Jump to content

Country initiatives of assessing governance

Carrying out a joint governance assessments: lessons learned from Rwanda

Governments and donors coordinating governance assessments

Authors: G. Williams; A. Duncan; P. Landell-Mills; S. Unsworth; T. Sheehy
Publisher: The Policy Practice, 2009

Full text of document

A joint governance assessment (JGA) aims to bring government and development partners together to undertake a joint assessment of governance performance based on commonly agreed indicators. The first assessment of this kind was undertaken in Rwanda during 2008 and this paper discusses the usefulness of a joint approach to governance assessment and offers practical guidance on how it might be applied elsewhere. Benefits of a joint governance assessments would arise from:

  • greater coordination, information-sharing and joint analysis among donors carrying out governance assessment work
  • directly involving developing country governments in governance assessments
The paper suggests that a joint governance assessment will work best where it focuses on those requirements that are common to both donors and recipients and centre on better managing the aid relationship. These include:
  • reducing duplication of effort, fragmentation of knowledge, uncoordinated action and high transactions costs (consistent with Paris Declaration principles)
  • testing the evidence basis for assessments, identifying and resolving misunderstandings and misinformation, and promoting better understanding of country specific considerations
  • reducing donor-induced reform overload, and inducing greater realism about the possible scope and pace of change
  • identifying areas of overlap between the interests of donors and government
  • providing a formal channel for communication through which governance issues can be collectively raised by donors
  • building mutual accountability around a joint framework for performance assessment as a means to increase aid predictability and reduce aid volatility