Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the debate on sector-wide approaches (SWAps) and accountability in the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and in the broader development-cooperation community. It is proposed here that the performance review framework (PRF) can serve as a useful tool to assist CIDA, other donors, developing-country governments and other local partners in designing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating SWAps. Results-oriented SWAps are good governance. Furthermore, results and accountability will be enhanced if CIDA promotes SWAps, and PRFs for SWAps, that are also participatory and gender-sensitive.

Policy Context

The current debate within CIDA on SWAps and accountability must be located within the context of efforts by the Agency’s senior management to reform Canadian development assistance in a more policy-intensive direction. This new direction calls for strengthened policy-analysis capacity, greater use of global policy instruments, and country-level programming that relies much more upon multi-stakeholder, comprehensive strategies, with developing countries "in the driver’s seat" (such as the World Bank’s Comprehensive Development Framework and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, the United Nations’ Development Assistance Framework, and the OECD’s Sector-Wide Approaches), than in support to stand-alone projects financed solely by CIDA. Similar reform efforts are evident in other OECD countries and multilateral donors, and appear to hold considerable potential.

However, there is a danger that, in clustering ODA strategy discussions at the policy level, CIDA may lose sight of, and disconnect itself from, its ultimate raison d’etre: reducing poverty amongst poor individuals and households in poor countries. It seems at times as if the aid-reform discourse in Canada floats up into the rarified ether of international colloquia and drifts far away from the grit and despair of deprivation on the ground. Related to this is another danger—that current reform efforts undervalue the Agency’s existing stock of knowledge and skills related to broader programming approaches. The fact is, among CIDA’s managers and officers, there already exists considerable practical experience with multi-donor and program- and sector-level interventions. Moreover, among donors, Southern governments and NGOs around the world, CIDA is well-known for its special expertise and experience with important dimensions in the development process, particularly civil society and gender equality, as well as with results-based management. The present paper is thus broadly concerned with reconnecting aid-reform efforts to the imperative of micro-level poverty reduction, and, at the same time, recognizing the rich knowledge base residing among CIDA personnel and the Agency’s comparative advantages relative to other donors.

2.Addressing the unique accountability challenges associated with SWAps is both necessary and timely

SWAps are operationalized when all "significant funding supports a single sector policy and expenditure program under Government leadership adopting common approaches across the sector, and moving towards using Government procedures to disburse and account for all funds" (Foster, cited in CIDA, 2000a:1). In SWAps, harmonization of "policies and procedures for planning, disbursing, monitoring and evaluating development co-operation is a common goal. This will require that donors modify their practices to make them more in line with national practices, while host governments need to improve national systems to reach international standards and best practices" (OECD, 2000:111).

Foster has noted that developing country governments "should be clear on what results they want to achieve in a SWAp. Donors need to be careful not to distort monitoring processes or patterns of expenditures by allocating budgets in response to verifiable results, at the expense of less tangible, but no less important, results" (CIDA, 2000a:3).

In his recent paper on sector-wide approaches and accountability in CIDA, Schacter (2001:23) argues that "the new paradigm requires that donors and the developing country government hold themselves jointly accountable for the success of the SWAp." In his view, CIDA must "hold itself accountable to Parliament and the public in a way that reflects its shared accountability with other development partners" (Schacter, 2001:24).

In particular, he suggests that the Agency must adjust its use of results-based management in SWAps. In reporting on SWAps to Parliament and the public, he argues, CIDA should make a special effort to downplay attribution of development results to the Agency’s specific inputs. Rather, the Agency should "concentrate instead on accountability for the logic of its interventions in light of desired development results" (Schacter, 2001:25), for which all SWAp partners are jointly responsible, with the developing-country government in the lead role.

Such recommendations challenge donors like CIDA that only now, after half a decade of hard work, have learned to apply RBM to project-level interventions in a reasonably effective fashion. Indeed, these recommendations pose challenges for CIDA’s relationships with Canadian central agencies such as Treasury Board and the Office of the Auditor-General, whose interest in assessing Agency spending on the basis of results and value-for-money has never been greater (Office of the Auditor-General, 2000).

