Main characteristics of Japanese Official Development Assistance (ODA) flows
At the end of the 1990s, the Japanese government distributed annually more than US$10 billion as foreign aid directly or indirectly to developing countries. Japan’s ODA can be divided into the following four groups: 1) Bilateral Grants, 2) Technical Co-operation, 3) Multilateral Aid, and 4) Bilateral Loans. In 2001, Bilateral Grants made up 19.3 percent of Japan’s total ODA budget; Technical Co-operation constituted 29.7 percent; Multilateral Aid and Bilateral Loans accounted for 24.7 percent and 26.3 percent, respectively. There have been criticisms that Japanese ODA loans have been provided mainly for economic infrastructure projects only. In response to these criticisms, the Japanese government claims to have made efforts to channel these loans into various social sectors, such as agricultural projects or rural development.
Policy consulting in developing countries: evidence from the Philippines
ABSTRACT No one can deny the importance of policy advice in the affairs of the government but the actual role played by consultants in policymaking is poorly understood and little researched, particularly in developing countries where data are scarce. This article is an initial attempt at examining the demand for policy consulting in a developing country. It sought to confirm whether the trends in policy advice – externalization and proceduralization – found in developed countries are present in an emerging economy such as the Philippines based on an extensive coding and analysis of a recently made public database of bid notices for consulting services. The study confirms that the demand for external policy advice is growing in Philippines, as expected from a government of a developing country. The proceduralization hypothesis of externalizing process-related work is partially confirmed but strategic policy advice is also found to be important where the government almost equally also outsources substantive, highly specialized advice. However, administrative politicization is not observed in this data set. A new category of advice is also generated – training – to capture demands of the bureaucracy to delivery advice expeditiously through workshops facilitated by experts.
Political Developments: Some Conclusions and an Interpretation
When the political decisions and achievements of the post-Khrushchev Soviet leadership are considered as a whole, it is not immediately obvious that there is any pattern to them. It may, nevertheless, be useful to begin by devoting attention to some of the major policy tendencies and outcomes of the past decade, most of which have already been considered in greater detail by other contributors, before going on to enquire if any broad strategy underlying them may be discerned and to attempt to place the various changes in a broader political context.