Effective poverty reduction requires narrowing the gap between words and
actions, making trust and accountability real within and between organisations, at all
levels and between all actors. Aid agencies today are shifting emphasis from projects
and service delivery to a language of rights and governance. They have introduced new
approaches and requirements, stressing partnership and transparency. But embedded
traditions and bureaucratic inertia mean old behaviours, procedures and organisational
cultures persist. The way forward is to achieve consistency between personal behaviour,
institutional norms and the new development agenda

Chambers, Robert

Pettit, Jethro

Scott-Villiers, Patta

English

IDS OpenDocs

 The changing context
Recent years have seen major shifts in the policies of
most aid agencies, whether multilateral lenders, UN
agencies, bilateral donors, foundations or international
non-government organisations (INGOs). Poverty
reduction is more than ever the overarching goal. The
local knowledge and priorities of poor and marginalised
people have new prominence. Participatory Poverty
Assessments (PPAs) and Poverty Reduction Strategy
Papers (PRSPs) have been introduced, in part with the
hope that they would enable poor people to influence
policy. Capacity building for policy influence is high on
the agenda. Through sector-wide approaches, aid
agencies now support Government budgets once by-
passed or funded only with stringent conditions.
Agencies have been shifting from supporting projects
and service delivery to becoming co-players in broader
political processes; they are seeking new relationships,
with more ownership by partner countries, organisations
and citizens.
The gap between words and actions 
The new language of aid and development implies shifts
in control and in the distribution of power, yet the gap
between what is said and what is done is widening. Why?
l Empowerment implies power to those who are
subordinate and weak, but the usual practice
between levels of hierarchy is control from above. Aid
agencies impose conditionalities at the same time as
they preach empowerment.
l Accountability between partners is two-way up and
down the aid chain, but in practice accountability
downwards is rare and weak.
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l Ownership implies national and local autonomy but
this is limited by aid agencies’ influence on policy,
human rights and governance, whether this influence
is exerted directly on governments or indirectly
through citizens and civil society.
l Partnership implies collegial equality but aid
agencies with funds often call the shots.
l Participation is considered a means by some and
an end by others, and is used to describe a range of
practices stretching from compulsory labour to
spontaneous self-organisation.
l Transparency implies information shared between
partners, and accessible in the public domain, but aid
agencies and governments often keep budget details
and other information about decision-making confidential.
l Primary stakeholder refers to the poor and
marginalised but though ‘primary’ they participate
least and have least voice.
THE NEW DYNAMICS OF AID: POWER, PROCEDURES AND
RELATIONSHIPS
Summary: Effective poverty reduction requires narrowing the gap between words and
actions, making trust and accountability real within and between organisations, at all
levels and between all actors. Aid agencies today are shifting emphasis from projects
and service delivery to a language of rights and governance. They have introduced new
approaches and requirements, stressing partnership and transparency. But embedded
traditions and bureaucratic inertia mean old behaviours, procedures and organisational
cultures persist. The way forward is to achieve consistency between personal behaviour,
institutional norms and the new development agenda. 
What people said in workshops
“There’s very little time and space for reflection and
learning on the ground. We’re all too busy dispensing
funds”
“Partnership is the word used, by far, with the
greatest hypocrisy”
“Gandhi believed that the way to tell if something is
right or wrong is whether you feel you have to hide
it. If you have to hide it, there must be something
wrong with it”
“We will help coalitions and networks of partners to
develop the strength to challenge us”
Ambiguities and contradictions can never be fully
eliminated. But while they remain marked, pro-poor
policies and practices will fall below their potential. By the
same token, narrowing the gaps between these words and
what happens presents a potent means to focus pro-poor
policies and practices and make them more effective. 
Current practices maintain the gap
Much current practice stands in the way of aid agencies
