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Motivation: Budget support is the form of aid most commonly associated with recipient‐country ownership. However, a number of scholars and practitioners have criticized the approach as masking new forms of conditionality. Was budget support simply a guise for increasing donor influence in recipient countries? How can we explain the rapid shift towards budget support, as well as the rapid decline in its popularity after only a few years?
Purpose: We use a bargaining framework to explain the rise and fall of budget support. Contrary to explanations that suggest that budget support was a normative decision by donors designed to increase aid effectiveness by fostering ownership, a bargaining framework emphasizes that aid policy is the result of sustained negotiations between donors and recipients. These negotiations, however, are constrained by donors' inability to deliver aid as promised.
Approach: We use a Nash bargaining framework to formalize the predictions of a bargaining model. From the model, two testable predictions emerge: (1) in exchange for more credible commitments, recipient governments are willing to selectively offer donor agencies greater access to and influence over domestic policy decision-making; and (2) in exchange for such influence, donor agencies are willing to exert less pressure on recipients to be politically inclusive. We then test the implications of the model using case‐study evidence from Rwanda and Tanzania.
Findings: The empirical data, based on over 80 interviews with practitioners over several periods of research in both countries, provide substantial evidence in support of the model's core assumptions and predictions. Contrary to claims that budget support increased recipient‐country ownership, interviews (identified as personal communications) suggest that, in exchange for more credible commitments, recipient governments were willing to grant donors greater access and influence. In return, donor agencies reduced demands on the recipient government regarding political inclusivity, tacitly accepting arrangements that centralized decision‐making and excluded civil society. When donor agencies could no longer provide budget support as promised, these negotiated arrangements broke down.
Policy Implications: The findings challenge a common narrative that donors embraced budget support because of a normative commitment to ownership. They also demonstrate the value of a bargaining framework. To understand why particular forms of aid, like budget support, rise in popularity only to quickly fall by the wayside, we need to understand what donor agencies and recipient governments bargain over and why.

Donor obligation is the donor role expected by the recipient. As a developing country, Nepal is characterized by the inadequate governance. As a result of the globalization of governance, Nepal has been making efforts for improving governance mostly supported by donor agencies since 1990s. In this context, this paper aims to assess the necessity of donor-support for improving democratic governance; to analyze the appropriateness of donor-support for civil service reform; and to identify the level of efficiency of development actors in demonstrating good governance in Nepal.This article is heavily based on secondary data. However, the data related to the 'appropriate donor-support for civil service reform' are derived from secondary analysis based on the raw data collected during the researcher's own PhD work (Adhikari, 2011). The study reveals that the donor-support is highly necessary for strengthening local authorities and civil society organizations. Financial support and policy advice are necessary for strengthening local authorities—the best performers of good governance among development actors in Nepal. Only policy advice is required for reforming new areas of civil service such as merit-based bureaucracy and performance incentives. The highly complex issue of civil service reform is corruption control in Nepal for which all kinds of donor-support (policy advice, financial advice and technical assistance) are required in Nepal.

Most Southern Non-Governmental Organizations (SNGOs) depend on donor agencies for their survival. To qualify for donor funding, SNGOs typically have to meet a range of funding conditions. Critics argue that donor requirements may have undesirable consequences. Based on qualitative research involving 41 SNGOs in India and Ghana, this article explores (1) the (potentially) adverse effects of donor conditions on SNGOs and (2) the strategies that SNGOs employ to deal with these conditions. We demonstrate that certain donor conditions are difficult to reconcile with a view of development that emphasizes local ownership and a strong and autonomous civil society. We also show that SNGOs employ a multitude of strategies to deal with adverse donor conditions, highlighting that they are not powerless in their relations with donors. Yet, these strategies are not always available to all organizations and may have undesired consequences. Points for practitioners Private development aid is increasingly characterized by pressure for accountability and a tightening of funding arrangements. Donors supporting SNGOs need to take into consideration that their funding conditions may have a range of undesirable consequences. Our study offers an overview of these consequences, enabling donor agencies to systematically review their conditions in the light of their potentially adverse effects. In addition, our study shows that – when confronted when unworkable donor conditions – SNGOs employ strategic behaviour. This is particularly problematic when SNGOs resort to manipulating the perception of donors resulting in the creation of a paper reality.

AbstractExisting measures of aid transparency overwhelmingly focus on how much information donor agencies are willing to share with the international donor community, overlooking that transparency is about increasing citizens' access to information in order to improve government accountability. In this article, we present the Citizen Aid Transparency Dataset (CATD). Using factor and correlation analysis, we show that the CATD captures a different dimension of transparency than existing transparency measures. We also show that aid agency transparency varies both within and between donor countries and that there are important quality differences between agencies in the timeliness, breadth, depth and accessibility of the data provided.

