“Ideology of Development”

William Easterly of NYU writes [subscriber only, but i found the pdf] in FP on the “Ideology of Development”. The article criticizes Development for all of the reasons that development criticizes itself and its various schools. Perhaps the only addition is framing development as an ideology.

Like all ideologies, Development promises a comprehensive final answer to all of society’s problems, from poverty and illiteracy to violence and despotic rulers. It shares the common ideological characteristic of suggesting there is only one correct answer, and it tolerates little dissent. It deduces this unique answer for everyone from a general theory that purports to apply to everyone, everywhere. There’s no need to involve local actors who reap its costs and benefits. Development even has its own intelligentsia, made up of experts at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and United Nations.

The power of Developmentalism is disheartening, because the failure of all the previous ideologies might have laid the groundwork for the opposite of ideology—the freedom of individuals and societies to choose their destinies. Yet, since the fall of communism, the West has managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and with disastrous results. Development ideology is sparking a dangerous counterreaction. The “one correct answer” came to mean “free markets,” and, for the poor world, it was defined as doing whatever the IMF and the World Bank tell you to do.

More after the jump

He compares it to the failed fascism, communism and other ideologies of the last century:

Like other ideologies, this thinking favors collective goals such as national poverty reduction, national economic growth, and the global Millennium Development Goals, over the aspirations of individuals. Bureaucrats who write poverty-reduction frameworks outrank individuals who actually reduce poverty by, say, starting a business. Just as Marxists favored world revolution and socialist internationalism, Development stresses world goals over the autonomy of societies to choose their own path. It favors doctrinaire abstractions such as “market-friendly policies,” “good investment climate,” and “pro-poor globalization” over the freedom of individuals.

Development also shares another Marxist trait: It aspires to be scientific. Finding the one correct solution to poverty is seen as a scientific problem to be solved by the experts. They are always sure they know the answer, vehemently reject disagreement, and then later change their answers. In psychiatry, this is known as Borderline Personality Disorder. For the Development Experts, it’s a way of life. The answer at first was aid-financed investment and industrialization in poor countries, then it was market-oriented government policy reform, then it was fixing institutional problems such as corruption, then it was globalization, then it was the Poverty Reduction Strategy to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

So True! but hardly original. I took special glee in yet another stab at the nincompoop Friedman:

And the experts heap scorn on those who resist the inevitabilities on the path to development. One of today’s leading Developmentalists, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, can hardly conceal his mockery of those who resist the march of history, or “the flattening of the world.” “When you are Mexico,” Friedman has written, “and your claim to fame is that you are a low-wage manufacturing country, and some of your people are importing statuettes of your own patron saint from China, because China can make them and ship them all the way across the Pacific more cheaply than you can produce them … you have got a problem. [T]he only way for Mexico to thrive is with a strategy of reform … the more Mexico just sits there, the more it is going to get run over.” Friedman seems blissfully unaware that poor Mexico, so far from God yet so close to American pundits, has already tried much harder than China to implement the experts’ “strategy of reform.” The self-confidence of Developmentalists like Friedman is so strong that they impose themselves even on those who accept their strategies.

[emphasis added]

On causes:

Ideologies usually arise in response to tragic situations in which people are hungry for clear and comprehensive solutions. The inequality of the Industrial Revolution bred Marxism, and the backwardness of Russia its Leninist offshoot. Germany’s defeat and demoralization in World War I birthed Nazism. Economic hardship accompanied by threats to identity led to both Christian and Islamic fundamentalism.

Similarly, development ideology appeals to those who want a definitive, complete answer to the tragedy of world poverty and inequality. It answers the question, “What is to be done?” to borrow the title of Lenin’s 1902 tract. It stresses collective social outcomes that must be remedied by collective, top-down action by the intelligentsia, the revolutionary vanguard, the development expert. As Sachs explains, “I have … gradually come to understand through my scientific research and on the ground advisory work the awesome power in our generation’s hands to end the massive suffering of the extreme poor … although introductory economics textbooks preach individualism and decentralized markets, our safety and prosperity depend at least as much on collective decisions.”

Although he stresses the multiplicities of paths to advancement and results of strategies, one cant help but notice that he himself bears ideological burdens that perhaps he isnt really even aware of. He cant get away from his belief in individualism despite using China as an example of non-developmentalist development. Quick read.