'Unpacking ownership'

DRAFT: Not for citation June 2011 For presentation at ‘Unpacking Aid Effectiveness’ workshop, LSE Unpacking Ownership at a Joint Sector Review Laura Collins, University of Cambridge lmac2@cam.ac.uk Abstract: The purpose of this paper is ostensibly simple: to unpack ownership. Ownership of what? For what? What is ownership? These are the questions that are asked of the subject: basic questions to which existing answers clearly do not satisfy. Development practitioners, aware of the Paris Declaration and its emphasis on ownership that characterises development cooperation efforts, ask a more consequential question: ‘it doesn’t work: so what?’ Equally concerning questions have been raised by aid recipients: ‘how can we learn to say no to donors better?’ Presented here is a deconstruction of ownership through a close-up snapshot of the Malawi education sector: an interrogation of its assumptions, and a call for further debate on and understanding of the subject. It demonstrates that ‘ownership’ is riddled with contradiction and suggests that if current trends continue, the narrative of ownership that emphasises an oppositional aid relationship of ‘them’ versus ‘us’ will dominate understandings, with perverse implications for development outcomes. Key Words: Ownership, aid effectiveness, politics of aid, Malawi. ‘We need a spirit of give and take rather than one of I know it all and everybody should follow me’, pronounced the Ministry of Education representative in pre-emptive explanation of slow progress as he opened Malawi’s 2010 education sector annual review. For, he said, using the language encouraged by the Paris Declaration, ‘as partners, Government and donors should walk on this path side by side and not in single file; the problem of walking in single file is that we do not know what is happening behind us’. He pointed out the implications of this: ‘you may get amazed when you decide to turn back, and see there is no one behind you; God has created us to have eyes on one side and not on the other’. With this emphasis on accepting constraints and working with facts rather than ideals, he does not dwell on who might be in front, or why whoever is not behind is not following. Rather, he says, ‘we can only make strides if we decide to do things differently from the way we have been doing’. He calls for such a decision, referring back to what a donor representative had just said: ‘the money is there, it is us who are a problem’. Greater effort needs to be made, he said, ‘to not defer blame for lack of success, for it is easy to point fingers at each other’. Instead of ‘you, you, you’, he asked that ‘we replace it with ‘we’ and ‘us’. For, he said, the Joint Sector Review is not about the Ministry of Education: it is about the education sector, and everyone has a role to play. ‘We shall not blame anymore’, he concluded, ‘let us look for other ideas’. 1 Ownership, enshrined in the Paris Declaration as the first principle of aid effectiveness and now a central concern for aid practitioners, is such an ‘other idea’, proposed on an international platform to address the same concerns as those raised by the MoEST representative. The principle emphasises partnership and progress in condemnation of single file politics where donors lead and the ‘partner country’ walks another path, recognising the need for give and take in the aid relationship. Yet if the answer is so simple then why, in a sector hosting several ownershippromoting aid modalities - national ten, four and one year education strategies, a Sector Wide Approach including a Joint Financing Agreement, and the achievement of ownership-dependent Fast Track Initiative Catalytic funding - does the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST) identify the very obstacles that ownership was supposed to overcome as the key stumbling blocks to progress? If ownership is still lacking, then who is driving the ambitious reform agenda? If these modalities do not yield ownership and results, then what does? Through a microscopic snapshot study of this Joint Sector Review (JSR), I present a deconstruction of ownership: an exploration of its underlying assumptions, an unpacking of the ways in which it is understood on the ground, and a resulting exposition of challenging questions which should prompt significantly more debate about the principle at the forefront of the ‘new aid architecture’ (Meyer and Schultz 2008: 1). The objective here is to demonstrate that ownership1 is more complicated than the straightforward Paris2 definition indicates, wherein ‘partner countries exercise effective leadership over their development policies, and strategies and coordinate development actions’ and donors ‘respect partner country leadership’ and ‘help strengthen their capacity to exercise it’ (OECD/DAC 2005: 3). In their efforts to provide guidance on how to build and measure ownership since, OECD’s Cluster A on Ownership and Accountability has considered difficult questions of incentives and power in a multifaceted aid relationship. To this end, recommendations on the subject at the 2011 Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4) in Busan are likely to focus on ‘inclusive’ or ‘democratic’ ownership, rather than Accra’s ‘country‘ ownership and Paris’ ‘government’, emphasising the importance of participation in national decision making. However, ownership has yet to become the subject of debate within highly relevant academic discourses on governance, state building and power. This indicates the strength of consensus that ‘they [partner countries] should have it’ (Whitfield 2009: 5), that ‘it is clear to all of us that ownership is essential for development’ (Wolfensohn 1999).3 1 Indeed, 'without The term ‘ownership’ in this research will be used as a short-hand reference to the principle of ownership for aid effectiveness towards development outcomes. 2 Reference to the ‘Paris’ definition of ownership also refers to subsequent clarifications of the concept at the following High Level Forum in Accra, and in lead up to the next in Seoul. The original and central reference point for ownership remains the Paris Declaration, and this is the reason for the term used here. 3 The centrality, necessity or essentiality of ownership is repeated across numerous OECD and World Bank documents, as well as in academic analysis. For example, see Stiglitz 1998; Beier 2009; Briseid et al 2008:1). 