The successful use of consultancies in aid‐financed public sector management reform: a consultant's eye view of some things which matter

Independent consultants, often contracted through consultancy firms, are important players in donor attempts to trigger and guide institutional change processes in recipient government structures and practices. However, little is known about the efficacy or ‘success’ of such consultancies. This article explores some of the issues involved. Following a discussion of the problems of defining ‘success’, we present an analytical framework which can be used in all kinds of contexts to generate information relevant to institutional change programmes, and to the design of consultancies to help carry the change processes along. Such information can be used to predict the likely success of intervening at all, for designing the elements of an intervention, and for ongoing monitoring of implementation. We apply the framework to eight consultancies which were undertaken in three different change contexts: post‐communist regimes in the early transitional period; aid‐dependent regimes committed to ‘politics‐as‐usual’ and the longer‐term highjacking of donor funds by patron – clientelist structures. We summarize the main lessons which emerge from our case studies in the form of criteria for judging whether and how (responsible) donors and/or consultants should get involved in change projects. Donors, consultancy companies and consultants should all be thinking of ways to exclude irresponsible parties and behaviour from aid‐financed institutional transformation processes. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.