Origins and Approach

Abstract

The multi-year Ford Foundation funded research project that gave rise to this book grew out of an ever-expanding collection of anecdotes and findings that pointed to the need to address the issue of accountability in international economic development consulting. At issue is the imbalance between the rising numbers, leeway, autonomy, influence, reach, and purview of consultants on the one hand, and the diminishing or inadequate means that donor and recipient governments (especially of less developed and transitional countries) and wider publics have of ensuring the accountability of consultants on the other. We take “accountability” to encompass ethical and responsible practice and the range of incentives and mechanisms that encourage such practice in each part of the consulting process. It should not be reduced simply to a system for punishing bad behavior by means such as sanctions imposed after the fact and often after damage has been done.

Different [donor] organizations have no idea what other organizations are doing. When I was at the World Bank, there was this drunken consultant who spent his time in various countries mostly at the bar, womanizing. Host officials in the recipient countries were complaining and this got back to us. We got his number and barred him from any further work with us. We found out that USAID did the same. Everyone in the know “tossed him out.” And then, when I went to work for this new company, a very reputable firm, the resume of the same guy came to me. Not just once, but three times. If I hadn’t happened to have worked at the Bank and encountered him before, I probably would have hired him because I had no way of knowing how awful he was. He had good references and a beautiful resume.

—International Development Specialist