The Foreign Service Journal, April 2011

A P R I L 2 0 1 1 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 59 Why Top-Down Doesn’t Work Delivering Aid Differently: Lessons from the Field Wolfgang Fengler and Homi Kharas, editors, Brookings Institution Press, 2010, $28.95, paperback, 286 pages. R EVIEWED BY L EON W EINTRAUB In assembling this anthology, Wolf- gang Fengler (a World Bank econo- mist) and Homi Kharas (a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution) have achieved their stated goal of demon- strating the urgent need for serious re- forms in the way U.S. foreign assistance is delivered. Regrettably, they offer few workable ideas for how to implement such an overhaul. Consider the book’s recommenda- tions for the government of Tajikistan, which begin: “Develop and adopt an overall planning framework, a formal approach that links national develop- ment priorities, the state budget, the national investment program, and pro- grams and projects funded by foreign aid.” The long to-do list goes on to in- clude establishing a new agency to co- ordinate foreign aid and amending the country’s tax code. Somehow, all these reforms are sup- posed to occur in a country that the State Department describes as one where “foreign revenue is precariously dependent upon exports of cotton and aluminum, and on remittances from Tajik migrant workers abroad,” and “government interference in the econ- omy and massive corruption stifle eco- nomic growth and private investment.” Speaking as someone who has spent considerable time in developing coun- tries as a Peace Corps Volunteer, doc- toral research student and Foreign Service officer, I am bemused that aid practitioners like Fengler and Kharas continue to cling to top-down planning, modeling and strategizing. Count me instead in the camp of WilliamEasterly, who says in his 2006 book, The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good , that “The plan to end world poverty shows all the pre- tensions of utopian social engineering. … That complexity [of society] dooms any attempt to achieve the end of poverty through a plan, and no rich so- ciety has ended poverty in this way.” Despite the editors’ emphasis on “country ownership” and sensitivity to local needs, they still rely on the multi- lateral Paris Declaration of 2005 and the follow-up Accra Agenda of 2008 to provide the guidelines for effective de- velopment planning. For a pointed example of the im- possibility of meshing bilateral and multilateral programs within a single framework, whether funded by non- governmental organizations or central governments, look no further than the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. As Tamera Fillinger com- mented in her June 2007 FSJ article (“Women’s Health Undercut by Ad- ministration Policies”), even this highly lauded, multibillion-dollar program could not be meshed appropriately with other efforts. And as for promoting “country ownership,” Alex Dupuy, a sociology professor at Wesleyan University and a native of Haiti, wrote in the Jan. 9 Washington Post that the InterimHaiti Recovery Commission “has effectively displaced the Haitian government and is in charge of setting priorities for re- construction.” Both official aid and the work being done by NGOs, he asserts, “reinforce the country’s dependence on foreign aid and further sap the ca- pacity and responsibility of the govern- ment to meet the basic needs of its citizens.” The most valuable part of Deliver- ing Aid Differently is the final chapter, B OOKS This book leaves me skeptical that procedures that apply to humanitarian operations will work for development assistance.