The Department for International Development (DFID) claims to be a world leader in developing results-based aid, and now Payment by Results (PbR). PbR means that recipients will have to show results before they are paid. It will help to share risk, we are told, and radically re-balance accountability. It makes sense for DFID ‘to take a tougher, more business-like approach by requiring results up front before payment is made. Better sharing of risk in this way will drive value for money as partners become more incentivised to deliver’. The drift of the past two decades away from participation and towards top-down controls and upwards accountability has been continuous and gradual, a heating of the water in the pot. The logframe, results-based management, upwards accountability, delivering value for money, business cases... these are motherhood and apple pie words with their mantras and procedures. They have to be good. More of them has to be better. But what has been happening to the frogs in the pot as these procedures intensify and heat it up?
