Chris Blattman

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ONE more reason to be disappointed?

What’s the Data Report, you ask? If their publicity blitz pays off, you’ll hear plenty in the coming days. It’s the ONE campaign’s push to hold G8 governments accountable to their development commitments.

I love accountability, but make sure you keep in mind ‘accountability to what?’ as you read the press. No development advice is left behind in this report. But the big message is money–who’s given as much as they pledged.

Whether that money’s spent well, is non-volatile, untied to trade, or untethered from political interests is probably in there (every possible goal and policy advice seems to be) but it’s all buried under the big hammering point: give more money. The report card alone makes that clear.

The big loser, in my opinion, is trade and investment. It gets a mention, but it’s a mouse squeak compared to the lion’s roar for more aid dollars.

2 Responses

  1. I’m not saying this is the case, but I think it’s possible that it’s best for them to hammer money and money alone.

    They want to get the biggest return on the money and star power they invest, and its possible that they get it by badgering governments into handing out a lot of money (didn’t they do that with PEPFAR?) because there is no countervailing force, just apathy. Meanwhile, if they hammer away for better trade deals or investment (isn’t drawing investment mostly in the hands of the poor country governments?), unions are going to go ape. When they lobbied heavily against farm subsidies (in 2007) big agribusiness jumped all over them and they lost on both amendments (I believe).

    I’d like to hear more about food ties, long term compacts, AID prevention etc. But I think they might be right that congress is only really sensitive to hearing about amounts and the implementation battle is settled within USAID, the World Bank, etc.

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