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1. Tony Killick made a presentation
based on his recent paper in Development
Policy Review . His main, overarching point was about
the use of evidence in aid policy. The article discussed three
cases in which he felt evidence was not being used correctly.
He would focus on one of these, the case of conditionality.
2. The evidence indicated strongly that conditionality was
largely ineffective, and indeed the current development discourse
reflected this. In practice, conditionality had not decreased
and might well have increased. This could lead to a large-scale
waste of public resources.
3. The evidence that conditionality did not work was well
established. Tony Killick's own earlier work had illustrated
the high frequency of breakdown of IMF programmes and the
poor correlation between the quality of aid countries policy
and support by World Bank structural adjustment programmes.
Structural adjustment, he argued, had been wholly ineffective
in achieving either an improvement in policy or a high average
standard.
4. It was important to understand why compliance with conditionality
was poor. Part of the reason was that local politics tended
to dominate the outcome, but it was also important that the
incentives on staff in the international financial institutions
were not such as to encourage them to pursue non-compliance.
In fact, the threat of aid withdrawal was not usually carried
out.
5. Since the early 1990s, the conventional wisdom had been
to reduce conditionality. However, the number of conditions
in World Bank and IMF programmes had only fallen very slowly,
and those that were legally binding had fallen least of all.
Furthermore, a new kind of conditionality had been introduced
through Policy Reduction Strategy Papers.
6. Tony Killick concluded that it was important to find alternative
ways of doing business.
7.
The discussion spent some time analysing different kinds of
conditionality. Some participants commented that there was now
a high degree of consensus between donors and e.g. African governments
on the way forward, and that therefore most conditionality was
now consensual. Furthermore, there was a difference between
conditionality on substance and conditionality on process, with
the latter being less damaging and difficult. Tony Killick was
somewhat sceptical of these arguments. He argued that conditionality
related principally to policies governments would either not
implement at all or not implement quickly enough. He described
these as "hardcore" conditions, and suggested that
the earlier conclusions still applied. He also thought it unlikely
that the new consensus resulted in any way from conditionality.
The World Bank itself had found in countries like Mexico and
South Africa that patient dialogue and influence was a better
way to change the mind of government. He thought partnership
might be a better way forward than conditionality.
