# Poverty reduction and/or politics? DFID and the FCO @ Friday, May 04, 2007 12:52 PM

In his speech to the ODI/Africa All-Party Parliamentary Group's meeting on parliaments and development earlier this week, Hilary Been clearly and repeatedly acknowledged the role and expertise of the FCO on issues of politics and support for democracy.

In a way, the changing relationship between DFID and the FCO and whether that goes as far as DFID taking over the FCO [nicely provocative that, Simon], is - in a microcosm - about the relationship between poverty reduction and (democratic or otherwise) politics. As DFID pays more attention to the importance of governance, democracy and politics it will necessarily get closer to the FCO.

Quite how close will probably depend on politics of a more domestic nature.

Alan Hudson

# re: Is Sir Mike Aaronson right to call for DfID to be merged back with the FCO? @ Friday, May 04, 2007 3:46 PM

I like Mike's optimism but I can't help thinking that at this stage, a merging of the two would end up with a series of compromises that would certainly damage the DFID agenda on any number of fronts, and probably also confuse the FCO's role.

Also, beyond the obvious policy and process clashes, I'm a little surprised, given Mike's long and distinguished career in the FCO before taking over the helm at Save the Children, that he believes that the two organisations' cultures and working practices aren't so drastically different as to make them fundamentally incompatible. To give one example: where DFID necessarily works politics from principles of good governance and transprency, the FCO necessarily operates in the grey-er areas of diplomacy and intelligence. I'm not saying there shouldn't be more coming together of the two - I'd be interested in how DFID's objectives might be better served if it adopted a more pragmatic and hard line approach to governance in many countries - but I'd be amazed if it were possible to achieve a reasonable merging anytime soon, and without a very long and hard fought campaign.

Martin Kirk

# re: Is Sir Mike Aaronson right to call for DfID to be merged back with the FCO? @ Friday, May 04, 2007 10:22 PM

The problem is much less about structure than it is about operations and fundamental understanding. There is a lot of knowledge about the "state" of development which shows more than anything else unmitigated failure ...relative to what could have and should have been. <p> None of the high profile experts are getting to grips with the question of WHY there is development disaster ... the answer to that question is not "politically correct" by a long shot. Nor are people asking HOW ... because again the answer to the "how" question is not going to please a lot of the people and organizations that are presently at the top of the economic heap. <p> In my corporate career decisions were made largely based on pretty good data ... it was my job as CFO to make sure that the numbers were relevant for decision making. In my relief and development consulting career the data are, more than anything else, what the donors want them to be ... and the end result is terrible performance in the relief and development sector ... and a lot of people getting rich at the expense of the poor.
<p>
Peter Burgess

Peter Burgess

# re: Is Sir Mike Aaronson right to call for DfID to be merged back with the FCO? @ Saturday, May 05, 2007 11:36 AM

Having worked for both ODA and DFID, I think that following Mike's suggestion would add to a further diffusion of the function of development assistance.   DFID's priorities have already been distorted by foreign policy priorities (e.g. the diversion of development assistance to Iraq).   While Chris Patten's estimate of a roughly equal balance between humanitarian, trade and foreign policy priorities is probably the correct balance in terms of the national interest, reintegrating the department back into the FCO runs the risk of unnecessarily unbalancing this.   A far more effecacious reform would be the rethinking of departmental strategy, a better balance between programme and project support, enhanced implementation of Paris Declaration principles (in particular iro strategic planning, procurement, and reporting), and investment in more in-house expertise which was lost during the Thatcher years.

Seamus Cleary

# re: Is Sir Mike Aaronson right to call for DfID to be merged back with the FCO? @ Monday, May 14, 2007 10:31 AM

I agree with Peter Burgess that the issue is not fundamentally about structures. My remarks were made to support my assertion that we need a foreign policy that is more inspired by development and humanitarian principles, and that takes a more enlightened view of what constitutes the ‘national interest’. This was the context for my somewhat mischievous suggestion that DFID should take over the FCO. However, if Martin Kirk is right that DFID’s and the FCO’s cultures and working practices are so different as to make them incompatible, don’t we have a serious problem that needs addressing? Does our current diplomacy support our development ambitions as well as it could – I don’t think so. For the avoidance of doubt, I’d like to make it clear that I would oppose anything that represents a dilution of the UK’s international development effort, or that risks subordinating global poverty reduction to narrower self-interest. I’d also like to make clear in fairness to them that I am speaking for myself, not for any of my previous or current employers.

Mike Aaronson

# re: Is Sir Mike Aaronson right to call for DfID to be merged back with the FCO? @ Tuesday, May 15, 2007 12:36 PM

I'm glad Mike Aaronson clarified what some other comments misunderstood: ie that his proposal was for DfID to take over the FCO, not vice-versa. I doubt that would help either development assistance or foreign policy: a combined department would lose its way in handling the sudden, gross enlargement of its budgets and personnel, and the diffusion of its responsibilties.
The merger is not or should not be necessary. FCO objectives already include support for sustainable development, as they do for other policies whose execution is in the hands of other departments (drugs, security, immigration, trade etc). The point of these objectives is to make foreign policy represent the total overseas interests of government. Development assistance is part of those interests, but not apart from them, even when, as in Africa, it may be the most important single area of British policy.
On governance, for example, DfID's policy would benefit from listening more to other parts of Whitehall as well as the FCO. Poor governance in a country is bad not only for its citizens but for its international standing and relationships with its foreign partners in many areas, including development.
For aid to improve governance, we need to identify our interests with those of citizens in badly governed countries and press for policy reforms accordingly. And we need to be seen to mean what we say about the centrality of good governance to development. Calling off the SFO inquiry into BAe's Saudi business did the credibility of our support for due process against corruption immense harm. So does our failure to  refuse to work with leaders whom their own people regard as notoriously corrupt. The compulsion to spend hugely increased budgets and the tendency for the big aid agencies to make themselves comfortable with questionable people warps judgement.
The alibi that we should not trim our aid according to governance criteria because we punish the poor for the misbehaviour of their rich leaders, is weak: Zimbabwe is an example of a country where our aid now helps to keep a brutalised population sufficiently alive to suffer  continued abuse at the hands of their leadership but too weak to see them off. We need to think more rigorously about where and when we draw lines, and whether more aid may not sometimes mean worse. That is hard for a pure spending department like DfID to do on its own.

Edward Clay

# re: Is Sir Mike Aaronson right to call for DfID to be merged back with the FCO? @ Tuesday, May 22, 2007 7:49 PM

Mike makes a good point about needing to bring FCO and DFID cultures together. I agree, and I didn't mean to suggest in my previous comment that the two should be considered permanently incompatible. Certainly they should be brought more in line with each other. I just take the view that this needs to be done in a way that minimises any possible confusion on UK development objectives with traditional foreign policy objectives, and that suggesting merging the two any time soon (which I accept Mike isn't doing) wasn't a realistic suggestion. But in theory it could become so, with appropriate handling over an appropriate period of time.

Martin Kirk