2 DRAFT: Not for citation June 2011 For presentation at ‘Unpacking Aid Effectiveness’ workshop, LSE ownership', OECD asserts, 'aid cannot be effective in reducing poverty and promoting sustainable economic development' (OECD 2008: 1). Ownership will also help 'strengthen governance and improve development performance’ (OECD/DAC 2005:1) and 'stimulate growth' (Zimmerman 2008: 11). It is the explanatory factor as to why development financing has hitherto ‘generally failed to produce lasting change’ (World Bank 2005: 11). Indeed, its importance does not stop here: it has been identified as an 'emerging norm' in international relations (Jenkins 2008: 2). But it is easy to dismiss ownership. To pose a few initial conundrums: ownership is inherently internal, yet is intended to be built from the outside. It was developed to reverse the practice of conditionality-based agenda setting, but is seen in itself to be a further condition. It promises control and responsibility in contexts of overwhelming fiscal dependence. It offers political freedom of choice to countries labelled, by the same donors as those promoting ownership, as patrimonial, corrupt and dominated by ‘big men’. It simultaneously promotes the dominant power of the nation, the government, the citizenry and the international community. Failure to recognise and understand these contradictions yields a further, more dangerous paradox where - as will be suggested here through specific reference to Malawi’s education sector - the enactment of ownership can restrict progress against the very development goals it was designed to achieve. Rejecting ownership as an option in face of these contradictions might seem advisable, and indeed this is starting to happen where frustrations are high, as seen here, and ‘donor control and quick fixes’ trump ‘ownership and slower results’ (Lomøy 2010). It risks being just another buzzword in a history of experimental ‘development’. To some, already ‘its time has gone’ (Buiter 2007). These contradictions are a result of the unrecognised fact that the meaning of ownership is contested: where ownership is discussed, it is usually assumed that understanding therein is selfevident and logical. One definition is usually put forth and it is rarely acknowledged that other possible definitions exist, let alone that the assertion of one is a statement of theoretical position (exceptions to this rule include Woll (2008) and Zimmerman (2008)). Even more rarely are the implications of this divergence in understanding considered. This research does not seek to define ownership but, rather, to point out the fact and importance of this multiplicity of definition. First unpacking the Paris definition, it is clear that the development strategies that should be ‘owned‘ by the ‘partner country’ and supported by donors are assumedly designed to achieve agreed goals. Two broad clusters of understanding in contrast to this are discernible across literature and practice. One portrays ownership as either a facade, behind which donor influence intrudes further, or an excuse, for donors to step back and issue a disclaimer. The assumption of partnership that makes the Paris Declaration ownership seem logical is thus rejected in this donor-focused analysis, based instead upon a contrasting assumption of a ‘them’ versus ‘us’ aid relationship. The other Pariscontrasting narrative takes a recipient viewpoint, claiming agency and the existence of ownership in 3 case study examples where recipient governments say ‘no’ to donors, whether through forthright disagreement or passive delaying tactics. The ramifications of this behavioural template of ownership for the legitimacy, let alone achievement of development outcomes, are obvious: they may be delayed, different or altogether discarded. These three understandings of ownership - for heuristic purposes here referred to as the Paris ‘consensus’ version, the ‘donorship’ version and the ‘resistance’ version - are each evident, simultaneous and competing, in the Malawi education sector. Exposition of these three understandings of ownership is achieved here drawing upon a political ethnography approach to analyse the two day JSR in the Malawi education sector, which took place on the 10th and 11th November 2010 in Lilongwe. Through participant observation, drawing upon two years of professional engagement in Malawi as an education donor and within MoEST, and two further years of analysis as part of my doctoral thesis, ownership will here be brought to life. For political ethnography, through interpretivist analysis of subject actions from observation and immersion, and/or engagement (even emotionally) with ‘the meanings that the people under study attribute to their social and political reality’ (Schatz 2009: 5), yields insights that in their ‘close-up’ nature allow for detail, complexity and the possibility of no answer. Though under-used in political science and especially international relations, it is a particularly useful approach in application to the subject of ownership, which despite numerous efforts to measure and rank it, is intangible and unquantifiable (Collins 2010). It is a method rapidly gaining respect for its ‘unique’ ability to ‘explain why political actors behave the way they do’ (Joseph et al 2007: 2) through looking at the detail of policy implementation by studying a single case (see Walford 2001). Through a political ethnographic lens, this snapshot of ownership thus goes beyond a reading of the minuted record and gains depth based upon my observations of the JSR as a researcher intimately acquainted with the sector, two years after I last attended one as technical assistance to MoEST. The quandaries that result from ‘hovering on the threshold’ (Eyben 2009: 71; also Mosse 2005) as neither insider nor outsider are manifold, though this approach fits well with my broader argument of deconstructing stark dichotomies. I do not identify individuals quoted here but use the terms ‘donor’ and ‘recipient’ rather than the currently au fait ‘development partner’ and ‘partner country’. This is for methodological reasons of ethics and sensitivity, but also to advance the same point on the limitations of dichotomy: though the rhetoric of partnership is prevalent, it is evident that framework for progress in the Malawi education sector is seen to be one of two sides of ‘them’ and ‘us’.4 4 At country level, the active subject switches sides; the donor is the ‘partner’. This is but one indication of the difficulty of distinguishing simply between donor and recipient: not all development partners (DPs) are donors, and the use of ‘partner country’ for recipient can thus get confusing. The terms ‘donor’ and ‘recipient’ shall be used in reference to their distinct roles - and fundamentally specific relationship (Faust 2009) - in the financial provision of aid. However, the term DPs shall be used here where employed by JSR participants in keeping with the distinction between DPs (a wider term inclusive of the provision of financial aid) and donors in the Malawi education sector. 