Monitoring Movements in Development Aid: Recursive Partnerships and Infrastructures

Notes

Chapter 1 1. The exception is David Mosse and David Lewis’ edited volume The Aid Effect: Giving and Governing in International Development (2005), which contains extended discussions of partnership and accountability. Even that book, however, doesn’t touch upon infrastructure and transparency. 2. Source: http://st-and-dev.net/sts/. 3. Edmund Leach would characterize development anthropology as “a kind of neocolonialism ” (cited in Ferguson 1997, 166). 4. For further discussion of the logical framework and its use by NatureAid, see chapter 5. Chapter 2 1. These interviews were carried out in Hanoi in October 2008. 2. From “Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam. South-East Asia joint initiative. Mutual accountability” (consultant’s report, 2008). 3. A British consultant working for Danida in one of the largest and most influential Vietnamese ministries offered a description of how partnership works. Partnership, he suggested, entails the continuous negotiation of one fundamental tension. On the one hand, there is the donors’ concern: How much can you spend and on what conditions? On the other hand, there are “weak institutions,” that are not really geared to work with the accountability measures defined by donors. For this reason, funds are often not transferred to ministries in a continuous, well-planned process, but are rather tipped into treasuries “in huge piles.” This means that no one is ready to take action even when funds are actually available. Our informant argued that the reason this problem still hasn’t been resolved is that there is a “hidden agenda not to do anything.” In some sense, the existing system works. But it works by maintaining a kind of deliberate opacity that preserves the autonomy of the participants. Notes 168 Notes to chapters 2 and 3 4. Source: http://blog.aiddata.org. 5. To make matters more complicated, Brit is a dance partner with one of the villagers , while our contact person in NatureAid turned out to be our research partner insofar as he produced documentation used in this book. 6. This material includes interviews and observations of Danish, English, Australian, and Vietnamese development consultants; interviews with representatives of the OECD, Danida, the UN, and the World Bank; and interviews with Danish and international development researchers, representatives of NGOs, representatives of various aid transparency initiatives, and Danish national auditors. Last but not least, it involves a year of fieldwork in the Danish branch of a global environmental NGO that had invited us in to study its monitoring and evaluation practices. We refer to this organization by the pseudonym NatureAid. 7. For some examples, see the report on the Seeking NGO-Donor Partnership for Greater Effectiveness and Accountability workshop held by the Inter-American Development Bank (source: http://idbdocs.iadb.org), the “Agency accountability framework” developed by the Canadian International Development Agency (source: http://acdi-cida.gc.ca), and Matthew Winters’ paper “Accountability, participation and foreign aid effectiveness” (2009). 8. Reading The Network Inside Out (Riles 2000), it is hard not to feel that the same must have been the case for Riles. Chapter 3 1. This happens by joint assessment of “progress in implementing agreed commitments on aid effectiveness, including the Partnership Commitment (Indicator 12)” (source: http://www.oecd.org/development/aideffectiveness/34428351.pdf). 2. Source: interview with independent development consultant. Thus, it is a source of frustration to development practitioners that the principle of mutual accountability appears most important, yet least operational. 3. Source: http://www.publishwhatyoufund.org. 4. Source: http://www.publishwhatyoufund.org. 5. Source: http://www.access-info.org. 6. Source: http://www.publishwhatyoufund.org. 7. The particular heading has been changed, but as of this writing the argument is still available at http://www.publishwhatyoufund.org. 8. Source: http://www.youtube.com. 9. The conference’s webpage, available at http://aiddata.org, offers further explanation . Notes to chapters 3 and 4 169 10. Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk. 11. The word informatted is derived from Shoshana Zuboff’s 1989 book In the Age of the Smart Machine. We use it to point to how present-day bureaucrats are changed by engagement with information technologies into agents who, ideally, should produce and handle constant streams of information. 12. In addition, the wired-up user on the ground resonates with other recently invented publics, such as the inscribed users of microloans and other actors at the “bottom of the pyramid.” Such a user isn’t necessarily in need of empowerment; he or she may already have many...