Make Europe happen on the ground? Enabling
and constraining factors for European Union aid
coordination in Africa
Maurizio Carbone*
This article investigates the extent to which the collective commitments on
aid coordination made in the EU context trigger any changes in the aid
practices of EU member states in Africa. By exploring the trajectory of joint
programming, it demonstrates that the development policies of EU members
states are affected by EU membership, yet the impact of Europe is,
surprisingly, less pronounced on the ground than at the headquarter level.
This decoupling of norms from practices can be attributed not only (and
necessarily) to the attempt of EU donors to pursue their national goals, but
also to the resistance of national aid bureaucracies on the ground, the
increased scepticism of developing countries, and the growing complexity of
the development architecture.
Key words: aid effectiveness, donor coordination, Europeanization, EU
development policy, joint programming
1 Introduction
It is widely agreed that in the first decade of the new century aid effectiveness
was a central concern for donors. It is also generally accepted that the European
Union (EU) has significantly affected the outcomes of some prominent summits
on international development, most notably the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid
Effectiveness, the 2008 Accra Agenda for Action and the 2011 Busan Partnership
for Effective Development Cooperation (Carbone, 2007; Holland and Doidge,
2012; Carbone, 2013; G€anzle et al., 2013). Surprisingly, its impact on the
development policies of the EU member states has been largely overlooked. An
emerging strand of the literature has, tentatively, concluded that any exogenous
pressure has resulted, at best, in shallow Europeanization (Lightfoot and SzentIvanyi,
2014; Orbie and Carbone, 2016; Orbie and Lightfoot, 2017), yet it cannot
be dismissed that the increased level and nature of interactions between member
states through the EU does elicit some (forms of) adaptation to Europe. One of
*Professor of International Relations and Development; Jean Monnet Professor of EU External
Policies, University of Glasgow. The author wishes to thank Mark Furness, Martin Holland, Stephan
Klingebiel, Jan Orbie, Balazs Szent-Ivanyi, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments,
and the 82 policy-makers in Europe and Africa who have accepted to be interviewed and have shared
unpublished documents.
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the areas in which such interactions have been most evident concerns joint
programming (JP) – that is, the process of formulating a collective European
strategy for programming of aid in specific developing countries (EC, 2015: 202).
JP was officially proposed in the context of the Busan summit and then launched
in a handful of developing countries. Importantly, it has been explicitly
mentioned, and in some cases integrated, in(to) the bilateral policies of several
EU member states. In the space of a few years, according to official discourse,
JP has emerged ‘as a norm’ in EU external relations, so as to promote donor
coordination as well as to ‘make Europe happen on the ground, translating
shared European values and policies on issues such as fundamental rights and
good governance into coherent, targeted action in partner countries’ (EC and
EEAS, 2015a: 4).
The situation on the ground, however, does not match these expectations.
By mid-2016, JP had been considered in 55 developing countries, with outcomes
varying from mere exchanges of information to adoptions of joint strategies
through mapping of donor activities and shared analyses – not to mention the
fact that in a large number of countries a JP process has not been set in motion
(EC and EEAS, 2015b; Helly et al., 2015). This variation begs the following
research question: why do the collective commitments made at the EU level
translate so differently on the ground? To answer this question, this article is
divided into two parts. The first part proposes a conceptual framework. Drawing
on the Europeanization and foreign aid literatures, it identifies a series of factors
that enable or constrain aid coordination on the ground. The second part focuses
on the trajectory of JP, from its inception in Europe to its application in subSaharan
Africa. This region is where aid fragmentation is highest, owing to the
simultaneous presence of a large number of EU member states, other traditional
donors and various new development actors. Furthermore, the enhanced agency
of African countries makes this region even more interesting (Aldasoro et al.,
2010; Sumner and Mallett, 2012).
Considering that JP processes have attracted little attention, if any at all,
this article relies on a meticulous analysis of primary sources, including
unpublished documents, and three rounds of elite interviews with a total of 82
policy-makers. The first round took place in May–June 2013 in Europe, with
officials working in the European Commission (EC), the European External
Action Service (EEAS), several EU member states and some non-governmental
organizations (NGOs). The second round was conducted in June–July 2015 in
five countries in sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia,
Zimbabwe) and included representatives from the EU Delegations, the embassies
and aid agencies of various EU member states and some non-EU countries
(Norway, USA, Japan), the foreign affairs and economy/finance ministries of the
five African countries, various international organizations (African Development
Bank, International Monetary Fund, United Nations, World Bank) and some
civil society organizations. A third round was completed in Brussels in January–
February 2016 with officials working in EU institutions and member states and
concentrated on five additional countries (Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Rwanda
and Senegal) with the view to gaining a more comprehensive understanding of
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the sub-Saharan Africa region.2
Overall, the ten countries constitute a balanced
mix in terms of geographical location, aid dependence, presence of EU donors
and JP outcomes.