4 DRAFT: Not for citation June 2011 For presentation at ‘Unpacking Aid Effectiveness’ workshop, LSE No sector-specific study of ownership has yet been attempted, resulting in a serious gap in knowledge about the implementation of ownership, as it is at sector level that the aid relationship is enacted. Education is a particularly relevant sector, being one of the main social development priorities, fundamental to the development of national identity, and a case study already in efforts to implement aid effectiveness through the Fast Track Initiative (FTI) and Cash on Delivery (COD). The ‘Fast Track’ to education outcomes, an approach promoted by all donors and recipients who signed up to the 2000 Dakar Education For All goals, is a compact based upon the demonstration of ‘serious commitment to achieve universal primary completion’. Note the parallels with the aid effectiveness agenda: it is designed to ‘provide the incentives and resources to empower poor nations to build and implement sound education plans’, whereby the recipient country is ‘responsible for taking ownership’ and the donor for providing resources and technical capacity (FTI 2011). COD is a recently developed and ownership-driven approach to aid propagated by the Centre for Global Development (CGDev) following a broader trend towards ‘output-based aid’ (OBA; see Brook and Murray 2007 and Mumssen et al 2010 ). It ‘takes the [OBA] idea further by linking payments more directly to a single specific outcome; giving the recipient increased authority to achieve progress however it sees fit’ (MacDonald 2011). strengthen incentives to make those plans a success’. (Idem) Malawi is a country where the ownership policy theory should work perfectly: descriptions of the country often start with reference to the stark contrast between its low socio-economic indicators and its remarkable political stability. This stability should ensure no crisis undermines efforts to build the ownership necessary to reverse the chronic poverty: Malawi is considered to be an anomaly to traditional trajectories of state fragility. Some studies explain this through making a distinction between state resilience and development (OECD 2010); others describe Malawi as a developmental state, distinguishing it terminologically (Fritz and Menocal 2007); others focus on the neo-patrimonial nature of internal politics, citing the endurance of this as a reason for the paradoxical political stability and economic stagnation (Cammack 2007). Yet one explanation for this anomaly is usually only given off the record, and it is for this reason that Malawi was chosen for case study here. It is hinted at in the Malawi-specific report within the DFID-sponsored Drivers of Change series into 'the political will problem', where Malawi displays an 'extreme case of a pattern of interaction that weakens aid effectiveness throughout the region' (Booth et al 2006: 46). Informally and unofficially, back-room conversations between donors and government are infused with frustration at the inexplicably slow progress in growth and development. In 2009, the net ODA to Malawi was US$778 million, 17.6% of gross national income. ‘But’, the question is repeatedly asked, as posed by a donor at this JSR, ‘has there been tangible progress?’ Answering himself, the donor said, ‘let us not mince words: there has not been enough’. 5 In late 2009, MoEST officials expressed interest to CGDev researchers, ‘eager for the flexibility that COD aid would offer to What constitutes ‘enough’, and to whom? The first of the three following sections deconstructs what ownership is understood to mean by strict adherence to the Paris definition. In the second section here, the two alternative narratives of ownership will be demonstrated - one where ownership is a tool for enduring donor influence, and the other where ownership is an opportunity for recipient resistance. Each of these, it is argued, is based upon a fundamentally different logic to the first - far from partnership, the aid relationship is presumed to be one of opposition and hierarchy. These assumptions, it is argued in the third section, are evidently dominant in the Malawi education sector. Four points are made in conclusion, serving both to highlight what this argument contributes to ownership debate and what lessons debate about ownership yields for the future of the aid relationship. Ownership: ‘Development Partners recognise the leading role of Government’ Ownership is ‘broadly understood as an encompassing consensus’ (Faust 2009), designed ‘to erase conflicts over the contents of policy reforms’ (Booth 2003). Reversing the perceived negatives of the era of conditionality-based development assistance, Paris ownership aims to negate defensive recipient opposition to donor imposition, and instead achieve ‘consensus’ between recipient country political leadership, government institutions and civil society. This partnership of all stakeholders is possible, it is assumed, because of a common concern to improve the effectiveness of aid towards better development outcomes. Though the MoEST representative quoted in introduction here bemoaned ‘single file’ politics, this narrative of ‘consensus’ ownership is clearly evident in the Malawi education sector. The following examples can be put to those who explain the slow progress by lack of ownership: whilst few stakeholders in the Malawi education sector could disagree that progress in increasing classroom construction, reducing class sizes and rolling out school-based cash transfers was slower than planned, 2009-10 had seen massive progress at policy level. As the representative of the Development Partner Group applauded in his keynote address, a number of important milestones had been achieved: the ten-year National Education Sector Plan 2008-2017 (NESP) had been drawn down into a four-year Education Sector Implementation Plan (ESIP) and a one year Programme of Work (PoW), with an accompanying annual procurement plan and budget. The MoEST-led NESP and ESIP had been endorsed by the ‘development partners’ (DPs) at country level. The Joint Financing Agreement (JFA), creating a pooled fund for sector budget support, had been signed by the Government and the four participating donors. The long planned Sector Wide Approach (SWAp), introduced as a ‘move away from looking at projects in isolation towards approaching the sector as a whole’, was officially established in June, including structures such as the Sector Working Group (a high level forum for Government, DPs, civil society and private sector) and 6 DRAFT: Not for citation June 2011 For presentation at ‘Unpacking Aid Effectiveness’ workshop, LSE Technical Working Groups (similar forums but on sub-sector