DEVELOPMENT BECOMES A NEW GLOBAL IDEOLOGY
ANALYSTS BEGIN TO ASK WHETHER GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT AGENDA IS AN IDEOLOGY FRAUGHT WITH AUTHORITARIAN PERILS
30 June 2007

Major ideologically-driven revolutions have sought to implant Utopian movements where authoritarian regimes once stood, since the 18th century, across the world. All too often, they have brought about new authoritarian regimes, which view dissenters as immoral or unthinking pawns of the old regime, and therefore, a universal threat.

Now, Foreign Policy magazine has asked the question of whether "development", as an international policy agenda, is becoming the new universalizing ideology, and whether it is given to the same dangerous weaknesses of reasoning that made totalitarian systems of the 20th century into such bloody attacks on humanity.

The root of the comparison is the ostensibly humanitarian urge, which does not automatically make a proposed policy or system dangerous. But, when the humanitarian urge is linked to specific concepts and definitions, when it is taken for granted that only this system, and no other, can effectively bring about a more just situation for the struggling masses of humanity, then the system proposes itself as a panacea, and creeps toward ruling out all competing systems or methods.

The primary fear regarding the so-called developmentalist agenda is that it proposes to rid the world of poverty, disease, injustice and tyranny, but it proposes to do so within a strict set of policy definitions, and based on circumstances that existed in certain past cases but do not exist for today's newcomers to the development project.

William Easterly writes, for Foreign Policy, "Like all ideologies, Development promises a comprehensive final answer to all of society’s problems, from poverty and illiteracy to violence and despotic rulers. It shares the common ideological characteristic of suggesting there is only one correct answer, and it tolerates little dissent. It deduces this unique answer for everyone from a general theory that purports to apply to everyone, everywhere."

Easterly proposes that economic freedom, the ability to build and expand businesses from local to international levels, to empower local actors to build the societies relevant to their circumstances, has morphed into an ideologically-driven "free-market" principle, that is imposed "in one of the worst possible ways, with unelected outsiders imposing rigid doctrines on the xenophobic unwilling".

The problem is obvious: an open market must allow for a lot of different players playing by varied rules, honoring distinct authorities or priorities, and competing to craft the best ideas for the best results, so that people who need to improve their condition can find the means to do so. But the global system used to force open "closed" or "emerging" markets, does not allow the local actors to grow into the system or to build an economy that will be able to compete or survive.

The consequence, often tragic, is that those who might most benefit from more liberal economic policies, are pushed into hard-bit opposition, and those who would help them open new horizons on all sides, become as much the problem as the poverty or the tyranny they —in theory— seek to overcome via trade.

FP cites several cases where resources have been applied in startlingly counterproductive ways: "The disappointing payoff following eight structural adjustment loans to Zimbabwe and $8 billion in foreign aid during the 1980s and 1990s helped Robert Mugabe launch a vicious counterattack on democracy. The IMF-World Bank-Jeffrey Sachs application of 'shock therapy' to the former Soviet Union has created a lasting nostalgia for communism."

The FP article attacks Jeffrey Sachs, a Columbia University economist, in particular, saying that his theories propose more or less utopian and immediate results by way of sweeping top-down expert-driven mandatory systems of reform. It is more fair to say that Sachs proposes a wide range of small steps that can each contribute to a multifaceted but generally upward trend in living standards, health and economic stability, but that all of this depends also on internal and external political tensions as well.

Nevertheless, it is not wholly untrue that massive global funding initiatives and the good will of people in wealthy countries who may or may not have the knowledge to do good effectively, are "channeled into fattening the international aid bureaucracy", what Easterly calls "the self-appointed priesthood of Development".

The concept of spurring development as a means to creating political modernization, cultural diversity, cosmopolitan political attitudes, and basic health and welfare improvements, is not inherently wrong-headed. But, it requires an acute awareness of the means by which it can function collaboratively.

Easterly is wrong to assert that there is no room for local actors, because he discounts the part of the global "development agenda" that funds private NGOs, whose motivation is precisely to use local actors to enact good ideas, as they advise or see fit.

The ideological crisis comes with the limited variety of places where funding can go if development as such is seen as panacea, and with the colossal power of anonymous, definitively detached and non-local bodies like the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank, which often mandate reforms that benefit their financial backers (wealthy governments) more than they do the nation implementing the reforms.

Easterly goes off track when he judges the development project to be fundamentally corrupted by the "borderline personality disorder" he assigns to those who view science as a means to creating sound development solutions to complex problems. While he accurately points out the risk in contorting scientific standards or proofs into blind political doctrine, it is not necessarily the case that this is the aim or the prevailing tendency of those who seek to use science to aid development.

It is the authoritarian tendency that is most worrying, where "Poor societies are not just poor, the experts tell us, they are 'developing' until they reach the final stage of history, or 'development,' in which poverty will soon end. Under this historiography, an end to starvation, tyranny, and war are thrown in like a free toaster on an infomercial. The experts judge all societies on a straight line, per capita income, with the superior countries showing the inferior countries the image of their own future".

It is, of course, instructive, to think in terms of non-linear history. Not all societies have the same goals, and not all are following the same course toward the same point at the "end of history", where prosperity reigns and the poor inherit the earth. Indeed, the wealthiest societies in the world have not been able to eradicate poverty or hunger, and still face violent crime and the persecution of those who live on the fringes of society in a state of temporary or perpetual marginalization.

Easterly points out, importantly, that "Few realize that Americans in 1776 had the same income level as the average African today. Yet, like all the present-day developed nations, the United States was lucky enough to escape poverty before there were Developmentalists. In the words of former IMF First Deputy Managing Director Anne Krueger, development in the rich nations 'just happened.'"

The 'developmentalists' did not dictate to the earliest presidents of the US or of the French Republic or to the British parliament or monarchy what they needed to do in order to advance technologically or economically. The "system" emerged from the market, and not the other way around. People sought what they needed and built what served their interests, and in some ways, this is what is lacking from the global development policy sweep: the opportunity to plot a course that makes sense from local perspectives and build a functioning, democratic marketplace for trade and for ideas. [s]

• Foreign Policy: "The Ideology of Development"