Acta Politica, 2007, 42, (469–472) r 2007 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd 0001-6810/07 $30.00 www.palgrave-journals.com/ap
Book Review Paradise Lost The White Man’s Burden. Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest have done so Much Ill and so Little Good William Easterly The Penguin Press, New York, 2006, 436pp. US$27.95, ISBN: 0-19-921082-9 Acta Politica (2007) 42, 469–472. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ap.5500197
A persistent tension between two different outlooks runs through the Western philosophical tradition. One of them holds that human reason lends itself to conceive of ‘the perfect society’ — and provide a blueprint for realizing such a uniform state of affairs. The other one holds that many human ends cannot be reconciled — and that the complexity of society in all events forces us to respect human diversity. In The White Man’s Burden. Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest have done so Much Ill and so Little Good, NYU professor and former World Bank expert William Easterly brings this distinction to life within the context of developmental policy. Easterly takes issue with the aid industry’s tendency to embrace utopian goals and all-encompassing roadmaps for getting there. Such centralized ‘planning’ has failed to spur development for 50 years. It has done so for the very simple reason that the imperfect character of our knowledge dooms it beforehand. Easterly’s description of six decades of failure is both incisive and thoughtprovoking. But the ambition of this book is wider than the mere descriptive exercise. Easterly also uncovers the roots of aid utopianism. It does not simply follow from a particular mindset; it flows from the lack of accountability and feedback that characterizes the area. Or, better, the planner mentality is a product of the aid industry being held accountable to Western donors rather than third-world recipients. I will return to this political or even sociological analysis, but I will discuss the economic analysis first. Easterly’s deliberate attempt to build his case against the present state of the aid industry on philosophical roots is quite impressive. He rightly claims himself the heir to critical rationalists such as Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek. The plan to end world poverty is merely the latest attempt to engage in what Popper famously termed ‘utopian social engineering’. That Jeffrey Sachs, who carries the credentials of an economist, has become the advocate of such a program is almost a contradiction in terms. For — as Easterly aptly quotes Hayek — ‘The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design’ (p. 269). In a nutshell, the right plan is to have no plan.
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But the aid industry begs to be different. Ever since its birth after the Second World War, the efforts were judged by the size of the amounts involved, not by the progress achieved. That constitutes a very weak criterion for success. Easterly dryly points out that when the motion picture Cat Woman was recently ‘awarded’ the prize as worst movie of the year, the producers did not defend the quality with the fact that they had spent $ 100 million in making it. Results, in short, must be judged by the output, not the input. So what does an output-evaluation show us? Easterly’s presentation of ‘the white man’s burden’, the centuries-old effort by the West to develop the Rest, is a disheartening read. Rather than paving the way for economic development, the aid schemes seem to either have been wasted away or even to have made things worse. To be sure, the difficulties involved in aiding corrupt governments who preside over ethnically divided societies mean that the odds have often been poor at the outset. But above all, the culprit of the developmental aid has been the desire to ‘plan’. The well-intentioned planners fail to recognize that every society is constructed as an elaborate clockwork. It is hubris to believe that outside experts are able to adjust and rebuild this construction. Consequently, nemesis is the outcome to expect when planners are given power to carry out their intentions. Differently said, our knowledge is too limited — too fragmented in the words of Hayek — for us to be able to set up a top-down formula for development. What alternatives do we have? Easterly wishes for ‘Searchers’ to replace ‘Planners’ on the developmental front. ‘Searchers’ are those enterprising men and women who make a market economy work. The price mechanism renders centralized planning superfluous because it enables the Searchers to navigate between supply and demand. If developmental aid could be made to incorporate devices that thus decrease complexity it would be a great achievement. But how? First and foremost, Easterly points out, it is necessary to assign clear responsibility for a given project. Donors must be held accountable for their contributions to ensure that these lead to the requisite results. Nowadays, responsibilities are not assigned clearly — more often than not several donors father the same projects — and, consequently, it is only natural that the proclaimed objectives are quite unrealistic. Furthermore, there is a dire need for more feedback. It is possible to reduce the complexity of aid projects by checking upon the efforts to see whether things are working on the ground and whether the local population holds them in demand. That too will call for a more humble kind of projects: measurable projects such as food distribution in schools to increase attendance, vaccination campaigns against measles and the like. If these efforts prove ineffective, new ones must be thought out. Trial and error is the best way to Acta Politica 2007 42
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tackle the information asymmetries. Easterly is eager to describe how such small, practical project can be effective, especially if the locals are consulted (or even better, if they come up with the idea in the first place). His avowed intention is not to do away with developmental aid but to lead it in a new and more promising direction. Poor countries are not doomed to continuous underdevelopment. Easterly finds no empirical evidence to sustain Jeffrey Sachs’ ‘poverty trap’-explanation. On the contrary, the latest 50 years have exhibited numerous examples of poor countries ascending the ladder of development with impressive speed: first Japan, then the East Asian Tigers and Chile, and more recently China and India. Common to all these success stories, however, is that the ‘miracle’ has been home-grown. Every society is unique, and if a country wants to climb the ladder, economically speaking, it must find (or stumble upon) its own itinerary. Free markets are of course an advantage but precisely the complexity of the social world makes it impossible to force them onto a country — just as is the case with democracy (another advantageous item in terms of development). All things considered, the striking thing about the success stories is how different they have been. If there is one lesson that the economic over-achievers have bequeathed to their observers, it is that countries can reach the same final destination from very different points of departure — and by traversing different routes. To return to the philosophical point of departure, diversity rather than uniformity is what makes human societies progress. Easterly is somewhat reluctant to acknowledge how radical the consequences of this analysis are. The overall message of the book is that developmental aid cannot lead to (general) development at all. So, the very term ‘developmental aid’ becomes meaningless because the donor money cannot ‘aid’ a country’s development, generally speaking. Yet on this exact point the analysis suffers from a contradiction that Easterly fails to address. For in such a situation, why would small practical projects be effective in decreasing poverty? Project funds can still — the book seems to answer — do particular, tangible things for people in need. That ought, perhaps, to be enough to foster motivation. However, as Easterly describes only too well, there is a reason why development activities always aim at new, utopian goals. These kinds of things catch on, and in a sense looking for perfect solutions and total redemption is very human. By contrast, sober analyses and advertisement for humility rarely inspire much enthusiasm. This reviewer, for instance, finds it hard to imagine Bono and Bob Geldof changing their ‘make poverty history’ slogan with a ‘let’s do the small things that work’. Would the two ageing musicians not rather turn to an alternative world-redeeming project — be it Al Gore’s climate crusade or a resurrection of the peace movement — than put themselves at the head of such a pragmatic program? Acta Politica 2007 42
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Differently said, there is a tension between Easterly’s sociological analysis of the roots of the present malady and his economic advice for getting out of the hole. His message seems to be that of John Milton: that men who have lost paradise should embrace an earthly life. Yet that was never an easy matter. Even though it is a shame, it is hard to see how such a Puritan revolution is to replace the wishful thinking of the aid industry without chasing away its political backers. Jørgen Møller Department of Social and Political Sciences, The European University Institute, Italy.
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