2 Conceptual framework: explaining aid coordination in the EU
In order to unravel the dynamics surrounding EU aid coordination, this article
draws on – and contributes to – two different strands of the academic literature. A
first group of scholars, in the area of development studies, has focused on the
contentious issue of aid effectiveness. More specifically, they have identified costs
and benefits of donor coordination, and have highlighted the influencing role of
some international organizations in shaping country decisions, particularly the
World Bank and the Development Assistance Committee, rather than others, for
instance the European Union. A second group of scholars, in the area of EU
studies, has focused on the concept of Europeanization – which for the purpose of
this article is defined as ‘a process of incorporation of EU norms, practices and
procedures into the domestic level’ (Moumoutzis, 2011: 608) – and its differential
impact across EU member states, seeking to isolate its effects from other external
pressures. In this case, the role of the EU is, often, over-emphasized. This section
delimits the perimeter of the research and proposes a conceptual framework so as to
show how the impact of the EU is mediated by a series of intervening factors, thus
generating different outcomes across different member states.
2.1 Aid effectiveness and Europeanization
One of the most researched areas in international development is aid
effectiveness. For a long time, the blame for the allegedly limited impact of aid
was largely attributed to the pernicious behaviour of recipients, but since the turn
of the new century donors have accepted some responsibility for it. Thus, in the
context of various forums on aid effectiveness (that is, Paris, Accra, Busan), they
have committed to coordinating their efforts. Nevertheless, empirical evidence
shows that aid proliferation and aid fragmentation have increased since the
adoption of the 2005 Paris Declaration (Aldasoro et al., 2010; Nunnenkamp
et al., 2013). This decoupling of norms from practice, which is a well-known
phenomenon in studies of norm compliance (Brown and Swiss, 2013), can be
attributed not solely to the donor use of aid to pursue their political and
commercial interests, but also to the increased resistance of recipients themselves.
While aid coordination generates evident benefits in terms of reduced transaction
costs and, most likely, maximized development impact, it also creates costs for
both donors, in terms of loss of sovereignty in aid allocations, and recipients, in
terms of reduced leverage vis-a-vis potentially more intrusive donors (Bigsten and
2. In order to preserve the anonymity of interviewees, the following system is used: MS, for officials from
EU Member States (both headquarters and ground); EU, for officials from European institutions
(both headquarters and ground); IO, for officials from international (non-European) organizations and
third countries; AC, for officials from African countries.
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Tengstam, 2015; Bourguignon and Platteau, 2015; Steinwand, 2015). Moreover, it
can be expected that actors/organizations participate in the generation of global
norms with the aim of enhancing or maintaining legitimacy and then may not
(be able to) fulfil the commitment of which they are rhetorically supportive:
‘Especially in the case of norms with weak enforcement mechanisms or with
minimal consequences for non-compliance, the likelihood of decoupling increases’
(Brown and Swiss, 2013: 752).
To be sure, there are different degrees of donor coordination, ranging from
simple exchange of information to fully integrated approaches through harmonized
strategies and arrangements (Klingebiel et al., 2016). Setting an optimal level of
coordination, as convincingly argued by the political economy of aid literature,
depends on the value that both donors and recipients attach to national autonomy
and aid effectiveness and the congruence of their goals (Bourguignon and Platteau,
2015; Bigsten and Tengstam, 2015; Steinwand, 2015). The consequence is that, on
the one hand, owing to the free-rider problem alimented by the presence of
multiple development actors, coordination ‘will not automatically guarantee the
sub-optimality of aid provisions unless there is a fundamental change in the
incentives for aid provisions’ (Rahman and Sawada, 2012: 611). On the other
hand, if donors are genuinely interested in coordination they can either deliver
more of their aid through multilateral channels or accept tighter coordination by a
supranational organization. While the first option would represent a radical change
in existing practices, ‘what can be achieved in the short-term is probably a
strengthening of the processes of joint programming and policy coordination’
(Bigsten and Tengstam, 2015: 83). The latter is the path chosen within the EU
(which has also attempted to change the incentive structure for member states), as
we will see in the empirical section, but to fully ascertain the impact of Europe on
national development policies it is necessary to refer to the Europeanization
literature.
The primary concern for Europeanization scholars is the degree of change
generated by the EU on member states. From a top-down perspective, the shared
consensus is that the impact of the EU would be high in areas of direct EU competence
and low in areas of no direct EU competence. The predominance of soft law measures
and the lack of a clear chain of command, in fact, create a permissive context for
member states, which incur no evident costs in case of failure to adapt. Member states,
however, are not passive takers of EU demands, and often they proactively seek to
shape EU policies. A bottom-up perspective, therefore, would see member states
attempting to upload their preferences, generally because they want to reduce the costs
of adaptation, but also because they think they may achieve more collectively than
unilaterally or, in some cases, they believe in the virtue of their choice. In all cases, the
more successful they are in uploading their preferences to the EU level, the fewer
problems they would face in adapting. These two phases, thus, should not be treated as
two separate processes, but as a sequel. Importantly, Europeanization can also involve
horizontal policy exchanges between countries without necessarily passing through the
EU: countries can learn directly from other countries (Wong and Hill, 2011; Alecu de
Flers and M€uller, 2012; Ladrech, 2012).