BACKGROUND: Ghana's shift from low-income to middle-income status will make it ineligible to receive concessional aid in the future. While transition may be a reflection of positive changes in a country, such as economic development or health progress, a loss of support from donor agencies could have negative impacts on health system performance and population health. We aimed to identify key challenges and opportunities that Ghana will face in dealing with aid transition, specifically from the point of view of country-level stakeholders. METHODS: We conducted key informant interviews with 18 stakeholders from the government, civil society organisations and donor agencies in Ghana using a semistructured interview guide. We performed directed content analysis of the interview transcripts to identify key themes related to anticipated challenges and opportunities that might result from donor transitions. RESULTS: Overall, stakeholders identified challenges more frequently than opportunities. All stakeholders interviewed believe that Ghana will face substantial challenges due to donor transitions. Challenges include difficulty filling financial gaps left by donors, the shifting of national priorities away from the health sector, lack of human resources for health, interrupted care for beneficiaries of donor-funded health programmes, neglect of vulnerable populations and loss of the accountability mechanisms that are linked with donor financing. However, stakeholders also identified key opportunities that transitions might present, including efficiency gains, increased self-determination and self-sufficiency, enhanced capacity to leverage domestic resources and improved revenue mobilisation. CONCLUSION: Stakeholders in Ghana believe transitioning away from aid for health presents both challenges and opportunities. The challenges could be addressed by conducting a transition readiness assessment, identifying health sector priorities, developing a transition plan with a budget to continue critical health programmes and ...

The top-down development approach has failed to bring Indonesia in meeting prosperity. Alternatively, a critical approach as offered by Non Governmental Organization (NGO) becomes much more attractive to be adopted. However such approach encounters problematics since each NGO carries its own interest, ideology, and its dependency on donor agencies, normally diametrically collide with another NGO's ideology, its interest as well as donor-supported interest. This study is to answer the question how deep have donors infleunced to the ideology, interest, and financial independency of local NGOs. The study use qualitative method as approach. The financial arrangement network, action, interest, motives and NGOs' ideologies are the main focus of this study. Two NGOs are observed, namely Lembaga Kajian untuk Transformasi Sosial (LKTS) and Lembaga Pertanian Sehat (LPS). This study revealed that LKTS and LPS were quite dependent in the financial aspect. LKTS was also dependent in formulating action, while LPS was independent. Some factors affecting the independence of NGOs are: (1) degree of militancy of NGOs' ideology, (2) financial strength, (3) NGOs' level of achievements. In the development perspective, NGOs are not necessarily reflecting type of social movement organization which are always strongly based on bottom-up ideology.

In the name of 'aid effectiveness,' public foreign aid is meant to bean equal partnership between donors and recipients of aid, while atthe same time proving its efficiency to taxpayers in donor countries.Moreover, as state institutions, public aid agencies are required tofollow their own bureaucratic regulations, and increasingly so alsothose of their partner institutions, while simultaneously managingaid in the most cost-efficient way. This article turns the spotlighton a category of aid workers who help foreign aid agenciesmanoeuvre through these conflicting objectives: the desk officersemployed locally by donor agencies in aid-recipient countries. Thearticle centres on Tanzania, a country at the forefront of the aideffectiveness agenda, illustrating well the tensions it embodies.Tanzanian desk officers advance donor conditionality andcircumvent heavy bureaucratic regulation by tapping into theirresources as locals. Such resources involve their identity ascitizens with a right to hold the Tanzanian governmentaccountable for how it spends development money. They alsoinvolve desk officers' personal networks in the Tanzaniandevelopment industry, which help agencies expedite aid interventions – a resource important enough to be assessed bysome foreign managers in the recruitment of national staff.

AbstractThe article reviews a number of reports and articles on both the roles and purpose of Anti‐Corruption Agencies or Commissions (ACC) to set the context for its empirical research. The research draws on field visits to two African countries (Ghana and Uganda) in 1999, and visits to these and three further African countries (Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia) in 20041 to study agencies whose remit includes anti‐corruption work—to consider the relevance and reality of the issues and themes raised in the review. The visits to Ghana and Uganda offer, for the first time, longitudinal perspectives on the development of ACCs and donor involvement.While the research generally confirms issues raised in the review, this perspective provides the basis for the development of three hypotheses new to the study of ACCs. These are: is there, paradoxically, an adverse impact on the development of ACCs as a consequence of mounting pressure from donors for anti‐corruption results; whether the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) is the most relevant ACC model; and whether better results may be achieved with sequenced or less donor involvement using ACCs and other organisations? This clearly has practitioner and policy relevance for the future role and development of existing ACCs within current circumstances and for decisions on the creation of new ACCs.

The agencies visited in 2004 were those with a responsibility for addressing corruption: the Anti‐Corruption Bureau (ACB) in Malawi; the Inspectorate of Government (IG), Uganda; the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (GHRAJ) and the Serious Fraud Office (SFO), Ghana; the Prevention of Corruption Bureau (PCB), Tanzania; the Anti‐Corruption Commission (ACC), Zambia. The agencies in Ghana and Uganda were previously visited in 1999.
Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Non-Governmental Organizations are dependent on the donor funding, and donor(s) demands strong internal controls. Fewer funds less sustainability more funds more sustainability. This study investigates the impact of FMSOPs financial management policies over internal control and donor aids and why these are necessary for the organization development. For analysis primary data collected from 191 respondents and five point's Likert scale method used. Data collected from NGOs experienced staff. This study concluded that financial management standard operating policies strongly and significantly related to internal controls and donor aids. Organization assessment is the part of donor agencies before making partnerships. Therefore, it is recommended to implement the FMSOPs in NGOs for transparency and earning donors' trust.