3.Canadian taxpayers and Parliamentarians support ODA as a means of reducing poverty among poor households in developing counties. For these stakeholders, and for the poor themselves, micro-level results matter most

The fact is, there has always been--and there remains—a major constituency in Canada for deploying tax dollars to reduce poverty in poor households in the South. For these stakeholders, although perhaps not for some development professionals, SWAps are a means, not an end in themselves. What matters most to Canadian citizens and politicians is achieving increased incomes, improved health, higher educational attainment, and enhanced human security for individuals in their households and communities. OECD’s international development targets, which include the aim of reducing by one-half the proportion of people living in extreme poverty by 2015, similarly recognize that poverty is a very personal, very micro-level matter—regardless of the types of interventions employed to alleviate it (see OECD, 1996). There is urgency, however, to act and to achieve meaningful, large-scale results. "Households are crumbling under the stresses of poverty," write Narayan et al (2000:6) in the World Bank’s Voices of the Poor report. SWAps must find effective ways of contributing to the international targets through the attainment of significant micro-level impacts.

The Performance Review Framework is the pivotal tool in applying results-based management to development policy and programming

CIDA defines a result as " a describable or measurable change in state that is derived from a cause and effect relationship" (CIDA, 1996:1). Results-based management (RBM) emphasizes defining realistic results, monitoring progress toward results using appropriate indicators, empowering line managers and partners to act on performance information, promoting meaningful stakeholder participation, and increasing transparency in reporting. Under RBM, CIDA accepts full responsibility for operational results and shared responsibility for developmental results. The Agency applies a "Framework of Results and Success Factors" to measure development results and guide RBM compliance.

In CIDA’s experience, the pivotal tool in applying RBM to development policy and programming is the performance review framework. Initially developed for projects, and more recently applied to sector and country programs, the performance review framework (PRF) "graphically represents the cause and effect relationships between activities, reach and developmental results. It describes strategic objectives, the chain of expected results, key stakeholders, and major activity components" (CIDA, 1999a:32). In general, the PRF specifies results by type (short-term outputs, medium-term outcomes, and long-term impacts) and by level (macro [policy], meso [institutional] and micro [community, household and individual]). Performance indicators are generated for each major result, and monitored as implementation proceeds. For optimum utility, the PRF must be regularly updated. In the best cases, stakeholders actively participate in the design and application of the PRF in assessing progress and improving results.

4.CIDA’s experience in applying RBM to large, multi-donor projects and to sector, thematic and geographic programs, offers a valuable knowledge base that should be tapped extensively

During the 1990s in particular, CIDA managers and officers built considerable practical knowledge related to participating in multi-donor project structures and processes and in designing and implementing sector, thematic and geographic programs. Moreover, the past five years in particular have witnessed the widespread application of RBM principles and tools to these interventions. One example is CIDA’s parallel funding of the Swap-like, multi-donor funded Fourth Population and Health Project in Bangladesh (CIDA, 1999b). Another is CIDA’s animation of the community water policy and sector investment plan in Ghana, which grew out of the Agency’s micro- and level-level interventions over many years (see Jackson et al, 1998). In both of these cases, CIDA led other donors in promoting community self-management, gender equality and RBM techniques. Current efforts to reform Canadian foreign aid should not ignore or undervalue the rich pool of knowledge and skill in these matters that resides among CIDA personnel.

Performance review frameworks should be negotiated at the front-end of SWAps by the development partners involved. PRFs should be used to plan, implement, monitor and evaluate sector-wide approaches. Results-oriented SWAps are good governance

Performance review frameworks can and should be developed for SWAps. PRFs are tools to optimize and track the results and value for money generated by SWAps. The point is not to use the PRF to attribute specific results to funds contributed by Canada or any other individual donor. Rather, PRFs for SWAps are tools to advance and continuously assess the outputs, outcomes and impacts of sector-wide approaches—for which all the development partners involved are collectively responsible. Clearly, developing country governments must agree to, and see the value of, such performance review frameworks. However, results-oriented SWAps and, more generally, public spending programs managed on a results basis, are simply good governance. PRFs for SWAps should thus be framed as part of a more general capacity building effort in RBM practices and systems within developing-country governments as a whole. Civil-society, too, should—and can--be trained and supported in helping to create and monitor PRFs for SWAps. In fact, local development partners that are not interested in applying results frameworks to sector interventions should be viewed by CIDA (and other donors) less favourably than local partners that do demonstrate such an interest.

5.

