Dan Honig, Assistant Professor of International Development, Johns Hopkins SAIS

Short Bio

I'm an assistant professor of international development at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), a non-resident fellow at the Center for Global Development, a member of the Scholars Strategy Network, and on the editorial board of the Journal of Public Policy. My research focuses on the relationship between organizational structure, management practice, and performance in developing country governments and organizations that provide foreign aid. I am currently focused primarily on "Mission-Driven Bureaucrats", exploring the relationship between motivation, management practice, and performance in Bangladesh, Ghana, Thailand, and the US amongst other places. I also have ongoing projects related to transparency, accountability, and performance inside foreign aid donor organizations.

I'm currently (academic year 20-21) a visiting fellow at Leiden University (Netherlands)' Institute of Political Science, and have previously held visiting appointments at Thammasat University (Bangkok)'s Department of Economics and the West Africa Research Center in Dakar, Senegal. I've also held a variety of positions outside of the academy. I was special assistant, then advisor, to successive Ministers of Finance (Liberia); ran a local nonprofit focused on helping post-conflict youth realize the power of their own ideas through agricultural entrepreneurship (East Timor); and have worked for a number of local and international NGOs. I've additionally worked and/or done research in India, Israel, Senegal, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, and Thailand. A proud Detroiter, I hold a BA from the University of Michigan (Go Blue!) and a Ph.D. from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.

If you're looking for data or info on my 2018 book Navigation by Judgment: Why and When Top-Down Control of Foreign Aid Won't Work, scroll down for a description of the work or to download the public Project Performance Database (PPD), to my knowledge the world's largest database of aid project outcomes across multiple organizations.

If you're a SAIS or Leiden student looking to meet with me, please schedule a time via Calendly here.

Honig CV November 2020 (pdf)Download

Publications

Academic Peer Review

Bertelli, A., M. Hassan, D. Honig, D. Rogger, & M. Williams. (2020). An Agenda for the Study of Public Administration in Developing Countries. Governance 33:4, 735-748.

Honig, D. (2020). Information, Power, & Location: World Bank Staff Decentralization and Aid Project Success.Governance 33:4, 749-769. Author's Final Version and online appendix downloadable below.

Bisbee, J. & D. Honig. (2020). Flight to Safety: 2020 Democratic Primary Election Results and COVID-19. Journal of COVID Economics 3, 54-84. (Preprint; editorial, not peer, reviewed)

Honig, D. & C. Weaver. (2019). A Race to the Top?: The Aid Transparency Index and the Social Power of Global Performance Indicators. International Organization 73:3, 579-610. Related erratum here. Authors' final version and online appendix downloadable below. Reprinted (with some alterations/improvements) in Kelley, J. & B. Simmons (editors), 2020. The Power of Global Performance Indicators, Cambridge University Press. Chapter 5, 157-191.

Honig, D. (2019). When Reporting Undermines Performance: The Costs of Politically Constrained Organizational Autonomy in Foreign Aid Implementation. International Organization 73:1, 171-201. Author's final version and online appendix downloadable below.

Honig, D. (2019) Case Study Design and Analysis as a Complementary Empirical Strategy to Econometric Analysis in the Study of Public Agencies: Deploying Mutually Supportive Mixed Methods. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 29:2, 299-317.

Honig, D. (2018) Navigation by Judgment: Why and When Top Down Management of Foreign Aid Doesn't Work. Oxford University Press.

Honig, D. & N. Gulrajani. (2018). Making Good On Donors' Desire to Do Development Differently. Third World Quarterly 39:1, 68-84.

Grossman, S. & D. Honig. (2017). Evidence from Lagos on Discrimination across Ethnic and Class Identities in Informal Trade. World Development 96: 520-528. Replication materials and code here. Authors' final version downloadable below.

Other Publications

Policy & Working Papers

Honig, D. (2020). Actually Navigating by Judgment: Towards a New Paradigm of Donor Accountability Where the Current System Doesn’t Work. Center for Global Development Policy Paper 169.

Honig, D., Lall, R., and Parks, B. (2020). When Does Transparency Improve Institutional Performance? Evidence from 20,000 Aid Projects in 183 Countries. AidData Working Paper #100. Williamsburg, VA: AidData at William & Mary.

Campbell, S., D. Honig, and S. Rose. (2020). Creating an Accountability Framework that Serves the Global Fragility Act's Mission. Center for Global Development.

Honig, D. (2019). The Power of Letting Go. Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2019. Downloadable below.