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The conventional departure of existing Europeanization studies is the existence
of a misfit between European and national policies. Such a gap generates pressure
for adaptation to Europe, to which member states respond differently (B€orzel and
Risse, 2007; Graziano and Vink, 2007). Europeanization, however, is not only a
process of adaptation, but also of social learning, which would require adjusting the
preferences of the actors and to a degree even their beliefs, which may start from
EU-level interactions or rhetoric (Exadaktylos, 2012). Generally, Europeanization
scholars categorise the impact of the EU not in binary terms, but distinguish
between degrees along a continuum, from inertia (no change to existing practices) to
transformation (fundamental change to existing practices), through absorption (low
incorporation of EU demands into existing policies) and accommodation
(substantial adaptation of existing policies without changing core features) (B€orzel
and Risse, 2007; Ladrech, 2012). Other studies have distinguished between different
forms of change: formal, behavioural or discursive adoption of rules, depending on
whether rules lead to actual change or whether there is only a mere lip service paid
to them (Sedelmeier, 2012). This article, however, is not so much interested in any
‘arithmetic of convergence’, but more in the drivers and limits of Europeanization of
development policy (Hill and Wong, 2011). More relevant for the purpose of the
article, in fact, is one of the conundrums faced by the Europeanization literature,
that is the extent to which change, when it occurs, can be attributed to Europe,
rather than to domestic or global factors, with the EU acting as an intervening
variable at best (Graziano and Vink, 2007; Ladrech, 2012). More specifically, the
EU is not the only actor that has attempted to tackle the issue of aid effectiveness –
other players, such as the World Bank and the DAC, or clusters of states, notably
the like-minded group, have actively pursued this area (Sumner and Mallett, 2012;
Smith, 2016) – so the key concern is whether certain norms are incorporated into
the policies of EU member states because they are universally accepted or because
the course of action they prescribe is considered appropriate within the EU context
(Moumoutzis, 2011).
2.2 From pressure to change: drivers and brakes
The pressure that the EU generates on national development policies does not result
in automatic adaptation, but translates differently in different countries. Whether
change occurs certainly depends on the strength of the pressure and the degree of
the misfit, but, more importantly, depends on the presence (or absence) of different
mediating factors. Existing studies derive these factors from the debate between
rationalists and constructivists in international relations and comparative politics,
whereby two different logics can (simultaneously) be at play: the logic of
consequentialism, which emphasizes the importance of incentives and efficiency
calculations, and the logic of appropriateness, which highlights the importance of
social learning and socialization. The focus of these studies is mostly on domestic
factors (Vink and Graziano, 2007; Ladrech, 2012), yet a number of external factors
can also have a significant role – and here the literatures on EU foreign policy and
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on foreign aid are of great help. All these intervening factors are not mutually
exclusive, and do not necessarily pull in the same direction.
A first group of mediating factors concerns actors and factors that, allegedly,
are expected to enable Europeanization – which in our case means more aid
coordination orchestrated by the EU (not necessarily by the European Commission).
The process of Europeanization is facilitated, first and foremost, by formal
institutions, which provide national actors with material and ideational resources
necessary to promote domestic adaptation, and informal (behavioural) norms, which
have emerged over the years thanks to the increased interaction between policymakers
(B€orzel and Risse, 2007). Importantly, the EU literature on foreign policy
refers to the presence of a sort of ‘coordination reflex’ – whereby EU member states
seek to coordinate with their EU peers before any ensuing action is implemented
(Wong and Hill, 2011; Pomorska and Wright, 2012). The role of formal institutions
could be supplemented by norm entrepreneurs, who seek to mobilize support and
refine the interests and identities of others in light of new norms and rules (B€orzel
and Risse, 2007). Taking a rational approach, some member states could seek to
benefit from the multiplier effect of political cooperation or could try to hide behind
the EU to promote their national goals (Moumoutzis, 2011; Alecu de Flers and
M€uller, 2012). From a constructivist perspective, the EU’s impact would not depend
only on material reasons. In particular, the perceived legitimacy of EU rules can
even counterbalance material costs. Such legitimacy depends on the properties of the
rules that are promoted or the process through which such rules are created
(Sedelmeier, 2012. In EU foreign policy, the expectation is that the ‘big three’
(France, Germany, UK) would influence policy outputs in most areas, whereas
smaller countries would seek to upload their preferences in selected areas (Alecu de
Flers and M€uller, 2012; Pomorska and Wright, 2012). Yet, some countries, to
different degrees, seek to strengthen the role of the EU in the international arena as
a way to project a specific set of values globally (Wong and Hill, 2011). Drawing on
the aid literature, it could be confidently stated that larger and smaller donors incur
different costs when they seek to participate in (or stay away from) the coordination
game: ‘Big countries tend to assign much greater weight to considerations of
political sovereignty and control than smaller ones, if only because they are more
able to design strategies that serve their own national interests’ (Bourguignon and
Platteau, 2015: 90).
