If you haven’t seen it yet, Stephen Walt’s piece, “Where Do Bad Ideas Come From?”, in the new issue of Foreign Policy demands a read. He starts with the obvious — that we never learn from our mistakes — but asks, when it comes to our policy decisions about the world, why?
The possibilities are probably endless, but Walt narrows them down. They come from age, a willful amnesia about what the generation (or more) before us learned from doing the same thing. They come from our optimism, or our naivete, that we can do better this time around. (David Rieff tackles narrows this particular blunder to our 21st century believe that we can technologize our way to success, a path he damns pretty persuasively recently in The New Republic.) They come from silence, imposed by political power in undemocratic regimes and by social taboo in democratic societies. They come from the strange inertia created by success. And they come from, and back to, good old interest: behind the policy that’s chosen, there’s always someone (or many someones) with political or, often, financial upside. (If for some reason you need any reminder of that, check out the NYT story on the Boeing-State Department, um, “synergy.”)
Most of Walt’s examples are about warfare — we could have learned from the French, but we went ahead and fought Vietnam anyway. And we could have learned from what we experienced in Vietnam, but we went regime-changing in Iraq and Afghanistan anyway. It’s interesting that the architects of the latter policies were also involved in Vietnam and therefore the generational argument — that new generations resist internalizing past generations’ mistakes — don’t apply. Maybe that makes the “we can do better” argument all the stronger?
But there’s another idea that begs to be part of this conversation: Development. We’ve been at “development” for 50-odd years — or longer, depending on how you feel about the historical evolution of the whole thing. Maybe you don’t think development is a “bad idea” — Walt chose clear liberal targets for a reason, I’m guessing — but it certainly shares the characteristics of other ideas he raises, namely, something we’ve done over and over that hasn’t worked.
A few years ago, Harper’s Magazine published a piece about the the first Millennium Village, in Kenya. The piece is buried behind a pay wall, unfortunately, but among the takeaways was this: Sauri, the site of the village, has been a pilot site of Great New Development Ideas before; in fact, the piece says, more than half of the research MVs at the time (2007) were built in places with histories of development projects. It makes some sense — the article says the idea was to avoid inexperience and cultural barriers that can impede development work early on — but it also makes weird science.
Last summer in Sierra Leone, I met an American guy working on a justice access initiative. He was not your Ivy League bona fide development worker. He was brash; he didn’t use the empty but politically acceptable vocabulary. He had a haircut I’d never see in a major American metropolis. But he was damn smart and committed to his work, and as I had breakfast with him and a Sierra Leonean colleague, he said to me in passing, “I hate the word ‘sensitization.'” To his colleague, he said, “What are we talking about, right?” And to both of us, or no one in particular, he said, “What we’re really talking about is cultural engineering. So we should just say that, because that’s what we’re doing.”
I thought of that guy when I read Walt’s article, because there’s another reason I think we repeat bad ideas: we invent and use language — even grammar — that allows us to willfully lie to ourselves. “Sensitization.” “Capacity building.” Even “local ownership,” which I like to imagine as revolutionary when people first bandied it about at meetings, has come to feel like an empty abstraction.
It’s not development workers’ fault, of course. The field doesn’t have final say on these, or so many other, things; it’s the guys back home, contending with the politicians and diplomats who pull the budgetary strings, who sanction our language. And I’d lay the blame first at the feet of the diplomats, who have spent centuries refining this linguistic game before imposing it on the allegedly apolitical projects they fund.
But while we’re on the “why” of bad ideas, I think that’s one of them. Here’s another I think development suggests: Sometimes, you just can’t do nothing, even if every rational synapse in your brain is screaming, “This has never worked, and there’s no way it can work now.” And that’s the rub — for development, for aid, for advocacy. What do you do with a moral imperative to act when the actions themselves are (at best) unlikely to work?
Agreed on the importance of language. Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” should be required reading for everyone in aid and development: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm
I tend to see development as almost a continuation of the colonial mission– and have problems with the push for homogenization. More of the same old “civilizing” of “backwards” people, or “saving” or the “poor”.
Some good reading I’ve found discussing the problems of development:
A Bed for the Night by David Rieff
Encountering Development ed. by Barnett and Weiss
Hugo Slim
Alex De Waal
That’s a pretty popular view among a lot of my favorite bloggers, too. I suppose that says I like the sort of second-look interrogation. But I found “A Bed for the Night” too cynical even for my counter-narrative tastes. Alex de Waal, though, is the man.
Walt is right to point out that we repeatedly fail to learn from our mistakes – or perhaps more accurately we fail to learn from other people’s mistakes.
This is of course visibly true about aid and development. And it’s true that language has a role to play – one prime example being the confusion between development and aid. When we talk about development not working, do we really mean development is not working or that aid as a means to development is not working (and is that all aid or just most aid, or some aid, and which aid is that exactly).
Getting our language straight so we know what we mean and we understand what others mean is important if we are to have meaningful conversations about aid and development – not because there is a single correct definition but to avoid us talking at cross purposes or worse to make plans based on fundamental misunderstandings.
Here’s a recent blog post I did on definitions: http://wp.me/p110pY-4F
The thing is: in such a case there is no moral imperative. You could argue that there is an imperative to do something when there is a good chance that it would work, but not if they are unlikely to or are even likely to do harm. One of the issues is that there is a lot of pressure to do ‘something’ even when there is no good option and hence there is no imperative, and from personal experience I can say that it is not easy and at times almost impossible to withstand that pressure.
