Developing democracies can thrive — messily

February 12, 2015 By in Uncategorized 9 Comments

participation formsIn a recent blog post, I introduced some data on patterns of governance change in developing democracies. The data confirm a central theme of Working with the Grain – that most developing democracies are messy, and are likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future. For the overwhelming majority of developing democracies, transformational fantasies are just that – fantasies. In these messy settings,  our conventional  frameworks  of good governance and technocratic policymaking are of little use. Those of us who are committed to democratic pathways need new understandings of the way forward.

This post provides the empirical detail which I promised in the earlier post – and highlights also what the reality of democratic ‘messiness’ implies for action.  As I laid out in the earlier post – and as the attached file on MAJOR GOVERNANCE IMPROVERS 1998 to 2013   details, —  65 countries are on a democratic pathway, and  have populations in excess of 1 million, and per capita incomes which (as of 2000)  were below $10,000.  The group divides more-or-less evenly between 35  countries for which the recent period has been one of continuing (albeit often uneven) economic progress, and 30  countries that have experienced limited, if any, gains on either the institutional or economic front.  The 35 countries in turn divide into three predominant patterns.

First is a group of 13 accession (and candidate accession) countries to the European Union. This group underscores that,  for all of its current difficulties,  the EU has been a powerful positive force for the development of institutions of democracy.  Twelve countries have enjoyed both substantial economic growth and institutional improvement. (Hungary, where growth has been slower, and there has been some institutional decline, is the exception.) Indeed,  six of the twelve  (Albania, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Romania, and Serbia) achieved truly far-reaching institutional gains  —  though, for some of these, from a weak starting point, and  with a long road still to be travelled. But for now, with no equivalent regional candidate  anywhere on the horizon, the EU accession experience remains unique, with limited relevance for other countries.

This brings us to the second pattern – rapidly-growing democracies outside the EU zone which,  in the fifteen years from 1998 to 2013, enjoyed continuing transformational gains in governance. How many countries fit into this category?  Only two – and this by a generous count!!!!  One of these is Georgia – where strong leadership between 2004 and 2013 by elected president Mikheil Saakashvili indeed resulted in extraordinarily rapid gains in measured institutional quality  (although it must be noted that, by the tail-end, of his presidency, Saakashvili confronted increasing accusations of abuse of presidential power). The other is Liberia, where institutions remain very, very weak – but where  Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf’s leadership since 2005 has reversed an earlier institutional collapse, with the gains evident in the speed with which (after an initially shaky start) the country has been able to bring its ebola epidemic under control.

In sum, the EU experience aside, a review of the comparative record finds few if any countries which offer inspiration (let alone practical lessons) for complex democratic societies seeking transformational governance change. In the aftermath of an initial democratizing moment, continuing rapid institutional improvements of the kind championed by advocates of bold leadership are exceedingly rare.

So, finally, we come to the third, most prevalent group –  20 democratic countries where the quality of institutions  continues to fall far short of transformational dreams, but where economic growth has been rapid:

  • Some countries in this group have managed some continuing incremental gains in institutional quality. Indonesia is a leading example. As per the data, other possible moderate governance improvers (from very different baselines) are Armenia, Sierra Leone, Turkey and Zambia. (Ukraine, prior to its recent travails, was also on the list.)
  • Other countries (Ghana, for example; or, at higher levels of per capita income, Panama and Uruguay) have seen little change in institutional quality over fifteen years.
  • In yet others (e.g. Bangladesh, Mongolia, Mozambique and Peru) there has been some institutional retrogression.

If one looks only at the quality of institutions few, if any, of the 20 would seem to be models of what one hoped might come in the wake of democracy. But perhaps a narrow pre-occupation with institutional quality is misplaced. What all of the countries in the group share is a sense of dynamism, of things on the move – of possibility — that can come from sustained, broad-based economic growth.

