Effectiveness In Practice: What It Means and How It Is Implemented by Four Development Agencies

In this paper, we explore how development agencies understand their own effectiveness. Drawing on interviews with 48 individuals across Agence Française de Développement (AFD), the Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), and New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT), we probe the relevance of five key dimensions of effective agency practice, which align effectiveness with: (1) how and where budgets are allocated; (2) implementation of effectiveness norms;(3) cost-effectiveness of development programmes; (4) how agencies are structured; and (5) flexible and adaptive management practices. We delineate differences in the relative prioritization of effectiveness theories both across agencies and the dimensions themselves. Notably, we find that adaptability emerged as the most salient dimension today, while adherence to global effectiveness principles was the least cited. While interviews revealed some shared understandings, they also showed how bureaucratic and political contexts shape what agencies prioritize and can achieve, meaning that effective practice is bound by each agency’s unique context. Our analysis also shows that the different dimensions of effectiveness were, in many cases, interdependent and mutually reinforcing, yet also involve important tensions, particularly when the interests of providers and partners are at odds. Such tensions may contribute to the gap between rhetorical commitments to internationally defined effectiveness norms and lackluster implementation, suggesting that advancing effective practice requires engaging with the political constraints that mediate implementation.