issues - Secondary Education, Special Needs, etc.). Most tellingly, the Principal Secretary’s presentation of Malawi’s education strategy to the FTI panel in Washington in May, successful in the award of the full US$90 million applied for, was the first to be made by a recipient government official; a representative donor for all other countries had hitherto made presentation. The significance of all of this is reflected in the donors’ keynote address to the sector: ‘DPs recognise the leading role of Government in achieving this goal [of improving education] and are committed to assisting the Government’. This JSR, though the ninth of its kind, was the first since the SWAp had been launched, the JFA signed and the FTI won, all modalities proclaimed as evidence and enhancement of ownership. Entitled, ‘Implementing Reform and Innovation in the Education Sector’, this JSR was more forward than backward looking, and included ample evidence and optimism that ownership in the Malawi education sector exists, and is improving. The ‘national’ nature of this reform was repeatedly emphasised. This is ownership towards improving the ‘quality and relevance’, ‘equity and access to’ and ‘governance and management’ of education in Malawi: these three overarching NESP goals characterise MoEST strategies, and were evidently infused throughout discussions at the JSR. Reference was regularly made to the global context within which these education goals fit: this is part of the Government of Malawi’s effort to achieve the second (education) and third (gender) Millennium Development Goals, and the UNESCO Education For All targets. Support for and commitment to this agenda was demonstrable, in the high attendance levels across a diverse spectrum of stakeholders from MoEST (including local government officials and Head Teachers) as well as community members heading School Management Committees (SMCs) and representatives of the Parliamentary Committee on Education, other Government ministries, civil society, donors, non-Governmental organisations, the private sector, and the media. Participation levels were also generally high, and there were many open plenary discussions on a wide range of issues that showed passionate engagement across the board and, in particular, in defence of each sub-sector ‘corner’. At one point, national interpretation of global development goals was questioned for being insufficiently ‘pro-poor’ and a suggestion made to even further ‘Malawianise’ the already Malawi-specific framework, the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy (MGDS). Strategies based upon donor-funded pilots, such as the School Improvement Grant (SIGs) programme - a version of the preferred modality of ‘consensus’ ownership where schools will be allocated a certain amount of money to spend on their individual School Improvement Plans (SIPs) - were presented as MoEST choices towards the three NESP goals. That versions of this were piloted in the past few years by USAID, DfID and UNICEF was not considered important: rather, the SIGs were presented as a further roll out of national Ministry of Local Government devolution guidelines and the joined-up school-to-Ministry NESP planning framework. That the District Education Plans, linking SIPs to the NESP, had been funded through a 7 JICA technical cooperation unit in MoEST headquarters was also not mentioned. Further examples peppered the JSR: the SWAp itself was referred to openly as an originally ‘World Bank idea’ but one the Government decided to pursue. ‘Mother Groups’, a local structure used by UNICEF to encourage girls’ education, were wholly endorsed and part of MoEST’s gender strategy. Regardless of donor engagement, these are policy choices led and owned by MoEST as part of a national education strategy. This was not simply top down enforcement either, though political will in support of the education sector was evident in the allocation by the Government of Malawi of the largest segment, 23%, of the 2010/11 national budget to education. This is lauded by many in the sector as evidence of Malawi’s ownership, and seemed further underlined by the appointment in 2010 of the President’s brother and widely presumed 2014 Presidential candidate, Peter Mutharika, as Minister for Education. But, a senior MoEST official assured stakeholders, this leadership and commitment would build upon school-based decisions: through the school grants, ‘communities will be empowered to be able to identify problems and come up with solutions’. That policy decisions would be made - and therefore ‘owned’ - through consultation with stakeholders at the community level was repeatedly asserted, and where question marks remained - such as over whether to introduce an automatic promotion policy to reduce 20% repetition rates and therefore class sizes MoEST refused to commit and rather referred the discussion back to school level for ‘guidance’. This, in many ways, is a textbook example of the type of ‘democratic’ or ‘inclusive’ ownership that ownership advocates at HLF4 in November 2011 seek to celebrate. If this is ownership, however, then why the frustration at the JSR: why did national newspaper headlines the next day proclaim the ‘donor threat to pull out’, and why the MoEST representative’s appeal for an end to finger pointing (Pemba 2010)? Why, then, is there still so little progress in the quality of education in Malawi’s classrooms? If the SWAp, FTI and NESP are not the answer, then has ownership failed? These questions are starting to be asked of ownership on a broader scale; the aid industry is impatient for results. Yet rather than urging patience and optimism, many analysts of ownership are unsurprised, explaining the lack of progress through two alternative narratives of ownership that directly contest the feasibility of the first. For consensus is ‘an illusive quest’ (Faust 2009: 3). Rather, ‘conflict’ and ‘prevailing power relations’ (Lazarus 2008: 1212) characterise the aid relationship, a ‘non-linear and uncertain political process embedded in conflictual local realities’ (Gulrajani 2010). This is a relationship steeped in the comparative bitterness of coloniser/colonised, First/Third, and developed/developing. The inside/outside dichotomy is assumed perpetual, yielding a damaging fatalism - for those who assume that donors will always, because of their objectives, incentives and power, dominate, and for those who see in ownership an opportunity to fight back. Each of these narratives of ownership 8 DRAFT: Not for citation June 2011 For presentation at ‘Unpacking Aid Effectiveness’ workshop, LSE is distinctly observable in the Malawi education sector and each, it is argued here, is damaging to ‘progress’ towards policy outcomes - no matter how or by whom these are defined.5 Donorship: ‘It will be very difficult for DPs to provide additional funds’ Drawing upon an existing thread in the extensive theorisation in aid discourse about donor incentives and a Western-dominated international system, the ‘donorship’ understandings of ownership depict it as an inevitable result of a mechanism invented and implemented by donors. Every example of ownership given above can be re-interpreted through this lens, with ownership yet another tool towards various, and often incompatible, donor objectives: to achieve their own geo-strategic aims, to protect national interests, to have an excuse for domestic accountability challenges, as an alibi in the blame game of international development cooperation, or to play along semantically in the hope that it will - from behind the scenes - allow them to continue working towards those development goals that they are genuinely devoted to (across this range, see Cramer et al 2006; Woods 2007; AFRODAD 2007; Molina 2007; Nkombo 2008, Gindroz 2009)). This is important: this perspective, here referred to as ‘donorship’ is not unanimously anti-aid or anti-donor, but what distinguishes it as a pattern across ownership discourse is a focus on donor behaviour within what is assumed to be an aid relationship of two unequal sides, one (the donor) dominating the other (the recipient). Ownership, here, is an example of panopticism, Foucault’s theory of power where the recipient is an object of information but never a subject in communication, and power is guaranteed even if no agency is actually asserting it. The ‘donorship’ narrative challenges the possibility of unanimously agreed ‘development goals’ and criteria for ‘effective aid’, and finds the ownership of the official narrative unrealistic. To re-cast articulations of ownership during the JSR in this light, the ten year National Education Strategy and related plans stem from a donor-driven aid effectiveness agenda that demands such a strategy so that aid can be allocated against a politically correct unified vision. Close reading of the NESP and the specific strategies referred to throughout the JSR reveals direct parallels with pre-existing donor programme documents. ‘Cut and paste’ acronyms of donor projects pepper NESP line activities. Two commanding budget lines in the NESP, and drawn-down PoW, were almost entirely omitted in MoEST’s 2010/11 annual budget: significant amounts of requested funding to the JFA pooled fund for the national roll out of Complimentary Basic Education (CBE) and Direct Support to Schools (DSS), flagship programmes to improve access to and quality of primary education piloted, hitherto funded and championed by the responsible donors, were not included. By the above ownership logic, the inclusion of these in the NESP would 5 It is beyond the scope of this paper to go into the relationship between ownership and outcomes, though this argument is further developed in my PhD thesis. In this larger work I explore in detail three education policies and assess progress in their implementation against different interpretations of ownership. 9 indicate that the donor programme documents were originally based upon a coherent MoEST vision and that the success of CBE and DSS was recognised and picked up - therefore ‘owned’ - by MoEST. However, the ‘donorship’ theory explains that the NESP is a compilation of successful donor negotiations to ensure that their projects and programmes were cemented within what, for political purposes, had to at least look (if not feel) nationally owned, and that these costings were not included in the national budget is demonstration of their low prioritisation by MoEST. Following successful lobbying by the relevant donors, the ‘mistake’ was rectified in a supplementary budget. This argument can be augmented with plentiful material: the presentations given by MoEST officials at the JSR were largely ghost-written by donor-funded technical assistance, or by donors themselves. The coinciding JSR Progress Report was written by a (Malawian, carefully not ‘external’) consultant and initiated, funded and reviewed by the hiring donor, not MoEST. The JSR itself is a condition of the JFA, the Memorandum of Understanding for which also includes a list of ‘eligible expenditures’ upon which the ‘ownership’-promoting budget support must be spent. ‘Tangible progress’, as a donor representative reminded the JSR audience, must be made against the nine key ‘ESIP reforms’, or else ‘considerable amounts of DP funds will not be released’. There is a marked contrast between these ESIP reforms, focused upon basic education (typically including primary education, early child development and adult literacy programmes, though the malleability of this definition is an issue in itself) as per (World Bank-housed) FTI eligibility criteria, and MoEST’s preferred approach of improving higher education for economic growth. Even the most visible demonstration of Government commitment, the 23% budgetary contribution to education, is a donor-driven condition: the signature by contributing donors of the JFA was conditional upon ‘agreement’ that at least 20% of the overall Government budget would being spent on education, and - by 2013 - 60% of this 20% spent on basic education. The donorship response to ‘whose ownership?’ is straightforward. As a new approach designed to avoid shackle-raising defensiveness to imposed conditionalities, ownership can be ‘built’ following an international aid effectiveness agenda, through externally-supported capacity development programmes and ideas funded or initiated by donors. Donor suggestion, guidance and facilitation are, as such, indistinguishable from influence and domination. Under the banner of mutual agreement, ownership becomes, thus, a hot potato for donors to legitimately pass back to the Government saying, as donors did at the JSR, ‘it is imperative that satisfactory results are obtained’, and ‘what are you going to do about it?‘ A senior official of the Ministry of Finance seconded to MoEST emphasised this, that ‘as DPs fund 20% of education, MoEST needs to comply with the conditions donors impose’. 