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MDG-based National Planning: An Assessment1

Elham Seyedsayamdost2

30 November 2014

Abstract This study reviews post-2005 national development strategies of fifty countries from diverse income groups, geographical locations, human development tiers, and ODA levels to assess the extent to which national plans have tailored the Millennium Development Goals to their local contexts. Reviewing PRSPs and non-PRSP national strategies, it presents a mixed picture. The encouraging finding is that thirty-two of the development plans under review have either adopted the MDGs as planning and monitoring tools or “localized” them in a meaningful way, using diverse adaptation strategies from changing the target date to setting additional goals, targets and indicators, all the way to integrating MDGs into subnational planning. A high correlation is detected between income group, PRSP status and ODA reliance of countries, and their propensity to incorporate the MDGs in their planning instruments. A closer examination of the national plans indicates that PRSP countries are more likely to have aligned their national plans with the MDGs. On the other hand, all the countries that have not aligned their plans with the MDGs belong to the middle-income countries and are least dependent on ODA. The correlation between countries’ human development level and their propensity to adopt or adapt the MDGs is similarly quite strong, as the number of MDG-based national strategies decreases as countries’ HDI increases. The discouraging findings include the dwindling attention national plans pay to the targets pertaining to reproductive health, environment, gender equality beyond education, and maternal health. More disconcerting is the lacking connection between planning and implementation, as MDG alignment of national strategies is not coterminous with greater pro-poor or MDG-oriented policies. In fact, in this sample, countries that have not integrated MDGs into their national plans were just as likely to allocate government funds to the social sectors as the MDG aligners.

1 Commissioned by UNDP Independent Evaluation Office in contribution to their report “Evaluation of the Role of UNDP in Supporting National Achievement of the Millennium Development Goals,” available at http://web.undp.org/evaluation/evaluations/thematic/mdg.shtml. 2 Prior to receiving her PhD in Political Science from Columbia University, Elham Seyedsayamdost worked on 2 Prior to receiving her PhD in Political Science from Columbia University, Elham Seyedsayamdost worked on development policy with UNDP and the World Bank.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................... 1

I. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 3

II. DATA AND METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................... 3 Table 1: Countries’ Planning Documents Reviewed, by Region and Income ............................................................... 5 Table 2: Sub-Criteria for National Development Strategy Alignment ........................................................................... 6 Table 3: Sub-Criteria for Evaluation of Social Expenditures Following the National Plan ....................................... 7

III. ANALYSIS OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES ............................................ 7 1. MDG INTEGRATION IN NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES ................................................................................... 8 2. DO ANY OF THE TARGETS BETTER LEND THEMSELVES TO PLANNING? ...................................................................... 18 Table 4: MDG Targets & Adaptation Strategies of Countries .............................................................................. 20

3. NATURE OF MDG ADAPTATION TO NATIONAL CONTEXT .......................................................................................... 20 4. IMPACT OF MDG-BASED PLANNING ON SOCIAL SECTOR SPENDING ........................................................................... 23

IV. CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................... 26 Annex 1: Countries and National Development Strategy Selection ........................................................................... 28

TABLE OF FIGURES FIGURE 1: MDG-BASED NATIONAL PLANNING, BY REGION ............................................................................................................ 9 FIGURE 2: MDG-BASED NATIONAL PLANNING, BY INCOME .......................................................................................................... 10 FIGURE 3: MDG-BASED NATIONAL PLANNING, BY PRSP STATUS ................................................................................................. 11 FIGURE 4: MDG-BASED NATIONAL PLANNING, BY HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX .................................................................... 12 FIGURE 5: MDG-BASED NATIONAL PLANNING, BY OFFICIAL DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE (NET ODA 2012, % OF GDP) . 13 FIGURE 6: MDG-BASED NATIONAL PLANNING, CONTROL GROUP – CRISIS COUNTRIES ........................................................ 14 FIGURE 7: MDG-BASED NATIONAL PLANNING, CONTROL GROUP – STABLE COUNTRIES NO MDG DEMAND ................... 15 FIGURE 8: MDG-BASED NATIONAL PLANNING, PUBLIC EXPENDITURE ON HEALTH (% OF TOTAL SPENDING) ...................... 16 FIGURE 9: MDG-BASED NATIONAL PLANNING, PUBLIC EXPENDITURE ON EDUCATION (% OF TOTAL SPENDING) .............. 17 FIGURE 10: MDG-BASED NATIONAL PLANNING, PUBLIC EXPENDITURE ON MILITARY (% OF TOTAL SPENDING) ................. 18 FIGURE 11: MDG-BASED NATIONAL PLANNING, MDG NEEDS ASSESSMENT .............................................................................. 23 FIGURE 12: PUBLIC SPENDING ON HEALTH, MDG ALIGNERS AND OTHERS ................................................................................ 24 FIGURE 13: PUBLIC SPENDING ON HEALTH AND MILITARY, MDG ALIGNERS AND OTHERS ...................................................... 25 FIGURE 14: PUBLIC SPENDING ON HEALTH AND MILITARY, BY COSTING EXERCISE .................................................................... 26

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I. Introduction As the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) approach their deadline in 2015, intense discussions have been reverberating throughout the international community. MDGs are a set of internationally agreed, quantifiable and time-‐bound goals to reduce poverty and advance human development. Various reports have set out to assess the impact of these millennium goals with a view to formulating their successors—Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs. One of the key questions of this paper relates to the extent to which such globally defined goals can be translated into national level planning tools. To make MDGs meaningful for the people, these goals must be tailored to the particular conditions in which each society finds itself. The primary purpose of this paper is to map MDG planning outcomes in order to study how the global development agenda under the aegis of the Millennium Development Goals has influenced development planning and policies at the country level. In addition, the MDGs are examined with a view to analyzing their varying propensity for better integration into national development strategies. Exploring the diverse adaptation strategies used by different countries leads to interesting findings in terms of correlations between socioeconomic and geographic characteristics of countries and their proclivity to choose certain strategies over others. Finally, the paper turns to the question of whether MDG-‐based national plans are more likely to translate into policies that emphasize public spending on social sectors. To do this, it compares public expenditures for social sectors (health and education) with military expenditures. Throughout, an attempt is made to highlight expected as well as counter-‐intuitive patterns while suggesting possible hypotheses that might shed light on the study’s findings. The paper is organized as follows. Next section provides an overview of the data and methodology used to conduct this study. Section three presents the results of the analysis in four subsections, discussing MDG integration in national development plans, the types of MDGs that better lend themselves to planning, the nature of MDG adaptation strategies, and the correlation between MDG-‐ based planning and social sector spending. The final section concludes.

II. Data and Methodology To assess the extent to which MDGs have been absorbed by countries and meaningfully used for planning purposes, national development strategies of 50 countries were selected for review. Since the MDGs formally took shape in September 2001, national plans expanding the years 2002 to 2010 were analyzed in an attempt to discern any evolution that may have taken place during that decade in terms of governments’ responsiveness to the MDGs. However, as a few studies have offered an analysis of the earlier PRPSs3, where possible, emphasis was placed on more recent strategies and policy documents, in particular those written in the aftermath of the 2005 World Summit, at which world leaders resolved to “adopt, by 2006, and implement comprehensive national development strategies to achieve the internationally agreed development goals and objectives, including the Millennium Development

3 The dearth of literature on the impact of the MDGs on national development strategies is indeed puzzling. This author is only aware of a few studies that have systematically assessed the incorporation of MDGs into national planning instruments, notably Harrison et al. (2003) and Fukuda-Parr (2008). But even these were rather selective and focused only on low-income countries by assessing Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (or in the case of Fukuda-Parr, she also assessed donor policies).

