Study on Evaluating Swiss Cooperation Strategies in Highly Harmonised Settings
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Date
2009-12Type
- Report
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yes
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Abstract
Cooperation strategies are important steering instruments for aid at the country level. Evaluations of these strategies satisfy accountability needs of stakeholders of aid and serve as instruments for organisational learning to increase aid effectiveness. Cooperation strategy evaluations must necessarily build on results of project and programme aid evaluations in a country portfolio. The higher the quality of these existing evaluations is, the higher is the quality of evaluations at the country level.<br/>To date many project and programme aid evaluations do not apply rigorous, quantitative methods to separate aid effects from other influences on target variables. In the case of programme aid (budget support) it is not possible to rigorously separate aid effects of all or individual donors from overall programme effects. Qualitative methods are frequently used to construct counterfactuals and to identify plausible” aid effects. Investing more into high quality, rigorous evaluations of project and programme aid has also positive consequences for cooperation strategy evaluations that build on these results.<br/>Document analyses and interviews with evaluation experts indicate that donors diagnose weaknesses of current cooperation strategy evaluations and want to improve the benefit cost ratios. Current practices put a high emphasis on the evaluation of inputs and outputs of aid as well as the quality of the overall aid process. Much less emphasis is put on the evaluation of the overall or combined effect of all aid activities at the country level, a methodologically very difficult and challenging task. The efforts to collect new data and information, which complement existing evaluation results of an aid portfolio, vary widely between donors and between country cases. Many cooperation strategy evaluations rely heavily on qualitative approaches, while the use of quantitative methods is relatively rare. Donors frequently carry out these evaluations unilaterally, because governments of recipient countries have limited capacities to participate in such exercises, and because the evaluation results for an individual donor are often not sufficiently interesting for others. Exceptions are country cases with “Joint Assistance Strategies” or, more generally, country cases where the shares of budget support in total aid are high. If the harmonisation of aid increases in the future, the potential and relevance for joint cooperation strategy evaluation will also increase.<br/>To improve the benefit-cost ratio of cooperation strategy evaluations we recommend SDC to consequently use existing evaluation and monitoring results of project and programme aid effects for meta-evaluations of the whole aid portfolio at the country level. These metaevaluations should be complemented by a process evaluation of the whole cooperation strategy. To get the best results, we also recommend SDC to heavily invest in rigorous, quantitative evaluations of project and programme aid effects. These investments will contribute to improve aid effectiveness at the project, programme and country level. In addition we recommend that programme aid evaluations should under all circumstances be carried out as joint evaluations with the recipient government and all donors participating in the programme aid. With increasing shares of budget support in total aid, i.e. increasing harmonisation, these joint evaluations will become more and more relevant. In countries with “Joint Assistance Strategies” and / or high shares of budget support joint evaluations may approximate evaluations of “total aid” in the foreseeable future. We recommend SDC to undertake an information campaign that explains to Swiss stakeholders of international cooperation the rationale of programme aid and SDC’s commitment to the “Paris Declaration” and the “Accra Agenda of Action”. The information campaign should also help stakeholders to better understand why in the case of budget support the aid effects of a single donor cannot be separated from overall programme effects and overall aid effects. Moreover, stakeholders should be informed that with SDC’s continued efforts to improve evaluations at the project, programme, and country level the quality and visibility of Swiss aid will be strengthened. Show more
Publication status
publishedPublisher
NADEL Center for Development and Cooperation, ETH ZurichOrganisational unit
03350 - Kappel, Rolf
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