One issue that requires attention here is how to create PRFs that respond to the various reporting needs of multiple donors. This is an important matter, but it is resolvable. The Development Assistance Committee of the OECD may prove to be a valuable vehicle for building common models of SWAp PRFs that many donors can utilize in reporting to their politicians and taxpayers. The OECD has already published a common glossary of terms related to evaluation and RBM (which Canada appears to have influenced considerably). CIDA’s field experience with multi-donor projects and broader, sector-wide interventions should also be tapped in order to draw out models and methods that will gain broad acceptance and usage with respect to SWAps.

There is an essential tension in PRFs for SWAps with regard to what is most important: macro- and meso-level outcomes, on the one hand, or micro-level impacts, on the other? All such results are important, but investing in micro-level impact assessment is crucial

The basic comparative advantages of SWAps are, first, their large scale, and second, their multi-level (policy, institution, and community/household) character. In the discourse so far on SWAps and accountability, there appears to be a strain of opinion recommending that donors stay at arm’s length from the operations of sector approaches and that developing country governments must be held accountable, in the first instance, for higher level, sometimes intangible outcomes. This is framed as an issue of governance and public-sector capacity development in the broad sense (see, for example, Foster in CIDA, 1999a; Schacter, 2001). In contrast, however, the use of the performance review framework in SWAps shows the stakeholders involved that all types and levels of results should be and can be "on the table" for all development partners to track and query. PRFs can also be employed to remind stakeholders that the ultimate impacts pursued through SWAps are poverty reduction and enhanced well-being among households and individuals. Development partners should not ignore or defer micro-level impact analysis. Instead, from the outset, they should invest, collectively, in long-term impact assessment, both quantitative and qualitative, of change in key indicators for households and individuals.

In designing a PRF for a SWAp, CIDA, national governments and other partners should build a results-chain for the SWAp as a whole that is both logical and feasible. A small number of key indicators (15-20) should be selected for detailed tracking of the most important outcome- and impact-results projected for the SWAp. Quantitative and qualitative data collection methods should be used. Internal monitoring and evaluation units, and management information systems, should be put in place to operationalize the PRF. External evaluators, both local and foreign, should be mobilized periodically to assess outcomes and impacts. Stakeholder participation in designing and monitoring the PRF should be facilitated, including a strong role for civil society and a commitment to gender equality. Participatory, gender-sensitive PRFs—especially in an environment that protects democracy and human rights—can be especially effective tools.

6.Current work on evaluation and monitoring for other comprehensive strategies, such as the Comprehensive Development Framework and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, suggests relevant models for the monitoring and evaluation of SWAps

The World Bank has begun to think through approaches to monitoring and evaluation in relation to the two comprehensive strategies it has been promoting in recent years: the Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF) and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). With respect to the CDF, the themes of results, participation and learning figure prominently in Bank analysis. "Developing results-oriented public management is a key challenge in many developing countries," writes Hanna (2000:17). Capacity building within governments to manage for results is an important task in the context of the CDF, he argues. Other stakeholders, including civil society, should participate as well in setting and monitoring CDF progress. "As multiple stakeholders work together to develop indicators of success, their differing expectations and priorities are brought into the open. Stakeholders must then negotiate to develop a more common framework, thereby building up ownership of outcomes and reflecting partnership in the assessment itself" (Hanna, 2000:17). Furthermore: "A focus on results and on development as a learning process implies an enhanced role for monitoring and evaluation and other mechanisms for generating and sharing knowledge at all levels of participation and decision-making within the country and among development partners" (Hanna and Agarwala, 2000:14).

Required under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, PRSPs provide the basis for program lending and debt relief on the part of the World Bank and the IMF.

PRSPs "should be country-driven, comprehensive in scope, partnership-oriented, and participatory" (World Bank, 2001a:2). In effect, the PRSP translates CDF "principles into practical plans of action" (World Bank, 2001a:3). Results monitoring is an important part of the PRSP: "In order to understand better the link between policies and outcomes, a poverty reduction strategy should include a framework for monitoring progress and mechanisms to share this information with a country’s development partners" (World Bank, 2001b:3). The Bank recommends an approach to outcome monitoring which builds on the country’s existing system for collecting poverty-outcome data, but, at the same time, emphasizes participatory monitoring and evaluation processes, includes a strategy for impact evaluation, and promotes transparency and accountability through the wide dissemination of results. Impact evaluation refers expressly to assessing "the changes in individuals’ well-being that can be attributed to a particular program or policy" (Prennushi et al, 2000:3). In general, in this approach, outcome monitoring is carried out continuously by line agencies at all levels: national, local and household. For its part, impact evaluation focuses exclusively on the household and individual levels and involves the periodic collection of data, before, during and after the intervention, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Impact evaluations are carried out by specialists from outside of the implementing ministries and the agencies conducting internal monitoring (Prennushi et al, 2000).

