Master's Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Politics - Topic: Development Politics, grade: 1,0, University of Birmingham (International Development Department), language: English, abstract: This paper deals with the aid instrument budget support and discusses its strengths and weaknesses in terms of the expected effects of the instrument in areas such as donor harmonisation, ownership, aid effectiveness and accountability. By presenting the international context in which the rise of program-based approaches, such as budget support, took place and by summarizing the actual debate about the instrument and its effectiveness, the paper elaborates a set of assumptions and hypothesises which are affecting the overall performance of the instrument and have to be addressed based on the specific country context. In consequence, it examines and tests these assumptions by critically analyzing the Multi Donor Budget Support in Ghana based on a field study conducted in Accra in July 2010. The central argument of the paper is that general budget support can be one of the most effective aid instruments available at the time, as long as problems inherent to the instrument are addressed and tackled to prevent negative side effects. It comes to the conclusion that the MDBS in Ghana, although there is still room for improvement and entry points for critique, is a functioning example on how to acknowledge and implement the principles of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and the Accra Agenda for Action. Especially the quality of the policy dialogue and initiatives taken to avoid negative side effects in areas such as domestic as well as mutual accountability and ownership could become valuable examples for others to follow.

Developing nations are faced with challenges of meeting the development needs of their people. They are faced with what is termed the 'The Forex Exchange Gap and Investment Gap. The developed world in their bid to ameliorate the situation have given billions of dollars in the form of aid to the developing world of the years. Despite aid, developing countries are still faced with challenges of extreme poverty, preventable diseases and weak economies.As such lots of questions were asked about aid effectiveness. This resulted in discussions on aid effectiveness. Two important conferences that discussed aid effectiveness were the Paris High-Level Forum and the Accra Agenda for Action.The outcome of these meetings were the establishment of the tenets of harmonizing donor assistance in order to make it more effective. The Multi Donor Budget Support programme was designed as a general budget support through which aid is made available to Ghana, to augment its budget. The MDBS followed the principles of the Paris Declaration to make aid effective. This book assesses the effectiveness of the MDBS in the areas of poverty reduction, aid predictability and aid alignment with national policies.

Master's Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Development Politics, grade: 1,0, University of Birmingham (International Development Department), language: English, abstract: This paper deals with the aid instrument budget support and discusses its strengths and weaknesses in terms of the expected effects of the instrument in areas such as donor harmonisation, ownership, aid effectiveness and accountability. By presenting the international context in which the rise of program-based approaches, such as budget support, took place and by summarizing the actual debate about the instrument and its effectiveness, the paper elaborates a set of assumptions and hypothesises which are affecting the overall performance of the instrument and have to be addressed based on the specific country context. In consequence, it examines and tests these assumptions by critically analyzing the Multi Donor Budget Support in Ghana based on a field study conducted in Accra in July 2010. The central argument of the paper is that general budget support can be one of the most effective aid instruments available at the time, as long as problems inherent to the instrument are addressed and tackled to prevent negative side effects. It comes to the conclusion that the MDBS in Ghana, although there is still room for improvement and entry points for critique, is a functioning example on how to acknowledge and implement the principles of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and the Accra Agenda for Action. Especially the quality of the policy dialogue and initiatives taken to avoid negative side effects in areas such as domestic as well as mutual accountability and ownership could become valuable examples for others to follow.

This paper examines whether the structure of the Multi-Donor Budget Support (MDBS) in Ghana evolved over time to minimize transaction costs commonly found in accessing and delivering development assistance in multi-donor settings. While the MDBS was expected to reduce the transaction costs involved in dealing with multiple development agencies, it created three additional sources of transaction costs: coordination failures, the costs of collective action, and measurement costs. The answer that emerges from this paper is that the structure of the MDBS evolved to mitigate these transaction costs. The problems associated with coordination was addressed by delegating the policy dialogue to sector-specific groups aimed at reaching agreements over a narrower set of issues and amongst a smaller group of participants. Also, the MDBS reduced the cost of collective action by devising rules that allowed all the participating agencies to have a role in the decision-making process, and, in doing so, encouraged these agencies to increase the share of their contribution coming through the MDBS, rather than through large projects and off-budget disbursements. There was less success in reaching a settled view on how to reduce so-called measurement costs, however. While the group of development agencies made several attempts to overcome the difficulties in measuring progress in the program supported by the MDBS, it was not able to reach consensus on the extent to which the monitoring of the program should rely on outcome indicators. The Government did not favor the use of outcome indicators, and some development agencies placed greater emphasis on maintaining a dialogue around policy actions aimed at reaching the desired outcomes.