The Obstacles to Foreign Aid Harmonization: Lessons from Decentralization Support in Indonesia

Relying on a new institutional economics analysis of transaction costs, the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness emphasizes donor harmonization as an intermediate objective for increasing the effectiveness of foreign assistance in bringing about development outcomes. Surveys on adherence to the Paris Declaration commitments so far suggest that foreign aid donors are lagging behind targets. This paper explores the political and bureaucratic obstacles faced by bilateral and multilateral aid organizations trying to harmonize aid at the country level. Looking at foreign support for the decentralization and local governance sector in Indonesia??where a ??bold experiment?? in harmonization failed to bring about improved donor coordination??I find evidence that the lack of harmonization can be linked to some of the characteristic pathologies of foreign aid: the dominance of the strategic interests of some donors and the structure of bureaucratic incentives within aid agencies. These traditional problems work through a pathway that is underexplored in the literature: by enabling a lack of coordination among agencies within the recipient government, donors create barriers to harmonization of their own programming. However, I conclude by noting that government coordination failure may not be as much of a problem as donors make it out to be. Decisions about governance and decentralization are necessarily contentious and political. In the case where donors succeed in bringing about government coordination in the interest of their own harmonization, they risk exercising harmful leverage that leads to premature resolution of domestic policy disputes, thereby undermining the Paris Declaration principle of country ownership.     

The Soviet origin of Russian chauvinism: Voices from below

The fledgling democracy of Russia is facing many challenges. Perhaps the most dangerous of all is the rise of an aggressive chauvinistic nationalism. Initially, political analysts regarded it as a “recent” phenomenon which was filling in the ideological vacuum left by communism. As time went on, however, scholars began to grasp its deep historical roots and investigate its ideological evolution during the Soviet period. In this process, they tended to focus on the “legitimate” domains of the Soviet system – such as the official press, the literary field of socialist realism, and so on – in order to investigate how “the Russian idea” overtly coexisted or even covertly prospered within the boundaries of officially sanctioned ideology. The main goal of this paper is to bring a new dimension to our understanding of contemporary Russian nationalism, by approaching the whole phenomenon from below. While focusing on the Soviet period, this paper traces the ideological evolution of Slavophiles and their selective degeneration into chauvinism at the social level. In particular, it analyzes the underground ideological field of samizdat – uncensored illicit publications – where Slavophiles played a significant role. In this way, we can hear the “unfiltered” voices of rising Russian nationalists during the Soviet era.     

The development of public administration from a global perspective: the case of italy

What is the impact of globalization on the Italian state and the development of the Italian public administration? Italy is one of those countries where the forces of globalization are challenging the strong state tradition and the predominance of the legal model of public administration. Globalization and the European regional integration push toward a diminished role of the state and a managerial public administration with an increased emphasis on efficiency and better quality of government activities.     

The Way Out of Russian Deadlock: Shift Power to the Regions

Aleksandr Lebed, the populist former general, is a leading candidate in the 2000 election for president of Russia. He is currently the governor of the Krasnoyarsk Territory (Siberia), one of Russia's richest regions. His remarks are adapted from an exclusive interview he granted to Genrikh Borovik for NPQ in Moscow during the August crisis.     

The radical change: From a socialist perspective to militarism (Rejoinder to Ben-Eliezer and Shamir)

Ben-Eliezer and Shamir's reply appeared in Vol. 4, No. 3 Carmi and Rosenfeld's article appeared in Vol. 3, No. 1.     

Reinventing government: a critique from an institutional perspective(1)

This paper critically examines the recent reinventing government movement from an institutional perspective, focusing on principal-agent problems in management and political contexts of public agencies. Based on this perspective, it analyzes the problems and prospects of the National Performance Review in the United States and suggests that an institutional perspective can prove useful in redesigning government--not by achieving a single set of insights common to all contexts, but rather by focusing attention to particular situations and institutional contexts.     

The Discursive Resistance to EU-Enticement: The Russian Elite and (the Lack of) Europeanisation

This article explores the discourse of the Russian elite on foreign policy in general and on the European Union in particular, and identifies the main reasons for Russia's resistance to Europeanisation. At a theoretical level, the article builds upon the study of discourse conceived in ‘structural’ terms, and argues that discursive incompatibility at a deeper discursive level prevents the socialisation of elite members to attitudes more sympathetic to Europe at a more superficial level. Methodologically, the research is based on content analysis of major Russian foreign policy documents, presidential speeches and, in particular, of a set of interviews with Russian foreign policy-makers and academics most frequently in touch with the European Union.