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Goals.”4 Thus, while originally anywhere between one to four national development strategies5 per country were reviewed, for this analysis, the most recent available plan of any one country within the time frame of this study was reviewed in greater depth than prior plans. The fifty countries chosen for this study were selected with a view to capturing a snapshot of all the geographical regions, income groups, human development tiers, and levels of official development assistance (see Table 1). Further, several countries were selected from each region in order to have two different control groups: one consisting of crisis-‐affected countries and another constituting stable countries that appear to have shown less interest in the relevance of the MDGs to their specific national contexts (see Annex 1 for a list of countries). The primary sources for this study emanate from publicly available national development plans and policy documents downloaded from the Internet. The poverty reduction strategies of PRSP countries were retrieved from the IMF website, which includes an updated repository of all the PRSPs submitted by countries.6 Many of the non-‐PRSP countries have five-‐year development plans, which are easily retrievable through a simple search. In some cases, we only had access to and reviewed countries’ long-‐term development strategies, such as Kazakhstan’s 2050 Strategy and South Africa’s National Development Plan-‐Vision for 2030. In a few cases, the actual documents were not available, such that we had to rely on secondary sources. These cases include China, Kazakhstan and Russia, where we relied on governmental websites that offer synopses of their national plans, providing an insight into the countries’ respective priorities. Finally, in one country, Mauritius, we could only draw on a presidential address about government’s five-‐year program. As such, in these cases in particular, our assessment had to draw on other sources to confirm our coding and scoring. As an added measure, we triangulated the results deriving from the review by consulting existing Assessment of Development Reports or ADRs published by UNDP’s Independent Evaluation Office. The purpose of the ADRs is to “assess the attainment of intended and achieved results as well as UNDP contributions to development results at the country level.”7 We could draw on ADRs for thirty of the fifty countries under review, with over 90 percent of them having been published within the past five years. In addition to assessing the incorporation of MDGs into national development strategies, this study attempts to gauge the extent to which words (as set out in policy instruments) may have translated into action. In other words, while countries’ responsiveness to the MDGs may be visible in their active integration of the global goals, targets and indicators in their respective planning documents, their subsequent funding allocated to these sectors offers a window into the implementation of the plans. As such, data indicating government expenditure on health and education, two of the primary social sectors receiving attention within the MDG framework, were collected to determine the link between planning and implementation. Although the expenditure data as a percentage of GDP are more readily available and more complete, government’s allocation of its total spending to the social sectors is a better measurement of the serious attention paid to the MDGs. Thus, we relied on data capturing public 4 General Assembly Resolution 60/1, 2005 World Summit Outcome, A/RES/60/1 (24 October 2005). 5 The number of national development strategies reviewed varied considerably based on their availability and whether or not they were PRSPs. In the latter case, progress reports offered additional information as to whether the MDGs may have been incorporated in later revisions, and at times this was the case. 6 See http://www.imf.org/external/np/prsp/prsp.aspx. 7 For more information and access to the ADRs, visit http://web.undp.org/evaluation/evaluations/assessment-of-development-results.shtml.

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expenditure on social sectors as a percentage of total government spending. International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank statistical databanks were consulted for the best available data on public expenditure. Interestingly, health expenditure data are much more complete and readily available. We have drawn on World Development Indicators (WDI) for health expenditure as a percentage of total government spending. Education data surprisingly are patchier, in particular when it comes to government’s allocation to that sector. IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department has a database that offers a more complete picture of education expenditure as a percentage of total government spending. However, their most recent data date back to 2007 or 2008, thereby making it rather difficult to assess governments’ funding follow-‐up in the national plans written in 2007 and onwards. As a result, we chose to use WDI data on public expenditure. This study makes several key contributions to our better understanding of countries’ MDG integration. First, it looks beyond PRSP countries to incorporate planning instruments of countries within higher income groups. In fact, only slightly more than half of the countries or 26 assessed here produce PRSPs. Second, and relatedly, it aims to show the important and meaningful ways in which some middle-‐income countries have used the goals to advance their development agendas while adapting MDGs to their particular contexts. Third, using available social expenditure data, it examines the extent to which government allocations to social sectors may have benefited from the countries’ MDG-‐based planning. Finally, it goes beyond an assessment of MDG integration in national development plans to gauge their implementation while comparing countries that have aligned their development strategies with the MDGs versus those that have not.

Table 1: Countries’ Planning Documents Reviewed, by Region and Income REGION AFRICA ARAB

STATES ASIA-

PACIFIC EUROPE &

CIS LAT AM &

CARIBBEAN % OF

TOTAL

CA

TE

GO

RIE

S

LIC 5 0 5 1 1 24

LMIC 5 4 5 3 3 40

UMIC 2 1 4 3 5 30

HIC 1 1 0 1 0 6

LDC 7 2 4 0 1 28

SIDS/LLDC 3 0 4 3 4 28

PRSP 10 2 7 4 3 52

TOTAL 13 6 14 8 9 #COUNTRIES IN REGION

47

21

49

29

32

% OF TOTAL

28 28 28 28 28

The questions guiding this study are three-‐fold. First, national development strategies (NDSs) were assessed based on their incorporation of MDGs. To do that systematically, each country’s most recent and accessible planning instrument before 2010 was reviewed and coded based on references made to the MDGs, use of MDG targets as planning or monitoring frameworks, and/or deeper adaptation of the goals or “localization” of MDGs by adding goals and targets, extending or shortening the timeframe for achieving the goals, and shifting indicators upwards or downwards. This coding enabled a scoring of the NDSs on a continuum bracketed on the one end by those countries that did not even mention the MDGs

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in passim in their plans and, on the other end, countries that meaningfully adapted the goals to their national, and at times sub-‐national and local, contexts. Table 2 illustrates the coding criteria.

Table 2: Sub-Criteria for National Development Strategy Alignment SCORE

SUB-CRITERIA ASSESSMENT

0 NDS does not reference MDGs NDS not aligned

1 NDS makes broad reference to MDGs NDS aligned “referentially” with MDGs

2 NDS uses at least 1 target per MDG NDS uses MDGs as planning/monitoring framework (Adopters)

3 NDS uses more than 1 target per MDGs, adds goal, and/or adapts indicators (downwards and upwards)

NDS integrates and adapts MDGs fully (Adapters)

Second, socioeconomic characteristics of the countries were incorporated in the analysis to assess possible correlations between those variables and countries’ likelihood to integrate the MDGs into their national plans. These economic and social variables were derived from diverse sources: income level from UN Department of Social and Economic Affairs, PRSP status from IMF, Official Development Assistance (ODA) from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), human development rankings from UNDP’s Human Development Report Office, and government spending on military from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. We also consulted various UNDP and World Bank publications to collect information about existing MDG needs assessments or costing exercises. A word about MDG needs assessments seems in order. Soon after the launch of the MDGs in September 2001, an effort was made to find out how much it would take to achieve the millennium goals by 2015. The UN Millennium Project spearheaded this global costing exercise, however, it didn’t remain a global exercise for long, as soon both United Nations and the World Bank carried out costing exercises for various countries. Hence, a series of countries conducted an MDG needs assessment, which have been consulted for this study where available. That information, mostly derived from the Millennium Project and UNDP, was supplemented with electronically accessible data. Third, having identified the countries that integrated the MDGs into their national plans, the particular characteristics of those “localization” efforts were examined with a view to identifying possible patterns that might explain why countries chose one type of integration strategy over another, or might be more inclined to adopt some targets than others. Finally, linking planning to implementation, public spending on social sectors, in particular education and health, were examined to evaluate countries’ follow-‐up with their plans’ goals and targets. In order to put social expenditures in perspective, government’s military spending was juxtaposed with their social spending to check for correlations and a possible effect of “peace dividends” on MDG funding. Furthermore, social and military expenditures of MDG aligners and others were compared to assess whether the “MDG-‐ization” of national strategies translated into increased public spending on social sectors. Table 3 displays the coding criteria for this part of the analysis. In order to remain consistent, social expenditure on health or education as a percentage of total government spending was assessed to either increase, decrease or remain constant based on changes gauged over the course of four years prior to and following the publication of the plan. This method was used to ensure that any potential

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time lags as a result of implementation timeframes would be considered in the analysis.

