The political economy of joint-donor evaluations

Part of the justification for joint-donor evaluations is that they allow the conduct of relevant evaluations with a broader scope than single-donor evaluations and at the same time reduce transaction costs. Many joint-donor evaluations, however, run into management and coordination problems, have unforeseen high transaction costs for the donors and result in general conclusions and recommendations. The purpose of this article is to contribute to a better understanding of the factors that influence how donor-evaluation units engage in joint evaluations and to identify mechanisms that can make them more effective. It represents a first step towards analysing joint evaluations using a political-economy perspective based on assumptions about the interests and incentives of donor management, evaluations units and evaluators. The article argues that the broader scope of many joint-donor evaluations and their relatively high transaction costs are closely related to and originate from differences in donor interests and incentive structures, and an insufficient focus on methodological challenges. The article concludes with a number of tentative operational suggestions based on the analyses.