Making Aid Work: Governance and Decentralization

Gil Epstein and Ira Gang

No 8653, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Donor aid organizations (DAOs) are multi-layered and multi-dimensional bureaucracies with many departments trying to find solutions to problems for countries, investing staff resources and effort into having an effect. A department may come into conflict with other departments because of personal and other rivalries, at least partly overlapping jurisdictions, and/or the bureaucratic necessity of laying claim to having the bigger impact. The idea here is that good governance starts at home. We consider how inter-departmental competition within the DAO affects departments' efforts and the DAO's performance measured by its ability to maximize effort towards helping a client country. In short, we wish to see how alternative reward systems which DAOs may put into place motivate competing departments in implementing the organization's goals. The argument for establishing good governance criteria is as much to put constraints on donor behavior as on the necessity of properly acting recipients.

Keywords: foreign aid; governance; rent seeking; decentralization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F35 O10 O19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2014-11
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published - published in: in Mak Arvin (ed.): Handbook on the Economics of Foreign Aid, Edward Elgar, 2015, 488 - 502

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp8653.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Making Aid Work: Governance and Decentralization (2015)
Working Paper: Making Aid Work: Governance and Decentralization (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8653

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().