Honig, D. and Lant Pritchett. (2019). The Limits of Accounting-Based Accountability in Education (and Far Beyond): Why More Accounting Will Rarely Solve Accountability Problems. Center for Global Development Working Paper 510. Washington, DC: Center for Global Development. Also issued as Research on Improving Systems in Education (RISE) Working Paper 19-030.

Honig, D. & S. L. Cramer. (2017). Strengthening Somalia’s Systems Smartly: A Country Systems Risk Benefit Analysis. Washington, D.C.: World Bank Group.

Gulrajani, N. & D. Honig (2016). Reforming Donors in Fragile States: Using Public Management Theory More Strategically. Overseas Development Institute (ODI) Report.

Honig, D. (2016). More Autonomy for Donor Organizations and Their Agents (Sometimes): Bringing Organizational Behavior and Management Theory to Foreign Aid Delivery. Winner of the GDN Next Horizons 2014 Essay Contest, Supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Revised version.

Blogs, Op-Eds, Briefs, & Other Shorter Writing

Honig, D. (2020) Managing Better: What All of Us Can Do to Encourage Aid Success. Center for Global Development Policy Brief.

Bisbee, J. & D. Honig. (2020). Sanders was losing to Biden anyway. But he lost more in areas with coronavirus cases. Washington Post Monkey Cage, April 2, 2020.

Honig, D. (2019). Putting “Account” at the Center of “Accountability”: Why ICT Won’t Improve Education Systems (and Beyond), and What Will. Center for Global Development, May 24, 2019.

Honig, D. (2019). Let Local Leaders Lead: Why Donors Should Create More Space for Local Leadership. Development Leadership Program Blog, September 27. Center for Global Development version here.

Honig, D. (2017). How Frequent Reporting of Quantitative Accountability Measures Can Undermine Bureaucratic Performance. Basic Facts Brief, Scholars Strategy Network.

Honig, D. & J. Johnson (2017). Body Cameras Work - Just Not in the Way You Think (Op-ed). "On Policing", Police Foundation.

Book Reviews

Honig, D. (2020). Tyranny of Metrics by Jerry Z. Muller. Governance 33:3, 714-717.

Barma, N., S. Campbell, D. Honig, R. Ginty, & J. Rovner (2019). Roundtable on Campbell's Global Governance & Local Peace: Accountability & Performance in International Peacebuilding. Roundable 10-24, H-Diplo/ISSF.

Honig, D. (2018). The Development Dance: How Donors and Recipients Negotiate the Delivery of Foreign Aid by Haley Swedlund. Perspectives on Politics 16:4, 1233-1234.

Current Projects

Under Review

When Does Transparency Improve Institutional Performance? Evidence from 20,000 Projects in 183 Countries. Joint with Ranjit Lall and Brad Parks.

Bad Actors or Bad Actions?: Developing Country Bureaucrats, Character, and Corruption.

Flight to Safety: COVID-Induced Risk Aversion in 2020 Democratic Primary Vote Choice. Joint with James Bisbee.

Management Practice and Intrinsic Motivation in the Public Service: Evidence from Over Four Million Individuals & Two Thousand Agencies Across Five Countries

Motivated MSW Students and Child Welfare Job Choice in Wayne County, Michigan. Joint with Joanne Sobeck & Lena Borragina-Ballard.

In Progress

Towards More Effective Government Service Delivery in Bangladesh: Local Engineers Mission & Motivation. Joint with Tim Besley & Adnan Khan.

Mission Match, Career Concerns, and Effectiveness: Thai Ampur-Level Vertical Bureaucrats.

Global Economic Governance in Action: When and Why States Act on the IMF's Executive Board. Joint with Alexander Kentikelenis & Timon Forster.

The Bargaining Bureaucrat: The Power and Agency of Bureaucrats to “Make”, not just to “Take”. Joint with Özsel Beleli.

Politicizing Capacity: Moving Beyond Country-Level Measures of State Potential Performance to Actual Comparative Behavior. Joint with Jen Tobin.

Policy-makers not Policy-takers: How Bureaucrats, not Principals, Catalyze IO Mission-aligned Performance. Joint with Susanna Campbell.

What World Bank Projects Get Evaluated? The Personnel Political Economy of Selection into RCTs. Joint with Vincenzo Di Maro, Arianna Legovini, Brad Parks, & Jennifer Rogla.

Back to the Future of Development: Mapping and Navigating a Fragmenting Field. Joint with Greg Larson & Michael Woolcock.