A second group of factors is expected to hinder Europeanization – and again in
our case aid coordination. Certainly, different types of development legacies and
cultures co-exist in the EU, which may not necessarily positively resonate with EUsponsored
norms (Smith, 2016). Resistance to Europeanization may also result from
an ideological hostility to European integration. The EU foreign policy literature
has underlined the fact that some member states may decide to ring-fence issues or
relations with special countries to prevent EU interference in areas that are of
primary importance for their national interest. In such cases, the member states
would either try to ‘keep the EU out’ or would try to upload their preferences to the
EU level (Wong and Hill, 2011; Pomorska and Wright, 2012). Similarly, the foreign
aid literature points out that donors find it difficult to coordinate and justify a
reduced presence in countries which are strategic from a political point of view,
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constitute important export markets, or are resource-abundant (Bigsten and
Tengstam, 2015; Fuchs et al., 2015). Then there are also the potential losers of
Europeanization, which would oppose any adjustment to EU demands. For
instance, bureaucracies can act as de facto veto players, rejecting or obstructing
change, because they would be afraid of losing power, or because they lack
incentives to promote coordination (Easterly, 2003; Carbone, 2013). Other potential
veto points are related to the pressure exercised by vested interests, particularly large
or dominant economic actors or by societal mobilization (Bretherton and Mannin,
2013; Sedelmeier, 2012.
Finally, a third group of factors, linked to the external context, can be
expected to both enable and hinder Europeanization – and again in our case aid
coordination – depending on the circumstance. Firstly, traditional big powers,
notably the USA and Russia, have at times played on internal EU divisions and
at other times acted as ‘external federators’ (Wong and Hill, 2011). Emerging
development actors, for instance China, or developing countries themselves, can
behave similarly. In the case of foreign aid, the USA, traditionally recalcitrant
regarding donor coordination, has been joined by a group of new development
actors that has questioned an aid effectiveness regime which they have not
contributed to forging and have offered developing countries an incentive to reject
yet another agenda imposed by traditional donors. At the same time, it may be
possible that other poles of attraction could be available and be more appealing to
specific member states (e.g. like-minded countries) than the European Union. As
for developing countries, they would be expected to support aid coordination,
essentially because aid fragmentation leads to an ineffective use of scarce
resources. Yet, they could extract a larger portion of aid by playing off different
donors and/or could have less bargaining power when confronted with a group of
well-coordinated donors: greater donor coordination could therefore result in a
further circumscribing of recipient ownership over development processes
(Carbone, 2010; Sumner and Mallett, 2012; Bigsten and Tengstam, 2015;
Bourguignon and Platteau, 2015; Janus et al., 2015).
3 Empirical analysis: the trajectory of EU joint programming
Development policy in the European Union has evolved around two tracks. On the
one hand, member states have, gradually, transferred larger resources to the
supranational programme – though this trend has stabilized since the late 1990s. On
the other hand, they have asserted their right to conduct their bilateral policies
autonomously, rejecting any attempted inference by the European Commission
(Carbone, 2007; Holland and Doidge, 2012). This special feature of EU development
policy has often been cited by scholars (and invoked by member states) to justify the
dearth of impact of the EU on national choices. The concept of Europeanization
was for a long time used solely, and inappropriately, to explore the extent to which
different member states managed to shape the EU supranational aid programme. It
was only in the early 2000s, when the European Commission launched a number of
initiatives aimed at projecting a common European vision of international
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development – and, some have even argued, manifested an overt ambition to
‘federate’ the development policies of the member states (Delputte and Orbie, 2014;
Orbie and Lightfoot, 2017) – that the concept of Europeanization could be fully
applied to development policy.3
The generation of a new body of legislation was
accompanied by the creation of a number of formal and informal venues in which
European development actors could engage, at ministerial and bureaucratic levels.
These changes have attracted some attention among scholars, who share the view
that Europeanization would at best be shallow and superficial and could occur only
through socialization and social learning (Bretherton, 2013; Lightfoot and SzentIvanyi,
2014; Orbie and Carbone, 2016; Orbie and Lightfoot, 2017). These studies,
however, have mostly concentrated on strategic choices, made by headquarters. This
article goes further, looking not only at the construction of the JP norm but also at
its implementation in a series of developing countries: to ascertain the
transformative power of Europe, particularly in development policy, what happens
on the ground is of paramount importance.