10 DRAFT: Not for citation June 2011 For presentation at ‘Unpacking Aid Effectiveness’ workshop, LSE The above list reads as a stinging criticism of donor behaviour that directly opposes the ownership principle that they endorsed in signing the Paris Declaration. Each statement would prompt heated explanation and defence of ownership from donors concerned: these are efforts to balance making progress towards results with facilitating ownership. But that a balance is widely considered necessary - between quick fixes (compromised ownership) and ownership (but delayed or different results) - demonstrates the strength of the assumptions underpinning ‘donorship’. ‘We’ (the donorship faithful) assume that ‘they’ are anti-developmental politically, aid dependent, lacking in political will, undemocratic and - in lacking capacity - incapable. To avoid the spectre of conditionality, ownership is made a condition itself. Faith in the donorship narrative has consequences: for example, the recruitment of a (donor-funded) Head of Procurement in MoEST is, as adjudged through JSR plenary discussion of the MoEST (donor-funded, consultant team-written) Capacity Development Strategy, to be a ‘top priority’. That this position be filled is a World Bank requirement for release of both FTI and World Bank funding. By the donorship understanding, this is ownership - a donor tool - to ensure effective aid, and to improve the delivery of - for example text books to schools. Yet herein lies the inescapable paradox and the warning held in revelation of these dominant but alternative interpretations of ownership here: this act of ownership has resulted, through a long and hitherto unsuccessful recruitment process, in the delayed disbursement of FTI and World Bank funds to the JFA bank account and thus implementation of education sector programmes. Resistance: ‘The Government plans to establish six universities: the sector should not be taken unawares’ A third understanding of ownership denies this enduring donorship and re-asserts, rather, recipient ownership. This understanding in many ways seems a logical extension of Paris ownership, where recipients take ‘the driver’s seat’.6 ‘Good’ ownership is identified in sites of dissensus, where recipients have ‘successfully’ rejected donor suggestion and proved negotiating strength. Equating ownership with sovereignty, this emerging cluster of interpretations of ownership understands it to be an opportunity for recipient governments to say ‘no’ to donors and to implement their own desires (see, for example, Whitfield 2009; Sumadi 2009; De Renzio 2009; Gomes 2009; Erostegui 2009; Nkombo 2008; Ohno 2005).7 This is not necessarily demonstrated through outward and straightforward dissent, but may be through passive disinterest, deliberate delay or ongoing indecision on the part of the recipient. Asserting agency to and taking a viewpoint of (though often not actually being) the recipient, ownership is thus depicted as a tool of 6 A common analogy (see Jerve 2002: 8; Geoghegan 2007: 1; Gunning 2008: 2; Birdsall and Vyborny 2008: 2; Gwekwerere 2008). Several alternative perspectives on this analogy were posed, however, during my research period in Malawi: Does the driver have a chauffeur’s cap on? Who is in the passenger seat? Is there a driving instructor? Is there a child on the driver’s lap holding the wheel? Who is in the back seat shouting directions? 7 This perspective draws upon a wider trend in political theory, of subaltern resistance. See, for example, P. Chatterjee (1993), E.P. Thompson (1963), J. Scott (1985), and the edited volumes Subaltern Studies (Guha 1997). 11 resistance for use in the negotiation process between an inevitably oppositional donor and recipient government. Conflict between donor and recipient ‘sides’ here, in this (hence ‘resistance’) theory, is again assumed par for the course. Here, ‘political will’ is not absent as national media protests over the disengagement of the Minister in the lead up to the JSR (that he did not attend) imply (Kakande 2010), but focused on different goals. This is evident in the re-emphasis by the MoEST representative of government plans to establish six universities. ‘With this knowledge’, he advised, ‘the sector should not be taken unawares and should ensure that results are achieved’. Plans for these six universities are not in the NESP, even under the Directorate of Higher Education’s portfolio. The source of funding for these universities is not yet ascertained, though one - to be built in Thyolo in the Southern Region, where the President is from - will be built by China Aid. This is a high profile statement by the Government of Malawi: articles documenting the progress and benefits of these universities had dominated recent newspaper headlines, overshadowing the frequently published donor and civil society protestations about the quality of primary education on inside pages. In a clear assertion of strength and resolve, this is the Government of Malawi defending its pursuit of the MGDS first priority, economic growth. By this ‘resistance’ understanding of ownership, saying ‘no’ to donors is applauded. Two other major activities in 2009/10 were outside the NESP, and a third was implemented despite the refusal of donors to fund it. First, the school year was changed from calendar (JanuaryDecember) to fiscal (now September to June), with massive consequences not least for the procurement of new curriculum textbooks. These arrived in schools ‘only’ a month after the start of the new school year. This change actually suited MoEST, as the fiscal year makes better cultural sense for reducing absenteeism, but was the result of an entirely political debate that has resulted in three alternations since independence in 1964. Second, in 2010 the Department for Teacher Education launched the Open and Distance Learning (ODL) teacher training initiative, designed to accelerate progress towards the Pupil to Qualified Teacher ratio. Rather than a process of a year of in-college teacher training followed by classroom experience, ODL recruits would spend six weeks in college before being deployed to schools and would do the majority of their training in the classroom, with a ‘mentor’ teacher and monitoring district officials supposedly (but in actuality, rarely) available for support. Donors had refused to fund ODL, concerned about the sheer numbers of students and the potential for low quality outputs. This was originally outside the NESP, but has now been incorporated and donor funding is to be provided in support. Third, and similarly, in July 2010 MoEST launched the Rural Teachers Hardship allowance, an allocation of cash as an incentive to keep teachers in schools in challenging environments, against significant donor pressure not to. Yet again despite the donors’ original objections, reflected in their refusal to fund it, at the JSR they singled this out for applause. These are the examples given when a concrete illustration of 12 DRAFT: Not for citation June 2011 For presentation at ‘Unpacking Aid Effectiveness’ workshop, LSE ownership is requested: MoEST, here, had won. Whitfield et al, in their research for The Politics of Aid, found examples of ownership in similar cases, where recipients ‘regain control from donors’, challenging ‘their