Category Archives: Review
Political Culture – Deeply Entrenched, But Not Impossible to Change
In his landmark study of the civic traditions of Italy, Robert Putnam showed how differences in the norms and patterns of behavior that drove societies in northern and southern Italy had profound influence on development outcomes, governance, innovation, and the prospects for democracy. As he explained,
Some regions of Italy, we discover, are blessed with vibrant networks and norms of civic engagement, while others are cursed with vertically structured politics, a social life of fragmentation and isolation, and a culture of distrust. These differences in civic life turn out to play a key role in explaining institutional success.
These patterns are deep-seated, and can be traced back as much as a millennium. Governments had come and gone. Economies had evolved tremendously. Lives had changed enormously, especially in the last few decades. But the basic underlying dynamic that drove how people interacted with each other, how officials behaved, and how government acted retained an important essence that had deep influence. Path dependence was hard to break. Why? (more…)
More on Central Asia, Elections, Europe, Governance, Politics, Review
What the OECD Does Not Understand About Fragile States
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and its International Network on Conflict and Fragility (INCAF) do an admirable job bringing together policymakers, collecting and synthesizing information, and helping set the agenda for donors.
But, as exemplified by Emmanuel Letouzé’s (lead author) and Juana de Catheu (co-author)’s recent report Fragile States 2013: Resource Flows and Trends in a Shifting World, its analysis of fragile states is flawed in a couple of important ways.
My major complaints are: (more…)
More on Foreign aid, Fragile States, Identity, Policies, Review
Discordant Development – Progress That Increases Instability
Samuel Huntington argued in his 1968 classic Political Order in Changing Societies that rapid development could be highly destabilizing:
Social and economic change—urbanization, increase in literacy and education, industrialization, mass media expansion—extend political consciousness, multiply political demands, broaden political participation. These changes undermine traditional sources of political authority and traditional political institutions; they enormously complicate the problems of creating new bases of political association and new political institutions combining legitimacy and effectiveness. The rates of social mobilization and the expansion of political organization are high; the rates of political organization and institutionalization are low. The result is political instability and disorder. The primary problem of politics is the lag in the development of political institutions behind social and economic change.
Richard Joseph, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Professor at Northwestern University, discusses a similar point in a recent article on Africa. In it, he introduces the very useful phrase “discordant development,” defining it as:
More than just “unequal development,” but rather how deepening inequalities and rapid progress juxtaposed with group distress can generate uncertainty and violent conflict. (more…)
Prioritization — The Easiest Way to Improve Governance
Fragile states have limited capacity to govern. They have few highly trained policymakers, few managers able to organize departments and ministries, and few officials able to implement decisions. They have very limited financial resources and little prospect (unless they have a lot of natural resources) of becoming self-sustaining anytime soon. Why then do we ask them to do so much?
These deficits are not going away anytime soon. As Lant Pritchett and Frauke de Weijer pointed out in their paper on capability traps, fragile states are:
far from any threshold of “good governance”; at their pace or average pace of progress it would take very (to infinitely) long to reach a threshold; even at very to extremely optimistic accelerations of the pace of progress . . . the time from fragile states to reach solid levels of governance is measured in decades, not years.
Yet, such countries are expected to do more or less everything much more developed countries do. They must deliver adequate public services to all their people, adopt and enforce an enormous number of laws and regulations, and meet international standards in a wide range of areas. If they receive substantial sums of foreign aid, they must deal with each donor on every project and meet all their specific requirements. Is any of this realistic? (more…)
Development: Solving Collective Action Problems
There has been a lot of deep thinking about development problems over the past decade or so. But for the most part, a better understanding about how countries progress has not translated into dramatic changes in the activities aimed at promoting it.
International development agencies now say they emphasize politics and seek to find “best fit” solutions tailored to individual country circumstances. However, as David Booth writes in a recent Africa Politics and Power Policy Brief,
Much of the newer governance programming looks much like the old kind. Even the most reflective country activists and the best governance advisers have trouble imagining what to do differently.
