William Easterly published a new book,
called “The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, andthe Forgotten Rights of the Poor,” which examines how would-be
do-gooders such as humanitarians, bureaucrats, and developmental
economists have historically prized economic growth over the rights
of the individuals they’re presumably trying to help. Easterly
says not only has this jeopardized the life and property of people in
developing nations, but even as an economic policy it’s bad and
counterproductive.
A while ago I went to the book’s launch and Easterly’s lecture on it. I picked up a copy (and
got it signed, whoopee!) and I’m finally getting the chance to read
a book the way it’s meant to be read - slowly, deliberately, and
without grad school deadlines! Ah, the glory. Anyway, the
first third retraces the origins of current development theories, and
here are some thoughts about it.
Basically, Easterly uses three examples
– China, Africa, and Colombia – to show that top-down, planned
economic development policies were designed in mutual interests of
foreign powers and domestic autocrats in the period between and after
the two world wars. World Bank officials and US, British, and
domestic governments quashed the views of “free development”
advocates, who wanted to foster development through “efforts of
creative individuals who exchanged ideas, goods, and finance across
national borders for mutual interest.” These advocates
cautioned against growth planning on the basis that those wielding
policy-making power have no incentive to enact anything but
authoritarian measures and, predictably, their views were not welcome
by the people who happened to have the biggest megaphone. It’s
an interesting, well-established, not entirely surprising, and
depressing claim, and I’m curious to see how the book treats it
going forward through the three “myths” Easterly identifies as
informing current development policies. But of course it leaves
questions.
Before getting to what’s missing,
though, there are a couple points so far which have really stuck with
me. In the chapter on Africa, Easterly traces modern
development practices to the British Empire’s conflicting need to
exploit racism and encourage US action against the Axis (i.e. Japan),
and the need to mitigate racism’s political costs to shore up
African support for the Empire. In pursuing these goals, the UK
identified racist practices within the US and threatened to pressure
the US for atonement unless it supported British development efforts
for the benefit of Africans in Africa. So from an American
perspective, the result was a trade-off – we accepted abrogation of
equal rights across the races at home but agreed to pursue
development for the benefit of other races abroad. I think one
could make an extremely plausible argument that on this point,
nothing has changed.
Though the WWII/Cold War era’s
fingerprints are all over modern development, the “non-political”
clause of the World Bank’s Articles of Agreement (Article IV, Section 10) really stands out.
This basically provides that the Bank won’t “interfere”
with its members’ political affairs, and will base decisions purely
on “economic considerations.” Easterly notes that this
provision has very political origins - it was included to obviate
conflict with the USSR during World War II - but he doesn’t seem
too curious about alternatives. What if, for example, the World
Bank did allow itself to interfere in the politics of its member
states? How is this not at odds with sovereignty? Perhaps
in the end, the possibility of protecting individual rights without
the non-political clause would outweigh the problems from violations
of sovereignty, but it’s a huge assumption to leave unsaid.
There are a more couple oversights in
the book (so far anyway; they might be addressed in the two-thirds I
haven’t read yet). For example, Easterly hasn’t yet
accounted for the voices of ordinary citizens. He does note,
almost in passing, the theories of dissenting economists such as Wu
on policy in China and Frankel, the erstwhile chair in Colonial
Economics at Oxford, on Africa. And he describes some popular
sentiment, for example the unrest that broke out in Colombia after
the 1948 assassination of the Liberal presidential candidate. But
there’s no indication of what the people who live in these
countries think of the World Bank’s and colonizers’ policies,
which are after all purported to improve the quality of their lives.
I expect it’s due to a lack of documentation, but either way,
I want to know how these policies were regarded on the ground and
he’s not saying.
Another point is the source of the
“technical problems” which development policy tried to address.
The 1949 American “mission” to Colombia, for instance –
how realistic was the clear “development problem” identified in
the results? In other words, did the existence of a “problem”
stem from the researcher’s interpretation of the facts in a way
that created a problem? Or did he ignore rural Colombians’
reality in a way that made it possible to imagine problems? Or
did real problems of “misery and superstition” exist at the time,
and if so, what was their source and how could a non-technocratic
approach such as spontaneous solutions and emphasis on individual
rights have addressed that? Would it have been possible for
earlier adherence to individual rights to avoid the creation of the
problems in the first place? And how can that be applied in the
present day?
OK, enough for now, I have to go see
what happens next.
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