For those who believe that developed nations have a responsibility to facilitate international development by delivering foreign aid, William Easterly's is not always an easy voice to listen to.
Easterly is a former World Bank economist, current professor of economics at New York University, and author of many books, including The White Man's Burden: How the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. As the title suggests, he is also an inveterate aid critic. His criticisms have three main themes:
1. The system of international aid is ineffective in ensuring that foreign dollars actually reach, and benefit, those who need them most.
2. The aid system is entirely lacking in accountability mechanisms that would allow us to recognize and hold governments and aid agencies responsible for their relatively meager success rate.
3. Aid policies and programs are driven by the neo-imperialist sense that "the West knows best," rather than supporting indigenous, grassroots-level programs that often offer the most effective responses.
Above all, Easterly is critical of what he calls the "utopian nightmare"- the idealistic conviction, best represented by the work of Jeffrey Sachs, that global poverty can be eliminated by global will and a Western checkbook.
As might be expected, Easterly's questioning of the role and competency of the West in international development has made him something of a persona non grata in the development community; he is seen as providing criticisms but not solutions (Amartya Sen's review of White Man's Burden was titled "A Man Without A Plan") and his witty-but-cutting attacks often prompt aid supporters - these authors included - into a defensive stance. Whatever the reason, Easterly is often written off as the nagging voice of "can't," and his arguments receive less open debate than is deserved.
In the first place - and this is worth stating - William Easterly isn't opposed to aid, he's opposed to ineffective aid. His aversion to the constellation of aid agencies is based on cost-benefit analysis - the cost is tremendous, and there is little way of assessing benefit.
Given the terrible consequences of the current the lack of accountability in government, we should all appreciate the common sense and pragmatism of Easterly's message: Progress cannot be achieved through unchecked policies, implemented because they seemed like the right idea at the time in the halls of Washington. Instead, the West has to use its money wisely through methods that yield tangible returns.
Easterly also argues that solutions cannot be imposed from the outside by those whom he terms "Planners" - big-ticket actors like the World Bank or UN looking for overarching strategies and universal development programs.
These Planners tend to construct solutions from the top down, with little oversight and even less attention paid to the actual needs or intricate situation on the ground. Instead, he champions the efforts of "Searchers" - social entrepreneurs, and perhaps a few aid workers, who are on the ground in the developing world, constructing small-scale, innovative solutions based on in-depth knowledge of the specific needs and incentives of the communities where they work.
Development, if it is to occur, must be "home-grown and gradual," the greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts result of piecemeal approaches taken throughout the developing world. The role of aid agencies and donors, then, is to identify, support and scale these piecemeal approaches, rather than to impose a plan that others must then implement.
So Easterly is a man without a plan, but not because of his failure to think constructively. He simply believes that "the right plan is to have no plan."
Whatever one's position on the aid debate, it's a debate that can't be ignored. The stakes are tremendous; development - the struggle to raise more than half the world from the crush of poverty - is the most powerful responsibility of our generation.
Yet the last 50 years have seen more development failures than successes, and it will require a critical look at development practices to understand how we can reverse this trend.
This evening, the Penn community will have a chance to engage in this debate when William Easterly speaks in Logan Hall (G17) at 6:30 p.m. We encourage you to attend, and to take a(nother) look at the controversial and thought-provoking work of a man with the courage to deliver an unpopular-but-necessary message.
Mara Pillinger and Kiran Bhatraju are College seniors and members of the Penn Society for International Development.
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