Development Assistance Committee

The establishment of the United Nations Development Cooperation Forum (DCF) is widely regarded as a major challenge for the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. While many observers expect the DAC’s development role in international development to be diminishing to the benefit of the DCF, no studies have been devoted to this topic. This article addresses the impact of the establishment of DCF on the DAC. Through a combination of semi-structured interviews, document analysis and participatory observations, we conduct a comparative analysis of both institutions to asses their input, output and throughput legitimacy. Our findings show that the DCF does not pose a threat to the DAC. We argue that (i) the debate has neglected the effectiveness and decision-making cultures of both institutions and (ii) the gap between the DAC and DCF in terms of inclusiveness has become less pronounced than is often suggested.

La création du Forum pour la coopération en matière de développement des Nations Unies (FCD) est considérée par beaucoup comme un défi majeur pour le Comité d’aide au développement (CAD) de l’Organisation de Coopération et de Développement Economiques. Bien que de nombreux observateurs s’attendent à ce que le rôle du CAD dans le développement international diminue au profit de le FCD, aucune étude n’a été consacrée à ce sujet. Cet article traite de l’impact de la création du FCD sur le DAC. Grâce à une combinaison d’entretiens semi-structurés, l’analyse de documents et d’observations participatives, nous procédons à une analyse comparée des deux institutions afin d’évaluer les investissements qu’elles demandent et leurs produits ainsi que leur légitimité. Nos résultats montrent que le FCD ne représente pas une menace pour le CAD. Nous soutenons que ( i ) le débat a négligé l’efficacité et les cultures de prise de décision des deux institutions et ( ii ) l’écart entre le CAD et FCD en termes d’inclusion est devenu moins prononcé que ce que l’on suggère souvent.

This article examines the European Union's (EU's) full membership of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). More specifically, we address (1) why the EU became a full member of the DAC in 1961, long before the EU was granted legal competences for development policy, and (2) why this membership status has remained unaltered over the past half-century, despite persistent dissatisfaction among both EU and non-EU members of the DAC. By applying historical institutionalism, we find that the initial decision on the EU's membership status in the DAC created a path dependence that was impossible to reverse afterwards, despite changing internal and external circumstances.

""The broad aim of effective engagement with non-members, including developing countries, industrialised countries, other international organisations and interest groups, especially in the pursuit of economic development, was laid down in the OECD’s founding Convention in 1961 (OECD 2013). The aim of this paper is to examine and compare two of the efforts of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee to engage with the Arab donor states. The first effort was in the 1973 to 1990 period. The second, more recent effort began slowly in 2009 and continues at the time of writing (2013).

The paper is based for the most part on OECD publications, including recently de-classified archival material and on the personal files of past Secretariat officials such as Jurgen Bartsch, Helmut Fuhrer and Ruth Stock. It is divided into two major parts. The first, ‘1973-1989: the first engagement effort’, examines the background to and the motives for the first engagement by DAC, as well as the processes involved and their outcomes. The second, ‘2009 to date: a revived but uncertain engagement effort’, provides a similar examination of the background, motives and initial outcomes of the second, revived engagement effort. It is an effort that is not yet complete and the authors’ conclusions must be regarded as tentative.

It concludes that DAC’s two engagement efforts in relation to Arab donors were not the result of a process of systematic planning aimed at clear objectives. In the 1970s they sprang from the fears engendered by the two oil crises, as a largely ad hoc response to very challenging circumstances, with limited, active support by DAC members and a very limited budget. In the late 2000s the DAC engagement effort emerged more slowly, initially in the absence of major crisis, but again without much in the way of a planned, systematic effort, as measured by the lack of detailed plans and the limited extent of participation by DAC members and a very limited budget. ""