practising what their words imply. Hierarchy in
organisations presents an embedded obstacle to
change. It is reinforced by top-down development
targets and pressures to scale up programmes and
achieve wide impacts. Dominating behaviour is
associated with creditor-debtor and donor-recipient
conditionalities in structural adjustment programmes
and with the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative
(HIPC) and PRSPs. It is sustained and reproduced by
the culture and incentives of donors, and of lending
organisations like the World Bank. Procedures provide
IDS Policy Briefing – Issue 15 2
structures that express and maintain institutional
cultures and relationships. Control-oriented cultures and
required procedures like the logical framework
approach (LFA) remain widespread.
Drives to disburse funds by deadlines, and to spend
within fixed periods, weaken or kill participation,
ownership and local self-reliance, undermining social
networks and leading to low quality in programmes.
Misleading and overfavourable information is passed up
the chain, delaying or preventing learning and change.
Time spent reporting is excessive especially when
several donors or lenders have different requirements.
Staff are disempowered and demotivated when they
lack discretion and are driven by targets and orders
from above, especially front-line field workers.
“Living in the contradiction between the demand for
tight budgets, short-term measureable results, targets,
a belief in cause and effect, linear social change and
avowed commitment to process, ownership of change
by the poor, locally driven agendas... is very painful for
all kinds of people up and down the aid chain.” 
– Workshop participant, IDS
Obstacles to change
New processes and procedures are one means for
change. Standing in the way are personal and
institutional inertia and desires for power and control. It
has often been found harder to abolish old procedures
than to introduce new ones. The reasons include:
l Risk-aversion Abolishing a procedure, or not following
one that has been abolished, means entering unknown
territory with potential exposure to blame.
l Extra work New procedures added to old ones are
resisted because they make more work.
l Habit Some grumble about procedures but welcome
them for the protection from blame their performance
provides.
Changing modes and relationships in development aid
Projects and Programmes and policies
services in the past in the present and future
Controllable and predictable More Less
Mental model Simpler, linear More complex, interlinked
Cause-effect attribution Clearer Less clear
Accountability, transparency Upwards 360˚ including downwards 
Power relations Top-down Reciprocal 
Development agencies and staff More confident Less confident
Language Technical Power-related
Political sensitivity Less More
Donor-recipient relationships Cruder More nuanced
Characteristic procedure Logical Negotiated principles
framework and process
LFA – the logical framework approach
The logical framework (logframe) has been prominent.
With antecedents in management practices of the
1950s and 1960s, and earlier applied to projects and
infrastructure, it embodies a linear logic associated
with simple and controlled conditions. It has given rise
to much debate and caused much anguish. Whatever
its merits and demerits, it is striking that those who
favour it most are those whose power and control it
enhances, and those who like it least are those whose
discretion it diminishes. The latter have repeatedly
found logframes irrelevant, rigid, constraining and
disempowering. Opinion is now divided between those
who advocate the preservation of the logframe and its
use, those who apply it in modified ways, and those
who argue for doing things differently. 
l Conditioning Staff have been trained to follow
approved routines and behaviours.
l Vested interests Trainers trained to train others in
procedures, and consultants who are familiar with
them (for example LFA consultants), sustain their
livelihoods through procedures.
l Power Many required procedures entrench power
and control, and provide opportunities for corruption.
So patterns of dominance, hierarchy and control-
oriented procedures persist, reducing and slowing down
adaptability and responsiveness. The challenge is to
bring about a genuine shift in modes and relationships
in development aid.
Signs of change
There have been promising moves in these directions.
Various aid agencies are taking steps to address issues
of power and transparency, and to bring mutual
accountability into both internal and external relationships.
Some examples of new procedures include:
l Partnership agreements, such as DFID’s (the