Encouragingly, as Princeton professor Dani Rodrik has laid out in detail for economic policy – and as I detail in Working with the Grain vis-a-vis governance improvement– incremental initiatives can keep forward momentum going, on both the economic and institutional fronts. We don’t need far-reaching transformational boldness of a kind which both recent historical experience and in-depth knowledge of specific country settings tells us simply is not on the cards. As long as momentum can be sustained, the private sector, civil society and middle-class actors all are likely to strengthen – and become increasingly well-positioned to push for better public services, a stronger rule of law, and greater personal freedom.

So perhaps, going forward in what promises to be another challenging year, this could be the resolution of those of us committed to democratic development: that we foreswear the seductive utopianism of transformational change, and commit instead to working in the development and governance trenches — taking satisfaction from modest gains in institutional quality; embracing inclusive economic growth which spreads benefits widely; and working more broadly to sustain forward movement (however partial it might seem). The resulting gains will surely feel uncomfortably partial – and inevitable shortfalls in relation to our imaginary visions of perfection will surely continue to pain us.

But if forward momentum can continue, then  cumulative causation increasingly can make its power felt. Decade-by-decade things will be seen to be getting better. And if  progress can be sustained for, say, a half century —  the length of time that elapsed from the end of the American Civil War in 1865 to the country’s late Progressive Era of the early twentieth century — then perhaps  the world can indeed turn out to have been transformed.

Transformational fantasies, cumulative possibilities

February 10, 2015 By in governance, institutions, Working with the Grain Tags: , , , 7 Comments

reality check ahead

Dreams die hard. I was on the road for much of last fall, talking about my new book  – which promotes (as I put it in a recent piece in foreignpolicy.com),   the virtues of modesty in our approach to democratic development. While my message is a sober one,  my aim is not to foster pessimism but rather to highlight pragmatic ways forward.

Yet, repeatedly, I come up against critics who bewail my seeming lack of ambition. “Why”, they ask, “do you sell short the possibilities of transformation? Isn’t what we need bold, decisive, ethical leadership which cuts through the messiness of present predicaments?  Where governance is weak, bold leaders can and should make it strong – rapidly and systematically!”.

By now, there is plenty of scholarship that makes the case that changes in governance cannot be willed into being – but rather that ‘good governance’ is the cumulative consequence of a long, slow incremental process. Nobel-prize-winner Douglass North and colleagues have clarified conceptually how personalized bargains between contending elites can provide platforms for both stability and (perhaps) the slow evolution of formal rules of the game. Francis Fukuyama masterfully  documents,  over two volumes,  the deep historical roots of the rule of law, and of the difficult challenges posed by democratization in settings where state capabilities remain weak.

For many, though, conceptual and historical perspectives remain unpersuasive. “We need change”, they insist. “Therefore good leaders should provide it.”

One way or another damage is being done. If what I argue in Working with the Grain is wrong, then my incrementalist approach is giving comfort to mediocrity (and, sometimes, venality) when boldness and excellence are called for. But if the critics are wrong, then it is their seemingly visionary argumentation that is doing damage – holding up the impossible as a standard,  and thereby fuelling the inevitable disillusion and despair that comes in the wake of failure.

To try and cut through these contending arguments, I have turned to some facts. Subsequent to the exuberant phase of democratization of the early 1990s, many democracies (both new and more longstanding) have made major economic, social and political gains. But what has driven these gains?  Is it continuing governance transformation, driven by sustained, bold leadership? Or is it a more messier process —  ‘muddling through’, but nonetheless on balance successful?

One way to get a better sense of these achievements and their drivers is to review cross-country evidence. I focus here on progress across two dimensions – trends in economic performance and trends in institutional quality.  The attached file of MAJOR GOVERNANCE IMPROVERS, 1998 to 2013  summarizes the observed patterns for the full set of 65 countries that are on a democratic pathway, have populations in excess of 1 million, and whose per capita incomes as of 2000 were below $10,000.  The group divides more-or-less evenly between 35  countries for which the recent period has been one of continuing (albeit often uneven) economic progress, and 30  countries that have experienced limited, if any, gains on either the institutional or economic front.