Table 3: Sub-Criteria for Evaluation of Social Expenditures Following the National Plan SCORE SUB-CRITERIA 1

0 No data available

1 Decrease in social expenditure

2 No discernible change

3 Increase in social expenditure

Two caveats are in order before the study’s results are presented. First, it is important to emphasize that a key assumption of this study at the outset was that adaptation of the MDGs in countries’ plans indicated increased national ownership of MDGs irrespective of the strategies used. In other words, the assumption was that as long as a country adapted the goals to its national context—regardless of whether it chose to raise or lower the targets, add extra goals, or change the target date—that act of adaptation and integration of the MDGs meant that the country took ownership of these goals. However, during the review and analysis of the results, it became clear that different adaptation strategies might imply different levels of ownership. For example, addition of a ninth goal was coded as one of several adaptation strategies, which helped that country score high on the ownership scale. Yet, that ninth goal may have used the MDG framework and catered to the global development agenda without necessarily translating into greater ownership of the global agenda. In fact, the opposite may have been the case, where the government may have selected an issue that it saw as priority without contributing to a strategy that would increase ownership and accelerate the country’s achievement of the MDGs. Thus, the analysis that is presented below takes into account that MDG integration may not necessarily mean greater country ownership of the MDGs. As such, while the analysis distinguishes between AdOpters (those countries that use the millennium goals, targets and indicators for planning and monitoring purposes) and AdApters (those countries that change the goals, targets and indicators in order to make them more meaningful to their national context), some of the analysis groups them together and refers to them as Aligners (those countries that either adopt or adapt the MDGs). Second, in examining the characteristics of countries that have aligned their national plans with the MDGs, this study has primarily focused on economic and social variables. That is, emphasis has been placed on countries’ income level, ODA dependence, human development record, and public expenditure on social sectors, in particular health and education. Yet, political variables, such as government’s willingness to pursue pro-‐poor policies, public demand for reduction of poverty and inequalities, and mechanisms that hold governments accountable to their citizens (or good governance variables), have been left out of the analysis. Hence, we acknowledge that, while it is beyond the scope of this paper, an analysis that incorporates political factors would be a welcome addition that would further contribute to our understanding of the varying rationales for MDG-‐based national planning.

III. Analysis of National Development Strategies The following analysis is organized in three sections. First, the results of the analysis are interpreted to answer questions pertaining to the actual integration of the MDGs into planning instruments. This section focuses on the characteristics of the countries that may explain different levels of interest by

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governments to design MDG-‐based national plans. Second, MDG adaptation to national context is examined to understand the strategies that different countries have used in this process. This section thus focuses on the characteristics of the MDGs and the propensity of some goals over others to find their way into national plans. Third, the sub-‐set of countries with an MDG needs assessment is examined to analyze whether costing exercises have impacted public expenditures on social sectors. This third section then shifts our focus to the implementation of the MDGs by analyzing the evolution of social spending. The interpretative narrative that follows draws on the most recent national development strategy available for each country. All the plans reviewed were written after 2005, except for NDSs of Cape Verde, Georgia, Guyana, Morocco, Nepal and Nigeria, where only national plans prior to 2005 were available.

1. MDG Integration in National Development Strategies To begin, almost two-‐thirds of the reviewed national plans, to be more precise, 32 out of 50 plans, have either adopted or adapted the MDGs into their medium and long-‐ term planning. In other words, a big majority of the countries under review has either used the MDGs as a planning and monitoring framework or integrated them into their national development strategies. While AdOpters have used the MDG targets and indicators to track progress and monitor their achievement, the AdApters have made an attempt to tailor these goals to their national context and to make them meaningful to their socio-‐ economic conditions. This adaptation can take different forms. For some countries, it has meant including additional goals. Others have added extra targets and/or indicators directly relevant to their local contexts. Yet others have incorporated the MDGs into their sub-‐national planning. In some middle-‐income countries, MDGs have been used to identify pockets of poverty by disaggregating along different social categories and honing in on those particular development challenges. This finding tells us that MDGs have found a way into the national planning of a majority of countries under review, at least as far as the formulation of the plans is concerned. The extent to which the verbal endorsement of these goals has been translated into action is a different question that section three addresses in more detail. Figure 1 illustrates by region the number of national development plans that either ignored the MDGs, made reference to them without further incorporating them into planning, adopted them by using the targets as planning frameworks, or adapted them to the local context. As already noted, 32 of the plans reviewed made use of the MDG targets and indicators either for monitoring purposes or in a way that would resonate with the local context. The majority of these are to be found in Africa and Asia-‐Pacific, which may be a sampling effect. One surprising finding of this regional analysis is that while Latin America with its increasing middle-‐ income countries could be expected to pay less attention to the MDGs, twice the number of countries in that region was found to integrate the MDGs into their plans versus Arab States and Europe & CIS. There are several possible explanations that one could entertain. First, Latin America has shown a keen interest in reducing structural inequalities over the past decade, in particular because of increasing social inequalities in that continent. Second, and relatedly, the “rise of the left” in Latin America created a welcome environment with the MDGs offering governments global legitimacy to pursue their social agendas, which aimed to help the poor and marginalized. These political factors are not further pursued in this study, although they would make a valuable addition to the socioeconomic analysis offered in these pages.

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Figure 1: MDG-‐based National Planning, by Region

Africa Asia-‐Pacific Latin America & Caribbean Arab States

Europe & CIS

Total

Aligned MDGs 10 9 7 4 2 32 Aligned referentially 1 1 2 2 2 8 Not aligned 2 4 0 0 4 10 Total 13 14 9 6 8 50 While the regional analysis may suffer from sampling bias, a disaggregation of MDG Aligners along certain variables, such as income, ODA, debt status, and geography, offers some interesting patterns. Figure 2 illustrates one such disaggregation, whereby national strategies’ MDG alignment is illustrated in relation to countries’ income level. As might have been expected, the likelihood of countries to adapt the MDGs increases as their income level decreases. In other words, the majority of MDG-‐ based plans are from low-‐income (LIC) and lower-‐middle-‐income (LMIC) countries, irrespective of their regional affiliation. While none of the high-‐income countries (HICs) reviewed for this study had either used the goals as planning frameworks or integrated them into their national plans (a finding that may have been anticipated), a closer analysis of the upper-‐middle-‐income countries (UMICs) sheds light on some of the factors that explain their interest in taking the MDGs seriously and tailoring them to their national priorities.

