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1. UK Research Aid: Tied, Opaque and Off-Topic?

Author:
G. Lee Robinson, Euan Ritchie, and Charles Kenny
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development (CGD)
Abstract:
The UK has considerably increased the amount of aid it spends on research in recent years. This policy follows statements by DFID that research is among the best ways of spending aid. It also follows the UK legislating a commitment to spend 0.7 percent of GNI as foreign aid. In pursuing this target, the UK has decreased the proportion of bilateral aid spent through DFID and has channelled more through other departments. BEIS and the Department for Health and Social Care have been big recipients, and research accounts for much of their increased share of aid budgets. The information associated with the majority of this research aid is vague, raising questions about transparency. A large amount of the research is financed using an allocation mechanism that effectively ties it to UK institutions. There are also questions as to the poverty focus of some of the research conducted, given the explicit intention of the UK government to find existing activity to reclassify as ODA following the legislating of the 0.7 percent target. We suggest reporting reforms that will increase transparency and allow greater scrutiny of the way UK research aid is spent. We also call for the UK to live up to its reporting to the OECD that all British aid is untied.
Topic:
Health, Research, Academia, and Funding
Political Geography:
United Kingdom and Europe

2. “Contractors or Collectives?” Earmarked Funding of Multilaterals, Donor Needs and Institutional Integrity: The World Bank as a Case Study

Author:
Owen Barder, Euan Ritchie, and Andrew Rogerson
Publication Date:
07-2019
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
Center for Global Development (CGD)
Abstract:
We revisit the policy dilemmas thrown up by so-called Multi-bi funding (earmarked bilateral aid routed via multilateral channels), based on a case study of World Bank trust funds, given their industry-leading overall size and relative transparency. We update patterns of sources and uses of Multi-bi using the 2019 Trust Funds Directory and use this to derive a new Index of Responsible Multi-bi Donorship. We consider complementary donor motivations for Multi-bi, highlighting their perceived need to shift the focus of a multilateral institution faster than they believe possible through its core systems. We examine potential negative effects of Multi-bi on the distortion of funding choices available to client countries, and above all on the risk of “hollowing out” of the multilateral itself, as the locus of power and accountability shifts from the wider collective toward a narrower set of contracting relationships. We find that current trust fund reform efforts can at best partly address these dynamics, while the growing trend toward creation of sub-windows within the main core funding instrument could potentially make things worse. Instead, we offer a pragmatic two-track solution that could significantly reduce tensions between funder needs and institutional integrity. This involves (a) developing an improved battery of output indicators mapped to donor core contributions, to enhance visibility and results reporting and (b) routing new Multi-bi proposals increasingly through core governance processes, focusing initially on greater transparency and on demonstrating their additionality to donors’ core funding.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Finance, Banks, Donors, and Funding
Political Geography:
Global Focus