3.1 The construction of the JP norm
The European Union has tackled the issue of donor coordination through a number
of initiatives. In particular, the 2007 code of conduct on complementarity and
division of labour called on European donors to reduce the number of sectors and
countries in which they actively operate. Moreover, some studies, funded by the
European Commission, have documented the significant savings (in the order of
several billion euros) accrued from additional donor coordination (Carbone, 2010;
Carbone, 2013; Klingebiel et al., 2016). The limited effect of these initiatives led the
European Commission to rethink its approach, concluding that it was ‘necessary to
go beyond previous technocratic approaches, and add a political dimension to donor
coordination’ (Interview with EU official, June 2013). The opportunity came with the
preparation of the EU’s common position for the fourth high-level forum on aid
effectiveness in Busan. In that context, the EU officially agreed on a new initiative on
joint programming, ‘in order to show leadership in Busan and beyond and as a
response to the increased [aid] fragmentation and proliferation’ (Council of the
European Union, 2011: 6). Essentially, JP consists of a joint analysis and a joint
response, to be completed on the ground, by the EU Delegations together with the
member states, taking into account the national development plans of recipient
countries as well as the activities of other donors. The joint analysis is meant to
provide an overview of the recipient country situation (political, social, economic and
environmental) as well as a mapping of donor presence and existing general
coordination mechanisms. The joint response is meant to outline the overall rationale
and the funding allocations of all EU (supranational and national) resources,
including a tentative division of labour between all actors (EC and EEAS, 2015a).
3. These commitments involve three broad areas: quantity of aid, specifically on the 0.7% target, subSaharan
Africa, and low-income countries; quality of aid, specifically on aid coordination, aid untying
and budget support; policy coherence for development.
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The construction of the JP norm was not easy (Interviews with EU and MS
officials, May–June 2013). On one side, France and Germany strongly promoted
the idea of JP, but for different reasons. For France, the motivation was more
political, broadly in line with the view that the EU should strengthen its role in
the global arena and affirm its identity vis-a-vis third countries and actors (see
also Bretherton, 2013). For Germany, the reason was related to the developmental
nature of the initiative: JP was primarily seen as a technical exercise to improve
aid effectiveness. These two rationales also underpinned the behaviour of,
respectively, Belgium and Spain on the one hand, and the Netherlands on the
other hand. On the other side, the UK reluctantly accepted the commitment to JP
in return for support of an initiative to increase aid transparency and with the
proviso that any JP process would be ‘conducted at partner country level in order
to respond to the specific needs and the situation on the ground’ (Council of
the European Union, 2011: 13). Interestingly, the decision on JP was endorsed by
Nordic countries, which have traditionally manifested reservations on EU collective
action on international development issues and resisted any European interference
in their bilateral policies. As admitted by a representative of one of these
countries: ‘We do support the idea of JP, but only because it coincides with our
agenda on aid effectiveness. For us, it is more the leverage aspect: achieving better
results by playing the collective card. We are not like the French or the Spaniards:
we couldn’t care less about the EU’s impact or visibility’ (Interview with MS
official, June 2013).
The European Commission not only welcomed the JP commitment by all
member states so as to allow the EU to play a leading role at the Busan summit,
in line with previous development summits (Interviews with EU officials, May–
June 2013; see also Carbone, 2013), but also ‘went on a roadshow through the
EU capitals’ (CONCORD, 2012: 38) and convened technical seminars in Brussels
(Galeazzi et al., 2013) to continue reassuring reluctant member states that JP
would not impinge on their national development policies (Interviews with EU
officials, May–June 2013). JP was then given preliminary testing in a handful of
countries, before being launched in about 50 countries in which the prospects of a
successful outcome were deemed high. Importantly, a range of EU member states
(e.g. Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands,
Spain) have issued detailed guidelines to inform practices on the ground, whereas
others have committed to participating in all JP processes (e.g. France, Sweden,
Austria), or on a case-by-case basis (e.g. Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, United
Kingdom) (EC, 2014; 2015). In spite of these commitments, progress on the
ground has been (far) below expectations: by mid-2016, about 20 countries had
actually completed a JP strategy, while the rest of the countries ‘seem stuck in
endless discussions’, with some of the initial champions (e.g. Rwanda, Ghana)
manifesting signs of disillusionment (Interviews with EU officials, January–
February 2016). The reasons for such a variation are discussed in the remainder
of this section, starting from EU-related factors and then focusing on contextrelated
factors.
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3.2 JP on the ground: EU-related factors
The responsibility to launch JP processes falls under the remit of EU Delegations,
whose role in terms of coordination has been substantially strengthened by the
Treaty of Lisbon (Delputte and Orbie, 2014). In general, an active EU Delegation
has facilitated the initiation, and in most cases the conclusion, of a JP document
(Interviews with EU and MS officials, June–July 2015, January–February 2016; see
also Galeazzi et al., 2013; Helly et al., 2015). However, in some cases (e.g.
Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia), EU Delegations have lacked leadership or have
suffered from the unresolved division of labour between the EC (DG DEVCO) and
the EEAS: heads of mission seem more prone to augmenting the EU’s visibility even
at the expense of aid effectiveness, whereas heads of cooperation are generally
keener on enhancing the impact of foreign aid (Interviews with EU and MS officials,
June–July 2015, January–February 2016; see also CONCORD, 2012; Bretherton,
2013). Importantly, JP processes are eased when one or a small group of member
states – as has happened in Ethiopia and Namibia – act as facilitators, drafting
documents and seeking to persuade diffident member states. In some cases, specific
member states can be more entrepreneurial than the EU Delegation itself – for
instance in Burkina Faso or Ghana (Interviews with EU and MS officials, June–July
2015, January–February 2016; see also Furness and Vollmer, 2013; Galeazzi et al.,
2013; Helly et al., 2015). More generally, the responses of EU member states can
vary significantly.