7.Building local capacity for monitoring and evaluating results must be a priority for SWAps

Inside and outside government, local capacity must be built to monitor and evaluate the development results of SWAps. Relevant skills and knowledge must be upgraded in the central ministries, the line agencies involved in implementing SWAps, the civil-society sector, universities and research institutes, and the consulting community. This knowledge-building process is likely to require training courses and workshops, undertaken on a face-to-face basis or, in some jurisdictions, online. Post-training coaching and support can also be provided. In terms of substance, priority should be accorded skills and knowledge in general evaluation and monitoring practices, results-based management, participatory data collection and analysis, and stakeholder conflict resolution and learning. Constructing actual, usable performance review frameworks can be integrated into this capacity building process. An important issue to be confronted is how ongoing evaluation and monitoring services will be financed. Public funds from SWAp budgets must be allocated to this function. But evaluation and monitoring units should also learn how to develop their own business plans that will permit them to generate diversified revenues, through a combination of budget support together with grants and contracts from both the public and private sectors.

There is a limited but still important role for Canadian technical assistance in ensuring accountability in SWAps

The overall direction of SWAps is toward greater reliance on the systems and personnel of developing-country governments and away from heavy reliance on expensive foreign technical assistance (TA). This is appropriate and welcome. Nonetheless, foreign experts can still play a useful, if more circumscribed, role in SWAps. For example, Canadian consultants or NGOs could be mobilized to assist in the design, monitoring and evaluation of results-oriented, participatory and gender-sensitive SWAps. These would be short-term roles, drawing on the strengths of the Canadian development community. In certain contexts, such as that of a very authoritarian government, or a very remote and underdeveloped region within a country, there may be a case for multi-year Canadian TA—though it would have to be scrutinized carefully. It is true, however, that foreign specialists can sometimes push for policy or program reform, or make difficult or unpopular decisions, where nationals may be constrained from doing so by political, economic, social or cultural factors. Still, the power of SWAps is that they are country-led. Accordingly, governments leading SWAps should first look for expertise from within their agencies and then generally inside the country itself. Only after doing so, should they consider the use of Canadian or other foreign experts.

8.Mainstreaming participation in SWAps, and in the design and monitoring of PRFs for SWAps, will optimize results

Much is known now about how to scale-up stakeholder engagement in development interventions. One well-tested method is the participatory poverty assessment (PPA), which engages the poor themselves and decision-makers in assessing the causes of poverty in a given country, and identifying national policies to alleviate poverty. Using open-ended methods such as discussion groups and visual tools, and taking into account power asymmetries between genders and among socio-economic and ethnic groups, PPAs compliment macro-economic analysis and quantitative surveys, and provide "valuable insight into the multiple meanings, dimensions, and experiences of poverty" (Narayan et al, 2000:16). PPAs and other participatory processes are encouraged and supported by the Bank in the design and monitoring of both the CDF and PRSP.

Blackburn et al (2000) have argued that ownership and partnership in the CDF can be built by scaling up participation in various ways: through policy consultation processes with the poor, notably in participatory poverty assessments; by scaling up participation in national government programs; through donor policies to mainstream participation; through participatory monitoring and evaluation, which also strengthens accountability and transparency; and by paying special attention to decentralization, democracy and diversity. Moreover, a recent corporate review of the Bank’s experience in mainstreaming participation in all of its activities recommended, among other things, greater use of participatory planning methods, and also of participatory monitoring and evaluation of development results for both the CDF and sector programs (Van Wicklin, forthcoming; for more on participatory evaluation, see Jackson 2000 and Jackson and Kassam, 1998).

