Research on the roles of aid agencies in basic education policymaking in Vietnam : Focus on Japan's roles

越南教育部门的援助协调主要有三个趋势。首先，从没有越南政府参与的捐助者之间的协调，转向在政府领导下建立捐助者和政府之间的协调体系。其次，它正在从被动的“分工”式协调转向捐助者之间主动协调的活动（例如，多捐助方项目）。第三，它正在从分部门和目标地点一级的协调转向部门一级有组织的协调。特别是在接受大量援助的初等教育分部门，协调工作从侧重初等教育转向避免目标地区和地点的重复，并进一步将援助纳入初等教育（从残疾儿童初级教育项目到有针对性的预算支助和全部门办法），这表明援助协调从被动式向主动式“演变”。这些发展是重要的，应被称为“第二代协调”。“援助协调仍然是一个两难问题，即为减少交易费用而加强协调可能导致费用增加，因为必须为协调工作本身调动资源。自主权和伙伴关系的条件听起来可能合理，但实际上，这些条件可能不利于发展捐助者与政府之间的关系，因为捐助者在提供援助方面拥有压倒性的权力。

There are mainly three trends in aid coordination in Vietnam's education sector. First, it is moving from inter-donor coordination without the participation of the Vietnamese government towards the construction of a coordination system between donors and the government under the government's leadership. Second, it is moving from passive "division of labor" style coordination towards proactively coordinated activities among donors (e.g., multi-donor projects). Third, it is moving from coordination at sub-sector and target location levels towards organized coordination at sector level. In particular, in the sub-sector of primary education which receives overwhelming aid, the coordination moved from the focus on primary education, to the avoidance of redundancy of target area and location, and further to the integration of aid to primary education (from Primary Education Project for Disadvantaged Children to Targeted Budget Support and Sector-Wide Approaches), which shows an "evolution" of aid coordination from reactive style to proactive one. These developments are significant and should be called a "second generation coordination."Aid coordination retains a dilemma that intensified coordination for the purpose of the reduction of transaction costs may lead to higher costs because of the necessity of mobilizing resources for the coordination effort itself. The terms of ownership and partnership may sound rational, but in reality those terms could be harmful to the development of the relationship between donors and the government because donors have overwhelming power in terms of aid delivery.