Linking Context and Strategy in Donor Support for Decentralization: a Diagnostic Framework

International donors, long-standing supporters of decentralization reforms in developing countries, often face the challenge of aligning program assistance to the great variety of country governance settings in which many operate. This paper presents a framework for assessing the implications of governance and institutional context for a range of programming challenges, with particular reference to the challenge of decentralized programming. The framework has three conceptual steps. Country governance and institutional change environments are first described in terms of how enabling governance capacities are for decentralized programming, and how rapid and predictable the rate of institutional change is. Second, these environmental considerations are associated with overall assistance modalities of donors, in areas such as the type of partners sought and interventions selected. Third, a range of options concerning the aims, scope and extent of decentralizing programming are reviewed and linked to the diagnostic framework above. The framework is broadly derived from organizational contingency theory, which it is argued has been relatively neglected in the study of development administration due to a preponderance of analysis based on single-case studies.