Towards country ownership?: an analysis of donor-commissioned evaluations of aid programs and projects in the Philippines

It has been more than a decade since the development community declared in Paris that aid could and should work, and along with it came the recognition that country ownership is necessary in realizing that goal. Although international assistance has since shifted to empha-sizing the importance of this dimension, it is still not being fully espoused in development evaluation, specifically those commissioned by donors. The study endeavors to determine the extent the Philippine government – a long-time recipient of aid – owns and influences donor-commissioned evaluations. The study investigates the main dimensions of evaluation practice wherein political influences may either or allow country ownership to take place: evaluation purpose and intended use, evaluator, and methodology. The analysis involves the review of 90 ex-post evaluation studies commissioned by the top aid donors in the Philip-pines from 2010 up to present, and used the impact evaluation of the Kalahi-CIDDS pro-gram conducted by the Millennium Challenge Corporation as a case study to elucidate the politics involved in donor evaluations. A mix of quantitative (descriptive statistics) and qual-itative (key informant interviews, desk review) was employed to provide a robust empirical analysis. The study finds that the Philippine government’s ownership and influence in these evaluations are limited due to a confluence of factors. While both donors and the Philippine government share a common purpose for and intended use of evaluations, the dominant practices of donors limit the actual use of evaluation results for their own organizational needs. Donors also predominantly enlist in-house consultants or heavily rely on foreign ex-pertise to conduct evaluations. Finally, donor evaluations remain conventional in its use of positivist methodologies (such as surveys and experimental designs) in evaluations, and have not yet transitioned to the use of participatory approaches which embody the principle of ownership more. Challenges of the Philippine government and donors, and recommenda-tions to address them are likewise provided.