Donor Dilemmas: Perceptions, Relationships and Strategies in the Rural Natural Resources Sector

Abstract

From the Introduction: "Development assistance has come under considerable intellectual scrutiny in the last couple of years, and four major development journals have devoted special sections to this issue. This has partly been in response to two specific publications by the donor community, Shaping the 21st Century (OECD, 1996), and Assessing Aid: What Works, What Doesnt, and Why (World Bank, 1998). There has also been a more general re-assessment of relations between donors (in the developed world) and host governments (in the developing world) in light of strategic realignment in the post Cold War era." "Much of this literature recognises (in the language of the World Bank) that 'aid has been both a spectacular success and an unmitigated failure.' What analysts are increasingly focusing on are the conditions under which success and failure occur, and the implications that this has for the role of donors in development. There is a general shift towards programmes that are initiated and owned by recipient countries, towards capacity building and sector-wide approaches, and well-focused donor lending linked to policy improvements (a selection of this recent literature includes Pronk, 2001; Harrison, 2001; Hermes and Lensink, 2001; Doornbos, 2001; van derHoeven, 2001; White, 2001; Dollar, 2001; Gilling et al, 2001; Foster, et al, 2001; Leandro, et al, 1999)."