A first group, including both large and small donors, has complied overall with
the JP norm. France and Germany, which had shaped the construction of the JP
norm, has not found it too difficult to adapt; yet, French officials have been very
active in West Africa and more passive in other areas of Africa, whereas German
officials have been hesitant in cases in which there were no major gains in terms of
transaction costs from the adoption of a JP document (e.g. Zambia) (Interviews with
MS officials, June–July 2015, January–February 2016). As for other member states,
the general expectation from headquarters that ‘small EU member states would see
more added value in JP’ (Interview with EU official, June 2013; see also
Bourguignon and Platteau, 2015) was broadly confirmed across sub-Saharan Africa:
some with a view to promoting the aid effectiveness agenda (e.g., Netherlands) and
others with the view to projecting the EU’s values and identity vis-a-vis developing
countries and other donors (e.g., Belgium, Italy, Spain). Nevertheless, on a few
occasions an eagerness to preserve special relationships (e.g. Belgium in Burundi;
Italy in Ethiopia; Portugal in Mozambique) has prevailed, even at the risk of
undermining JP processes (Interviews with EU and MS officials, June–July 2015,
January–February 2016).
A second group has been hesitant towards, and in some cases openly resisted,
JP processes, yet again for different reasons. For Nordic donors, despite their
general commitment to a European approach at the rhetorical level, there is still the
obstacle of established cultural and normative structures on the ground, where they
have preferred a multilateral approach to aid coordination and thus have resisted
the idea of a collective EU identity in international development (Interviews with
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EU and MS officials, June–July 2015, January–February 2016; see also Delputte and
Orbie, 2014; Smith, 2016). An official in one of these countries has admitted that his
colleagues in headquarters ‘realized that, in order to push aid effectiveness principles
forward, it was necessary to work with and through the EU. But the
implementation level, in specific developing countries, does not necessarily respond
to the same logic’ (Interview with MS official, June 2015). If for Nordic countries
resistance to JP processes is in the name of aid effectiveness, in the case of the UK it
has been caused, to a large degree, by an ideological opposition to further European
integration, to the pooling of sovereignty in yet another policy area. Moreover, the
UK perceives itself as a big donor, performing better than most European donors,
so it has not seen much added value from cooperating with other EU member states
(Interviews with EU and MS officials, June–July 2015, January–February 2016).
Importantly, numerous policy-makers from various African countries have noted
that not only is ‘the UK a donor of its own, doing things differently from any other
EU member states’, but also that ‘it is no longer a shining example in the promotion
of aid effectiveness and ownership, and now everything must be on their terms’
(Interviews with AC officials, June–July 2015). It is therefore not surprising that
numerous European policy-makers have openly stated that ‘progress on JP strategies
is easier in those countries in which the UK is not particularly active as a donor’
(Interviews with EU and MS officials, June–July 2015, January–February 2016).
These discrepancies in JP outcomes serve to qualify the role of socialization in
causing change in national policies. The initiatives on aid effectiveness have created
new opportunities for member states as a group to interact on the ground. The EU
Delegations generally convene meetings at least once a month; moreover, several
workshops with the aim of facilitating the sharing of good practices were organized
in different regions in 2014–15 (Interviews with EU and MS officials, June–July
2015).4
Nevertheless, it appears that EU socialization effects on the ground have
been less pronounced than expected. Instead, national aid bureaucrats have resisted
JP processes, fearing a potential loss of power (and of course jobs) and complaining
about the lack of incentives coming from their capitals to engage in joint approaches
(Interviews with MS officials, June–July 2015; see also Carbone, 2013; EC, 2014). A
large number of them has claimed that JP, like any other coordination initiative, ‘is
burdensome and not rewarded by headquarters, which continuously and insistently
ask for more tangible results’ (Interviews with MS officials, June–July 2015). In
Tanzania, for instance, member states seem to have suffered from a sort of
‘consultation overdose’ and have therefore been reluctant to engage in JP processes
(Helly et al., 2015). It should not also be forgotten that other groupings (e.g. likeminded
donors, Nordic group) can perform important socialization functions in the
area of development (Smith, 2016). Another interesting finding is that, contrary to
expectations (Alecu de Flers and M€uller, 2012), diplomatic missions with larger
degrees of autonomy from capitals are less prone to Europeanization pressures
(Interviews with MS officials, June–July 2015; see also Delputte and Orbie, 2014).
4. These workshops were jointly organized by DG DEVCO and the EEAS, with the support of some EU
Member States: France in West Africa; Belgium and the Netherlands in East and Southern Africa;
Spain in Latin America; and Germany in Asia.
