“With networked research, all can help collect
and share the data that is sorely lacking... We need more hands and minds to
confront theory with evidence on major policy issues. This is the direction
that I want the World Bank to take. This is democratizing development
economics.”
-
Robert Zoellick, President
of the World Bank Group,
 |
B.K. Bangash / AP
|
In a huge step forward for aid transparency, the World Bank's
Independent Evaluation Group recently published its entire store of
approximately 10,000 WB project evaluations from the 1960s to present. And importantly, the Bank’s unique project identification
system allows users to track individual database records back to project
documents.
Shortly after the Bank released these records, we geo-coded all of
the World Bank’s publicly available project evaluation data in Afghanistan
since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. By “mashing-up” these geo-coded data and
other statistical sources, we may begin exploring the spatial determinants of
aid effectiveness in Afghanistan.
To conduct an initial "plausibility probe" of the popular
hypothesis that security is a key determinant of successful projects, we overlaid all geo-coded and IEG-evaluated
World Bank projects from 2002-2007 with sub-national violence data from the Long War Journal.
The resulting map reveals a puzzling pattern. The spatial
distribution of violence and project performance do not correspond as closely
as one might expect. Conventional wisdom holds that aid projects are generally
less successful in conflict-affected areas. But this map suggests that many failed World
Bank projects actually cluster in the relatively less violent provinces north of Kabul. Additionally, this map calls
attention to the fact that a fair number of World Bank projects succeed in the country's
most violent southern provinces, e.g. Kandahar and Helmand.
Several explanations may account for
this unusual pattern. Projects in the most dangerous provinces may receive a higher
level of donor supervision (since they are located in areas where "the
stakes are highest"), which previous research identifies as an important
predictor of project success. It could also
be the case that donor supervision is lower
in these areas, which makes it easier for local officials to avoid
micro-management from Western capitals and tailor projects to local needs and
conditions.
The key point is that aid effectiveness scholars
cannot answer a puzzling question like this one until they know it exists. This
is why we have expressed great enthusiasm for the World
Bank's ambitious effort to "liberate" development data and promote
"networked research". Finally, we should acknowledge that more
comprehensive, time-series data from all
donors in Afghanistan would provide a
much stronger empirical basis for systematic hypothesis testing. A recent pilot
project in Malawi strongly suggests that geocoding the universe of aid is feasible
when donors agree to disclose detailed project documentation. However, mobilizing the necessary political
will and capacity necessary to ensure that project evaluation documents are placed in the public domain will likely prove
far more challenging. The latest Publish What You Fund benchmarking exercise demonstrates
that only a handful of donors receive high scores on evaluation disclosure
practices.
Brian
O'Donnell is an AidData Post-Baccalaureate Fellow at the College of William and
Mary. Brad Parks is Co-Executive Director of AidData and Research Faculty at
the College of William and Mary.
1 comment:
Not to be too pedantic, but how does this absolute number of attacks compare to provincial population figures? Wouldn't rate of violence/1,000 population generally be a more appropriate measurement? It may not clarify the trend line anyway since there are so many confounders (e.g. corruption rates, divergent cultural settings, program type). Agreed strongly on the overall point of liberating data, however.
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