In the companion post linked here, I explore the empirical detail.  But here is the headline conclusion:

  • European Union accession countries aside, only two countries – Georgia and Liberia – experienced continuing transformational gains in governance subsequent to their initial democratizing moment.

Only two countries…(!!!) ..…Georgia and Liberia…(!!!)…. Hardly a powerful platform for transformational claims!!!

Given these realities, surely we need to set aside our transformational fantasies and base our actions and advocacy not on our dreams and desires, but on the track record of what is feasible. But this need not mean setting our sights low. Over time, the cumulative consequences that follow from the accumulation of many seemingly small victories can be profound. But focusing on incremental gains calls for a different mindset than has prevailed in the recent past – it calls for us to set aside our infatuation with instant gratification and commit to sustained effort for the long haul. Development, including in its governance dimensions, is not a sprint, but a marathon.

Indonesia’s anti-corruption agency — a remarkable island of effectiveness

January 15, 2015 By in anti-corruption, corruption, development, governance, institutions, Working with the Grain Tags: , , , 3 Comments

indonesia KPKIn countries where corruption is pervasive even at the highest levels of political and bureaucratic leadership, is it nonetheless possible to deter impunity? The dilemma, which I explored in a recent blog post, is that in many difficult governance environments the logic of power is centered around personalized deal-making.  A culture of deal-making can all too easily degenerate into extremes of impunity, with profoundly  corrosive effects on a country’s institutions – but where such deal-making has become central to the political culture stamping out corruption hardly seems plausible.   In such settings, might it nonetheless be possible to establish a credible tripwire capable of deterring the worst abuses?

A remarkable example from Indonesia, explored in  two  papers written this past fall by graduate students of mine at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, suggests that that given the right combination of circumstances and creative activism the answer can be ‘yes’.

Indonesia certainly fits the bill of a difficult governance environment. Estimates of the amount of wealth amassed by the family of President Suharto during his 33-year reign (from 1965 to 1998) range from $15 billion to $73 billion. In  2004, Transparency International named him the most corrupt leader of the previous twenty years. Though things have improved since then, over the past decade the Worldwide Governance Indicators consistently locate Indonesia in the bottom third of countries globally in control of corruption.

But, against that backdrop, (and with thanks to Jake Thomases for making available  his paper on Indonesia’s anti-corruption agency) consider the recent track record of Indonesia’s corruption-fighting agency, the  Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi (KPK). The legislation mandating the creation of the KPK was passed in 1999. The KPK began its work in 2003, after a four-year-long gestation.. Between 2003 and 2012, only 169 cases went to trial. The intensity of its efforts has increased over time — but even in 2013 only 81 cases were investigated. While superficially this track record might seem limited, the KPK has won increasing respect for its achievements, and admiration for its boldness. A 2008  poll showed that 82% of Indonesians thought of the KPK as the most trustworthy law enforcer. (The police and attorney general received 6% and 2% of the vote.)

The KPK  indeed appears to be a tripwire against impunity. The fish caught were ‘big’ Among those it successfully prosecuted and convicted between 2008 and 2013 were: 72 members of parliament; a close family member of the sitting president; senior officials of the ruling party; the chief of one of the state-owned oil companies; the religious affairs minister; the chief justice of the constitutional court; and (perhaps most popular of all among citizen tired of being harassed on an almost daily basis) the commander of the National police traffic division. Further, contrary to the experience of anti-corruption drives in other countries, there has been no sign of any systematic targeting of political enemies while turning a blind eye to friends.

