Gi v ing A id Effecti vely i Giving Aid Effectively The Politics of En vironmental Per for ma nce a nd Selectivit y at Multilater al Development Ba nks Mark T. Buntaine i 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America © Oxford University Press 2016 First Edition published in 2016 All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Buntaine, Mark T., author Title: Giving aid effectively : the politics of environmental performance and selectivity at multilateral development banks /​Mark T. Buntaine Description: Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, [2016] | Includes bibliographical references and index Identifiers: LCCN 2015034920 | ISBN 978–0–19–046745–6 (hardcover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Economic development projects—​Environmental aspects—​Developing countries | Economic assistance—​Environmental aspects—​Developing countries | Environmental policy—​ Economic aspects—​Developing countries Classification: LCC HC59.72.E44 B86 2016 | DDC 332.1/​53—​dc23 LC record available at http://​lccn loc.gov/​2015034920 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed by Sheridan, USA i Contents Preface vii The Problem of Performance 1 The Politics of Aid Effectiveness 25 Addressing the Problem of Performance 46 Administrative Procedures: Avoiding Delays with Environmentally Risky Projects 68 Accountability Mechanisms: Civil Society Claims for Environmental Performance 110 Project Evaluations: Learning What Works 142 S trategic Planning: Integrating Evaluation into High-​Level Decision-​Making 182 Conclusions and Implications 213 Appendix 1: Data Collection Procedur es 235 Appendix 2: A Br ief History of Eva luation at the Multilater a l Development Banks 244 Notes 247 R efer ences 257 Index 283 v Preface i This project began with a rather simple observation: very little evidence was available to assess whether investments in evaluation and learning make international organizations more effective This book is an attempt to understand how project evaluation, strategic planning, citizen complaint mechanisms, and administrative procedures can be used to steer international organizations toward decisions that more effectively achieve their mandates I focus specifically on the environmental performance of the multilateral development banks, since activities related to preventing environmental harm and promoting good environmental management have faced intense scrutiny over the past three decades My purpose is not to retell a history about performance diverging from mandate; I seek instead to understand when and why environmental performance can be improved by producing better information about the outcomes of the development and environmental activities of the multilateral development banks The other purpose of this book is to propose a better way to give development assistance Researchers and the development community have converged around the idea that development assistance is most effective when it is provided to recipient countries that have the capacity and incentives to use it well Most scholarly and practical effort has focused on identifying capacity and aligned incentives at the level of countries, often through indices of the quality of governance or policy The challenge with this approach is that it tends to shift development assistance toward the middle-​income countries that have the least need for it I argue that by vii viii i Preface producing better information about the outcomes of development and environmental assistance, organizations that allocate development assistance can be more focused and move toward the projects that have a successful record and away from projects that have an unsuccessful record for individual countries This book demonstrates that a focused approach can work I could not have completed this project without the assistance and support of numerous people Over the several years that it took to complete this project, our research team poured through hundreds of thousands of pages of more than 1,000 evaluations and compiled primary documentation for a number of case studies that appear in this book More than 50 staff members and managers at the multilateral development banks provided me interviews I also received invaluable advice and support from mentors and colleagues as I pulled together the evidence in this book I gratefully acknowledge these various contributions I have benefited greatly from the research assistance of Sarah Freitas, Susan Carter, Selim Selimi, Jacob Wolff, Hannah Freedman, and Varun Kumar Coding hundreds of documents that are each hundreds of pages long is an arduous and unseen task This book would not have been possible without their diligent work I am also grateful to Rahul Madhusudanan, who helped compile the primary documentation for many of the case studies that appear in this book His keen eye for relevant evidence has been a valuable asset I benefited from the time of numerous staff members at the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, African Development Bank, and Inter-​A merican Development Bank, who for reasons of confidentiality must remain anonymous The interviews that these staff provided assisted me in understanding the incentives at multilateral development banks to use information about performance The interviewees greatly influenced many of the conclusions reported in this book and I hope will bring to life many of the findings from the statistical analyses Many people have offered guidance and suggestion in the design of this research and writing this book Like many books, the seed of this book was a dissertation Erika Weinthal was an excellent dissertation supervisor, even when I was not sure of my direction She has been a steadfast advocate and has always encouraged me to think broadly about the implications of this research Judith Kelley, through her consistent engagement with the core theoretical issues of this project and her constructive approach to the research process, has shaped my intellectual journey in lasting ways Chris Gelpi and Meg McKean provided important comments about this research at various points, and this book is surely better for their efforts I received other important support for this project while I was completing doctoral studies at Duke University, including comments from seminar participants and several travel and fellowship grants A National Science Foundation Decision, Risk, Preface j ix and Management Sciences Doctoral Research Grant (#0962436) supported this work, without which it would have been impossible to collect the evaluation and interview data that I use as the basis of this book I expanded and began refining the dissertation into a book while I was a faculty member in the Department of Government at the College of William & Mary I  owe a special debt to Mike Tierney, who has been one of my greatest advocates as I turned this project into a book He organized an extremely helpful book workshop, where I received exhaustive comments from Tamar Gutner, Joe Jupille, Christopher Kilby, Paula Manna, Amy Oakes, Brad Parks, Sue Peterson, and Maurits van der Veen These comments shaped the development of this book greatly and assisted me in honing the arguments and presentation of evidence I also received excellent and helpful comments on the penultimate version of this book from Sarah Bush and Ron Mitchell The reviewers for this manuscript took their jobs very seriously and offered insightful comments that have shaped the final product, particularly regarding the presentation of qualitative evidence Finally, the long road that is a book project would not have been nearly as enjoyable without the support of friends and family I  would like to extend a special thanks to my parents, Robbie and Jim Buntaine, for always supporting my education and to my wife, Ryoko Oono, who has endured many years of living separately and countless late evenings so that I could complete this project To them, and a large number of supportive friends, I am forever grateful ... focus of this book is the allocation of development and 2i Giving Aid Effectively environmental projects by the multilateral development banks, which for a number of reasons offer an excellent platform... history that brought the challenge of controlling the multilateral development banks to the fore The World Bank entered the 1990s at odds with both environmental advocates and the countries that contributed... the allocation of aid more selective To complete this investigation, I created a comprehensive data set of environmental outcomes, both positive and negative, from thousands of multilateral development