Donors’ impact on the work of development implementing organisations

Donors’ impact on the work of development implementing organisations

Introduction

As funders of development initiatives, donors play an essential role in international development. Their international aid allocation policies, development vision, and management control greatly influence development projects. However, the asymmetrical relationship between donors and development implementing organizations (Hereafter DIOs) has the potential to sideline final beneficiaries, allowing donors to set the agenda on their own. As a result, implementing organizations have to pay considerable attention to their funding sources concerns.

Given the breadth of the topic, this paper focuses mainly on governmental donors and bilateral aid. It analyzes their incidence in DIOs' practices in the Global South through concrete cases as examples and previous related studies in the field. It mentions tangentially other types of donors and funding modalities to make specific points.

In the first section, this investigation provides an overview of the different kinds of donors and funding types in international development. This classification is essential to understand donors' particularities and interests, especially governments' international development agencies.

The second section addresses the power dynamics patterns in the relationship among donors, DIOs, and final beneficiaries. It analyzes how donors' inherent leverage over DIOs, given their position as providers of resources, allows them to dictate the terms of their assistance. This section also evaluates donors' lack of accountability to final beneficiaries and its effects on DIOs' effectiveness as development agents.

The third section focuses on the priorities and development vision misalignment between donors and final beneficiaries. It points out how donors' development aims are not necessarily aligned to the recipients of their resources.?It refers, as illustrative examples, to the proliferation of security sector reforms and god governance projects in the Global South, which reflects the security concerns and vision of donors in the Global North rather than the development needs of the developing countries.

Finally, the fourth section addresses the discipline donors exert on DIOs through the imposition of public policy management approaches, top-down accountability systems, and project planning prerequisites for funding. Consequently, it examines how this discipline influences DIOs' projects elaboration and implementation.

Donors and funding types overview

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) classifies donors as governments, multilateral donors, NGOs, and private philanthropists (Keeley, 2012).?For the first category, the OECD also makes the distinction between governmental DAC donors and non-DAC donors. The first group corresponds to those countries that operate within the organisation's Development Assistance Committee, while the other group to those countries that don't (Dreher et al., 2011). Multilateral donors are international organisations like the United Nations and the World Bank, which fund development initiatives (Reisen, 2010). Finally, under the banner of private philanthropists are faith-based organisations (FBOs), charities, and other private entities (Keeley, 2012).

Despite their shared commitment to make a better world, donors have different visions, priorities, ideologies, and aims (Civicus, 2003). Consequently, there is no consensus about how that better world should be. Not surprisingly, sometimes, donors end up funding conflicting initiatives on behalf of their development vision. Female sexual and reproductive rights is a common area in which observers can appreciate this dynamic. On the one hand, funders like the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office support initiatives to facilitate access to contraception, sexual education, and safe abortions (Katerini, S. et al., 2019). Yet, on the other hand, the Trump administration adopted the global gag rule in 2017, denying access to US funds to any organisation supporting abortion medically or politically (Starrs, 2017). These conceptual divergences reveal donors' incidence over DIOs, which try to accede to their funds.

Simultaneously, donors have different approaches to development. In this regard, DAC donors' aid must comply with the following requisites for the OECD considers it as official development assistance (ODA): OECD monitoring, governmental source origin, having welfare and economic development ends for recipient countries in the Global South, and having the modality of grants or below-market interest rates loan concessions (Keeley, 2012). However, non-DAC donors do not have any constraints in their development policies. Every non-DAC country follows its national development guidelines (Mawdsley, E. et al., 2015). For example, GCC countries consider religion an essential factor in their international aid policies, Russia follows similar standards that DAC donors, and China a more transactional business-like approach (Hook and Rumsey, 2016).?Concurrently, new development donors' emergence put pressure on DAC ones, pushing them towards adopting more transactional approaches (Hook and Rumsey, 2016).

Donors' characteristics and capabilities vary according to their nature. Governments have plenty of resources, political influence, and ambitious goals; however, access to their funds is more bureaucratic. (Civicus, 2003). Contrary, private donors generally have specific aims, fewer resources, and simplified procedures; notwithstanding, they always operate within states' jurisdictions.?(Civicus, 2003). INGOs and multilateral donors have a dual role as development intermediaries and donors, depending on states' support for their development assistance funds (Keeley, 2012). Not surprisingly, government donors are more autonomous actors and politically influential than other donors. Simultaneously, most international aid is bilateral (Biscaye, P. et al., 2017).?In this regard, Keeley (2012) points out that 70% of ODA belongs to this category.?As direct donors and donors of donors, governments have more leverage to dictate development priorities directly or indirectly to DIOs.

Governments bilateral aid policies are not decoupled from their foreign policy. Hook and Rumsey (2016) pose that governments further their national interests abroad through aid allocation. Not surprisingly, DIOs dependency on donor countries' resources can compromise their autonomy (Mitchell, 2014). In a study about Cambodian NGOs, Khieng and Dahles (2015) conclude that local DIOs focus on projects donors want to support, accepting foreign development agendas to access those funds. In Cambodia, about 75% of NGOs annual budget relies on international aid (Khieng and Dahles, 2015). In this regard, DIOs vulnerable autonomies expose them to donors' impositions.

