Most reports and studies written about the impact of the Paris Declaration seem to come form the perspective of donor countries. Some examples of these would be: http://www.cjld.org/file/Publications_files/PEMD%20GRANT%20REPORT.pdf and http://www.oecd.org/development/evaluation/dcdndep/41807824.pdf
It would be worthwhile exploring what fellow researchers have discovered in relation to the impact of the Paris Declaration or even its "appropriateness" as a reform initiative in supposedly improving the implementation of aid.
Hello Vicente,
In my doctoral reasearch on the good governance agenda, I examined how the harmonisation project, of which the 2005 Paris Declaration was a major 'outcome', changed government-donor- local recipient community relationships in Mozambique. I drew on various indicators from WB, OECD etc to track what happened in terms of the public discourse but used situational analysis methods (narrative /discourse analyses, field visit and interviews with key informants) to get a sense of how this did or did not change practice on the ground in Moz.
Among other things, I found that several years of preparation (in Moz as well as elsewhere) went on prior to the Declaration, so some of the commitments made by donor governments had already started, e.g. a memorandum of understanding relating to joint donor support of the poverty strategy through budget support. In that respect the Declaration became a multi-purpose, multi-user tool to support efforts (mainly of individuals involved) to stablise the political arena and improve the general economic situation locally. From a 'generic' aid recipient point of view the public transcript helped exert pressure on donors to put their money where their mouth was. The work around this was described to me as a'work in progress' but, over the 5 or so years that I followed, certainly donors' efforts became more co-ordinated and transparent.
From a government perspective, while this (perhaps) reduced opportunities to play donors off one another, it also gave an opportunity to hold (OECD) donors more at arms length (out of micro-management at departmental level) as well as setting them up as 'blameworthy' participants in the local aid partnership. From a local civil society perspective, various structural developments like the poverty observatory, gave them better access /legitimate voice in policy discussions, even if limited perhaps and also putting them at risk of being co-opted by larger players. Certainly, it gave government more opportunity to steer the 'strategic' direction and evaluation narrative for some time.
However, later indicators and the actual situation on the ground recently don't give any sense of a straightforward movement towards 'better' governance (or aid effectiveness variously defined) among players there. You might say, as individuals and their organisations come and go (both locally and on the international stage) or change roles and other aspects of power flare-up or die back so the local path can look more like a series of hairpin bends and the general public as 'aid recipient' often feels the costs more directly than claimed benefits, which can be diffuse and or flimsy.
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