Tag Archives: elites
Power and Politics in Pakistan: A Limited Access Order
The Limited Access Order (LAO) conceptual framework is an excellent way to understand why developing countries work the way they do, analyze their political and economic dynamics, and formulate policy ideas appropriate to their context. Its focus on power, violence, rents, and elite bargains provides far greater explanatory and predictive power than the standard template that uses developed countries as a model for how countries ought to work. As such, everyone in the development field working in a policymaking role should make use of it.
Created by Nobel Prize winner Douglass North, John Wallis, Steven Webb, and Barry Weingast, the LAO framework argues that:
No one, including the state, has a monopoly on violence . . . An LAO reduces violence by forming a dominant coalition containing all individuals and groups with sufficient access to violence . . . The dominant coalition creates cooperation and order by limiting access to valuable resources – land, labor, and capital – or access [to] and control of valuable activities – such as contract enforcement, property right enforcement, trade, worship, and education – to elite groups . . . The creation and distribution of rents therefore secures elite loyalty to the system, which in turn protects rents, limits violence, and prevents disorder most of the time. (more…)
A Multidimensional Approach to Resolving Conflict: The Eastern DRC
Problems that have been intractable for decades are very likely the product of many different issues that intertwine with each other in a way that makes attempts to fix things highly problematic. Simple solutions — changing a person, introducing a reform, holding an election, penalizing one party — rarely work.
Conflict, weak governance, state failure, economic backwardness — all have many causes and many issues that must be dealt with. There are no magic bullets, no easy remedies, no quick strategies.
The eastern Congo is representative. Depending on who you listen to, the ongoing violence is caused by either a weak state, grievances over land and identity, greedy local elites, or international business. Some say the root cause is local, another group says it is national, and a third group defines the problem as regional. In fact, all these interpretations are correct — to some degree. Interests, actors, and causes are intertwined in a complex web. It is hard to say where one factor stops playing a role and another starts. (more…)
More on Africa, Conflict and Security, Foreign aid, Governance
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
Language Policy and Development: Lost in Translation
Language is one of the most neglected areas in the development field. It barely registers on any agenda to help poor countries despite its importance to a number of crucial areas and it being a barrier to progress in many fragile states. Why is this? (more…)
More on Africa, Economic Development, Policies, Politics, South Asia
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…)
Good Ideas Aren’t Enough
Greece is not a fragile state, but its governance problems share many of the same characteristics. The state’s struggles to enact reforms are an important case study in how politics, corruption, and elite self-interest can triumph over good ideas:
In exchange for the bailout money that Greece needs by March to avoid what could be a catastrophic default, the country’s foreign lenders have demanded radical changes to make the state more efficient and bring in more tax revenue. But . . . good intentions and directives can easily be evaded or sabotaged by the political class, if its members have not signed on. (more…)
More on Capacity Building, Europe, Policies, Politics
