Sector Wide Approaches in motion:
From an aid delivery to a
sector development perspective
Bruxelles, 10.-11. June 2008
June 2008 1 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
Your turn!
• In your experience from the water sector,
what are the achievements and strengths of
water SWAps?
What are the weaknesses and challenges?
June 2008 2 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
Overview: The general lessons
• Strong interest in the SWAp and PBAs
• More driven by donors than by government
• Limited analytical underpinnings
• Increasing attention to civil society
• Increasing concern about links to decentralisation
• Many rather incipient processes – weak incentives?
• And/or a SWAp concept beyond reach?
June 2008 3 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
What is a Sector Programme?
A Sector Programme is a product of the Sector
Approach. It is a government (not donor)
programme
June 2008 4 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
Sector programmes: 5 typical
elements
Public finance Sector policy
management in macro-framework
Services and
enabling Accountability &
Institutions and environment Performance
capacities monitoring
Aid alignment and
harmonisation
June 2008 5 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
Key Issue: Capacity to SWAp?
• Too much complexity vis-à-vis available
capacity and incentives to transform the SWAp
into sensible action, for all stakeholders?
June 2008 6 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
The SWAp concept – means and
ends
• Born out of aid effectiveness concerns…
• …but aim of sector programmes is sector development,
thus...
• …raising the ante: how can a sector develop?
• …implying:
systemic view, more to look at, more diagnosis
handling political economy dimensions
increased complexity
• The JLP is moving in this direction, offering imperfect
analytical framework for ‚sector helicopter view‛
June 2008 7 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
Open Systems Model for Sector Diagnosis
Contextual factors beyond influence
Sector
Governance
Sector systems
Inputs Outputs Outcome Impact
and
Organisations
Contextual factors within influence
June 2008 8 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
Open Systems Model for Sector Diagnosis
Organizational capacities
Contextual factors beyond influence
Sector coordination
Policy
Inputs frameworks Outputs
mechanisms Outcome Impact
Contextual factors within influence
June 2008 9 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
Sector diagnosis and reform entry points
1. Wider context factors, public sector wide reforms
2. Sector resources and inputs
3. Sector outputs
4. Sector governance and accountability
5. Policy frameworks; sector vision and strategy; legal
issues and legislative frameworks
6. Public financial management systems and capacity
7. Organizational capacities
8. Feedback-mechanisms
9. Sector coordination mechanisms
10. Decentralization and/or deconcentration
11. Specific incentives driving or constraining performance
12. The change capacity of domestic actor
June 2008 10 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
Sector policy: process
• Country ownership still compromised
• How good is ‘good enough’
• Cobbling the pieces together
• Still weak policy – budget links
• ‘Policy - capacity = capacity gap’
• Too much ‘development (project?) planning thinking’
carry over
June 2008 11 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
Sector policy: content
• Lack of prioritisation
• ‘Missing middle’ (in objectives and in targets)
Poor micro-, meso-, macro linkages
Lack of non-state actor involvement
• Taking account of winners and losers
Beyond government, below national level, towards
disadvantaged areas and people
Can (or should) losers be implementers?
June 2008 12 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
The budget, PFM, MTEF
• Theoretical importance well accepted
• De facto budget/PFM issues not yet that central
• Finance ministries conspicuously absent
• MTEFs in sector can be very rudimentary
• Limited sector incentives to pursue better PFM
June 2008 13 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
Risky PFM issues in SWAps
• Risk of ‚state-centred‛ perspective – budget not equally
important in all sectors
• Sector programme budget may only be part of sector
budget, or cut across sectors
• Risk of overlooking fiscal decentralisation interfaces
• Risk of technocratic bias
• Premise of predictability uncertain
• MTEF – maybe, but when?
June 2008 14 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
Institutions and Capacities
• Everybody’s concern
• Everywhere – and nowhere….
• Few handles – except the supply driven TA and
training
June 2008 15 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
Capacity development issues
• Mainstreaming CD in Sector Programmes
• Opening dialogue about institutional/political economy
drivers and constraints
• Opening dialogue which respects that CD must be
demand-driven
• Maintaining realism about what sector level CD can
achieve
• Finding joint sector approaches to support CD
June 2008 16 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
Accountability
Political
system/govern
Context
ment
Checks and Non-state
Core public
balances actors
agencies
organisations
Frontline
service Donors,
providers international
Governance organisations
Accountability
June 2008 17 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
Strengthening domestic accountability
• Focus on expenditure • Attention to revenue
• Focus on sector • Service users to hold
outcomes providers to account
• Focus on CD for • CD of ‘pillars’ of
government accountability
• Bias towards mutual • Priority of domestic
accountability accountability
concerns
June 2008 18 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
Monitoring
• Harmonisation and alignment successes
• Monitoring for learning vs monitoring for
accountability
• The problem with indicators
• Monitoring systems as government management
information tools first and donor ‘checking tools’ after
June 2008 19 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
Alignment, harmonisation, modalities
• Unprecedented push for H&A
• Government push essential – donors alone won’t make
it
• Overdoing donor-govt coordination may crowd out
domestic sector coordination
• Coordination often poorly performed
• Increased time required for SWAps
• Inclusive SWAp model appreciated, but..
• Budget support still contentious
June 2008 20 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
H&A issues
• Putting the sector coordination perspective first
• Getting business-like approach to coordination, and
managerial capacity to pursue it
• Embracing transaction costs – pay them with a smile!
• Working on tensions around donors coming too close
for comfort
June 2008 21 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
Decentralisation
• Centralising tendencies in SWAps – how to
deal with decentralisation is key issue in several
JLP events
• Central government faces ‚donor dilemmas‛
vis-à-vis local governments
• Funding mechanisms, policy/legal mechanisms,
bargaining – all in play to define
autonomy/control balance
• Country perspective on the tension and issues,
not an aid perspective
June 2008 22 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
Concluding remarks: Implications?
• Looking for a middle ground between..
the Scylla of a building a system on sand, stuck in
capitals, pondering about complexities; and..
the Charybdis of unprincipled, opportunistic
muddling through
June 2008 23 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal
Strategic Incrementalism?
• A sector development perspective
• Explicit political economy perspective
• Consistent actor/stakeholder perspective
• Strengthened managerial inputs
• Common sense focus on results
• …building SWAp as a process also with focus on
processes
• …and thereby fostering trust through modesty, realism
and patience….
June 2008 24 Nils Boesen/Erma Uytewaal