Helping people help themselves: from the World Bank to an alternative philosophy of development assistance PDF
Preview Helping people help themselves: from the World Bank to an alternative philosophy of development assistance
HELPING PEOPLE HELP THEMSELVES Evolving Values for a Capitalist World In most of the world today, the issue is not whether or how to embrace cap i tal ism, but how to make the best of it. The currently dominant capitalist values include competitive individualism, instrumental rat io nal i ty, and ma te ri al suc cess. The series explores questions such as: Will these values suffi ce as a basis for social organizations that can meet human and env i ron men tal needs in the twenty-fi rst century? What would it mean for capitalist systems to evolve toward an emphasis on other values, such as cooperation, altruism, res pon si - bil i ty, and concern for the future? Titles in the series: Neva R. Goodwin. Editor. As if the Future Mattered: Translating Social and Economic Theory into Human Behavior Severyn T. Bruyn. A Civil Economy: Transforming the Market in the Twen ty-First Century Jonathan Harris. Rethinking Sustainability: Power, Knowledge, and Institutions Nikos Passas and Neva Goodwin, Editors. It's Legal but It Ain't Right: Harmful Social Consequences of Legal Industries David Ellerman. Helping People Help Themselves: From the World Bank to an Alternative Philosophy of Development Assistance Helping People Help Themselves From the World Bank to an Alternative Philosophy of Development Assistance David Ellerman the university of michigan press Ann Arbor First paperback edition 2006 Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2005 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America cPrinted on acid-free paper 2009 2008 2007 2006 5 4 3 2 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ellerman, David P. Helping people help themselves : from the World Bank to an alternative philosophy of development assistance / David Ellerman. p. cm. — (Evolving values for a capitalist world) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-472-11465-4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Economic assistance—Developing countries. 2. Economic development—Social aspects—Developing countries. 3. World Bank—Developing countries. I. Title. II. Series. HC60.E433 2004 338.91'09172'4—dc22 2004019094 ISBN 978-0-472-03142-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) To Vlasta, who taught me a thing or two about autonomy-respecting assistance, and to Joe, who in many different ways led to my writing this book. A Note from the Series Editor Helping People Help Themselvesis the ‹fth volume in the University of Michigan Press Evolving Values for a Capitalist World series.The ‹rst volume, As if the Future Mattered (ed. Goodwin), describes, and pro- poses constructive responses to, a deep ›aw in the capitalist system, especially in the United States: that considerations of the future are external to most market transactions. The second and fourth books in the series can be seen as a pair. Existing institutions that encourage capitalist ‹rms to act in consonance with social needs and goals are described in A Civil Economy (Bruyn); while some of the most antiso- cial realities of the present system are described in It’s Legal but It Ain’t Right: Harmful Social Consequences of Legal Industries (ed. Passas and Goodwin). The third book in the series, Rethinking Sustainability (ed. Harris), takes up the topics of development and how it can be made sustainable for the future. These topics are examined in depth in the present book. In Helping People Help Themselves, David Ellerman focuses on the deepest layer of economic life: the cultural values that determine the institutions that support the economy. In chapter 8, a case study of the disastrously misdirected efforts to smooth the transition to capitalism in the former Soviet Union, Ellerman states that his primary purpose is “to lay the intellectual foundations for an alternative philosophy of development.” Economic development is about change; Ellerman starts by inquiring into how change may be fostered on many levels— the most basic being that of individual learning. The answer is a deep and simple truth that has been expounded by a number of thinkers (thoroughly referenced in this book): to be sustainable, change must come from within those who are changing. It must, therefore, be some- viii A NOTE FROM THE SERIES EDITOR thing that they want—not something that the donors (or teachers, community organizers, therapists, or managers) have told them they should want. We in the industrialized world have not, in fact, done very well at knowing what we actually want—at enunciating acceptable goals for our own economic development. We have been led astray by economic simpli‹cations, which have shown how to maximize that quanti‹able thing—wealth—while ignoring the ‹nal goal—well-being—that wealth must serve if it is to have human value. One of the outstanding characteristics of capitalism has been its inexorable spread. Those countries that have successfully adopted cap- italism have been vigorous in their attempts to convert others. Unfor- tunately, economic development, as it has been practiced and preached for the last ‹fty years, often devolves to transmitting a carica- ture of capitalism. Standard introductory economics textbooks for high school or college students lay out a simpli‹ed understanding of the workings of a market economy. This schematic view is codi‹ed and reduced even further in the advice given by development organizations such as the World Bank. Development assistance, based on an economics in which history does not exist and human psychology is reduced to the most sel‹sh motivations, has too often ignored some essential characteristics on which our own economic system depends. These necessary characteris- tics include institutions such as legal systems and generally accepted accounting practices—not to mention the educational, health, and social service institutions that support the human beings who run the whole show and for whose bene‹t (theoretically) it is run. A well-func- tioning capitalist (or any other) economic system also requires cultural expressions of basic values, such as trust, honesty, and a desire to do a good job or to make a meaningful contribution. Ellerman describes how much of what has been done in the name of development assistance actually destroys essential culture and values and often fails to support the necessary existing and emerging institu- tions. He joins a growing chorus in pointing out that efforts to export a version of capitalism based on simplistic, exported goals have in many cases not been sustainable. His evidence supports an emerging consen- sus that failures in this area arise from the relationship between those who are doing the development and those who are having it done to them. A Note from the Series Editor ix One of Ellerman’s brilliant innovations is the terminology he uses throughout the book. Insisting on a too-often-ignored reality, that “development will not yield to social engineering no matter how much aid is provided” (chap. 10), he refers to those who are developing some aspects of their own economies as the “doers,” while the aid workers, policymakers, and others are, at best, “helpers.” This book rests on a deep theoretic grounding in the standard and nonstandard economics of capitalism (including management theory), in philosophy, and in theories of learning and change, for a practical description of how goals can be better set and met. It examines in detail how the relationship between doers and helpers might be better carried out, with speci‹c suggestions such as the use of “parallel experimentation,” movement “from a global agency to a global network of local agencies,” and encouragement for developing countries to oppose further indebted- ness or “addiction” to a kind of aid that enriches a few while further dis- empowering the rest. Understanding the reality and the potential of the development relationship between industrialized and other countries is key to under- standing capitalism, at its best and its worst. Ellerman not only illumi- nates many of the values that contribute to more and less successful forms of capitalism; he also suggests a constructive path along which some of these values could evolve. Neva Goodwin Co-director, Global Development And Environment Institute, Tufts University
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