Civil society should be encouraged and actively supported to play a strong role in holding national governments accountable for results in SWAps

Civil society is widely recognized as an important partner in comprehensive strategies generally, and, more specifically, in assessing the performance of the public sector in delivering development results. Civil society should be encouraged and actively supported to play a strong role in holding national governments accountable for results in SWAps. The question is how to operationalize this role. In Bangalore in India, a local NGO conducts citizen surveys of public satisfaction with the level and quality of municipal services. In Uganda, a group of public and private organizations (including the central government) sponsored a survey to track to what extent public funds transferred to local authorities actually reached the schools and clinics for which they were destined. In South Africa, the NGO IDASA analyzes the allocation and use of public sector resources to assess the impacts of budgets on vulnerable groups throughout the country. In each case, these NGOs carry out sophisticated, independent research whose findings are then popularized and made public, and used to encourage improvements in government performance (McKay and Gariba, 2000).

9.

In a recent workshop, Ghanaian NGOs identified two types of training and capacity building needs that must be satisfied if they are to play a more effective role of monitoring the public sector in that country. The first area involves monitoring, evaluation, sector review techniques, and policy and budget analysis. The second area involves basic competencies for civil-society organizations, including communications, fundraising, citizen research and policy advocacy. In Ghana and in other countries, donors could support training and capacity-building in these areas by establishing civil-society capacity-building funds at the country level (McKay and Gariba, 2000). Such funds could be linked with, and would compliment, SWAps and other comprehensive strategies.

Democracy and human rights are fundamental preconditions for maximizing development results through SWAps, and can even be the subject of SWAps

While the terms governance, accountability and transparency appear frequently (and appropriately) in the discourse on SWAps, there appears to be little explicit reference to democracy or human rights. Mainstreaming participation and promoting civil-society monitoring of governments will significantly enhance SWAp performance. However, these dimensions will be constrained by conditions which limit civil and political rights and circumscribe democratic practices. This does not necessarily mean that donors should avoid sector approaches in countries without full rights or democracy, although this may be worth considering carefully. In fact, as O’Neil (2000) has suggested, democracy and rights might actually become the subject of special SWAp initiatives, bringing together the national government, donors, the courts, the media, think tanks, and civil society in a national partnership aimed at enlarging the democratic space and elaborating and enforcing human rights. Further, SWAps-for-Democracy should and can be planned and monitored on a results basis, using the tool of the performance review framework.

The gender dimension can be levered to enhance SWAp effectiveness, and to sharpen the indicators of the PRF

The gender equality policies now in place in many bilateral and multilateral agencies are based on the recognition, which has grown over two decades, that promoting gender equality significantly enhances the results of development interventions at all levels. This is as true for SWAps and other comprehensive strategies as it is for stand-alone projects. And SWAps are welcomed by GE specialists, since sector approaches offer the potential of effecting policy-level as well as program-related change for women in particular.

10.

An acknowledged leader among donors in integrating GE considerations into its projects and programs around the world, CIDA is currently designing a performance review framework to assess the Agency’s corporate-wide performance, at all levels, in applying the GE policy. The GE-PRF may be instructive for development officials planning PRFs for SWAps—in both form and substance.

The framework includes two grids: one to assess development results in GE and the other to assess operational results. The grid for development results proposes indicators for each of CIDA’s three policy objectives in GE: 1) to advance women’s equal participation with men as decision-makers in shaping the sustainable development of their societies; 2) to support women and girls in the realization of their full human rights; and 3) to reduce gender inequalities in access to and control over the resources and benefits of development. Because it is a corporate PRF, the grid presents only impact and outcome indicators (leaving output results to be reported at the country and program levels). These indicators are classified at the macro (policy), meso (institutional) or micro (community, household, individual) levels. For example, for the first GE policy objective, the macro-level impact indicator is proposed as: "Increase in the number of gender sensitive policies, regulations, and legislation (eg. universal daycare) in place." The meso-level impact indicator is proposed as: "Positive change in the public environment for women’s participation in leadership positions and public life through, for example, more positive representation of women as leaders in the media, public opinion and affirmative action programs." The micro-level impact indicator is proposed as: "Improvement in gender sensitive development indicators, such as the Gender-related Development Index and the Gender Empowerment Measure." Country-program staff and external evaluators would assess CIDA performance over time against these and other indicators in the development-results grid, primarily at the national, sectoral and regional levels. As the framework is currently structured, there are about 20 impact indicators and some 50 outcome indicators proposed for this grid.

