Exposing the myth of Third World aid
This article is about a new book by some guy called William Easterly who talks about the Planner approach to aid, versus the Search approach. Planner's, like Jeffrey Sachs (who I don't like) try and fix everything using ideas garnered from every part of the world except the country they operate in. It's an appealing idea, that you can apply the success stories of one place to another. But often they're inappropriate for the situation, and even more often you simply can't replicate them, because social change in an incredibly complex, organic process.
Searchers try to identify things they are already successful, and build on those. I think the author is suggesting, small more independent economies within countries. I've never really understood why encouraging exports is so critical. The vast majority of things that people need for a dramatic improvement in the quality of their life don't need to be brought in on a ship. Let people export if they want to, but don't force them.
Update: Amartya Sen does a slightly better job of explaining Easterly's point than he does. Good old Senny boy.
I'm also not saying that aid is bad, or has been completely wasted. It just feels to me like the world is still way too crap. I can't back that up with any evidence about it might have been better under some alternative.
I would hope that part of the "searcher" mentality would be to find "planner" projects that do well and use them. Since it seems to be so difficult to account for all the variables that might ruin a plan, it might be worth spending more effort looking for plans that succeed, for whatever reason, in the prevailing environment.
It’s a bit of a simplistic distinction, though, between planners and searchers. I think that coordinating and harmonizing efforts across sectors is an essential part of maximising the positive effects of local or ad hoc activities.
On Easterly’s article and book – Amartya Sen’s article in Foreign Affairs is excellent. He basically says that Easterly makes some good points that get lost under his overblown rhetoric.
There’s also a good discussion between Easterly, Steve Radelet, Deepak Lal, and Branko Milanovic over at Cato Unbound where I think the critics of Easterly’s position make the strongest points.
You’re right to highlight the significance the local context and complexity of development and social change.
ben / 9:37am / 20 June 2006
You’re right. It is simplistic. I’m very supportive of aid in principle. Maybe it isn’t done badly because people don’t understand it, but because it the critical decision-makers have incentives to screw with it for their own gain. It strikes me as very strange that so little has come from the $2.3 trillion in “aid” when you can give Tear or MSF a few thousand dollars and they can make a big change. Why doesn’t someone give the $2.3 trillion to Tear, and see if they can do something with it? Probably because only a tiny fraction of that money was actually intended to help the poor. If you gave it to Tear there is the risk they wouldn’t spend it all on F-15s.
So it all gets muddled, and we blame the failure of programs on the programs and not on the people siphoning the funding off into their own piggy banks. We need to look at the outcomes of the money that was spent well, and base our justification for more aid (or less) on those. We also need more than one word for “aid”, because one man’s aid is another man’s war on communist peasants.
Ryan / 10:07am / 20 June 2006
The other thing is that every program is obviously a bit of both. You can’t delineate between the two perfectly. From what I’ve seen the “plans” of many effective agencies, have a lot more in common with searching than planning.
Ryan / 10:14am / 20 June 2006
You’re right to highlight that much of the $$trillions that Easterly (and others) talk about having been wasted in aid over the last 50 years didn’t go to poverty-eradication at all, but to propping up favourite dictators, or making and keeping Cold War friends and allies. It is just to easy to denigrate all aid because some (a lot?!) has been used badly. Which I didn’t think you were doing, but is what some people who make use of Easterly (rather than Easterly himself so much) end up doing…
ben / 1:54pm / 20 June 2006
He’s like the Noel Pearson of foreign aid.
Ryan / 6:54pm / 20 June 2006