Publications

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, fragile states around the world struggled to manage complex and interacting risks. Facing macroeconomic stressors on top of a fragile peace, many countries found themselves balancing precariously between tipping points, knowing that interventions that might ease economic tension may push dangerously close to a political precipice, while those designed to alleviate social unrest may drive the country deeper into fiscal crisis.

As the world’s largest bilateral donor responsible for managing around $20 billion in annual funding, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has a particular responsibility to take an evidence-informed approach to its work. It also has a congressional mandate to do so.

In the final days of 2019, Congress passed the Global Fragility Act, an ambitious bill that aims to improve how the US government approaches stabilizing conflict-affected states and preventing the escalation of violence in other fragile contexts. Here are some ideas to keep it accountable.

Global development is increasingly intertwined with state fragility. Poverty is becoming concentrated in fragile states, and conflict, violent extremism, and environmental stresses can emerge from and be exacerbated by fragility. As a result, many donors, including the United States, are reflecting on lessons of the past to rethink how they can better help fragile states address the underlying causes of fragility, build peace and stability, and cope with complex risks.

Are USAID programs high impact and good value for money? Do they work? Do they generate more results for less cost than if the agency just gave poor people cash? We don’t always know the answers to those questions, but USAID is trying to find out.

USAID has announced its intention to pursue “strategic transitions”—shifting select countries which have achieved an advanced level of development to a model of US engagement that relies less on traditional development assistance and more on other forms of cooperation. This paper seeks to inform USAID’s approach to strategic transitions.

Happily, in the last 25 years, the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 a day has dropped by two-thirds. Most of this success is due to major global forces such as trade and cross-border labor mobility. And much of the credit goes to the governments and citizens of developing countries themselves for pursuing the policies that have enabled donor, private sector, and (increasingly) their own resources to translate into development outcomes. But development assistance—including US aid—has made important contributions.

This brief considers how the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) conceptualize ownership and apply the concept in practice. We focus on three pillars: ownership of priorities (the willingness and ability of donors to align their efforts with country priorities); ownership of implementation (the degree to which donors involve local partners in the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of programs); and ownership of resources (the degree to which a partner country contributes its own finances to the objectives receiving donor support).