subordination’ (Whitfield and Maipose 2008: 4). Success is deliberately not adjudged on the basis of outcomes, but on assertion of a different policy choice: this third understanding of ownership is distinct in finding ‘good’ ownership in victory against ‘donorship’, and assumes the impossibility of ‘consensus’. Are these examples of recipients testing donor limits (as some argue President wâ Mutharika is currently doing by expelling the British Ambassador after a leaked memo to the Foreign Office criticising Malawi’s ‘deteriorating governance’ (Mapondera and Smith 2011))? If so, and they are not - as the ‘donorship’ understanding might have it - cases where donors have decided to let go, in the hope of progress in other priority areas, and they are evidence that - contrary to Paris Survey assessments - ownership is, in fact, present and improving in Malawi, then this sets a dangerous precedent. The behavioural implications of ‘saying no’ to donors are the ‘so what’ of this argument, pointing out the contradictions within, discrepancies between and multiplicity of understandings of ownership. For how ownership is understood and implemented has consequences for policy outcomes - whosoever’s vision they are. Ownership through resistance is manifested as indecision, deliberate delay, or choice of action based on assertion of sovereignty and independence. And this results, as at the Malawi education sector JSR, in frustration at ‘unsatisfactory progress’ in improving the quality of education for students. ‘You! You! You!’ With money available, MoEST identified ‘us’ as the cause of slow progress. In ‘us’, he spelt out, he meant the sector as a whole. As he saw it, fragmentation and opposition were yielding stagnation through evaded responsibility and finger pointing. He was not the only one. For the JSR was infused with assumptions of ‘them’ and ‘us’. The explanation of incentives and behaviour based upon the ‘other’ is not uncommon in political analysis (see Neumann 1995, Rumelili 2004 and Abizadeh 2005), and is particularly unsurprising in what is a particularly dichotomised relationship (developed/developing; West/rest; coloniser/colonised etc). But the suggestion of partnership and unanimous consensus, raised by MoEST as the alternative ‘idea’, met not only scepticism but rejection. The MoEST representative implied that donors should not evade their responsibilities. A donor official called upon MoEST to define what ‘you’ are going to do about it. A senior MoEST official questioned the ‘genuine’ nature of partnership in the sector. Although ‘everyone is supposed to be partners’, he pointed out that this could not be true given the competitive jostling for financing. The MoEST political advisor warned against dependence upon ‘others’. This was not a fragmentation of competing categories. ‘Them’ and ‘us’, were not rigid or 13 definable categories but did, clearly, exist as two sides - and this point holds lessons for efforts in the lead up to HLF4 to highlight the roles of civil society, parliament and local government. For example, one donor expressed concern that the JFA partners and MoEST were being seen as one ‘side’, leaving out other donors that could not contribute to the pooled fund. A donor advised sensitivity, ‘so other sub-sectors do not feel neglected’. ‘But’, a representative of one MoEST subsector asked, ‘why are we part of the programming and not part of the financing?’ This, he intimated, is demonstration of a shutting out by the donors, Directorate of Policy and Planning, and Directorate of Basic Education (‘them’) of the other education sub-sectors (‘us’): ‘their’ agenda dominates, to the detriment of ‘ours’. The sector was very clearly understood and defined by the overwhelming majority not as a partnership between ‘them’ and ‘us’ but as negotiations in a conflict of ‘them’ versus ‘us’. Conclusion The argument put forth in this paper is simple but hitherto unacknowledged: there is not one definition, but rather multiple understandings of ownership. Three broad patterns of understanding are evidenced here, characterised by a common underlying assumption of a two-sided aid relationship. The ‘consensus’ model is that of the official Paris Declaration, where rhetoric about partnership between two sides and shared development goals makes ownership an unquestionable positive and ensures its position at the forefront of the aid effectiveness agenda at HLF4. However the alternative narratives evident across ownership discourse and practice - one focused on donor behaviour, and the other recipient behaviour - are premised upon oppositionality and hierarchy between the two sides. These narratives are the dominant understandings of ownership, evident across academic and policy discourse on ownership and substantiated through participant observation at the Malawi education JSR. Taken to their logical conclusion, donorship will mean the concept of ownership is discarded; resistance will mean recipient decisions are more frequently made for the sake of saying ‘no’. It should be evident that this is not a dismissal of ownership but rather a critical analysis, with the objective of unpacking a subject that, as this paper demonstrates, yields a plethora of important questions. This is a claim for the importance of ownership, and a suggestion that all of us involved in the aid relationship move beyond simple binary oppositions in perspective (them/us) and values (good/bad), and more critically ask, what is ownership? For the upshot otherwise is as occurred at the JSR: decisions were not made, a final judgement on progress was not agreed, and frustration continued. Four suggestions are made here to deconstruct this seeming impasse between donors and recipients. First, this is a call for better understanding: of what ownership means and of its implications. A small but growing academic community are already doing this, and this paper is in part a 14 DRAFT: Not for citation June 2011 For presentation at ‘Unpacking Aid Effectiveness’ workshop, LSE contribution to this and in part an exposition of the fact of existing debate. For whilst the work of, for example, Booth, Eyben, Faust, Hyden, Meyer and Schultz, Nkombo and Whitfield et al locates ownership at the nexus of fascinating and important questions of power, sovereignty, democracy, influence and international relations, the themes and theories that infuse these works have not resulted in engaged dialogue. The opportunity that this conference presents to highlight and bring together these different arguments is welcomed. Evidence in this paper, for example, supports Faust’s argument that the prefixed adjectives that are almost always attached to ownership reflect a degree of unease with the term (2009). Bettina