How, in an environment rife with personalized influence-peddling and deal-making has this track-record been possible? A proximate explanation lies in some of the features of the KPK’s design, and early-stage implementation. These included:

  • Very broad investigative and prosecutorial powers that allowed the KPK to circumvent and overrule police and prosecutors. These powers included the right to tap phones without a court order, to impose travel bans, to freeze bank accounts, and to access financial records.
  • Very robust and transparent mechanisms for appointing KPK leadership and staff – with staff selected from within the regular police and prosecutorial offices, and appointed only subsequent to extensive background checks. (Of 34,000 annual job applicants, only about 150 pass the background checks.)
  • A very robust screening process before a case is brought to trial – but a requirement that once the KPK officially names a person as a suspect, it is required to reach the trial stage (a fail-safe arrangement to prevent prosecutors from dropping a case in exchange for a bribe).
  • A wholly independent anti-corruption court to hear the trial — comprising five panelists, including three ad hoc appointees, drawn from eminent lawyers, legal scholars or retired judges.

As Matt Andrews emphasizes (his book, The Limits of Institutional Reform, features the KPK as an example), from the early conception of the idea of the KPK into its implementation, the reform approach was consistently inceremental. “The aim”, Andrews suggests, “was to start activity, learn from it, and build toward larger interventions.”

A deeper explanation for the KPK’s success is to be found  in a happy combination of context and development entrepreneurship. As my SAIS student Chris Crow detailed in his  paper on Indonesia’s democratic transition, the Indonesian environment in the latter 1990s  offered a classic ‘window of opportunity’ for reform. (The law establishing the KPK was promulgated in 1999.) Suharto was forced from power in May, 1998. His handpicked successor, BJ Habibie, with virtually no independent power base of his own, tried to win legitimacy by turning to reformist segments of Indonesian society. Ryaas Rasyid, a young academic who had written his dissertation on democratic reform, was perfectly positioned for this moment. He had been appointed in the last years of Suharto’s rule to lead a task force of seven  political scientists to scope out a plan for political reform. In latter 1998, in an effort to strengthen his legitimacy, Habibie turned to this group to draft a new set of electoral laws. ‘Team 7’, in turn, capitalized on their newly-won status as successful refomers to advocate successfully for far-reaching decentralization of the political system.

Skillful leveraging of reform space  has consistently been central to Indonesia’s efforts to combat corruption, with momentum coming from a powerful network of allies in civil society. Indonesia Corruption Watch (established in 1998) and other activist groups played an important role in the initial push to establish the KPK. Its 1999 enabling legislation was drafted by a respected, reform-minded law professor, Romli Atmasasmita. Whenever the organization has been threatened, its allies have risen determinedly to its defense – including an episode in 2012 when in response to the KPK’s investigation of the police chief (and to quote Jake Thomases)  “the police threatened to raid KPK headquarters and arrest the investigator. Word spread on the street. By the time 300 armed offers showed up and surrounded the building, there were already scores of people blocking the entrances with their bodies. The police gave in and retreated.”

Among democracy advocates, at a difficult time globally, Indonesia is coming to be seen as a beacon of hope. Part of this sense of hope comes from the message sent by the KPK’s successes – that powerful leaders act with impunity at their peril. To be sure, the country falls far, far short of anyone’s depiction of “good governance”. But what stands out (and the KPK exemplifies) is the sustained, determined focus of reformers both inside government and in civil society on achievable objectives, rather than on rhetorical flourishes —  on a development strategy organized around what I describe in my recent book, Working with the Grain as “islands of effectiveness”.

“Hope”, I suggested in Working with the Grain, “can come in different intonations. There is the drumbeat of exhortation, of a world on the march to some more perfect destination on the horizon. But hope can also come in a quieter pitch: searching – encouraging deliberation, reflection, co-operation.” In its steady, incremental, cumulative progress, the KPK is an example of this latter kind of hope – as an important beacon pointing towards what is possible, even in difficult governance environments.

Duncan Green on Working with the Grain

January 6, 2015 By in development, governance, inclusion Tags: , Leave a comment

fp2p blogDuncan Green’s review of Working with the Grain on his widely read From Poverty to Power blog (CLICK HERE TO ACCESS THE REVIEW) usefully points towards the two very different goals I aimed to achieve in the book.