All in all, the relationship between donors and DIOs poses power asymmetries, which affect the alignment of development priorities and visions. In this regard, the following section will analyse how donors influence DIOs activities through the lens of those power dynamics.

Power dynamics between donors and DIOs

Emerson (1962) posits that power dynamics are based on controlling tangible or intangible things others value. In a few words, power rest on the dependency of others. In the particular case of DIOs, many depend on the resources donors provide to support development initiatives. This situation exposes them to lose their autonomies and increase the leverage donors have to impose their vision of development and further their interests (Sadoun, 2006). The case mentioned above of Cambodian NGOs reflects how DIOs can adapt their priorities to their patrons' vision, sidelining final beneficiaries' interests (Khieng and Dahles, 2015).

Donors take advantage of their position in the development hierarchy to further their foreign affairs and commercial objectives. In this regard, Mawdsley et al. (2015) point out how Western donors used international aid allocation to support their private firms. Similarly, donors use bilateral aid to extract concessions from their clients?(Wang, 2018).

On the same page, McGregor et al. (2013) point out how the refocus of New Zealand' aid policy from poverty alleviation to sustainable economic development relies on the government's leverage on development funds to lead NGOs in this direction.??To be more specific, New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the entity in charge of development aid, used funding cuts and delays to accomplish this goal (McGregor et al., 2013).

Similarly, the interaction between development actors in Ghana reveals power dynamics patterns. Bawa (2013) highlights the powerlessness of Ghanaian LNGO vis-à-vis international donors. She points out how LNGOs financial dependency diminishes their autonomy and conditions their work to donors' preferences and priorities?(Bawa, 2013). Consequently, local Ghanaian NGOs assume chess pawn roles in a development chessboard dominated directly or indirectly by government donors in the Global North.

Power dynamics lead to the creation of structural hierarchies (Emerson, 1962). In this regard, an implication of DIOs dependency on private donors is the informal adoption of a development hierarchy. In this regard, government donors would be at the top of the position and final beneficiaries at the bottom (Bawa, 2013). Ironically, given their proximity and shared culture, LNGOs have an in-depth understanding of final beneficiaries; however, they are irrelevant in determining development agendas and priorities (Mitlin, 2007). As a result, DIOs development projects do not necessarily address the mains concerns for the target communities.

The interaction among development actors and final beneficiaries resemble a neo-colonial modernist development vision. Hanchey (2020) posits that the Global North base its approach to African development on the old paternalist mission civilisatrice. Thus, the development narrative depicts Africans as ignorant and corrupt salvages and Westerners as indispensable saviours (Hanchey, 2020). Simultaneously, the current international aid framework reinforces African countries dependency on their former colonial masters (Uzoigwe, 2019).

Power dynamics between government donors and DIOs pose considerable challenges to international development. A relevant one is the lack of alignment between donors' development priorities and their final beneficiaries'. Before this situation, DIOs are supposed to play an essential role as intermediary institutions. However, their diminished autonomy does not allow them to play that critical function. The following section will analyze the alignment between donors and DIOs.

Donors, DIOs, and financial beneficiaries priorities misalignment

Given the power asymmetries and the implied informal hierarchical structure of international development, donors have considerable leverage to determine agendas and set priorities. Consequently, their vision, ideologies, and interests prevail over final beneficiaries' ones in the Global South. This dynamic creates the conditions for potential misalignments between development actors and final beneficiaries. International aid subject allocation reflects this situation (Hook and Rumsey, 2016). In this regard, Western donors prioritize funding security sector reforms and good governance projects in developing countries (Harrison, 2013). However, these areas are not necessarily connected with aid recipients' particularities and major concerns (Harrison, 2013).

After the terrorist attacks of November 9, 2001, Western countries started paying more attention to security issues from a global perspective (Larzillière, 2017). As a result, OECD DAC donors increased their ODA related to security sector reforms (SSR) in the Global South by more than 258% from 2004 to 2008 (Swiss, 2011). The main driver behind this radical change in the global development agenda is the increasing risk fragile states posed to the Global North, given their instability and potential to serve as safe-havens for terrorist organizations (Abrahamsen, 2016).

The mainstreaming of an SSR perspective distorts development. In this regard, the securitization and militarization of international aid focus on the effects of the Global South's underdevelopment in the Global North rather than their causes (Abrahamsen, 2016).?Fisher and Anderson (2015) point out how donors' support to SSR in Rwanda, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Chad had left aside social development and human rights protections in those countries. Not surprisingly, the emergence of SSR affects the image of traditional development actors.?In this regard, Larzillière indicates that Western NGOs working in SSR projects are more susceptible to be considered imperialist agents, which affects their credibility and effectiveness (Larzillière, 2017).

