Institute of Development Studies

Achieving the MDGs: Why Power and Relations Matter

Four simple low-cost steps promise to transform the effectiveness of international aid programmes in support of the MDGs

Ros Eyben - 24 September 2008

Current approaches to effective aid assume that we are in control and that change is predictable. Neither is true: but such assumptions are blocking donors from responding effectively to a largely unpredictable and dynamic policy environment. New ways of thinking about aid are needed to make it more effective. International aid agencies are stuck on a ‘thought treadmill' which focuses on technical mechanisms of resources and architecture. This may render invisible other possible and useful approaches.

The Importance of Power

Power is central to aid relationships. Addressing this would allow for serious critical examination of the organisational cultures and practices that shape expectations of what international aid can and should do. Relational power produces perverse consequences in which the orthodox perspective confirms previously-held convictions. Evidence is sought to check that one is still on track, not to ask whether there are other tracks. Alternative ways of understanding and tackling problems are ignored or dismissed as irrelevant. The choice of indicators is too often assumed to be just a technical matter. Power influences whose ideas count and what is deemed a ‘result'.

Once the importance of power is recognised, opportunities can be opened up for dialogue and learning. Aid would be more effective if donors looked for and appreciated diverse perspectives. Governments and multilateral organisations can improve the success of their aid relationships through adaptive learning, recognising diverse realities experienced by others and the existence of political relationships in which international aid is embedded.

Missed Opportunities?

Aid can be more effective if factors such as trust, and relationships that recognise and address issues of power, are taken into account. According to one UN official cited in a recent paper, many of her agency's most effective country level interventions have not been reported because they invested in relationships rather than achieving the measurable outcomes that get included in logical frameworks. Perhaps aid is only as effective as it is because of what is today not going reported. How many opportunities are we missing for making aid work better?

Donors need to think about how power is operating in everyday practice. Even in an international aid conference exclusion can be generated, perhaps through the conference design or how diversity is recognised and responded to. Critical reflection to address costs nothing and can start tomorrow.

Four Steps to Greater Effectiveness

The following four steps do not require any additional resources or re-arrangements of development's institutional architecture. These are simple low cost steps to more effective aid:

1. Donors need to learn more about the particular context in which they are working.

What works in one place, may not work in another or even in the same place at a different moment in history or with a different group of donors. Such learning is becoming a practical challenge for many donor staff, whose time is spent in donor co-ordination meetings or in reporting to their own management. Staff and their government counterparts need to re-organise their time to get out of the capital city and listen to what people tell them.

2. Diverse perspectives need to be built into methodologies for defining and assessing the success of aid.

While there are some obvious arguments for better co-ordination and more efficient use of resources, a balance has to be struck between this and encouraging diverse points of view for solving complex problems. Both consensus and contestation are drivers of pro-poor change. If the former dominates, there may be a tendency to look only for a single diagnosis and solution, thus shutting out the possibilities of creative dialogue and the collaborative challenging of implicit assumptions about how the world works that hampers innovation and constrains imagination.

3. In addition to measuring results, donors need to assess the quality of relations at project/programme, country and international levels against indicators agreed with partners that could be regularly reviewed and widely commented upon.

An emphasis on performance measurement can lead to mutual risk-adverse behaviour. Compensatory process indicators might include ‘preparedness to take risks', ‘embracing and learning from failure' and ‘willingness to change one's mind'. Such assessments could be supported by country specific studies to bring to light the way relationships are managed and the lessons that can be learnt. Such studies will make visible processes that may be reinforcing existing power relations and thus hindering the effectiveness of aid resources and instruments.

4. Aid agencies need to develop the competences of staff in organisational and personal self awareness, to develop sound understanding of the power, position and biases they hold in relation to others.

Power has an adverse effect when we impose our own point of view. Alternative ways of understanding and tackling problems are ignored or dismissed as irrelevant; those putting them forward feel disempowered and will drop out of the conversation. Organisational and individual critical self-reflection delivers benefits for donors as well as the others they seek to help. Like them, donors also will learn and think differently, to imagine new possibilities and to debate alternative choices.

Rosalind Eyben is an IDS Research Fellow in the Participation, Power and Social Change Team