Funds from international development banks and international cooperation agencies are crucial for policy investments across the developing word. These organizations’ procedural requirements and selection criteria are obvious limits to developed nations’ policymakers access to funding sources. But, beyond those limits, in this research we ask “How do international funding processes contribute to the formatting and implementation of policy?” considering the internal organizational choices presented to those in the national, subnational or local government bureaucracy responsible for international financial cooperation (fundraising).
Cohen, March and Olsen’s (1972) garbage can model of organizational anarchy and unclearly defined priorities along with Kingdon’s (1984) multiple streams analysis make up the primary theoretical foundations of the research. Kingdom’s (1984) hypothesis that bureaucrats will match problems to policy solutions, as opposed to the contrary, is tested against empirical evidence from the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil, last eight years’ experiences with international financial cooperation, policy formatting, implementation and value creation in different sectors. We investigate grant and funding opportunities and negotiations as policy windows in order to understand the role and influence of fundraising bureaucrats in policy choices and, ultimately, in policy implementation – as development banks and international financial cooperation agencies often present specific implementation requirements, and Brazilian legal constrains do limit how loan funds can be allocated.
The research explores data from interviews with the State of Minas Gerais’ bureaucrats, and internal and external policy monitoring and result reports to answer the main question, and to enlighten implementation as an effort made not only by the bureaucrats immediately involved in service delivery, but by the multiple actors within the complex public sector organizational structure, such as priority setting (political) officials, policy sector specialists, budgetary analysis and finance, government planning, and policy monitoring bureaucrats.
Preliminary results indicate that those in the governmental bureaucracy responsible for fundraising are actors both in the policy problems and the policy solution streams as they are indeed limited by the organizations’ unclearly defined priorities, but depend on external results (successful funding) to achieve internal approval. Also, they confirm that international funding agencies act as (part of) policy communities as they shape and influence policy choices far beyond strict funding criteria adherence, mainly as either political officials or technical bureaucrats seek the continuity of the financial cooperation. Specifically regarding the contribution to the panel topic and field, the research helps to bring further clarity (i) to the issues of implementation and the multiple roles and challenges faced by different bureaucrats involved in service delivery, along with (ii) cross-cultural policy and value translation – specifically regarding developed/developing country contexts, and, more importantly, (iii) value creation through international development cooperation.