One goal was to write, anchored in my lived experience, an accessible tour d’horizon of the current, cutting edge of development thinking and practice — and how it got that way. A second goal was to provide an analytically robust conceptual framework as a foundation for moving that thinking forward — bringing together  a variety of theoretical contributions which rarely are considered in an integrated way. As anyone who has labored through the work of Mushtaq Khan, Douglass North, Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson knows, this involves a lot of seemingly arcane terminology – but the payoff can be high.

I have tried to use the analytical concepts to help push the analytical foundation of development practice beyond the tired polarities of Bill Easterly’s best practice, technocrat ‘tyrant experts’ and his bold ‘searchers’, plunging, gloriously free, into the unknown. Rather, as the FP2P review highlights, I use the book’s conceptual platform to identify four distinctive country-types – each characterized by distinctive incentives and constraints to development policymaking and implementation. The aim is to give content to the idea of “good fit”, by exploring in depth how both reform priorities and effective approaches to implementation vary radically and systematically across the country-types — thereby directing attention away from off-the-shelf blueprints and hopefully laying out a practical, analytically grounded set of options that can help us engage constructively with the governance ambiguities of our early 21st century world.

South Africa — where democracy and inequality collide

January 1, 2015 By in anti-corruption, development, governance, inclusion, institutions Tags: Leave a comment

khayelitsha-cape-townAre governance and inclusion mutually reinforcing  or  at odds with one another? An optimistic perspective suggests that over time, participatory and accountable governance institutions will move economic policy and performance in a more inclusive direction. A  pessimistic view is that no-holds-barred contestation for limited elite privileges and increasing discontent among an excluded majority  will result in the gradual, cumulative erosion of governance institutions. Nowhere is this tension between governance and inequality starker than in South Africa; I’ll be heading back there in less than two weeks. (I spend part of each year teaching and researching, based at the University of Cape Town). While there, I  expect to post a number of blogs on how this tension is playing out. Meanwhile, as a baseline for forthcoming pieces, the links below will take you to two blog posts which I wrote from South Africa a few years ago – and which remain strikingly current.

The first post frames the tension between democracy and inequality from a broad, comparative perspective – highlighting some striking parallels between the way in which Mexico’s Party for Institutionalized Revolution (the PRI) governed the country for close to 60 years, and some emerging trends in South Africa under the African National Congress which, since 1994, has consistently enjoyed a sweeping electoral mandate. In Mexico, patronage came to dominate. In South Africa, will patronage, populism or a happy combination of inclusion and economic dynamism win the day? For further discussion CLICK HERE TO ACCESS MY POST FROM A FEW YEARS AGO ON “WHEN DEMOCRACY AND INEQUALITY COLLIDE”.  (Note: the Gini coefficient of expenditure inequality quoted in the piece, i.e. after taxes and transfers,  is incorrect; the correct number for 2010 is 0.66, not 0.59.)

The second post highlights the centrality of basic education (and skills acquisition more broadly) to reducing inequality – and points to some of the large, continuing challenges South Africa confronts in this area. (I currently am co-leading  a major research project on the politics and governance of education in South Africa and other developing countries, supported by the University of Manchester’s, DFID-funded  Effective States and Inclusive Development  programme – so more posts to follow in this area.)  CLICK HERE TO ACCESS MY POST ON “EDUCATION AS LIBERATION”. More on both topics in the next few months……but before leaving this site, do sign up to subscribe to my blog…..

