Graduate School of Public Policy and Civic Engagement

Since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by the UN General Assembly in September 2015, interest in building effective development partnerships has grown in the both the international development discipline and practitioner community. Responding to this trend, many scholars and policy-makers highlight participatory development cooperation among state actors and non-state actors as a means of achieving comprehensive development goals. Despite this emphasis, however, only a handful of empirical studies have examined whether such partnerships have any meaningful relationship with project outcomes. This study aims to answer whether and to what extent different types of implementing partnerships (i.e. state or non-state implementing agencies) affect the outcome of development projects. Using the World Bank Independent Evaluation Group (WBIEG) project data with newly constructed implementing-partnership variables, this study shows that implementing-partnerships with host country governmental agencies tend to produce a less successful outcome compared to partnerships with non-state actors, and on average only attain moderate level outcomes. Projects implemented by non-state actors, on the other hand, are likely to result in higher level project outcomes. The paper further tests these findings by analyzing the relationship between the number of state and non-state partners interacting in a project and the subsequent project outcome. This result suggests that an increased number of non-state actor participants leads to a better project outcome; this positive participatory effect, however, diminishes as the number of governmental implementers increases.

This study explores how Japanese development non-governmental organizations (NGOs) had altered their patterns of advocacy and accountability after changes in political structure that occurred in the 2000s when the Democratic Party of Japan created the two-party system and the Liberal Democratic Party took power again. After the 1990s, a unique feature of development NGOs actively performing advocacy and accountability within the ODA domain, while also eagerly reaching political authorities by forming networks, was found. Behind their efforts were the appearance and expansion of the Democratic Party of Japan through its systematic and political ties. As concluding remarks, the active participation of civil society not only represents the level of internal resources mobilized within the civil society network, but is also an indicator on how supportive the policy space at the bottom is towards civil society.

Despites Development Public-Private Partnership’s importance and popularity in international development, evaluations on the partnership has not produced sufficient evidence of partnership’s synergy on intended outcome of the project. The authors argued one of reasons for such lack of evidence is that existing evaluation framework for Development Public-Private Partnership often did not fully appreciate the objective measures of outcome achievement and relied solely on the subjective measures of partnership dimension. Suggested alternative evaluation

In development cooperation, there has been a long-standing debate on the effectiveness of multilateral versus bilateral aid. Many middle-power countries have utilized multilateral approaches strategically to overcome geopolitical restrictions and advance their national causes in the world powers-centered order. This study aims to identify the key characteristics of middle power countries' multilateral aid, including the case of South Korea. By doing so, we attempt to discover whether, and to what extent, a middle power prefers the multilateral approach of ODA to a bilateral one. This study will also analyze the emerging pattern of multi-bi aid of middle powers. The multi-bi aid tends to blur the clear distinction between multilateral and bilateral assistance. At the moment of a big transformation in the international development paradigm from Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), this study attempts to show that the middle power countries have made substantial efforts to enhance their influence in the world through the means of multilateral aid support.

This paper studies the determining factors of Korean ODA allocated by KOICA and EDCF during the last two decades. Empirical research is conducted with eight variables from economic, politico-strategic, cultural/interactive, and humanitarian categories in order to show what factors have influenced Korea s aid allocation and selection of primary partner countries of grants and loans respectively. The results indicate that the allocation of grants has not been influenced by a single dominant factor but by all four categories, while the loan aspect has been influenced in large part by economic motivation. This research also uncovers the underlying factors for being selected as primary partner countries of both KOICA and EDCF. It finds that there is no single outstanding factor influencing the selection of primary partner countries for the grant again and it is noteworthy that there is no variable from the humanitarian category which has an impact on determining primary partners for the grant. On the other hand, when it comes to primary partners for the loan, all humanitarian factors do not contribute to selecting the partners in a positive way. The countries with a higher Human Development Index (HDI), lower Political Rights Index (PRI), and higher GNI per capita are more likely to be selected as primary partners. Among other categories, only cultural and interactive ones, number of visitors has a strong correlation. As a result, we are unable to validate the two hypotheses built in this paper that humanitarian factors have been more likely to play a prominent role in both allocating and selecting primary partner countries for grants.

Development NGOs started to rapidly grow since the mid-20th Century. However, by focusing mainly on service programs and putting their emphasis on the system’s sustainability, the boundary between the state and development NGOs has become vague and from time to time they face the danger of deteriorating into the role of supplementing
what should be the role of the state. This paper focuses on BRAC, a prominent development NGO in Bangladesh, as a representative case and analyzes the role of their activities and their limitations from a comparative perspective. As BRAC became susceptible to the interests of foreign aid organizations, they started to excessively focus
on the organization’s hierarchy, transparency and effectiveness. The result of this is the limitations on accountability, grassroots mobilization and activism as well as the citizens’ capabilities. By comparing BRAC and Via Campesina, we have found the future tasks for development NGOs working in developing countries. Development NGOs should not be content with just being transparent and having a limited form of accountability but should strive to find a strategy that can encourage the continual participation of grassroots citizens from the bottom and strengthen the capabilities of these citizens. Without these
strategic changes, the activities of development NGOs will be limited in fundamentally alleviating poverty in developing countries.

Since 2002, the international community have begun to discuss the topic of development fiance in that the financing for development is one of critical factors for the achievement of development goals. However, it seems the mechanism of the Post-2015 to establish development agendas replacing the MDGs in 2015 does not pay proper attention on the financing for development. Therefore, there are low consensus on how to secure financial resources required to implement strategies to achieve development agendas and goals among developed and developing countries, international agencies, and NGOs. This article focuses on how the issues of anti-slavery, human rights, environment, woman suffrage movement were able to be the issues of transnational movement and finally affect changes in state policy and practice. Based on the lessons learned from the successful transnational movements, the article aims to find room for the effective agenda setting for financing for development as a transnational development agenda. It seeks to establish a sustainable global aid architecture enabling relevant actors in international development and cooperation to change their policy and practice on financing for development. This article found the three implications. Firstly, it is necessary to exploit the strategy of accountability politics to pressure actors in international development and cooperation to fulfil their pledge of 0.7% ODA/GNI which is accepted as a common goal in the international community in 1970. Secondly, organizing transnational networks is an effective mechanism to influence the behavior changes of states and international agencies in relation to financing for development. Lastly, NGOs and their advocacy is a critical actor to pressure states, international agencies, and private sector to tackle the issue of financing for development more actively, and therefore building enabling environment for NGOs and their advocacy is important for financing for development.