COUNTERPARTS - CONCEPTS AND MODELS

Most international development agencies rely on the counterpart concep t to achieve the transfer of knowledge between experts necessary to es tablish, maintain, and expand development programs. Achievement of tha t transfer of knowledge requires that those in the counterpart relatio nship continually renegotiate their roles, relationships, statuses, an d functions as the program is planned, implemented, and evaluated. Mos t discussions of counterparts suggest that the transfer of knowledge i s unilateral, i.e., from the foreign expert to the host country nation al. The predominant Core Counterpart Model is a circumscribed one-on-o ne relationship lasting the life of the project and confined to the le vel of the bureaucratic hierarchy that houses it. This paper describes four variations of the Core Model: 1) Multilateral Model; 2) Multilat eral-Multilevel Model; 3) Team Model; and 4) Counterpart Development M odel. The counterpart relationship is visualized as processual in natu re across a spectrum of knowledge transfer. Each model is illustrated by case examples from two programs to prepare college-level nurse-facu lty in the People's Republic of China. The case examples demonstrate h ow configurations of models can change over the life of the project wi thout necessitating changes in counterparts.