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Africa Asia-Pacific Latin America & Caribbean

Arab States Europe & CIS

Num

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Aligned MDGs Aligned referentially Not aligned

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Figure 2: MDG-‐based National Planning, by Income

Low Income Lower

Middle Income Upper

Middle Income High Income-‐ Non OECD

Total

Aligned MDGs 12 14 6 0 32 Aligned referentially 0 6 1 1 8 Not aligned 0 1 7 2 10 Total 12 21 14 3 50

The six UMICs that have aligned their national development plans with the MDGs include Albania, Brazil, Costa Rica, Iraq, Mauritius and Peru. It is a truly mixed group of countries, and different factors explain these governments’ commitment to poverty reduction. These countries are to some extent guided by governments committed to reduce poverty and inequalities in their societies. For example, in Peru, The National Agreement was endorsed in 2002, establishing consensus among the main political parties and civil society groups on 30 state policies consistent with the MDGs. This agreement, along with other national plans and presidential decrees focusing on social reform and poverty reduction, led to government’s prioritization of nutrition, maternal health, and infant mortality—three of the MDGs—in its national development strategy. Albania is an upper-‐middle-‐income country, a PRSP country, and an official candidate for membership in the European Union (EU). As an UMIC and EU candidate, the expectation might be that the MDGs would be swept under the carpet since they may not be relevant to the particular priorities of the countries that have already reached many of the targets entailed in the Millennium Development Goals. Yet, Albania has been hailed for its pioneering work among the states in Europe and Commonwealth of Independent States for having “MDG-‐ized” local development plans through inclusion of disaggregated MDG targets and indicators that link to national strategies. The intriguing aspect of Albania is that its PRSP status trumped its status as an upper-‐middle-‐income country in that it has been highlighted as an MDG best practice case despite the correlation found between UMICs and the lower likelihood for MDG integration. Indeed, Albania is a great illustration of another pattern that leaps from this analysis: the high likelihood of a PRSP country adapting the MDGs into its poverty reduction strategy plan.

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LIC LMIC UMIC HIC-Non OECD

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As Figure 3 illustrates, out of the 26 PRSP countries reviewed for this study, 22 have aligned their national priorities with the MDGs by either monitoring relevant targets or adapting the goals to their national context. The remaining four PRSP countries reference the goals by uttering their commitment to the global development agenda and the values and principles for which it stands. Therefore, and as a result of the finding that three-‐quarters of the MDG-‐based national plans are located in PRSP countries, this study indicates that PRSP countries were much more likely than non-‐PRSP countries to use MDGs as planning tools and to integrate them into development strategies by defining poverty in a way that makes sense within their local context. This adaptation can take the form of upgrading or downgrading the targets based on local circumstances, adding indicators that directly reflect particular development challenges, and so on. This may seem to be quite intuitive, as the PRSP is a precondition required by both the IMF and the World Bank for highly indebted poor countries’ access to debt relief and concessional financing. Thus, the finding that all the ten countries that have not aligned their development plans with the MDGs are non-‐PRSP countries might not come as a surprise but rather confirm a pattern that is oft observed in these pages.

Figure 3: MDG-‐based National Planning, by PRSP Status

PRSP Country Non-‐PRSP Country Total

Aligned MDGs 22 10 32 Aligned referentially 4 4 8 Not aligned 0 10 10 Total 26 24 50

In particular, a historical comparison between the earlier and later PRSPs demonstrates that far fewer of the non-‐PRSP plans were aligned with the MDGs before 2005. In fact, based on this analysis, only Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Senegal, Mongolia and Viet Nam were among the PRSP countries that early on included these global goals and targets in their planning. Some of them, such as Mongolia referenced the International Development Goals, which were not very different from the MDGs. As PRSP countries, many of them fell into the least-‐developed country (LDC) category with high reliance on official development assistance (ODA) and a significant debt burden, which they wanted to reduce through the PRSP process. Thus, LDC status of many of these countries as well as their ODA reliance could potentially

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explain their eagerness to adapt the MDGs.8

Figure 4: MDG-‐based National Planning, by Human Development Index

Human Development Index (HDI) Total Low Medium High Very High

Aligned MDGs 15 11 6 0 32 Aligned referentially 1 3 4 0 8 Not aligned 0 5 4 1 10 Total 16 19 14 1 50

Mapping countries’ HDI against their MDG alignment illustrates an interesting correlation. Countries with a higher HDI are less likely to have a national development strategy that either adopts or adapts the MDGs. Figure 4 shows this pattern very clearly, indicating that possibly those countries that have high human development might have already reached the MDGs and hence focus on priority areas that are not aligned with the MDGs. Interestingly, of the six MDG-‐based national plans in high HDI countries, four are based in Latin America and the Caribbean, including Brazil, Costa Rica, Jamaica and Peru highlighting the importance of pro-‐poor governments in upper-‐middle-‐income countries with high levels of human development for MDG-‐based national planning. Another pattern that emerged from this analysis was the relationship between official development assistance (ODA) and MDG alignment. As can be seen in Figure 5, one-‐fifth of the national development plans reviewed are not aligned with the MDGs, and almost all of them are non-‐ODA recipients, including China, Croatia, Equatorial Guinea, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, South Africa, Thailand, and Turkey. In fact, the countries that have taken a hands-‐off approach to the MDGs in their most recent national plans hail from the higher income levels, both HICs and UMICs.

8 Political will, government’s willingness to pursue pro-poor policy, as well as societies’ demand for such policies may also contribute to the alignment of national plans with MDGs. This study has focused on economic and social factors primarily, although political variables would make a welcome contribution.

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A few cases are worth highlighting here. It is puzzling that Equatorial Guinea is in this group of countries not having adopted the MDGs as planning tools. Although considered a high-‐income country, Equatorial Guinea has some of the most despairing human development indicators. Almost 77% of its population lives under national poverty line in a country where only 42% of those living in rural areas have access to water sources, and life expectancy is terribly short at 53 years. It seems that the MDGs would be a particularly useful planning tool for Equatorial Guinea, and yet regrettably the country’s national plan does not even take note of them. The other country that needs to be highlighted is Thailand for exactly the opposite reason. Based on some external documents and previous development plans, Thailand was praised for having set an MDG-‐Plus agenda because of having already reached many of its targets.9 However, the Tenth Plan reviewed for this study does not set any real goals or targets but talks about paradigm shifts and focuses primarily on macro changes in general.10 Over the period of the Ninth and Tenth National Economic and Social Development Plans (NESDPs), from 2002 to 2011, Thailand experienced strong economic growth and became a middle-‐income country. Given the high expectation of achieving the MDGs, Thailand set its own more ambitious goals, called MDG-‐Plus. For example, with poverty already reduced by two-‐thirds, Thailand set a target of reaching 4 percent poverty by 2009, which would mark a four-‐fifth reduction in poverty since 1990. Hence, while Thailand has been included in the list of countries that have not incorporated the MDGs into its latest NDS, it is worth noting that throughout the 2000s the MDGs very much figured in their national planning. Their absence in the Tenth NESDP might merely reflect Thailand’s successful achievement of the MDGs.

Figure 5: MDG-‐based National Planning, by Official Development Assistance (NET ODA 2012, % of GDP)

9 A UNDP review of Thailand’s MDG adaptation states, “Thailand exemplifies how the MDGs can be putto good use in a middle-income country that has already achieved most of the MDGs well in advance of the 2015 deadline. The process to transform the MDGs into a floor instead of a ceiling for human development and ultimate commitment to these adapted goals, known locally as MDG-Plus, has made the MDG-Plus a mobilizing and agenda-setting theme in Thailand.” See UNDP, MDG-Plus: A Case Study of Thailand, (New York: UNDP, n.d.). Also, see UNDP, Assessment of Development Results: Thailand, (New York: UNDP, 2011); Royal Thai Government and UNDP, Thailand Millennium Development Goals Report 2004, (Bangkok: UNRC, 2004). 10 Royal Thai Government, Tenth National Economic and Social Development Plan: 2007-2011, (Bangkok: NESDB, 2006).

