Rosalind Eyben ODI Workshop Southern Voices for Change in the International Aid System

1. Project vs. Programmatic Aid: What role for civil society with the growing ‘governmentalisation’ of aid? Rosalind Eyben ODI Workshop Southern Voices for Change in the International Aid System

2. Is aid more than delivering money ? MDGs

3. Different approaches to international aid • Managerial • Financial • Political economy • Post development • Relational - citizenship • International relations

4. The world of aid Citizen Donor country civil society & INGOs Donor government Multilateral agencies Recipient government Local civil society Citizen

5. What are we talking about? • A systemic or structural approach? • The ODI background paper considers architecture, procedures and rules • A systemic approach privileges meanings and relationships in which an explicit recognition of power is central • Is the noted lack of Southern civil society involvement in the aid effectiveness discussions an outcome of the paradigm already being constructed?

6. Issues that shape this debate • Power and relations in international aid; • The connections and feedback loops between purposive efforts to change society and how history happens; • Concepts of policy making: as a piece of paper that gets implemented or as a never continuously re-negotiated process; • Can a government and its international donors ‘deliver’ change?

7. My re-phrasing of the question • Is this a question of which aid instruments privilege civil society involvement ? • Or how do we deliberate to understand and design aid for supporting processes of inclusive citizenship?

8. Voices from DFID I hide the project because the programme manager would be worried because there are no measurable results and nothing happens beyond the local” “Why are changes in a policy matrix more significant than a change in the life of a community?”

9. Investing in relationships as much as outcomes • Understand the specific context, • Identify and invest in relationships with individuals, organisations and networks seeking progressive change; • Provide the human resources to create, support and strengthen alliances, bringing ideas as well as money. • Be aware that there is no necessary correlation between the amount of money provided and the magnitude of the impact. • Respond to the historical landscape of power within which the aid relationship is placed;

10. Making a difference through relationships Aid agencies can make a difference not only through formal interventions related to objectives but through the relationships and influence they have on others, the values they represent and spread and how the worth of their intervention is judged by others

11. Relationships Matter Positive change for poor people Investing in relationships Understanding the context Donor people and money

12. Aid instruments: people and money • Thus, support to the design and implementation of a national poverty reduction strategy, in addition to general budget support it would involve considerable staff resources supported by small financial investments in facilitating relationships and supporting those working for change within the country as a whole.

13. Small scale and relatively low cost interventions • Designed with local partners (in or outside government) on the basis of a problem diagnosis that may be dissimilar from that of actors in other parts of the system. • It means donors playing a role in encouraging rather than suppressing alternative perspectives - being prepared to recognise that harmonised diagnostic assessments, as proposed by the Paris Declaration, may be counter-productive to securing the desired impact.

14. Embracing diversity • 'Donor complementarity'would thus imply not simply providing aid to different sectors or with different aid instruments in support of an agreed diagnosis, but readiness to support variously positioned local actors whose diagnosis of the problem may be different. Contestation and (non-violent) conflict is an important means to pro-poor change

15. Valuing the relationship as much as the outcome • But this is more than a choice of a particular instrument to meet a particular end. For such an approach to work means valuing how and with whom you work as well as the goal you are seeking to achieve. It also requires experimentation and double loop learning.

16. Aid is not a catalyst • Seeing aid as a catalyst implies the donor is capable of intervening without being affected and influenced by the patterns of relationships of which its organisation and staff are part and that are promoting or blocking pro-poor change in the recipient country. Being ready to being open, rather than resisting being influenced by local actors encourages a donor agency to examine more closely with whom it chooses to relate and which networks of relationships to support