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Paradoxically, some policy-makers on the ground have even lamented a
‘contradiction between the high level political declarations on joint programming
and the flexible and voluntary character of the process. Although there are clearly
advantages to this informal character of the process, it also leads to ambiguity’
(Interview with EU official, January 2016).
3.3 JP on the ground: context-related factors
While so far analysis has concentrated on EU-related factors, the context in which
JP processes take place is equally important. The expectation, particularly in EU
headquarters, was that aid recipients would be supportive of any endeavour aimed
at reducing aid fragmentation. Empirical evidence projects a slightly different
picture. Some African policy-makers have questioned the added value, and the
legitimacy, of yet another initiative on aid effectiveness launched by the EU – in
fact, the EU is perceived as not being able ‘to live up to the many commitments it
has made over the years’ (Interview with AC official, June 2015). Other African
policy-makers have associated JP with other donor coordination initiatives, which in
their view would likely lead to aid retrenchments and more intrusive conditionality
(Interviews with AC officials, June–July 2015; see also Carbone, 2013; Bigsten and
Tengstam, 2015). The response of the government in Ethiopia well exemplifies these
sentiments: the initial active resistance, owing to the fear of confronting a larger
front of donors, has eventually turned into passive acceptance: ‘we accept the
process for as long as it does not add to our administrative burdens, but we do not
participate in it’ (Interview with EU official, January 2016).5
In general, the support
of aid recipients may not be so decisive to set JP processes in motion (Helly et al.,
2015), yet it may still play a crucial role: in Zimbabwe, for instance, the political
environment was deemed not conducive – and a similar situation emerges from
Mali, where the process was delayed as a result of civil unrest (Interviews with EU
officials, June–July 2015, January–February 2016). The support of aid recipients,
certainly, is fundamental in more advanced stages of JP processes, for instance in
the case of joint responses or joint implementation (e.g. Senegal). In this respect,
‘the example of Rwanda demonstrates that governments already taking the lead in
donor coordination are more eager to reap the potential benefits of this initiative’
(Galeazzi et al., 2013, p. 7).
The attitude of recipient countries towards JP processes has also been partly
conditioned by the presence of donor-wide coordination mechanisms. When such
mechanisms are perceived as functioning, as argued by various African policymakers,
‘EU joint programming represents a step back from where we are at the
moment, with all donors sitting at the same table’ (Interviews with AC officials,
June–July 2015). When such mechanisms are absent, or are perceived as not
5. Resistance to JP processes may also be the indirect consequence of a potential redistribution of power
within governments in recipient countries: the initiative on JP, and more generally EU donor
coordination, assigns a more prominent role to central ministries (mainly finance) at the expense of
sector ministries (such as education, health, agriculture), which in fact ‘seem to prefer a decentralized
approach’ (European Commission, 2015: 139; Interviews with EU and MS officials, June–July 2015).
542 Maurizio Carbone
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effective, EU pressures for coordination are likely to affect national decisions: in the
view of various European officials, ‘if the EU acts collectively, we can have a louder
message and a stronger impact’ (Interview with EU official, June 2015).
Interestingly, the initial intention was that of making JP as inclusive as possible,
taking into account what other donors were doing so as to avoid waste of resources.
But it gradually became evident that ‘JP could be sustained only if certain political
foundations exist. If we open it to other non-European donors, we would lose an
important driver: this process can fly only if it maintains this European spirit’
(Interview with EU official, June 2015). It is not surprising that the signing of JP
documents has often been accompanied by a public launch involving senior
representatives of African governments (as has been the case in Ghana or Ethiopia).
More surprising is the view that the significance of JP in Rwanda, which has
involved both EU and non-EU donors, has been ‘somehow diluted, so much so that
it is not actually possible to recognize the EU driver in it’ (Interview with EU
official, June 2013).
Another important element to consider is the development status of the
recipient country. Specifically, aid dependence does not seem to have a direct effect
on JP outcomes (Helly et al., 2015). Moreover, it is not necessarily true that ‘the
incentive to coordinate aid efforts increases . . . when the size of the coordinating
club of donor countries is smaller’ (Bourguignon and Platteau, 2015: 92). In
Namibia and Zambia, for instance, the number of active European donors is small
but the JP outcome has been different. In Tanzania and Ethiopia the number of
donors is high, but again the outcome has been different. What is noteworthy,
however, is the fact that JP processes have consistently been more difficult in
middle-income countries and in countries experiencing an economic boom or
endowed with natural resources – for instance Ghana, Mozambique, Zambia
(Interviews with EU and MS officials, June–July 2015, January–February 2016). In
these contexts, ‘foreign aid is perceived as a gateway to the government and the
state; JP processes, and more generally EU donor coordination, have met with
remarkable resistance or have even been boycotted by some EU member states’
(Interviews with EU officials, June–July 2015). Interestingly, some European officials
have appeared ‘annoyed by a new initiative on aid effectiveness’, especially at a time
in which other non-EU actors have been more actively pursuing their commercial
interests, and wished ‘the European Union and the Commission to move beyond the
aid effectiveness decade’ (Interviews with MS officials, June–July 2015).