Honig 2020, Information Power and Location, Governance; Author's Final Version & Online Appendix (pdf)Download

Honig Weaver 2019, ATI Race to the Top, International Organization; Authors Final Version (pdf)Download

Honig Weaver 2019, ATI Race to the Top, International Organization; Online Appendix (pdf)Download

Honig 2019 When Reporting Undermines Performance, International Organization; Author's Final Version (pdf)Download

Honig 2019, When Reporting Undermines Performance, International Organization; Online Appendix (pdf)Download

Honig 2019, Power of Letting Go, Stanford Social Innovation Review (pdf)Download

Grossman Honig 2017, Evidence From Lagos, World Development; Authors' Final Version & Online Appendi (pdf)Download

Oxford University Press, 2018

High-quality implementation of foreign aid programs often requires contextual information that cannot be seen by those in distant headquarters. Tight controls and a focus on reaching pre-set measurable targets often prevent front-line workers from using skill, local knowledge, and creativity to solve problems in ways that maximize the impact of foreign aid. Drawing on a novel database of over 14,000 discrete development projects (downloadable below) across nine aid agencies and eight paired case studies of development projects, I conclude that aid agencies will often benefit from giving field agents the authority to use their own judgments to guide aid delivery. This “Navigation by Judgment” is particularly valuable when environments are unpredictable and when accomplishing an aid program’s goals is hard to accurately measure. Accomplishing results and accounting for results are sometimes in tension; focusing agents on meeting metrics sometimes undermines performance.

From the back cover:

"Honig's brilliant new book shows that when implementation is complex the ever greater tendency to reduce accountability to narrow accounting actually harms rather than helps aid effectiveness. Management and staff of every development organization will benefit from his insights." --Lant Pritchett, Professor of the Practice of International Development, Harvard Kennedy School

"Dan Honig provides a novel, rigorous empirical examination of the outcomes of foreign aid efforts, opening up fresh possibilities for getting things done in unpredictable settings. In doing so, he offers an original approach to the age-old problems of delegation and control. Honig is a new voice to be reckoned with." --Walter W. Powell, Stanford University

"In a panoramic study that establishes a new baseline for excellence in its domain, Dan Honig shows the vast costs of overzealous management, and why politicians and funders need to let foreign aid programs adapt themselves to local context." --Daniel Carpenter, Allie S. Freed Professor of Government, Harvard University

"Honig assesses the conditions under which high levels of agent discretion are likely to out-perform heavily controlled, top-down management practices when providing development assistance. He couples an impressive number of interviews with original statistical analysis to provide important and timely insights for scholars of international organizations and practitioners seeking to employ best practices in foreign aid delivery." --Sarah Bermeo, Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University

"Honig has written an important book that deserves to be seriously engaged by both development practitioners and the scholarly community. Expertly mixing methods and drawing on systematic, comparative data, Honig explores the inner-workings of development agencies, demonstrating the conditions under which decentralizing authority to officials in the field generates better development outcomes. At a moment when how we deliver foreign assistance is a source of contentious political debate, Honig's contribution provides rigorous, empirical evidence to help guide policymakers as they consider organizational reform." --Jeremy M. Weinstein, Professor of Political Science, Stanford University

BUY THE BOOK

The Project Performance Database (PPD)

Downloadable below is a .zip archive with the public Project Performance Database (PPD). The archive contains project data in .csv format, a detailed codebook, and supporting documentation from individual agencies where available.

The PPD is, at present, the world's largest database of development projects which includes project outcome ratings of holistic project performance. The PPD contains over 14,000 unique projects from eight agencies: The Asian Development Bank, the UK's Department for International Development, the Global Fund for AIDS, TB, and Malaria, the German Society for International Cooperation (GiZ), the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the Japanese International Cooperation Agency, the German Development Bank (KfW), and the World Bank. The public PPD excludes the EC data used in Navigation by Judgment due to a confidentiality agreement. World Bank data is public and easily accessible. I thank AsDB, GFATM, JICA, and KfW for their release of information in response to requests. GiZ, IFAD, and JICA information was coded from publicly available project-level reports.

I believe this data can be of substantial use to scholars of international organizations, aid effectiveness, organizational behavior, and public management, among others. I am very keen to see the PPD put to use; if I can answer any questions or provide any clarification on the data, or be of help thinking through potential uses of the data, etc. please do not hesitate to contact me.

Originally made public in February 2018, below is the February 2019 version of the archive, incorporating user suggestions and corrections as well as user-generated coding which improve the data's usability. This February 2019 version also adds original project IDs where available, facilitating the linkage of these data to other existing data (OECD DAC-CRS, AidData, etc.) These data are also hosted on the Harvard Dataverse here.

Project Peformance Database February 8 2019 (zip)

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Dan Honig

Short Bio

Publications

Oxford University Press, 2018

The Project Performance Database (PPD)

Teaching

Contact Information