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< 0.5% 0.5% > 10% 10% <

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NET ODA 2012 (% of GDP) Total < 0.5% 0.5% > 10% 10% <

Aligned MDGs 5 20 7 32 Aligned referentially 3 5 0 8 Not aligned 10 0 0 10 Total 18 25 7 50

Another interesting correlation is to be found in a comparison of ODA and non-‐ODA countries. Among the countries in which official development assistance makes up ten percent and more of their gross domestic product, all have aligned their national development strategies with the MDGs. These countries include Afghanistan, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti and Mali. As might be expected, all of these countries are PRSP countries, and the majority of them are also crisis-‐affected countries, which make up one of our control groups to which we shall turn below. At the same time, over half of the countries where less than 0.5% of the GDP is composed of ODA have not aligned their strategies with the MDGs. Two control groups were designed at the outset for comparative purposes. On the one hand, a group of six crisis-‐affected countries, comprising Afghanistan, Central African Republic (CAR), Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Haiti, Iraq, and the Sudan were selected before the start of the analysis to test their ranking on the MDG adaptation score and to see whether being exposed to crisis may reduce interest in MDGs. As Figure 6 illustrates, all the countries in this category aligned their national strategies with the MDGs while the majority tailored the goals to their national context by either changing the targets, including new goals, or pursuing subnational plans that consider local disparities. Thus, conflict does not appear to be associated with reduced demand for MDGs, but rather correlated with stronger propensity towards MDG-‐based national planning.

Figure 6: MDG-‐Based National Planning, Control Group – Crisis Countries

Crisis Country Non-‐Crisis Country Total


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In order to compare social spending in countries having adopted the MDGs and in countries not having adopted the MDGs, another series of six stable MICs that have appeared less interested in the MDGs, including China, India, Iran, Russia, South Africa, and Turkey, was selected as a second control group. An assessment of their MDG adaptation is depicted in Figure 7 and indicates the opposite finding of the crisis group. None of the countries in this group aligned their national strategies with the MDGs. That is, there was not even a cosmetic reference to the MDGs. However, not having aligned their plans with the MDGs does not necessarily mean that these countries did not allocate substantial portions of their governmental budgets to social sectors. In fact, where data was available, one sees consistent or increased levels of spending on health and/or education among these countries. This observation alludes to another finding of this report (discussed in more detail below) that incorporation of MDGs in the text of a national plan may not necessarily reflect associated actionable implementation of the goals. Similarly, their absence may not reflect dwindling resources allocated to social sectors. Several hypotheses can be entertained to explain the patterns observed among these two control groups. One factor worth noting is the income level of these two groups. While the “disinterested” group is almost entirely composed of UMICs (except for India which is an LMIC), the crisis countries represent low-‐income countries with the exception of Iraq. In addition, almost all of the crisis countries heavily rely on ODA (except Iraq and to a lesser extent Sudan) and are PRSP countries. This influence of the international community in the internal policy planning of these countries could certainly explain the high integration of the MDGs in their plans. In contrast, the “disinterested” countries are not only middle-‐income but also do not rely on development assistance. It is also highly likely that having achieved the minimum floor for human development that the MDGs set also contributes to the lower demand for MDGs among the stable control group while it sets a ceiling for the crisis-‐affected countries, explaining the latter’s increased propensity to align their plans with the MDGs.

Figure 7: MDG-‐based National Planning, Control Group – Stable Countries No MDG Demand

No Demand for MDGs Demand for MDGs Total


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Having assessed the national development strategies of the countries under study, a final question arises regarding these countries’ public spending in light of their endorsement of the MDGs in their respective planning documents. Data relating to public spending on health, education, and the military were collected in order to evaluate the extent to which governments’ plans may have translated into actual expenditure frameworks. Public spending in health and education as a percentage of total spending in the four years after the endorsement of each plan was assessed by examining increasing, static or decreasing trends in expenditure following national planning outcomes and respective budget allocations as compared to a similar period prior to the report. In a few cases this information was only available for a three-‐year period. Figure 8 depicts public spending on health for the 45 countries for which data was available. Remarkably, health expenditure increased not only in the countries that aligned their national plans with the MDGs but also in most of the countries where there was no indication of even a reference to the MDGs in the national strategies. This may denote some kind of norm absorption across all countries, as many of the plans reviewed for this study were written and/or endorsed in the aftermath of the 2005 World Summit. As for the countries that adopted or adapted the MDGs but lowered allocation of public funds to the health sector, it is a mixed group, although some patterns can be discerned. Out of the 9 MDG-‐based national plans that were followed by a decrease in national health expenditure, all belong to PRSP countries, which might indicate a degree of tokenism to be involved in the MDG alignment of these plans for the purpose of access to debt relief through the HIPC initiative. The other interesting finding is that of the nine non-‐aligned countries for which data was available, almost half increased public expenditure on health with the rest at least maintaining their existing expenditure. Thus, it is not a foregone conclusion that countries with MDG-‐based national planning necessarily act on their plans and implement them by allocating more funds to the social sectors, which are the underlying areas addressed by many of the MDG targets.

Figure 8: MDG-‐based National Planning, Public Expenditure on Health (% of Total Spending)

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Health Expenditure (% of Government Spending) No Data Total Increase Static Decrease Sub-‐Total

Aligned MDGs 13 6 9 28 4 32 Aligned referentially 2 1 5 8 0 8 Not aligned 4 5 0 9 1 10 Total 19 12 14 45 5 50

Data on public expenditure on education is generally less complete providing us with only 18 entry points. As Figure 9 shows, there does not appear to be any correlation between MDG-‐aligned national plans and increase in education expenditure, as non-‐aligned countries are as likely as MDG-‐aligned countries to increase their public spending on education. On the other hand, all of the countries that chose to decrease their education expenditure in the years following their national plan were referential aligners while proportionately more non-‐aligners reduced funds allocated to education than MDG aligners. Irrespective of these observations, this pool is too small to offer any conclusive evidence either way, although it seems safe to say that there is no direct correlation between MDG-‐based national plans and associated increase in public spending on education.

Figure 9: MDG-‐based National Planning, Public Expenditure on Education (% of Total Spending)

Education Expenditure (% of Government Spending) No Data Total Increase Static Decrease Sub-‐Total


Although these findings may not be very encouraging, still many governments increased their public allocation of funds to social sectors. Did this increasing investment in social sectors correlate with declining military expenditures? Thanks to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute,

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military expenditure of most countries as a percentage of GDP is available and updated yearly. However, when it comes to military expenditure as a percentage of total government spending, data becomes quite patchy and incomplete. As a result, we only have data for 23 of the countries in our sample. As Figure 10 shows, nine of these countries decreased military spending in the aftermath of their MDG-‐based plans. Although some MDG aligners maintained and even increased their military budget, none of the countries for which data was available and which fell in the non-‐aligned and referentially aligned categories decreased their military spending. While the sample is too small and the data too incomplete to make any conclusive statements about a possible correlation between MDG-‐based plans and a potential peace dividend, the finding that more than half of the countries with data either decreased or maintained their military budget seems to indicate a positive development. This might of course indicate the possibility of a peace dividend as a result of the global agenda to pursue poverty reduction, however, further research would be required to make and substantiate such a claim.