Hmm, could be a few too many doses of Kant, but I can’t write off the idea of moral imperative that quickly. Also, I’m not confident enough in our — collective — ability always to know what is “likely to do harm” to undermine the idea of an imperative. And then there’s the personal experience: when I face someone for whom I truly can do nothing, I still feel an obligation, regardless of my own limitations. So I think it’s a bit more complicated than saying, “There’s no imperative, but there’s pressure.” But it’s possible it’s simply subjective.
That is an important point to make. We always work with imperfect information, especially in the field (what David Week called after Clausewitz the ‘fog of aid’), so we need to do as best as we can with the information that we do have. Now for the following scenario: we are in a situation in which our (imperfect) information leads us to believe that all options lead to consequences that are more negative than if we do nothing. Does this mean that we shouldn’t do anything (which would be my position), or that we should do something anyway (what seems to your position)?
Oh, absolutely. I am waiting for someone to write a PhD thesis on this issue, and there is no way we could possibly sum this up in the confines of this space.
I wholeheartedly agree, Michael. And might start applying to PhD programs? Lee, I think you’re right-on, too — especially about the time horizon this sort of thing takes. Thanks to you guys for engaging. I’ll never finish any real work, thinking about all this now…
Isn’t thinking about these things part of your work? 😉
Isn’t there also a question of who is to do something. There are lots of problems in the world that need attention (or even within one specific country), am I to try to do something about them all? Maybe the perceived ability to be able to do something about them is one way of picking which ones to take on- and this depends both on the problem and who “I” am and what I can bring to the problem.
I think it also depends what the “doing something” is. There is doing something abroad and there is doing something at home.
I think we do face a moral imperative to speak out against policies pursued by our own governments which are clearly damaging to the prospects of the poorest. No matter how good our chances of success in creating change are, we have a responsibility to speak out against Western agricultural subsidies, restrictive Western immigration polices, Western arms exports to undemocratic despots.
It took a very long campaign to get rid of slavery.
When we say “do something”, do we mean “do something funded”? Was Bonhoeffer funded by a grant? How come doing something is always down south? Is there nothing to be done about Western militarism and over-consumption in the Western countries themselves? Is it always the poor who need to change, and never the affluent?
Why are development people so silent on militarism? (I don’t mean grumbling in expat bars– I mean dropping work abroad to return to the heart of the beast and speak out about the relationship of poverty abroad [with slideshows of the poor in villages] to untenable militarism in the UK and US?
True, Michael. I can log it!
Ian, good point, you’re right, the choice is fraught with problems and limitations.
Jim, I don’t mean “do something funded,” and I don’t think “it’s always the poor who need to change.” There’s lots to in all of our homes, even if you just stick with poverty. Human rights journalists get asked all the time, “Why do you work abroad? There are issues at home that need attention.” I’ve seen great journalists give very different answers to the question. I think it’s probably a combination of a lot of idiosyncratic things, in addition to the moral dimension.
I am all for the existence of overseas human rights journalists, and for overseas journalists in general (it is sad that they have been cut back in recent years). So I’m not one of those asking that question.
But I am talking about the readers of those articles, who need not travel abroad (tho that may be more fun and sexy) to do something about the articles they read. I agree with Lee’s comments.
And I am criticizing “just sticking with poverty”. Many poverty problems can not be solved if you “just stick with poverty”; just as many problems with militarism or ecology can not be solved within the confines of those silos.
I recently read James Bradley’s “Imperial Cruise”– I recommend it highly.
Makes total sense to me, Jim. The journalism thing is the best analogy I’ve got from my own line of work, but I definitely agree that when it comes to make-a-difference stuff, travel is not required. (If you’ll indulge me, I did a cover story for the Christian Science Monitor last year (er, 2009) on social entrepreneurs. The website uselessly disaggregates the article and the five profiles that drove it, but I liked Emily Fernandez’s work because it’s international without her having to be, and Rosanne Haggerty, whose work on homelessness tackles those silo problems on a very local level.)
I’ll check out “Imperial Cruise,” thanks for the recommendation! In turn: James Traub wrote a vignette in Foreign Affairs magazine, years ago now, about UN workers in East Timor, a piece of the “here they come and there they go again” variety, which is a nice reminder that being there doesn’t always mean accomplishing anything.
Thanks– for other folks reading, it looks like the links are
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/56240/james-traub/inventing-east-timor
and
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/56641/ruth-wedgwood/trouble-in-timor?page=show
I am, um, putting these on my very long list of things to read.
Thank you,
Jim
PS- An example of the rare book that takes a look at peace AND ecology AND militarism are the State of the World reports.
Via email, a heads-up about a study of the Millennium Villages which finds that the success of the villages depends on the method you use to evaluate them. Check out Gabriel Demombynes’s post here:
http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/evaluating-the-millennium-villages
and co-author Michael Clemens’ post here:
http://blogs.cgdev.org/globaldevelopment/2010/10/when-rigorous-impact-evaluation-is-not-a-luxury-scrutinizing-the-millennium-villages.php
and Sachs, et. al’s response here:
http://blogs.millenniumpromise.org/index.php/2010/10/13/evaluating-the-millennium-villages-a-response-to-clemens-and-demombynes/
(…and authors’ response to that response: http://blogs.worldbank.org/africacan/evaluating-the-millennium-villages-reply-to-the-mvp-upcoming-seminar-with-comments-from-jeff-sachs)