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Regional themes > Poverty reduction frameworks and critiques Last update: 2020-11-27  
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Conceptualizing RFI’s versus GFI’s - Ravi Kanbur

4. Conditionality and Ownership
 
There is, however, one generic issue in which a clear case could be made for potentially different comparative advantages of regional versus global institutions. Conditionality, as practiced by the Bretton Woods Institutions in particular, has come in for a lot of criticism, for being imposed from the outside on an unwilling and resentful population. And this is just on economic conditionality. As the development dialogue broadens from the purely economic to include aspects of governance and democracy, tensions between donor and recipient are bound to increase as different interpretations are given of these concepts and their implementation.

I start with the premise that it is not conditionality per se, but its nature and its implementation that is at issue. For example, most NGO’s (Northern and Southern) would like to see stronger conditionality on governments to spend more on the social sectors. It is not conditionality per se that they object to, but its content. For many in the middle class elite in recipient countries, it is not necessarily economic conditionality that jars so much as the perceived “imperial” mechanisms for their implementation. The wait for the IMF/World Bank mission to pronounce on the country’s performance brings to mind recent eras of political domination by foreign powers, direct and indirect. In this atmosphere, no benefit of doubt is given, and even policies that would otherwise be accepted become the subject of vehement discourse, not because of the policies themselves but because of the mechanisms for their implementation and monitoring.

Even for governments convinced of the broad policies, and willing to take the domestic political heat, there is irritation at the detail in the conditionalities, and at the lack of appreciation of the time needed for implementation.

There will always be conditionality, implicit or explicit, in a donor-recipient relationship. No donor will write a blank check, and there will always be differing views on what constitutes an appropriate development strategy and an appropriate use of donor resources, between donor and recipient, and among donors themselves. Our task, rather, should be to fashion mechanisms that reduce these tensions and that do not, by themselves, become obstacles to reaching agreement on use of resources. And it is well to recognize upfront that in these matters, perception is as important as reality.

Perhaps the problem can be best posed in terms of a government and a polity that needs to be delivered a “tough” message about its policies. I do not specify what these are, but they could range from economic through social to governance issues. Of course, the best source of such a message is the population itself, through the ballot box. But sometimes the population itself is behind these policies. In any event, one possible messenger for this tough message is from outside the country. This can come in a variety of ways, one of which is through establishing and implementing conditionality in the transfer of resources from donors. We can then ask the question—who should this messenger be?

An examination of the recent New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) initiative in Africa highlights some of the issues involved. A central feature of the NEPAD initiative, which sets it apart from all of the many previous Africa-wide initiatives coming from the continent, is the proclamation of the importance of governance and democracy as key building blocks of development and poverty reduction. But equally important is the philosophy of “mutual monitoring” in ensuring that common standards are met and followed in these (and other) areas. It is understandable why donors have welcomed this initiative. It is long recognized that conditionality applied in the past through the Bretton Woods Institutions has not worked, and the doubts and suspicions sown in the past negatively impact any reforms of conditionality through processes that emphasize “ownership”. The standard criticism of the PRSP (Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper) process, for example, is that the content of the papers is very little influenced by the dialogue surrounding it. Whatever the truth of this criticism, the point is that any process emanating from the IFI’s will now be seen as tainted and for that reason less effective than it might otherwise have been. In this context, alternative mechanisms for developing and monitoring conditionality need to be explored.

The theory behind the NEPAD mechanism is presumably that Africans and African governments are more likely to accept criticism from other Africans than from people outside the region. There is certainly some truth to this, and it applies more generally to other regions as well. But this is obviously too simple a characterization. A counter argument is that neighbors might be less likely to criticize each other, for a host of reasons also related to proximity. The reluctance of African leaders to criticize Mugabe in Zimbabwe is often produced as evidence for this position. Indeed, some donor countries have made the Zimbabwe case the first “litmus test” for the workability of the NEPAD mechanisms. This in turn has led many in Africa to criticize NEPAD as simply a tool for donor interests. At the other extreme, however, there is a worry that localized monitoring mechanisms may fall prey to the intense ethnic and other rivalries that exist between neighbors, and may actually destabilize the region rather than bring it under an overarching cooperative frame. By this argument, then, there is something to be said for having a complete outsider deliver those tough messages.

The central problem with the World Bank and the IMF delivering these tough messages to individual countries, and making their funding conditional on them, is that these agencies are widely perceived to follow the interests of the G 7 countries. As long as this perception persists, there will be resistance and resentment at the involvement of these agencies. To the extent that the RFI’s are not plagued by this perception, because of their governance structures or because of a perceived greater understanding of ground level problems, the RFI’s can play an important role, perhaps even a lead role, in developing conditionality and monitoring its implementation. Following the thread of the argument developed above, in an ideal setting the IFI’s would only come in for situations where a true outsider was needed, perhaps in the framework of an “appeal” process whereby a country could go to the IFI’s as a higher, more independent, authority. But for this to happen the IFI’s would have to be restructured to earn this standing—certainly, reform of governance structures would be a key. Till this restructuring takes place, however, there is an argument for allowing the RFI’s to take the lead in the process of interacting with the recipient country in developing and monitoring donor conditionality.

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