"Capacity development is a vague concept that is used to justify specific reforms that have real ramifications at the international, and also at the project level," explained doctoral student Stefan Roch. He went on to explain that the World Bank and other donor organizations define capacity development in a very particular way – one that encompasses a number of contradictory aims. "They insist, for example, that capacity development be ongoing, and yet there must be defined outcomes," he said. "It must be both domestically owned and also be consistent with internationally accepted best practices." Roch noted that these contradictions serve a purpose in that they enable the World Bank and others to claim successes that have not truly been achieved.
Roch, who made his presentation during the Annual Doctoral Conference 2016 on April 5, says that he became interested in this topic while doing research in Moldova for his dissertation on EU Twinning projects. What he found in Moldova was that there was a difference between what the World Bank said it had achieved, and the perceptions of those living in the country. "The Institute for Public Policy Moldova published some data in 2015 that shows how people responded to this question: Is your country heading in the right direction?" What the data shows very dramatically is that "more and more people believe that their country is headed in the wrong direction," said Roch. He says that he does not blame the World Bank, "yet there is a point to be made about the World Bank enabling Moldova to retain a western façade that signals change and modernization yet in fact is steered in the opposite direction, toward ever more political chaos and continuously deteriorating living conditions."
In his comments on Roch's "interesting and well-done" paper, School of Public Policy Associate Professor Michael Dorsch urged him to analyze the incentives of the World Bank and others. "Why are they doing what they do," he asked? Dorsch suggested also that Roch take a look at other governance indicators to see if they correlated with the World Bank indicators. "I would be interested in knowing also," said Dorsch, "whether Moldova is an exception or do your observations hold across countries?"