Figure 10: MDG-‐based National Planning, Public Expenditure on Military (% of Total Spending)

Military Expenditure (% of Government Spending) No Data Total Increase Static Decrease Sub-‐Total


2. Do Any of the Targets Better Lend Themselves to Planning? The majority of the most recent national development strategies reviewed for this study listed at least one or another of the MDG targets in their plans, even those that did not reference the MDGs, for example, India, South Africa and Turkey. These targets were time-‐bound and quantitative with many

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aligning themselves with the 2015 MDG deadline. Out of the 41 plans that had outcome-‐oriented targets, 83% listed a target for primary schooling, water and sanitation. Targets related to child health and maternal health were next on the list of priorities in most national strategies with 80% of the plans setting a target to monitor child health and maternal health. Three-‐quarters of the plans had a poverty target that was mostly listed in monetary terms but often also included food poverty indicators. In fact, hunger was the next most referenced target in national plans with roughly 65% of the strategies dedicating an indicator to reducing the proportion of people suffering from hunger by either tracking prevalence of underweight children or monitoring food poverty headcount. Equal proportion of the plans (slightly more than 60%) listed literacy indicators and various targets related to HIV/AIDS and other diseases. More disheartening has been the lower traction that gender equality, reproductive health and the environment received in most national plans. While only half of the strategies set a target to reduce the ratio of girls to boys in schooling, less than one-‐third (27%) dedicated indicators to monitoring gender equality in wage employment and/or national governance. Similarly, 44% of the plans prioritized reproductive health while only one-‐third targeted environment as an important national priority. Employment and housing were, however, even lower on the list of nations’ priorities with only 15% dedicating a target to these goals despite the fact that most plans acknowledged the close link between unemployment and poverty. Turning our attention to the countries that had integrated the MDGs into their national plans, the pattern that emerges changes slightly. Before sharing the results, a caveat is in order. The coding and scoring of the countries’ strategies in terms of achieving the MDGs relied primarily on the assumption that these goals are universal and expected to be achieved by all at the national level, just as they are set in the global agenda. In other words, the targets set within national development strategies are assessed in terms of their correspondence with the globally set quantitative targets. This type of assessment by default undermines the rationale of ownership and localization of these global goals. Cognizant of this shortcoming, the results are primarily representative of the types of priorities that different countries have emphasized in their plans. This analysis is based on 19 of the 20 countries that have integrated the MDGs into their national plans in a contextually meaningful way. Brazil has been left out of this analysis for two reasons. First, although this author was able to work through French and Spanish national plans, Portuguese went beyond her language skills. In addition, none of the Brazilian development plans were available in English so that the ranking of Brazil as an MDG adapter had to rely primarily on secondary sources, many of which exist and almost unanimously praise this country for its integration of the MDGs in its subnational reports.11 From this follows the second reason for why Brazil was left out: its MDG-‐based planning success is primarily due to the way in which it has succeeded in localizing the goals through municipal-‐level monitoring and adaptation systems. It is beyond the scope of this paper to analyze subnational plans, hence the focus will be on the 19 national development plans reviewed. Table 4 summarizes the findings of this analysis, indicating that all of the national strategies of these 19 countries included targets pertaining to water and sanitation as well as child health. However, while close to 70% either exceeded the globally set quantitative targets for water and sanitation, almost 60% set under-‐ambitious targets for child health. Even more disconcertingly, while 95% of the plans set targets aiming to improve maternal health, nearly 70% of those were below the MDG targets. Of course, it is possible that the highly ambitious nature of this goal which proposes that maternal mortality ratio be reduced by three-‐quarters between 1990 and 2015 has led many governments to set more pragmatic

11 For example, see UNDP, “Assessment of Development Results: Brazil,” (New York: UNDP, 2011).

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goals. Poverty and primary schooling also figured in prominently in governments’ national strategies with 90% of the plans setting a target to reduce poverty and universalize primary education. The plans were split in terms of poverty, as most countries either exceeded the MDG targets or trailed behind, with only a few keeping to the 2015 halving of poverty rate.

Table 4: MDG Targets & Adaptation Strategies of Countries MDG Target

% of NDS Listing MDG Target

% of NDS More Ambitious than MDG Target

% of NDS at par with MDG Target

% of NDS Less Ambitious than MDG Target

Water and Sanitation 100 37 31.5 31.5 Child Health 100 16 26 58 Maternal Health 95 16 16 68 Poverty 90 42 16 42 Primary schooling 90 16 58 26 Hunger 84 37 31.5 31.5 HIV/AID & Other Diseases 84 16 32 52 Gender Equality in Education 68 11 63 26 Reproductive Health 68 0 0 100 Environment 47 0 5 95 Gender Equality beyond Education 42 0 16 84

Note: The countries whose NDSs were reviewed for this MDG adaptation exercise includes Afghanistan, Albania, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Costa Rica, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Iraq, Madagascar, Mali, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Senegal, Sudan, Tajikistan, and Vietnam.

Three areas were identified as glaringly challenging. While only two-‐thirds of the plans set a reproductive health target, all of them set lower targets. The next area of concern was the environment where less than half of the countries set a target with 95% of those that did having opted for less ambitious targets for environmental sustainability. Unfortunately, gender equality also fared rather poorly in these national development plans, where only 40% set targets to eliminate gender disparity in wage employment and national governance. Out of those that set such a target, 84% fell below the MDG target of attaining gender equality in the workplace and in government by 2015.

3. Nature of MDG Adaptation to National Context Different countries have chosen different adaptation strategies. A review of the countries that have tailored the MDGs to their local contexts indicates that generally states use one of five strategies: 1) change of the target date either beyond 2015 or a shorter time-‐frame in line with medium-‐term frameworks; 2) inclusion of an additional goal to reflect a particular development challenge within the national context; 3) addition of new targets to existing goals; 4) expansion of the indicators to enhance tracking of the targets; and 5) disaggregation of the goals through subnational planning. More than half of the countries assessed as MDG localizers set their own target years. Some have

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extended the date beyond the 2015 deadline, such as Bangladesh’s 2021 extension. Others have chosen shorter time frames in line with the medium term frameworks, on which their plans are based, as in the case of Afghanistan (2013), Ethiopia (2010), and Iraq (2014). As a result, and because most of them do not list the values of their indicators based on 1990 but mostly take the year of the plan as the starting point, it is not right away recognizable whether they are overreaching the targets or reaching for less ambitious ones. However, in our sample of countries, changing the target year was always combined with one of the other strategies. One strategy has been the inclusion of an additional goal. Afghanistan’s 2008 Afghan National Development Strategy, for example, added a ninth goal to enhance security through such targets as reducing the proportion of illegally held weapons and reducing the contribution of opium to the total GDP. In a move to accost the EU governance standards by 2015, Albania also added a ninth goal on strengthening democratic governance, which it revised later to reflect its goal of improving governance for all citizens, in particular vulnerable groups. Albania set indicators that would monitor accountability, rule of law, and corruption. Similarly, Cambodia created its own goal to eliminate deaths resulting from “explosive remnants of war” through demining and victim assistance. To monitor national progress in achieving that goal, Cambodia listed targets that track areas cleared of mines and their renewed use for resettlement and agriculture. Mongolia also endorsed a ninth goal that aims to ‘strengthen human rights and foster democratic governance,’ incorporating such targets as upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, mainstreaming democratic principles, and developing a ‘zero-‐tolerance environment to corruption in all spheres of society.’ A second MDG adaptation strategy pursued has been that of incorporating additional targets in order to tailor the goals to their particular circumstances. For example, Afghanistan’s Goal 3 for women’s empowerment includes a target that measures gender disparity in access to justice while transforming the women’s representation target to one that increases female participation in elected and appointed bodies at all levels of governance. In line with standards that such quantifiable goals as the MDGs have set, these targets are all quantitative and time-‐bound, making monitoring and assessment of countries’ progress more feasible. Côte d’Ivoire incorporated an additional target into its Goal 7, which aims to improve the lives of at least 100 million inhabitants in shantytowns by 2020. Iraq designed a new target that is more in line with its realities and aims to reduce poverty by one-‐third by 2015. Albania might be one of the better examples of a country that has been actively revising its targets to reflect its changing realities. For example, pursuing its goal of joining the European Union, Albania revised its targets in order to bring them in line with EU standards by the year 2015. As a result, Albania revised most of its goals and added targets and indicators that would help it track achievement of standards that would help its candidacy for EU accession. For example, having already reached the education goal, it revised Goal 2 to incorporate quality of education and included additional targets to monitor its education quality with a view to reaching OECD standards while increasing public spending on basic education to the level of new EU members. Another adaptation strategy has included the expansion of indicators that reflect diverse local development challenges. For instance, because of the high incidence of HIV/AIDS, Haiti’s health focus is prominently on that epidemic leading it to include indicators that increase its monitoring capacity, such as transmission rate between mother and child and prevalence of HIV/AIDS among pregnant women. It has also increased its gender equality indicators to include prevalence of gender based violence, among other localized indicators for goals 3 and 6. Mali has focused its poverty goal on food poverty and rural

