This book fills a vacuum for those interested in development policy and administration. Development administration has been a subfield very much in limbo for the past two decades as the market and civil society have attracted prime interest among development analysts and practitioners. Anil Hira and Trevor Parfitt argue that development assistance agencies, such as the United States Agency for International Development, its bilateral counterparts in Europe, and the World Bank, continue to insist on a mode of operation that perpetuates the same weaknesses that were identified in earlier literature on development administration and management. These agencies insist on short time spans for the activities that they fund. They treat these projects as if void of people. They fail to share information with potential beneficiaries. Above all, they do not hold themselves to the same high standards of accountability and transparency that they impose on recipients of their aid. With more and more development activities being carried out by community-based organizations and other nongovernmental bodies, these aid agencies have increasingly become part of the problem, not just the solution. The gap between donor and recipient has simply become too big to overcome.

Development Projects for a New Millennium is organized into seven chapters of varying length. It begins with a useful overview of development aid in the post–Cold War era. It focuses on why foreign aid has become less important and why new concepts as well as theories in aid delivery have evolved to reflect postmodernist influences on what development entails and how it may be practiced in an era when positivist assumptions are no longer taken for granted. The subsequent three chapters examine the shortcomings associated with dominant approaches to project analysis and implementation. The authors point to the blueprint approach to project design, logical framework analysis, and environmental impact analyses as examples of inappropriate and unhelpful approaches to development. The two authors also remain critical of recent initiatives aimed at bringing about more policy dialogue with aid recipient governments because the terms for these consultations are really set by the donor organizations. Chapter 4 is a critique of efforts at decentralization by the donors. In the view of the two authors, these have been conceived first and foremost as administrative and cost-saving measures instead of providing true opportunities for people to have a say in development.

The next two chapters introduce the concept of participation and how various forms of participatory analyses have come to dominate the mode of operation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). A distinction is made between forms of participatory analyses that are primarily consultative and those that are empowering. The growth of a gender perspective in development has encouraged an increasing emphasis on empowerment, not just of women but also of other groups that hitherto have lacked a voice in public debates. The book ends with a discussion of project evaluations where the main point is that donor agencies have great difficulty in accepting independent evaluations and rarely really learn anything from these studies that shape their practices.

I find the greatest value of this book lying in its historical perspective on ideas and practices in development policy and administration. It is a useful text in this subfield, whether the student's interest is in policy analysis or implementation. It demonstrates how, despite shifts in approach, reductionist ambitions have prevailed at the cost of consideration of context. The concluding chapter on evaluations includes a list of measures that the two authors consider could be done to enhance the prospect that development projects will really yield anticipated outcomes. A longer time horizon for planning and evaluation, more input from potential beneficiaries, participatory forms of evaluation, and the need for considering a project's political sustainability are among measures that are recommended. Unfortunately, the authors do not provide much evidence of how the measures can be made to work. Above all, they do not take their argumentation to its logical conclusion by asking whether improvements are possible so long as donor agencies remain as dominant as they are, especially in sub-Saharan Africa.

There are increasing calls for restructuring the ways donor funds are disbursed in recipient countries. The bilateral agreements that each donor seeks with a recipient government or an international NGO put definite limits on accountability, transparency, and, not the least, sustainability—political as well as economic. These critics believe that a new phase in development management would only come if and when donors are ready to treat foreign aid as investments in public trust funds, incorporated in recipient countries and jointly managed by boards made up of representatives appointed by the recipient government, civil society, and resource providers. By letting these funds serve as intermediaries, much of the direct pressure from donors to micromanage would cease. A more demand-driven approach to development would emerge. Perhaps most importantly, this approach would facilitate local institution building and lay the foundation for more democratic forms of governance in society at large. The two authors do not consider this approach, but it is a more realistic route to the reform of development management than trying to wed participatory forms of development to the imperatives of bureaucratic organizations like the donor agencies. Bernard Schaffer (“The Deadlock of Development Administration,” in Colin Leys, ed., Politics and Change in Developing Countries, 1969) drew attention to this impossibility already 35 years ago. It is a pity that the authors in their postmodernist euphoria do not go further to examine whether their own calls for action really can be acted upon without a more radical shift in the way that donor agencies themselves operate.