Join the Dialogue: Effective Negotiation and Development Funding

Join the follow-up dialogue to Nepal's Negotiating Health Development Leadership Training Workshop.

What is your response to the following scenario and the specific question posed?

Ministries of Health sometimes seek to move toward basket funding mechanisms, meaning that donor funds are pooled to support the whole health sector and the agreed-upon priorities. However, Ministry of Health officials are generally enticed to draw in additional development funding whether through traditional project-based funding or basket-funding mechanisms. For this reason, when the possibility of drawing in new funding outside a basket mechanism is on the table it is extremely difficult for the Ministry officials to just "walk away" from the negotiating table.

How can Ministry of Health leaders effectively negotiate a "win-win" with development partners to generate new resources for the health sector and at the same time increase investment through a basket funding mechanism?

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Joignez-vous au dialogue : Comment négocier efficacement avec les partenaires du développement

Joignez-vous au dialogue de suivi sur l’Atelier de formation au leadership pour la négociation du développement de la santé (Negotiating Health Development Leadership Training Workshop) qui s’est tenu au Népal.

Quelle est votre réponse au scénario suivant et à la question spécifique qui est posée ?

Ministères de la santé cherchent parfois d’évoluer vers des mécanismes de financement commun, ce qui signifie que les fonds des donateurs sont mis en commun pour soutenir l’ensemble du secteur de la santé et les priorités sur lesquelles tous les acteurs se sont accordés. Cependant, les responsables des Ministères de la Santé sont généralement attirés par l’idée de tirer des fonds additionnels des donateurs, que ce soit en utilisant des mécanismes traditionnels de financement de projets particuliers ou par le biais de mécanismes de financement commun. Pour cette raison, lorsqu’il existe une possibilité de tirer de nouveaux fonds en dehors d’un mécanisme de financement commun, il est extrêmement difficile pour les responsables d’un Ministère de quitter la table de négociation.

Comment les dirigeants des Ministères de la Santé pourraient-ils parvenir à négocier avec les partenaires du développement des solutions où tout le monde est gagnant afin de produire de nouvelles ressources pour le secteur de la santé tout en augmentant simultanément les investissements par le biais d’un mécanisme de financement commun ?

Comments

Liz McClintock (not verified)

February 9, 2010 - 8:12pm

Sometimes one of the most difficult challenges in negotiation is a situation where there is a perceived power imbalance, such as a donor-recipient relationship. In these cases, the "weaker" party may feel obligated to accept the conditions of the "stronger" party in order to assure that the negotiation they are engaged in ends "successfully". However, this is not an effective way to improve negotiation outcomes, especially because giving in to the more powerful party's conditions means that your agreement may never get implemented because it does not conform to the recipient's internal constraints. Instead, the "weaker" party should make the negotiation about criteria explicit. In the case of basket funding, there are usually very good and solid reasons for recipient countries to have decided to pool resources - national policy makers have better health data about their population; they have a clearer sense of national priorities; and they need ownership of both the process and the resources in order to assure effective implementation. As a result, policy makers need to explicitly reference the evidence (data) that supports their desire for basket funding (i.e. Where are the successes? What are the advantages that other ministries or countries have discovered?); underscore how the national policy was arrived at (e.g. a negotiation in parliament or with other ministries); and demonstrate how donor funds will be used (e.g. the mechanisms for protecting against fraud) to defend their decision to go with the basket funding. At the same time, negotiators need to demonstrate how the basket funding can serve the interests of the donor. This approach is far more effective than simply advocating for basket funding for its own sake. Use criteria to effectively manage this challenge.