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development. As a result, it has included further indicators that measure food security such as increase in cereal production, livestock population, and fish. Similarly, Papua New Guinea has changed its targets to take into account its local context. This has led to its adoption of new indicators that track commercially produced agriculture while aiming much lower as compared to the global MDGs. A fourth strategy has been for countries to focus on pockets of poverty existing within societies. For example, Peru is a country with two faces. There is a huge rural urban divide, which largely also reflects the marginalization of the indigenous population. Cognizant of those disparities and committed to reduce poverty among the vulnerable groups, Peru has been monitoring disaggregated indicators, tailoring its targets to the divided realities on the ground. Similarly, Costa Rica, in addition to including further targets that better capture gender parity at different levels of education has disaggregated many of its targets, such as literacy and schooling rates among boys and girls, and poverty rates in urban and rural areas. Other countries have pursued this type of disaggregated strategy by advancing subnational MDG targets and indicators for regional strategy formulation and planning. For instance, Brazil has been a strong advocate of MDG-‐based planning at the municipal level thereby making the goals applicable to the subnational level. Due to subnational disparities, the localization of the goals has found traction among state governments, especially from those lagging behind in development and eager to highlight that fact, in order to attract attention and resources. One example is that of the Brazilian state Minas Gerais, which revised the goals and set new targets and indicators to take into account and respond to rising inequalities. Albania is another example of a country that developed subnational targets early on (2003) because of the willingness of regional and municipal governments to lobby for resources and highlight their needs. In Bangladesh, 41 sub-‐districts have developed MDG-‐based local development plans and trained close to 500 officials in the MDGs. Iraq similarly has recently produced MDG reports for its governorates in an attempt to bring the goals closer to the people. Having identified these varying adaptation strategies, the question arises as to why countries may choose a particular strategy over another. Do the countries that choose to add a goal have something in common? Could one predict a certain type of adaptation strategy based on a country’s features? To answer these questions, the diverse strategies identified in the national development plans under review were mapped against the following features of countries: income level, PRSP status, LDC category, SIDS/LLDC, costing exercise, and number of MDGRs. Because of the small number of countries, the analysis here is not considered to be deterministic. Rather, the aim is to discern any potential patterns that could help explain the choice of certain adaptation strategy over others. No patterns emerge when countries’ diverse adaptation strategies are mapped against their income level, LDC status, and ODA levels (the latter two are essentially proxies for income level, so perhaps there are no surprises there). Nonetheless, three of the four countries that receive no or little ODA, including Brazil, Iraq and Peru have chosen to localize the MDGs through sub-‐ national plans and/or disaggregation of the targets by region, gender, or ethnicity in order to take into account disparities within their societies. All these countries are composed of largely diverse groups, stratified by religion in Iraq, by race in Brazil, and by indigenous groups in Peru. This could potentially explain their rationale for choosing MDG-‐based planning that is aligned with the diverse priorities of their stratified population groups. Alternatively, the fact that these are middle-‐income countries that have mostly achieved the MDGs nationally may explain their focus on disparate local achievements and thus their inclination to pursue MDG localization at subnational levels.

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An attempt was also made to assess whether the existence of an MDG needs assessment might be correlated with increasing likelihood to align national plans with MDGs. The analysis indicates that 18 of the 32 countries whose national plans were aligned with the MDGs had conducted a needs assessment in order to cost their goal of achieving the MDGs. Figure 11 shows the results, which indicate that the existence of an MDG costing exercise may not signal MDG-‐based planning.

Figure 11: MDG-‐based National Planning, MDG Needs Assessment

MDG Needs Assessment No MDG Needs Assessment Total Aligned MDGs 18 14 32 Aligned referentially 5 3 8 Not aligned 1 9 10 Total 24 26 50

4. Impact of MDG-based Planning on Social Sector Spending To explore the degree to which social sectors may have benefited from increased funding as a result of MDG-‐based policy planning, this section examines the translation of plans into actual poverty-‐ reducing activities. Since government expenditure on health and education as a percentage of total government expenditure offers a good measure of translating plans into implementable programs, WDI data were sought to compare pre-‐ and post-‐NDS budget allocation of funds to social sectors.12 Very soon it became clear that this data is not as readily available as government expenditure as a percentage of GDP, however, the data on health were more complete than those on education and military. As mentioned above, in order to account for the potential time lag of putting into effect national development strategies, we chose to compare evolution of expenditure during the course of four years before and

12 In addition to availability and reliability of social expenditure data, it is important to note that they also do not reveal priorities regarding MDG-related targets. In other words, it is not clear whether funds were allocated to primary health care over curative care or basic education over tertiary education, etc.

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four years after the NDS (and in some rare cases we contended with three years). Because of this restriction, we could retrieve budget allocation to health sector for all but five countries. However, over three-‐quarters of the countries did not have data on government expenditure on education while roughly half had that data on military expenditure. Thus, we chose to first focus on public expenditure on health by comparing countries with MDG-‐aligned national strategies and those that had not aligned or solely referentially aligned their plans with the MDGs.

Figure 12: Public Spending on Health, MDG Aligners and Others

Constant/Decreased Health Spending

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As Figure 12 illustrates, out of the 45 countries for which health expenditure data was available, 28 were MDG aligners, 9 had not aligned their plans with MDGs, and 8 had aligned them referentially. The striking finding here is that proportionately as many of the countries that had aligned their strategies with the MDGs were likely to increase their health expenditure after the publication of their NDS as those that had not aligned their national plans. In other words, the probability of a country increasing its health budget in the years after the publication of their national development plan was the same for countries that had aligned their reports with MDGs and those that had not aligned them. Thus, the additional funding allocated to social sectors in MDG-‐aligned NDS does not seem to have translated into a substantial difference between the MDG aligners and the rest in terms of their actual spending. At the same time, 45% of the non-‐aligners and MDG aligners had nonetheless increased public spending on health in the years following their national development strategies when compared to a similar period prior to the NDS. This of course begs the question of whether any kind of norm absorption was taking hold in the national planning of the countries due to the international community’s repeated promise in 2005 to accelerate the achievement of the MDGs. This is a question that requires more detailed analysis and country case studies, which is beyond the scope of this paper.

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Was there any indication that higher spending on health may have correlated with lesser spending on military? To answer that question, we compared all the countries that had both military and health expenditure data available. This narrowed down our sample to 23 countries, out of which almost half or 16 had MDG-‐aligned national strategies, 5 had not aligned their plans, and 2 had only referenced the goals in passing. Figure 13 illustrates the results.