Like SSR, the good governance approach to development surges as a set of policies designed in the Global North for developing countries without paying attention to their particularities. It is based on the idea that poor institutions are behind underdevelopment (Gray and Khan, 2010, 339).?As a result, it tries to replicate Western institutions in the Global South. However, when now-developed countries were at a similar development stage, they had more deficient institutions than current developing countries (Chang, 2011). Simultaneously, Gray and Khan (2010) pose that the good governance approach is biased to neoliberal institutions, limiting governments' capacity to deal with very particular market failures like the challenge of relocating rents to more productive uses. These relocations sometimes occurred through corruption and the violation of property rights (Khan, 1996). Both now-developed countries and late-industrialized countries like Japan and South Korea carried out such policies during their industrialization processes (Chang, 2011).

Corruption is one of the targets of the good governance approach. Mauro (1998) highlights how it increases transaction costs and reduces accountability. In this regard, anti-corruption organizations like International Transparency receive considerable donors' support (Sampson, 2005, 109). Simultaneously, the topic's ethical sensibility and donors' active policy to support the anti-corruption movement turn mobilization against corruption into an end in itself (Sampson, 2005, 109). However, now-developed countries were as corrupt as today developing countries when they were at a similar development stage (Chang, 2002).

All in all, donors' development visions and priorities do not necessarily agree with their final beneficiaries'. However, power asymmetries allow them to impose their development conception. Therefore, the materialization of their vision of development requires disciplining intermediary organizations. In this regard, the following section will approach donors' discipline tools for DIOs.?

Donors’ discipline tools:

Donors' position at the top of the international development hierarchy relies on their funds. The allocation of their development aid gives them the power to dictate access terms to their resources to DIOs (Bawa, 2013). In this regard, donors decide which themes, organizations, and countries to support. Tacitly, donors have the power to discipline DIOs, denying access to their funds to organizations that do not share their development vision or misuse their aid.

Before hands, donors choose the areas they want to support. As a result, successful DIOs' funding proposals appeal to donor's development priorities and approaches (Civicus, 2003). In this way, donors can condition DIOs to advance their development visions and interests. Regrettably, DIOs' dependency on development funds can push them to prioritize donors' interests over final beneficiaries. Khieng and Dahles (2015) narrate how Cambodian LNGOs' extremely external dependence on international grants eviscerates their institutional autonomy, turning them into donors' agents.

The predominant management account framework for development projects makes them fit within donors' expectations (Eyben and Guijt, 2015). For example, the former DFID required DIOs to adopt a value for money approach to implement their projects (Bond, 2012). This approach pursues to maximize donors' aid impact increasing its effectiveness, efficiency, and economic management (Bond, 2012). In this way, donors can monitor how DIOs spend their resources on the project they pick to fund (Clerki and Quinn, 2019). As a result, the system increases DIOs accountability to donors rather than to final beneficiaries.

Similarly, donors frequently required DIOs to use logical frameworks (Dale, 2003). This methodological approach allows DIOs to organize the implementation of development projects. However, logical-frameworks focuses on donors' objective (Kerr, 2008). Simultaneously, it reduces DIOs flexibility to address unexpected events during the implementation of their projects (Dale, 2003). Thus, Eyben and Guijt (2015) consider it as an instrument to dominate DIOs. Likewise, Kerr (2008) points out that log-frames work as a tool to imposed donors' neocolonial development visions.

Finally, quantitative indicators and other public administration tools in international development focus on implementing donors' development aims for developing countries (Kerr, 2008). However, the consequent disregard to the social particularities of recipient countries sometimes can harm local communities. In this regard, Haiti's chaos after the earthquake proved the rigidity of these approaches to the humanitarian crisis on the ground. (Satterthwaite and Moses, 2012). The Haitian State's fragility and the humanitarian crisis required quick intervention, local knowledge, and putting people above performance; however, DIOs couldn't' adapt effectively, which lowered their assistance efficiency (Satterthwaite and Moses, 2012).

Conclusion

Donors and their funding type, especially governments and bilateral aid, significantly impact development organisations’ work. Most of the time, this impact is negative. The dependency DIOs developed on international support compromise their institutional autonomy. As a result, they work for their donors instead of their final beneficiaries (Khieng and Dahles, 2015). Simultaneously, bilateral donors allocate aid not independently to their foreign policy and international trade objectives (Mawdsley et al., 2015).

The divergence of interests and development vision causes priorities misalignment between donors and final beneficiaries (Hook and Rumsey, 2016). Simultaneously, DIOs limited autonomy does not allow them to intercede to balance the playing field. As a result, donors imposed their development vision on DIOs and final beneficiaries. The proliferation of security sector reforms and good governance projects in developing countries reflects this anomaly (Harrison, 2013).

Donors’ capacity to determine aid allocation and to set the conditions to apply to their funds give them leverage over DIOs (Bawa, 2013). This natural advantage allows donors to impose a top-down accountability system based on a quantitative management approach. In this way, they lead organisations to materialise their development vision. However, final beneficiaries are left aside.

Finally, power dynamics distorts international development, making DIOs accountable to donors instead of final beneficiaries. Simultaneously, the imposition of donors' priorities and vision resemble the old Western civilizing mission. In this context, problems belong to recipient countries and solutions to donors. As a result, DIOs become agents in the donors' developmental crusade to save developing countries in the Global South.

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