Learning matters because Researcher/Consultant: Development Effectiveness, Financing for Development, EU Joint Programming (Country Strategy and Analysis), Policy Dialogue, Political Economy Analysis Associate Faculty, Human Security and Peacebuilding, Royal Roads University

- Alexander O'Riordan

Over twenty years international development experience with specializations in political economy analysis, country strategies, multi-donor initiatives, transaction costs, division of labour and development effectiveness. Currently provides development partner country offices and headquarters with programming strategy advice (including on improving implementation efficiencies/reducing transaction and implementation costs), political economy and policy analysis, mid-term reviews and evaluations. Extensive experience with applied political economy analysis (PEA). Previously Team Leader for a four-country applied PEA on fiscal space for UNICEF, Team Leader for a political economy analysis on public sector reform and later on TVET for the UK Government, a senior analyst on PEA for USAID on HIV/AIDS and for the EU on agricultural modernisation. His doctoral research was on the political economy of donor allocations of development assistance for which the Open Society Foundation funded a portion of the research on South Africa as an emerging development partner and the political economy incentives it was responding to in Mozambique. The PhD research argued that ‘transaction costs’ are better thought of as meaningful indicators of the political incentives that drive programming decisions. Since 2009 been an independent consultant mainly on long-term assignments for the European Union, USAID, UNDP, UNICEF, DANIDA and governance civil society organizations like Pact and IDASA. O’Riordan has also worked as an advisor to Ministries of Finance in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Jamaica, Kenya, Laos and South Africa. Prior to that he worked for UNDP in Bulgaria and the EU Delegations to South Africa, Kenya and Jamaica. Associate faculty with Royal Roads University in Canada. O’Riordan has experience working in more than twenty countries globally covering Eastern and Southern Africa, the Horn, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and the Balkans, the Caucuses, South and South East Asia, the Pacific and the Caribbean.