State Fragility as a Wicked Problem: How Should Donor Financed Interventions Be Managed?

State Fragility as a Wicked Problem: How Should Donor Financed Interventions Be Managed? An extensive literature exists about state fragility. Since a large number of countries are labelled as fragile according various... [ view full abstract ]

State Fragility as a Wicked Problem: How Should Donor Financed Interventions Be Managed?

An extensive literature exists about state fragility. Since a large number of countries are labelled as fragile according various indices developed by the World Bank and Freedom House (to choose two) and they remain fragile for a long time, state fragility can be thought of as a wicked problem. Nevertheless, both bi-lateral donors and international donors continue to finance interventions in fragile countries with the broad goal of reducing their fragility by improving their governance processes. Nevertheless, over the last few decades, international development (known as Official Development Assistance or ODA) has been under attack for its lack of effectiveness. These attacks have ranged from the specifically programmatic (i.e. how a donor agency implements aid programming) to the universal (i.e. does ODA promote development or, perversely, impede development?) At both levels, a critical question is the control over the development initiative asserted by the donor agency. This paper examines a variety of implementation strategies, including their strengths and weakness, keyed to the level of control asserted by the donor agency. These strategies fit within two dialectical extremes. On the one hand, most major donors have traditionally applied a Strong Design Application Approach (SDAA) approach or expert driven strategy of program design and implementation. At the other extreme, in part driven by beneficiary countries, some development is now being implemented according to a Strong Local Ownership (SLO) model of development in which development programming is determined and executed according to the direction of the beneficiary government. Between these two extremes lie three additional models, each of which has been offered as an alternative to SDAA. These include: Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA), which replaces control by the donor with control by the implementer who uses an empirically based trial and error approach to program development and implementation; the Consultancy Assistance model (CA), which places the beneficiary in control of the development project assisted by international experts who serve as consultants to the beneficiary; and the Best Practice Partnership Approach (BPPA), which treats development as a partnership or collaboration between the donor agency, implementer, and beneficiary. We illustrate our argument through a review of funded legislative strengthening projects – many of which are USAID funded projects that have been implemented by the Center for International Development (SUNY/CID) of the University at Albany, State University of New York.