Aid
Governance considerations: donors’ use of the World Bank’s Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) tool
Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) as an aid criterion
Authors:
J. Müller-Goldenstedt
Publisher:
International Cooperation for Development and Solidarity , 2009
This paper analyses the use of the World Bank’s Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) rankings by bilateral and multilateral donors in their aid allocation and other related decision-making processes. This specific interest is embedded in the more general question of which role governance criteria plays in donors’ aid allocation processes.
The findings are based on the analysis of documents as well as on interviews with staff members of various donor organisations. The study shows that CPIA has only a minor influence on the decision making processes of donors. Most of them use the CPIA mainly as a source of information, however, quite often with some scepticism.
The United Kingdom, which gives CPIA scores some weight in the allocation of funds and uses the instrument in the context of its own Country Governance Assessment (CGA) is, however, an exception to the rule.
The CPIA scores are most significant for the World Bank itself as well as for the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These institutions use the CPIA to decide on the allocation of funds, country policy design and in the assessment of debt sustainability.
Finally, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the African Development Bank (AfDB) do not use the CPIA directly, but conduct their own assessments based on the CPIA model.
The paper also includes a list of publications available about governance criteria, donor aid allocation formulae and the CPIA and an overview of 17 Governance Assessment Tools (GAT)
