From Scientific American, The Science of Doing Good (subscription only, unfortunately)

For those interested in the Kenyan election (beyond my half-informed blog posting), see a collection of writing and blog links at KenyaVotes.org.

The Economist reports on record fundraising by the World Bank, and somewhat uncritically endorses the centralization of aid:

In a world of more than 280 donors (from the Desert Locust Control Organisation for Eastern Africa to the International Potato Centre), international aid is a fragmented business, putting it mildly. The bank says it can hold it all together.

For example, on December 13th the bank approved a project to lay and repair rural roads and bridges in Afghanistan, which often succumb to snow, rain or landslides. Afghan reconstruction is supported by a multilateral fund, administered by the bank. All neat and tidy. But funds for road-building also arrive from the Europeans, the Japanese, the Americans, the British and even the UN’s Counternarcotics Trust Fund. The road project’s prospectus bemoans the “large numbers of donors and NGOs chasing projects and government attention”.

Too true. Tanzania got 542 donor visits in 2005; Vietnam had 791, more than two a day. By pouring money through a shared conduit like the bank, donors make fewer demands on weak local bureaucracies. The OECD, a rich-country club, says the bank is less of a nuisance than some donors: less prone to split aid into tiny projects, or to bypass a government’s own budgetary systems.

Coordination and management of assistance is the great white whale of the aid business. While obviously coordination has to be pursued, and government bureaucracies should be conduits for aid, has the Bank ever demonstrated sufficient capability to be the primary provider and coordinator of any? has any development, UN, or government organization? Is that bastion of classical liberalism The Economist suggesting that there is a market that doesn’t benefit from a little competition?