ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasizes the principle of plausibility to examine critical difficulties encountered by cooperation and aid programmes. These difficulties have been generally underestimated or ignored in evaluation. In contrast to cooperation theory, the success or failure of cooperation policies depends largely on the way in which contact between communities of donors and recipients (in a broad sense) develops and gains significance amongst the parties involved. The start up of an aid programme is a construction that takes shape in the negotiation phase and which is then followed by a system for resource mobilization. Contacts among parties may be new or tested in time; one-off or continuative; fertile and lasting, innovative, sporadic, a righteous duty, or even a dead weight to be shed as soon as possible. Contact evokes various reactions of assimilation, aloofness or rejection; it may encourage partnership, which is a key feature of effective development programmes. Assimilation, aloofness and rejection are themes of unquestionable interest for evaluation for the very reason that they indicate the plausibility of programmed actions.