Figure 13: Public Spending on Health and Military, MDG Aligners and Others



Constant/Decreased Military Spending

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Aligned MDGs 9 7 12 4 Aligned referentially 2 0 0 2 Not aligned 3 2 2 3

One of the assumptions of this study has been that countries that have engaged in MDG-‐based national planning are more likely to allocate funds to social sectors. It is further assumed that this increased social expenditure would translate into a peace dividend whereby fewer funds would be funneled to the military. However, as Figure 13 illustrates, MDG aligners were just as likely to maintain or decrease their health expenditure as non-‐aligners. However, countries with MDG-‐based plans nevertheless spent less money on the military following their NDS as compared to a similar period prior to the plan. While over half of the MDG aligners maintained or decreased public spending on health, only one out of four increased military spending. While no causality is ascribed to this finding, clearly a higher proportion of MDG aligners have decreased military spending in the years following the MDG-‐incorporated national plan. Does this result hold, if we compare public spending on military and health while disaggregating between the countries that conducted an MDG needs assessment? Figure 14 seems to indicate that costing did not affect the propensity of countries to increase public

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spending on social sectors or decrease military expenditure. In fact, those countries that had conducted an MDG needs assessment were as likely to decrease their military expenditure as those that didn’t engage in a costing exercise. More puzzling is the finding that out of the 13 countries with a costing exercise and available health and military expenditure data, only 3 or 23% increased their health expenditure in the years following the MDG-‐based national plan analyzed for this study, while 60% of those without a costing exercise increased their health expenditure within a similar timeframe. Again, there seems to be evidence that the translation of these MDG-‐ based plans into actionable programs does not necessarily follow from the alignment of their national development strategies with the MDGs or the existence of an MDG needs assessment.

Figure 14: Public Spending on Health and Military, by Costing Exercise





MDG Costing 10 3 8 5 No MDG Costing 4 6 6 4 This is a crucial finding of this study, as analyses aiming to understand the translation of global goals into meaningful change have focused on either measuring countries’ successes in achieving the MDGs or assessing the incorporation of MDGs into their national development plans (in particular PRSPs). This analysis, however, suggests that even those countries that have undertaken MDG localization exercises may not necessarily follow up their planning targets with the funds required for successful implementation.

IV. Conclusion This study has reviewed post-‐2005 national development strategies of fifty countries from diverse income groups, geographical locations, human development tiers, and ODA levels to assess the extent

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to which national plans have tailored the Millennium Development Goals to their local contexts. The results of the analysis were mixed but offer some food for thought as we embark on the next series of global development goals. It is a testament to the power of global agendas that 32 of the fifty national plans reviewed have incorporated the MDGs, at times in a meaningful way, and at others, using the goals and targets as planning tools. This analysis indicates that although it may not be very straightforward to explain why countries choose different strategies, there are some patterns that indicate the likelihood of some countries to align their national plans with the MDGs versus others. PRSP, higher reliance on ODA, and lower income were correlated with higher proclivity of national plans to be aligned with the MDGs. On the other hand, countries that were in the higher income groups showed a lower likelihood to align their plans with the MDGs, a fact that has been attributed to the lower ceiling that the MDGs set for middle-‐income countries. Having started off with the assumption that MDG-‐based national planning equals national ownership of the MDGs, we conclude the report with the finding that these two may not signify the same thing. The five integration/adaptation strategies examined in this report indicate that different strategies may indeed speak to different degrees of national ownership of the MDGs. Further criteria and detailed case studies would be required to draw substantive conclusions, however, this study warns of the immediate praise that is leveled at countries that use one of the adaptation strategies without further investigating the actual ownership of the goals and their meaningful implementation within the national context of diverse countries. Further, closer analysis of social expenditure data indicates that the incorporation of the MDGs into national planning might not necessarily speak to a higher alignment of national budgets with the goals. In fact, whether governments chose to increase or decrease social spending on health and education could not be easily gleaned from their likelihood to align their national plans with the MDGs. In other words, governments may verbally accept the MDGs and even integrate their targets and indicators in their national strategies; however, this does not necessarily mean that resources are allocated for the implementation of those goals and targets. No causal claims could be made based on the analysis laid out in these pages, but this finding does call for further investigation into the link between planning and implementation of plans. The study did not go into detail about the MDG costing exercises, however it has highlighted the importance that these exercises took early on in the MDG experience. Indeed, a good amount of time and resources were dedicated to MDG needs assessments, and yet, it is not clear that these attempts necessarily led to an increasing propensity of governments to allocate funds to social sectors. In fact, the most discouraging finding of this analysis has been that despite increasing MDG-‐based national planning, this engagement with planning may not have translated into implementation. Non-‐aligned countries were found to be as likely to invest in social sectors as aligned countries. This could indicate that the focus has been disproportionately on designing MDG-‐based national plans rather than focusing on strategies to make MDG-‐aligned goals and targets actionable, supported by the necessary resources.

Annex 1: Countries and National Development Strategy Selection

COUNTRY

REGION

INCOME GROUP (UN)

PRSP

YEAR(S) OF NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

PLANS REVIEWED

Afghanistan Asia-Pacific (LDC) Low ✓ 2008 Albania Europe & CIS Lower Middle ✓ 2001, 2008 Armenia Europe & CIS Lower Middle ✓ 2003, 2008 Bangladesh Asia-Pacific (LDC) Low ✓ 2003, 2005, 2009, 2011 Bolivia Latin America & Caribbean Lower Middle ✓ 2006, 2010 Brazil Latin America & Caribbean Upper Middle 2004, 2007 Cambodia Asia-Pacific (LDC) Low ✓ 2006 Cape Verde Africa Lower Middle ✓ 2002, 2004 Central African Rep. Africa (LDC) Low ✓ 2007 China Asia-Pacific Upper Middle 2006, 2011 Costa Rica Latin America & Caribbean Upper Middle 2011 Côte d’Ivoire Africa Lower Middle ✓ 2002, 2009 Croatia Europe & CIS High 2006 Dem. Rep. of Congo Africa (LDC) Low ✓ 2002, 2006 Djibouti Arab States (LDC) Lower Middle ✓ 2001, 2004, 2008 Egypt Arab States Lower Middle 2007 Equatorial Guinea Africa (LDC) High 2007 Ethiopia Africa (LDC) Low ✓ 2000, 2003/4, 2005/6, 2007/8 Georgia Europe & CIS Lower Middle ✓ 2001, 2003 Ghana Africa Lower Middle ✓ 2002, 2003, 2006, 2010 Guatemala Latin America & Caribbean Lower Middle 2006 Guyana Latin America & Caribbean Lower Middle ✓ 2000, 2002 Haiti Latin America & Caribbean (LDC) Low ✓ 2006, 2008 India Asia-Pacific Lower Middle 2002, 2007 Indonesia Asia-Pacific Lower Middle 2004, 2009 Iran Asia-Pacific Upper Middle 2004, 2009 Iraq Arab States Lower Middle 2009, 2010 Jamaica Latin America & Caribbean Upper Middle 2004, 2007 Kazakhstan Europe & CIS Upper Middle 2012 Madagascar Africa (LDC) Low ✓ 2003, 2007 Mali Africa (LDC) Low ✓ 2002, 2005, 2006, 2013 Mauritius Africa Upper Middle 2010 Mexico Latin America & Caribbean Upper Middle 2001, 2007 Mongolia Asia-Pacific Low ✓ 2001, 2003, 2004 Morocco Arab States Lower Middle 2000 Nepal Asia-Pacific (LDC) Low ✓ 2000, 2003 Nigeria Africa Lower Middle ✓ 2004 Pakistan Asia-Pacific Lower Middle ✓ 2001, 2003 Papua New Guinea Asia-Pacific Upper Middle 2005, 2010 Peru Latin America & Caribbean Upper Middle 2011 Philippines Asia-Pacific Lower Middle 2004, 2009 Russian Federation Europe & CIS Upper Middle 2008 Saudi Arabia Arab States High 2006, 2010 Senegal Africa (LDC) Lower Middle ✓ 2000, 2005, 2006, 2013 South Africa Africa Upper Middle 2010 Sudan, Rep. of the Arab States (LDC) Lower Middle ✓ 2005, 2007, 2013 Tajikistan Europe & CIS Low ✓ 2002, 2007 Thailand Asia-Pacific Upper Middle 2007 Turkey Europe & CIS Upper Middle 2007 Viet Nam Asia-Pacific Lower Middle ✓ 2001, 2002, 2005