Department for International Development) new
procedures for collaborating with larger INGOs on a
basis of shared principles and trust (albeit with less
evident benefits as yet for smaller partners).
l Two-way reporting, down the aid chain as well as
up. ActionAid’s new planning system encourages
communication and accountability between levels.
l Participatory budgeting, citizen report cards and other
forms of engaging citizens and service providers in
mutual planning and monitoring are being encouraged
by the World Bank and other aid agencies.
l Participatory monitoring and evaluation continues
to be a rapidly growing field, entering virtually every
segment of the aid system to varying degrees.
IDS Policy Briefing – Issue 15
l Decentralisation of authority to local offices, giving
more discretion to front-line staff, has become a
widespread trend among aid agencies.
Other examples abound, many of them quite
encouraging. The question is whether these efforts,
taken together, will lead to significant shifts in power and
relationships within and among actors in the aid system –
or whether they reflect a temporary homage to a passing
trend. What will it take to make these changes real?
Congruence and consistency
Aid agencies can do more to enable changes in power
and relationships, and to put concepts of trust,
accountability and partnership into meaningful practice.
There is no blueprint or ‘off-the-shelf’ solution for
bringing reality closer to rhetoric. Experience suggests
that multiple approaches can be employed, together or
sequentially. The key is that such steps should promote
congruence and consistency between personal
behaviour, organisational norms and development
objectives.
Personal behaviour and attitudes are pivotal in helping or
hindering change, and directly influence wider norms and
relationships. New policies and procedures are needed,
but they will work best if viewed not as solutions in
themselves, but as helping to create the conditions for
people to increase awareness of and develop key
concepts – such as rights, ownership and mutual
3
Behaviour and
attitudes
Organisational
norms and
procedures
Development
objectives
and philosophy
Organisations usually seek to change procedures and
relationships without adequate monitoring, learning and
subsequent adaptation. The opportunity is there to
improve and share such learning, warts and all,
wherever promising procedural change is introduced.
Staff in the INGO ActionAid were spending three
months of the year writing reports. To reduce
reporting, reform power relationships, and enhance
learning, the Accountability, Learning and Planning
System (ALPS) was devised and is being adopted
and adapted. Key elements include:
l annual Participatory Review and Reflection
Processes at all levels, with multiple stakeholders
from different levels;
l downward accountability, with transparency of
budgets between all levels;
l space and encouragement for local diversity.
Instead of a manual there are ‘Notes to accompany
ALPS’ with at the head of each page: ‘Health
Warning: Ideas and options only’.
Innovation is encouraged. At a workshop in
Bangalore, ActionAid’s local NGO partners were
invited to evaluate ActionAid. Making the ActionAid
budget transparent cleared the air and set an example
for the partners to follow in turn, sharing their budgets
with communities.
In parallel with ALPS new relationships have been
negotiated between ActionAid and DFID on a basis of
shared principles, trust and accountability. In Kenya, a
Programme Partnership Agreement between the two
parties accepts ActionAid’s internal management and
reporting system without imposing a logframe.
ALPS – the Accountability, Learning and Planning System of ActionAid
respect. This kind of change cannot be mandated or
engineered, but it can be either nurtured or stifled by the
type of leadership and climate that prevails. 
The initiative for change can come from different places
but the most responsibility lies with those who are more
powerful in a relationship, as between senior managers
and front-line staff; aid agencies and partner
Governments and organisations; and the staff of those
partners with local organisations and communities.
What kind of behaviour is being modelled and
rewarded? What key principles are being acted upon?
Five principles for congruence
Seeking congruence between personal, professional and
organisational behaviour is a new frontier in pro-poor aid
and development. The challenge is to narrow the gap
between words and actions, and to acknowledge and
transform power relations. This is a long-term process,
requiring work on multiple levels. Recent experience
suggests five key principles that can be acted upon to
help create conditions for enduring change:
