One of the problems that I observe in this conversation is just the meaning of the word “Aid”. It seems like in some cases this can refer to directly supporting a government’s budget, while in other cases it could refer to a foreign NGO directly administering a program. Should we expect such diverse interventions to have equivalent risk of corruption or institutional effects? To me they seem quite different.
I used the term to mean ODA, as did all of the authors that I cited. Basically, this would capture grants and concessional (below market rate) loans that are aimed at promoting economic development or welfare (so not military aid). From a donor’s POV, it includes money that it gives to multilateral organizations like the WB that then pass the grant on as well as classic bilateral money. From the recipient’s POV, it includes money from bilateral donors and from multilaterals. It does not include non-concessional loans or private charity. Money can be ODA even if the government doesn’t administer the aid. This is sometimes called “bypass aid.” ODA would also include things like project aid (money for a specific project, e.g. to build a road) or programme aid aimed at sectors or general budget support.
Mapping this language onto the EA landscape, it sounds like most GiveWell-recommended or GiveWell-style charities, programs, or grants would not be considered ODA or “Aid”, do you agree with that?
That is correct. I think it is pretty uncontentious to say that the people who study this in general worry less about these private charity-type interventions than they do about ODA.
This surprises me, since on-budget ODA works through government and government accountability frameworks, whereas off-budget and totally private spending does not. Is this perhaps just because private philanthropy in international development is just very small (and therefore less risky) in dollar terms compared to ODA?
In the domestic context, excessive private philanthropic funding can be seen as undermining democracy and weakening the state, in relation to education policy for example.
I’m thinking for example of the arguments made in “Winner Takes All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World” by Anand Giridharadas—a book which I really didn’t like and don’t personally endorse but makes some valid points, which I think are commonly held.
My claiming it’s uncontentious is based on working in this research area and talking to lots of researchers about it. When asked, most say they’re less worried about charity than ODA causing these sort of governance issues. Now I get that your question is “why?” and my answer here is more tentative, because I don’t know what is going on in their heads.
I do think “size of flow” is a big part of it. I’d guess “large flow” is a necessary but not sufficient condition for governance issues, and absent something like a big GiveDirectly UBI-type thing the size of charity flows is often not that large compared to e.g. recipient government budgets.
In terms of the theory, I honestly just think our theory is pretty weak. We’ve often expected flows to cause harm when it looks like they didn’t. I don’t want to say theory isn’t important here, but I think we should be at least as cautious about theory as we are about empirics (very). Maybe it’s worth pointing out that my title was that we don’t have good evidence for harm, which I strongly stand by, not that we have good evidence that these flows are benign (we don’t). This is just a very hard area to study.
Thank you, Ian, for asking the question that was in the back of my mind while I was reading this well-written and accessible post by ryancbriggs. I think it would be nice if the OP could add this caveat (that the evidence concerns a specific type of aid), since I assume some of the people reading this post in the EA forum will possibly update unjustly against aid recommended by, for instance, GiveWell.
One of the problems that I observe in this conversation is just the meaning of the word “Aid”. It seems like in some cases this can refer to directly supporting a government’s budget, while in other cases it could refer to a foreign NGO directly administering a program. Should we expect such diverse interventions to have equivalent risk of corruption or institutional effects? To me they seem quite different.
Fair.
I used the term to mean ODA, as did all of the authors that I cited. Basically, this would capture grants and concessional (below market rate) loans that are aimed at promoting economic development or welfare (so not military aid). From a donor’s POV, it includes money that it gives to multilateral organizations like the WB that then pass the grant on as well as classic bilateral money. From the recipient’s POV, it includes money from bilateral donors and from multilaterals. It does not include non-concessional loans or private charity. Money can be ODA even if the government doesn’t administer the aid. This is sometimes called “bypass aid.” ODA would also include things like project aid (money for a specific project, e.g. to build a road) or programme aid aimed at sectors or general budget support.
I hope that helps!
Thanks for the quick and detailed response!
Mapping this language onto the EA landscape, it sounds like most GiveWell-recommended or GiveWell-style charities, programs, or grants would not be considered ODA or “Aid”, do you agree with that?
That is correct. I think it is pretty uncontentious to say that the people who study this in general worry less about these private charity-type interventions than they do about ODA.
This surprises me, since on-budget ODA works through government and government accountability frameworks, whereas off-budget and totally private spending does not. Is this perhaps just because private philanthropy in international development is just very small (and therefore less risky) in dollar terms compared to ODA?
In the domestic context, excessive private philanthropic funding can be seen as undermining democracy and weakening the state, in relation to education policy for example.
I’m thinking for example of the arguments made in “Winner Takes All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World” by Anand Giridharadas—a book which I really didn’t like and don’t personally endorse but makes some valid points, which I think are commonly held.
My claiming it’s uncontentious is based on working in this research area and talking to lots of researchers about it. When asked, most say they’re less worried about charity than ODA causing these sort of governance issues. Now I get that your question is “why?” and my answer here is more tentative, because I don’t know what is going on in their heads.
I do think “size of flow” is a big part of it. I’d guess “large flow” is a necessary but not sufficient condition for governance issues, and absent something like a big GiveDirectly UBI-type thing the size of charity flows is often not that large compared to e.g. recipient government budgets.
In terms of the theory, I honestly just think our theory is pretty weak. We’ve often expected flows to cause harm when it looks like they didn’t. I don’t want to say theory isn’t important here, but I think we should be at least as cautious about theory as we are about empirics (very). Maybe it’s worth pointing out that my title was that we don’t have good evidence for harm, which I strongly stand by, not that we have good evidence that these flows are benign (we don’t). This is just a very hard area to study.
Thank you, Ian, for asking the question that was in the back of my mind while I was reading this well-written and accessible post by ryancbriggs. I think it would be nice if the OP could add this caveat (that the evidence concerns a specific type of aid), since I assume some of the people reading this post in the EA forum will possibly update unjustly against aid recommended by, for instance, GiveWell.