More flexible SWAps which specifically address exclusion problems could be developed.

Future SWAps should analyse discrimination, implement participatory consultations and increase capacity on anti-exclusion measures through technical assistance.

While some SWAps promote limited gender mainstreaming, increased focus on gender issues in education, health and agriculture needs to be endorsed.

Although SWAps seem not to have explicitly addressed exclusion issues, policy work on improving equity often falls within wider SWAp initiatives on health or education.

Each of these approaches can be used to promote anti-exclusion policy: With SWAps, donor funding is earmarked to a policy sector, independent of the national budgetary process, whereas GBS directly funds the central budget. Sector-Wide Approaches (SWAps) and General Budget Support (GBS) are two aid instruments within the new aid modality. However, developing countriesвЂ™ interest in increasing national identity within PRSPs may reduce the focus on exclusion.

Early вЂњsecond-generationвЂќ PRSPs in Tanzania and Uganda suggest that the quality of policy debate has improved and that the linkage of PRSPs to national budgets has strengthened.

Although some marginalised groups were consulted in PRSPs, limits on their participation also reduced the focus on exclusion.

The failure to emphasise exclusion in PRSPs relates to their increasing focus on national government empowerment, which can restrain donors from commenting on governmentsвЂ™ unwillingness to incorporate excluded groups.

In some PRSPs, where anti-exclusion policy is discussed strategically, there is insufficient detail on methods of policy implementation. However, some countriesвЂ™ PRSPs incorporate anti-exclusion policies as instruments to reduce poverty and promote social cohesion.

Economic growth, empowerment and security are the dominant objectives in PRSPs: exclusion is often included in a fragmented way.

Various findings are made on the responsiveness of PRSPs to exclusion issues: The high investment costs of new aid modalities may deter governments from supporting the types of grassroots, anti-exclusion action previously undertaken. PRSPsвЂ™ poverty-reduction priorities may reduce commitment to exclusion issues.

However, the effectiveness of PRSPs in driving policy is questionable as they can have a tenuous relationship with budgetary allocations and regulation of government performance. PRSPs are at the centre of the new aid environment which seeks to build partner countriesвЂ™ policy ownership and institutional capacity. It argues that donor countries should promote participatory consultations and national ownership of anti-exclusion policies in PRSPs, while monitoring the use of new funding instruments to encourage action on exclusion. To what extent have Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) addressed exclusion issues? How can the new aid modalities be used to encourage anti-exclusion policies in the developing world? This paper from the Overseas Development Institute surveys PRSPs worldwide to ascertain the responsiveness of the new aid modalities to excluded groups.

Instruments that start with z