps
• Better laws, not better practice• Better budgets, not better execution• Better central agencies, not better deconcentrated agencies
• Why is this the case?– One argument: Reforms lack realism• Not enough attention to the realities of getting things done
– Politics, capability constraints, uncertainty, etc.
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What can be done?
• Change the process of aid and support– More adaptive processes
• Anchoring reform in context, allowing reforms to emerge and adapt to contextual realities– Doing Development Differently, PDIA
• A greater emphasis on learning about the realities of doing reform– Peer learning
• IN PFM through PEMPAL, CABRI, ESAAG, and more– Donors who leverage their own country experience?
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A ‘realism comparative advantage’
• Various authors suggest that bilateral donors might enjoy a comparative advantage in areas where their countries have tacit experience– Like PFM reforms in Sweden– Having been through reform means:
• There is know-how, experience, etc. with fostering change, in complex political and administrative setting– Including persuading authorizers, choosing reforms, experimenting and
learning, and more
• Do donors like Sweden leverage this experience when supporting reforms in developing countries?
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Study approach: Examine experience to see if Swedish aid worked in this way, or was more
normally technical
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Looking through time, using systematic process analysis at global level, in Mozambique, and in Cambodia
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Findings
• There are efforts to inject realism into PFM reform– But these tend to be driven by Swedish development experts
working in a more DDD process– Less so through bringing Swedish experience into the
discussion• Although there are examples of this in Mozambique and Cambodia,
especially earlier in the trajectory
• The space for realism seems to have declined over time, in development generally– More focus on generic reform scripts, dominance by larger
donors
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How you inject realism in
development:
Swedish lessons point to 4 roles1. Own-country
experts with tacit lessons;
2. Adaptive development
specialists;3. Strategic
country counterparts4. Technical
experts
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Conclusions• Limits of the work, method, sources, etc.• But an interesting story line emerges
– About how a donor like Sweden engages, builds on its own experiences, fosters realism
– About how the development arena allows realism (decreasingly so)• With recommendations
– Build a lore of Swedish experience (in providing the various roles, and in its own reforms)
– Foster communication across boundaries in govt.– Establish its comparative advantage where possible (possibly
narrow and focused, like audit in PFM)