Woll (2008) has already pointed out the distinction between the Paris and Accra terminologies, respectively ‘government’ and ‘country’ ownership but there are a range of others: ‘democratic’ or ‘inclusive’ are being used in the lead up to HLF4 and ‘broad-based’, ‘encompassing’, ‘local’, ‘national’, ‘domestic’ and others are often employed - by these authors, in policy discourse and in practice. Findings here also substantiate the argument made by Kelsall, Booth and others within the Africa Power and Politics research programme to deconstruct the normative values associated with neopatrimonial and democratic systems of governance (Kelsall 2008). This approach can usefully be applied to questions of conditionality/ownership, donor suggestion/recipient leadership, repetition policy/automatic promotion policy and other such binary oppositions. Such a breaking down of assumptions of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ provides a more helpful starting point then to address the conundrums of building capacity without compromising ownership and balancing financial accountability with results. Making a case for the iterative, complex and contingent nature of ownership, this research also builds upon Eyben’s argument (2010a): for relationism: ownership is not a pre-determined entity, process or goal to be striven for. Rather, using the words that MoEST used at the JSR to clarify that the SWAp is not just a new pool of money, ownership allows us to understand the aid relationship as ‘more than the sum of its parts’. This paper highlights some of the debates that emerge from understanding ownership better. The importance of ownership for reflexive understanding is evident (it could be termed ‘conflict resolution’), and a warning is raised about the restricting and detrimental consequences that might result from one understanding becoming dominant. Second, this is a call for dialogue and debate, not only in academia or in OECD’s Cluster A on Ownership and Accountability, but at country level. It is here that ownership is enacted through the aid relationship; it is here that the implications of the polarised camps of ‘them’ and ‘us’ play out. This research, as with some of the others referenced above, stemmed from my own frustration as an aid practitioner with the lack of interaction between ‘on the ground action’ and what are seen to be ‘academic’ debates on aid. ‘Constructive and open dialogue’ between MoEST and stakeholders was called for at the Malawi JSR. It is suggested here that forums for such dialogue on ownership at country level might yield deconstruction of opposition and recognition instead that ‘their’ good may be ‘our’ bad, that ‘they’ are not any more a cohesive unit than ‘we’ are and that 15 these values and perspectives hold complexity, diversity and multiplicity that should negate facile and binding assumptions. The facilitation of such dialogue would be one concrete way in which ownership could be usefully advanced after HLF4. Third, this is a call for a more panoramic perspective. If such dialogue on ownership at country level were to be advanced, it would likely be proposed as a suggestion of what donors could do to facilitate, improve, or build ownership. Much discussion of ownership has been a result of donors asking ‘what can we do?’ Eyben convincingly argues that ‘the impossibility of predicting that a particular event will lead to a certain outcome suggests that donor action should focus upon developing long term and consistent relations in selected recipient organisations, those pursuing a social change agenda compatible with the donor’s own values and mission’ (2010b: 2. Emphasis added). Lewis and Mosse (2005) encourage reflexive enquiry, on the part of donors. Hyden suggests that development partners need to understand that development cooperation is no longer just policy but politics (2008). Fifteen years after Ferguson’s Anti-Politics Machine, this is now well established: SIDA, the World Bank and DfID in particular emphasise the political roles of aid practitioners and conduct in-depth political economy analyses in the countries in which they work. This research posits that this is not enough: a focus on donor behaviour alone is insufficient. Far more work needs to be done to facilitate understanding by and between all stakeholders in the aid relationship of the various constraints, values and incentives at play. This requires transparency, information sharing, experimentation, and awareness of the politics of aid not only from the donor perspective but by all. The practical organisation of country level forums for dialogue on ownership in itself would raise many of the paradoxical questions at the heart of ownership: if donors were to fund the forums; if the knowledge and content of debate were driven by external facilitators; and if ownership itself is a product of a Western-driven global aid system characterised by what Derrida terms a Western logic of ‘violent hierarchy’ in binary opposition, then who owns the ownership? The narratives of ownership that are currently dominant would, being premised upon such confrontational otherness, hold that this suggested understanding, dialogue and panoramic perspective are infeasible. Things brings an inevitability and fatalism to the impasse between donors and recipients. Yet this discussion of ownership has highlighted that these perspectives are just that: divergent assumptions, or theories on the possibility of change. These first three points in conclusion here have been unashamedly infused with optimism, supporting perspectives that challenge the inevitability of a hierarchical and inevitably oppositional impasse between donor and recipient. Unpacking ownership in the ways suggested here is a way to look beyond these simplistic dichotomies. It is, as Eyben points out (2010a), possible to work with the fluid and multilayered processes of power that are reality, rather than the orthodox linearity portrayed in 16 DRAFT: Not for citation June 2011 For presentation at ‘Unpacking Aid Effectiveness’ workshop, LSE policy documents (such as, in the Paris Declaration, development outcomes). ownership -> aid effectiveness -> But the fourth and final suggestion here puts a realistic foot on the rhetorical brake: realisation and acknowledgement of constraints and limitations are as important as efforts to deconstruct dichotomies. Glennie (2011) and Faust (2009: 4) are right to assert that there are ‘fundamentals’ and ‘special interest politics on each side of the delivery chain’. Or, as the MoEST representative put it: ‘God made us with eyes on one side of our head and not the other’. This cannot and should not be ignored. 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