Improving governance in developing countries in Africa and beyond requires that international actors undertake much greater reforms in how they operate than has been contemplated up to now. Many of the assumptions about development need to be challenged and overturned. (more…)
More on Africa, Economic Development, Foreign aid, Governance, Review
Social Exclusion Case Study: Pakistan
Pakistan is arguably the world’s most important fragile state, but many of its problems are not well understood. Security problems dominate headlines, but the country’s real troubles more often than not float beneath the surface unknown even to those trying to help the country.
A good example of this is the issue of social exclusion. Although it receives almost no attention internationally, social exclusion—in its various forms—plays a major role in the country’s problems. By systematically disadvantaging large portions of its population, Pakistan’s elites reduce the legitimacy of the state, encourage extremism against it, weaken the impetus to enhance public services, and contribute to long-term demographic and environmental threats.
Horizontal social exclusion is one of the two most important drivers (with weak government) of state fragility worldwide, yet rarely receives the attention it deserves in international discussions of fragile states. Whereas vertical inequity between individuals plays a major role in debates on development, horizontal inequity between groups is often not even measured.
A recent Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Center (NOREF) Policy Brief on social exclusion in Pakistan is therefore a very welcome addition to the literature on the country. By outlining the country’s main axes of social exclusion and how they affect stability and governance, it does a great service to anyone working on the country. I strongly recommend the analysis part of the paper both as a backgrounder for those working on Pakistan and as a case study for how social exclusion affects fragile states in general. (more…)
More on Economic Development, Foreign aid, Governance, Identity, Review, South Asia
Why Do States Die? What Happens When They Cannot?
By Brennan Kraxberger
Book Review: Fazal, Tanisha M. 2007: State Death: The Politics and Geography of Conquest, Occupation, and Annexation. Princeton University Press.
The world community – including scholars and journalists – devotes significant attention to the creation of new states. In 2011, South Sudan was born. A decade ago, Timor Leste (East Timor) garnered international recognition as a sovereign state. And we could add Eritrea and the post-Soviet states to the list.
But what about state death? For many, this question is received with confusion and mystery. In recent generations, we’ve grown accustomed to the occasional partition of states, but other types of territorial changes have basically ceased. (more…)
More on Conflict and Security, Governance, Review
Can Informal Accountability Replace Elections?
Improving the accountability of leaders tops the agenda of just about everyone involved with development. But the preferred solution—elections—often comes up short in countries with divided populations and democratic structures that are not well institutionalized. There is a great need for alternatives.
Such alternatives can take many forms—including improving governance, enhancing the rule of law, promoting transparency, decentralizing government (where leaders might be held more accountable in some cases), ensuring equity in governance and the distribution of resources (which may matter more than better governance), and increasing the leverage of societal groups to monitor the performance of state officials.
One neglected area that deserves much more attention is promoting social cohesion. Indeed, it can be argued that the greatest difference between the successful developmental states and their far less successful developing country peers is the degree of social cohesion.
But how do you promote social cohesion when it is lacking? (more…)
The Moral Foundations of Good Governance
One of the biggest differences between strong and weak states is the nature of the moral imperatives that operate in the public realm. Whereas in well-governed countries, people feel obligated to act according to certain minimum ethical standards, in badly governed countries they do not. There are many reasons for this divergence, most notably differences in the effectiveness of enforcement mechanisms, the area that receives by far the most attention from donors and reformers alike.
But there is a deeper, more important cause of the dysfunction that plagues governments in fragile states that is rarely considered or addressed. (more…)
Where Does the Political Will to Promote Development Come From?
Why do some states promote development better than others? Why do elites sometimes support reforms that energize development and other times fail to do so?
We know a lot about what kinds of policies support development, but much less about why governments differ in the zeal with which they pursue these policies and in the effectiveness with which they achieve results with them. (more…)