Personal development To recognise the significance of
individual behaviour and attitudes. To identify valued
personal characteristics, and for leaders to model these.
To recruit and train according to desired values and
professional conduct. To provide opportunities for learning,
critical self-reflection and personal growth. To facilitate staff
exchanges between countries, including immersion
experiences in rural and urban communities, and between
organisations North/South, South/South, etc.
Organisational learning To review and renew
organisational norms, rewards, incentives and
procedures. To adopt procedures which promote and
support reciprocal relationships within and between
organisations, such as two-way reporting. To remove or
adjust those procedures, structures and controls which
inhibit learning, feedback and innovation. To invite and
reward staff innovation, and to create time and space
for critical reflection.
Reciprocal relationships To acknowledge power
relationships, while recognising the reciprocal and
interdependent nature of aid: aid agencies and
partners/recipients need one another. To strengthen the
ability of partner and recipient organisations to refuse
conditional aid and rigid procedures which undermine
their autonomy. To enhance the capacity of poor
people’s organisations to contract, on their own terms,
the services and technical support they need from aid
agencies and intermediaries.
IDS Policy Briefing – Issue 15 4
IDS Policy Briefings are published by the Institute of Development Studies and 
aim to provide concise, up-to-date reviews of important development issues. 
Institute of Development Studies, at the University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9RE, UK
Tel: (+44) 1273 606261 Fax: (+44) 1273 691647 or 621202
E-mail: ids@ids.ac.uk
Web site: www.ids.ac.uk Institute of Development Studies
Sussex
IDS
Mutual accountability To introduce norms and
procedures for two-way reporting, accountability and
transparency among all levels of an organisation, and
between organisations or institutions engaged in
partnerships. To combine trust and decentralised
discretion over funds with timely and honest accounting.
Negotiation of process To build relationships on the
basis of commonly agreed values, objectives and
processes to be followed, rather than specific results.
To affirm the value of outputs and indicators such as:
quality of participation; capacities developed; learning;
transparency and mutual accountability; and well-being
as identified by poor and marginalised people
themselves, including human rights.
“All our work should be critically analysed with a
consciousness of power and a willingness to challenge
and be challenged by the poor, by partners and by each
other.” 
– Participatory Methodologies Forum, Dhaka
This Policy Briefing was written by Robert Chambers, Jethro
Pettit and Patta Scott-Villiers and edited by Rosalind Goodrich.
Sources for this Briefing Paper include reflections and insights
from two workshops: ‘Procedures, Power and Relationships’ at
IDS, University of Sussex, 8-12 May 2001, and the
Participatory Methodologies Forum in Dhaka 28 January-
3 February 2001. The opinions expressed are the authors’ and
do not necessarily reflect those of IDS or its funders.
Readers are encouraged to quote or reproduce material from
IDS Policy Briefings in their own publications. In return, IDS
requests due acknowledgement and a copy of the publication.
Full text of IDS Policy Briefings and more information on the
Institute and its work are available on the IDS web site. 
© Institute of Development Studies 2001 ISSN 1360-4724
Further reading
ActionAid, 2001, Transforming Power: Report of the
Participatory Methodologies Forum, Dhaka, Feb 2001.
Contact: David Archer, ActionAid, Hamlyn House, Macdonald
Road, London N19 5PG davida@actionaid.org.uk
CDRA, 2001, Measuring Development – Holding Infinity,
Community Development Resource Association, PO Box 221,
Woodstock 7915, South Africa www.cdra.org.za
Gasper, D., 2000, ‘Evaluating the “logical framework approach”
– towards learning-oriented development evaluation’ Public
Administration and Development, 20(1), 17-28
Hobley, M., 2000, ‘Transformation of Organisations for
Poverty Eradication’, Sustainable Livelihoods Support
Office, DFID, 94 Victoria Street, London SW1E 5JL
www.livelihoods.org.uk
Norton, A., et al, 2001 A Rough Guide to Participatory
Poverty Assessment, Overseas Development Institute, 
111 Westminster Bridge Road, London SE1 7JD
www.odi.org.uk


The new dynamics of aid: power, procedures and relationships

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The new dynamics of aid: power, procedures and relationships

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