The second grid of the GE-PRF is designed to assess operational results. As the draft Concept Paper for the framework notes: "The achievement of development results depends on the extent to which administrative processes and procedures take into account sound gender analysis, the effective formulation of GE results at the output, outcome and impact levels, and the use of qualified and adequate human resources—all operational aspects of development" (Jackson et al, 2001: 10). Among the operational results presented in this grid are the following: programming data are disaggregated by gender and other variables; branch results statements support the three GE policy objectives; all programming frameworks (for countries, sectors, programs, institutions and projects) include GE results; sound gender analyses are carried out by qualified specialists; GE considerations are incorporated into all phases of program and project approvals; sufficient and qualified human resources are available in each branch (in headquarters and the field) to support the implementation of the GE policy; and CIDA’s knowledge base on GE is effectively developed and maintained.

11.

The corporate performance review framework for gender equality is at a very early stage, and will evolve considerably in the future. Nonetheless, the framework’s relevance to SWAps and accountability is at least two-fold. First, the framework’s form—notably, its focus on higher level development results as well as its inclusion of operational results—can inform the design of PRFs for SWAps. Second, the GE framework’s substance—that is, its concern with assessing performance against gender-equality policy objectives—can also be integrated into performance frameworks for sector-wide approaches. The point cannot be made too often that gender-sensitive SWAps are more likely to generate meaningful development results than SWAps that ignore the gender dimensions of their work.

An Opportunity for CIDA to Lead

It would appear that CIDA is presented with an opportunity to play a lead role internationally and at the country level in promoting SWAps and accountability. The key to ensuring CIDA’s accountability to the Parliament of Canada and Canadian taxpayers, as well as its shared accountability with developing-country governments and other in-country partners, is to negotiate performance review frameworks for SWAps that can be used to plan, implement, monitor and evaluate sector interventions. The PRF is the pivotal tool that can maintain the focus of the partners on producing development results—results that, ultimately, reduce poverty and enhance well-being at the household and individual levels. PRFs for SWAps allow CIDA to demonstrate the value for money of its SWAp investment as part of a collectivity of donors and implementers.

Furthermore, SWAps and SWAp-PRFs that are participatory and gender-sensitive have more likelihood of generating broad-based and significant development results than SWAps that are top-down and gender-blind. Building on its proven expertise in these areas, CIDA can play a catalytic role among other donors in promoting a strong role for civil-society organizations and for citizens in planning and monitoring SWAps, and in integrating gender-equality objectives and results-indicators in sector interventions.

Internationally, OECD’s Development Assistance Committee can serve as a useful vehicle to develop models for performance review frameworks for SWAps that are acceptable to a large number of donors, and that meet their domestic reporting needs as well as their overseas programming objectives. At the country level, CIDA can animate discussions with governments, other donors and civil-society on the benefits and costs of designing SWAps that are results-driven, participatory and gender-sensitive. Building broad agreement among the development partners that this direction offers advantages to all parties will set the stage for productive discussions on specific SWAp opportunities.

And all of these efforts serve to advance the value-for-money interests of Canadian citizens and the Parliament of Canada.

12.Conclusions

There are good reasons, then, for CIDA to consider undertaking more detailed work on the performance review framework as a means of furthering the debate and its own understanding of SWAps and accountability. The PRF can serve as the key tool in designing sector-wide approaches that are results-driven and deliver value-for-money to all development partners. Investing in Agency-wide learning, exchange and analysis of the potential models for PRFs for SWAps is likely to move the debate forward in a productive direction. There is valuable knowledge and experience among CIDA personnel with respect to multi-donor arrangements and sector programming that should be tapped extensively. There is also a rich base of knowledge in these areas among CIDA’s partners in Canada and overseas, and they too should be engaged in this process.

Finally, focusing on the performance review framework can remind all parties that the ultimate policy goal of public spending on foreign aid is to reduce poverty at the household and individual levels. Sector-wide approaches offer the important advantages of policy leverage, program coordination and scale in the fight against poverty in poor countries. But SWAps are a means, not an end. Micro-level impacts are, in fact, the highest purpose of all types of development interventions. In this sense, for Canadian taxpayers, Parliament and for the poor themselves, micro matters most.

Edward T. Jackson is Associate Professor of Public Administration and International Affairs at Carleton University and
President of E. T. Jackson and Associates Ltd. in Ottawa. He can be reached at: edward_jackson@carleton.ca or etjack@fox.nstn.ca.

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Posted 20/03/2001

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