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Abstract
Norway is a generous donor in terms of funding and has been categorised as a donor mainly motivated by altruism. Nevertheless, the Norwegian aid administration has been criticised for not sufficiently measuring and demonstrating the effects of its development assistance. This is unfortunate as we may miss opportunities for learning and end up with lower aid effectiveness. In this article, we discuss why an altruistic donor may fail to document the consequences of aid for beneficiaries. The crux of our argument is that there are two types of altruistic motivation for aid: a ‘feel good’ type where focus is on the virtue of donating and a ‘do good’ type where focus is on the effects of aid for beneficiaries. We use the agency framework to analyse these dynamics and argue that if the ‘feel good’ motivation dominates, the institutions within which the aid administration operates will favour disbursements, whereas if the ‘do good’ motivation dominates, institutions will be geared towards documenting consequences and effects. The first may result in lower welfare for beneficiaries if aid is less effective. While altruism cannot be observed, the current institutional set-up of the Norwegian aid administration is compatible with the ‘feel good’ type as the dominant motivation for development assistance. However, a stronger results focus may not improve matters unless also accompanied with institutional changes to ensure the evaluability of aid. As long as the dominant motivation is to ‘feel good’, stronger results focus may simply shift aid to where it can most easily be measured rather than where potential to do good is greatest.
Notes
1. A-magasinet.
2. The owner of the magazine, Aftenposten, decided to publish all the articles in 2013. They can be found at: http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/Sakene-du-aldri-fikk-lese-7095972.html. The possible involvement of Norad in decision not to publish the articles is also described here. While there is disagreement about whether Norad had any influence over the magazine’s decision to drop the series, the newspaper Aftenposten reports that the articles were discussed with Norad.
3. In Norad’s 2011 annual evaluation report, the then evaluation director concluded that none of the evaluations completed in that year could report sufficiently on results at outcome and impact levels. In order to identify the reasons behind this failure to report on development effectiveness, the Evaluation Department commissioned an evaluation of the entire Aid Administration’s system and routines for evaluability and results management. The findings from this evaluation (published in the report ‘Can We Demonstrate the Difference that Norwegian Aid Makes?’, by Lloyd, Villanger, and Poate, Citation2014) confirmed to a large extent that insufficient attention paid to outcomes and impact was prevalent not only in reports commissioned by the Evaluation Department but also in project management, from planning through implementation to completion in the remainder of the system.
4. Development assistance is classified as altruistic, that is ‘behaviour that benefits others at a personal cost’ (Kerr, Godfrey-Smith, and Feldman Citation2004) if the development assistance is conducted as a means to promote the welfare of recipients. This contrasts to the use of development assistance as a mean to serve foreign policy interests.
5. Both the evaluation and the article by Lloyd, Villanger, and Poate (Citation2014) are by the same authors.
6. This does not imply that we assume that altruism is the only motivation for Norwegian aid, but only that we, like Berthelemy (Citation2006), argue that it is important.
7. History of the 0.7 per cent target (ODA/GNI) can be found in http://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/45539274.pdf and history of the 0.7 per cent target and the 1 per cent target in http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/4300311e.pdf?expires=1410576207&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=D15FAED622CA85010B87C22D8584D295 (pages 45–46).
9. The target is now measured as GNI, rather than GDP.
10. In surveys conducted by Statistics Norway 88 per cent said they were positive to development assistance to Asia, Africa and Latin-America in 2001 (no survey in 2003). In 2013 the figure was 82 per cent. Source: https://www.ssb.no/statistikkbanken/selectvarval/saveselections.asp, accessed on the 15 September 2014.
11. The Norwegian Aid Administration consists of the Foreign Ministry, Norad and the Embassies. The overarching terms and principles for Norwegian development assistance are laid down by the Norwegian Parliament and administered by the Norwegian aid administration.
12. From Norad’s website: http://www.norad.no/no/om-norad, accessed on the 1 October 2014.
13. Within the Norwegian system, individual units are responsible for their own quality assurance (QA), with formal QA provided through the legal section, while technical guidance and advice can be requested from Norad sector advisers, the Results Management Section and/or the Evaluation Department (this is not mandatory). Quality assurance by the legal section takes place during the preparatory phase of a grant and is limited to checking the grant Agreement (the contract), including its compliance with the relevant Grant Scheme Rules and the Grant Management Manual (Norad Citation2014, 10).
14. Norad and the Ministry are divided into different departments and sections, and while section and department heads are responsible for their section’s/department’s disbursements, their decision will to a large extent rely on information prepared by the programme officer.
15. For budget support to UN departments, the process may be different.