This last point leads to a final consideration on how the changing development
architecture has altered dynamics between European actors. Existing literature
concurs that the USA has shied away from aid coordination (Bourguignon and
Platteau, 2015; Steinwand, 2015), yet over the past decade it has emerged as a new
pole of attraction for some EU member states, at least in specific sectors (Interviews
with MS and IO officials, June–July 2015). The fact that ‘the UK shares similar
principles and practices with the USA, more than it actually does with countries in
southern Europe’ (Interview with MS official, June 2015) has been confirmed by
several US officials, so much so that one of them has admitted that ‘it is a joy to
work closely with the UK’, whereas another one has revealed how the US
‘pragmatic approach to development is in line with that of some Nordic countries’
European Union aid coordination in Africa 543
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Development Policy Review 35 (4)
(Interviews with IO officials, June 2015). As for China’s rise as a development actor,
officials in European headquarters appeared convinced that once their colleagues in
Africa ‘felt the rising competition of new donors, they would naturally seek to act
collectively through the EU’ (Interview with EU official, June 2013). The situation
on the ground, according to various non-EU officials, has turned out to be different:
‘European donors are wary of the increased influence of China in the region, but
there is no common front, no collective approach’ (Interviews with IO officials,
June–July 2015). Paradoxically, the increased prominence of China has provided an
ulterior motive not to engage in JP processes and other forms of donor
coordination, as indirectly admitted by a European policy-maker: ‘China looks like
a lost battle; other European countries have become our competitors’ (Interview
with MS official, June 2015).
4 Conclusion
The role of the European Union in shaping the development policies of the EU
member states has largely been overlooked by scholars in both EU and development
studies. On the one hand, the prevailing literature on international development has
concluded that foreign aid decisions are largely determined by national processes –
and only minimally, if at all, by exogenous pressures. On the other hand, the
consensus in EU studies is that, in areas of no direct EU competence,
Europeanization tends to be light, working mostly through socialization and social
learning. This article has added to these two literatures by showing that EU
membership does affect the development policies of the member states, in some
cases more than in others, and not necessarily only through social learning and
socialization, but also as a result of strategic calculations. Moreover, it has pointed
to a significant decoupling of norms from practice. Specifically, the initiative on EU
joint programming, which is the EU’s latest response to the problem of aid
fragmentation, has revealed a disconnect between what is decided at headquarter
level and what actually happens on the ground. In fact, in the construction of the JP
norm two different national positions reflecting two different rationales have been
uploaded to the EU level. On the one hand, there is a view that EU donor
coordination would significantly contribute to enhancing the impact of foreign aid.
On the other hand, there is the idea (if not the hope) that JP processes would
contribute to boosting the EU’s impact and identity in international politics and
development.
The translation of this vision into action has been enabled, or hindered, by
various intervening factors, which help explain change in some member states and
not others. Some of these factors pertain to the EU context, others to the external
context. In particular, the initiatives undertaken by EU institutions, the attempt of
some member states to pursue the aid effectiveness agenda through the EU or the
desire of others to strengthen/legitimize the EU’s international development
actorness can be included among the enabling factors. By contrast, the pursuit of
political and commercial interests by several member states (especially in fast
growing economies), the resistance of aid bureaucrats who have sought to preserve
544 Maurizio Carbone
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Development Policy Review 35 (4)
their privileged positions in developing countries or have lacked adequate incentives
to engage in coordination initiatives can be included among the constraining factors.
Socialization effects have not kicked in as expected, or at least have been less
pronounced on the ground than in headquarters. Moreover, contrary to what has
happened at headquarter level, differences between those member states that have
sought to emphasize the aid effectiveness aspect of the JP initiative and those that
have stressed the EU’s increased political leverage certainly have slowed down
progress – and similar tensions have, though in only a few cases, been experienced
within EU Delegations.
But besides the EU level, resistance to JP has come, albeit indirectly, from external
(f)actors. In particular, aid recipients have seen very little benefit in an initiative which
they have barely understood or bothered to get involved in. As for other donors, they
certainly have not acted as external federators – the rise of China in Africa has, in fact,
generated increased competition between European donors – and on some occasions
have acted as an alternative pole of attraction for some EU member states (e.g. the USA
with the UK and Nordic countries). To this changing development landscape, the EU
has reacted too slowly, so much so that if one of the primary objectives of JP is that of
boosting the profile of the EU in international development, then the result is not very
positive. It may be an exaggeration to claim that the aid effectiveness era has come to an
end, and with it the ambition of the EU to play a leadership role in international
development (discourses). It is however fair to state that the translation of grandiose
political commitments into concrete actions has turned out to be, once again, a problem
for the European Union, and that, at least in the specific case of joint programming and
more generally on aid coordination, there may be more Europeanization at national and
supranational levels than in specific contexts in Africa: this, ultimately, means that
Europe is still far from happening on the ground.
first submitted November 2015
final revision accepted July 2016
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