OWNERSHIP AND PARTICIPATION IN AID PROJECTS A qualitative study of workers perceptions of work methods, constraints and motives to ownership and participation reforms in the aid project Bai Bang

Abstract: The purpose of the essay is to develop a better understanding of aid- actors and implementors perceptions of efforts to create ownership and participation in aid projects. In research and policy literature on international aid, the terms ownership and participation have emerged as fundamental components for ensuring the success of aid (Rabinowitz 2015, Kanji & Greenwood 2001, Brown 2017). Ownership and participation involve practices to give aid receivers the ability to exercise effective ownership, sense of empowerment and cooperation throughout the development of policies, actions, and ways of implementation in the aid project (Rabinowitz 2015). There are however constraints to pursuing ownership and participation reforms, and literature suggests that ownership and co-decisiveness during aid relations is a complex matter where one has to weigh the pros and cons between ownership reforms and project performance (De Valk 2004, Mansuri and Rao 2013, Mansuri 2012). There is hence reason to investigate how these constraints appear, and how the possibilities with working methods shaped by ownership and participation materialize, when questioning implementors and actors who were present during an aid project. By conducting interviews with workers from the former Swedish-Vietnamese aid project Bai Bang, this study develops the understanding of how implementers experience ownership and participation reforms, what the hindrances look like, and what the basic motives to the reforms are, from a perspective rarely investigated.. The results show that former research’s frameworks for investigating ownership are relevant, and that the hindrances to ownership and participation in aid are experienced in a wide range and furthermore that the main motive to ownership reforms in Bai Bang was the practical use of co-decisiveness.