Publication: Building or Bypassing Recipient Country Systems : Are Donors Defying the Paris Declaration?
Date
2013-04
ISSN
Published
2013-04
Author(s)
Knack, Stephen
Abstract
The 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid
Effectiveness sets targets for increased use by donors of
recipient country systems for managing aid. It also calls
for donors to be more responsive to the quality of recipient
country systems: the optimal level of their use, in terms of
maximizing the development effectiveness of aid, is believed
to vary with their quality. This study investigates the
degree to which donors' use of country systems is in
fact positively related to their quality, using indicators
explicitly endorsed for this purpose by the Paris
Declaration and covering the 2005-2010 period. The results
of these tests strongly confirm a positive and significant
relationship, and show it is robust to corrections for
potential sample selection, omitted variables, or
endogeneity bias. The result holds even when estimates are
informed only by variation over time within each
donor-recipient pair in use and quality of country systems.
Moreover, donor-specific tests show that use of country
systems varies positively with their quality for the vast
majority of donors. These findings contradict several other
studies that claim there is no relation and imply that
donors in this respect are failing to live up to their
commitments under the Paris Declaration. The author's
interpretation of the available evidence on use of country
systems is more favorable: donors' behavior over the
measurement period is largely consistent with their
commitments in this area. In this respect, at least, donors
appear to have modified their aid practices in ways that
build rather than undermine administrative capacity and
accountability in recipient country governments.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Knack, Stephen. 2013. Building or Bypassing Recipient Country Systems : Are Donors Defying the Paris Declaration?. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 6423. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/15564 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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