An Africanist’s perspective on Working with the Grain

December 18, 2014 By in Uncategorized Leave a comment

Ken Opalo (Stanford and Kenya’s Saturday Standard):

“I finally got to reading Brian Levy’s Working With the Grain. It is easily the most underestimated development book of 2014, and should be read alongside William Easterly’s Tyranny of Experts (which it both complements and pushes back against). ” Click on the link below to read the full review on the Africanist Perspective blog:

Working With the Grain in Development

 

Doing development differently — the rebirth of ‘the science of muddling through’

December 16, 2014 By in corruption, development, governance, institutions, Working with the Grain Tags: , , , , , 1 Comment

doing development differentlyIt is a commonplace that the pendulum of economic development scholarship and practice swings back and forth from one set of (faddish) ideas to another.  But beneath this back-and-forth cycling is another, longer cycle —  the tension between a search for grand, seemingly scientifically-grounded solutions, and an approach to problem-solving which self-consciously is more pragmatic, incremental. In recent decades, this long-cycle pendulum has swung powerfully in the direction of  scientism. There are, though, some striking signs that it may be swinging back. As a next step in crafting a way forward, a rapidly growing group of eminent scholars and practitioners have signed on to a “Doing Development Differently” manifesto.  I explore this swinging pendulum, and make the link to some of the earlier  intellectual roots of the DDD movement, in a blog post on the Oxford University Press website. You can access the full post by clicking here. (…..but before you go, though, do go to my blog home page, and sign up to receive email updates of future blog posts……..)

Puzzling over ‘anti-corruption’

November 17, 2014 By in anti-corruption, corruption, development, governance, institutions Tags: , , , , 9 Comments

anti-CorruptionI’ve been puzzling (yet again!) over the usefulness of anti-corruption as an entry point for engagement by civil society, donors and other developmental champions. Always and everywhere, behaving ethically is surely crucial to meet the most important test of all — the “look oneself in the mirror every morning” test. The question for activists is not whether we should model ethical behavior — an obvious “yes” —  but what are the pros and cons of an anti-corruption ‘framing’.  I list below three analytically strong arguments against using anti-corruption as an entry point– but also one compelling argument for its use. It would be terrific if this post could get some fresh new conversation underway on the dilemma.

 Here (to establish that I’m not coming at this as an apologist) is the argument ‘for’ focusing on anti-corruption. Impunity is corrosive. It can over time destroy a country’s entire development platform. In the absence of sustained vigilance, some political leaders might find themselves wading, step by incremental step, deeper and deeper into the mire of corruption – setting a tone at the top which progressively pervades layer after layer of a country’s institutions. The absence of a strong anti-corruption voice in society can help ‘enable’ this type of downward slide.

But here are the three arguments against leading with an ‘anti-corruption’ focus:

  • First is the logic of ‘limited access orders’ — as laid out in landmark work by Nobel-prize winning economist Douglass North and his co-authors. They show compellingly that in the large majority of countries today (and historically everywhere), before impersonal institutions have taken root, personalized deal-making among elites is the basis for political stability. They argue also that the development of a country’s institutions and its economy are interdependent, and that the process evolves incrementally. Taken together, as they argue, these insights suggest that “transplanting institutions [can] undermine the political arrangements maintaining stability, [and can] unleash disorder, making the society significantly worse off.”
  • Second is the logic of clientelism – spelled out in useful detail by Francis Fukuyama in his recent book, Political Order and Political Decay. Fukuyama argues that the allocation of public sector jobs to political allies will almost inevitably be present in societies that democratize before they build strong state capability. He suggests that in settings with democratic contestation but without a capable state  “clientelism should be considered an early form of democratic accountability and be distinguished from other forms of corruption – or indeed not considered a form of corruption at all.”
  • Third is the central importance of the ‘capacity to co-operate’ in achieving development outcomes – and, as per the path-breaking work of Elinor Ostrom (another Nobel-prize winner), the role of encouraging trust  and  mutual learning in building this capacity. In a world where (as she puts it) “there are some saints and some sinners, but mostly regular folk capable of both types of behavior….norms can evolve to support co-operation.” As Ostrom’s good practice principles for effective co-operation suggest, co-operation and trust are built by a combination of close monitoring and encouraging people to put their ‘best foot’ forward, even in the face of imperfection, not by punitive admonition. [Chapter 8 of my book, Working with the Grain  includes a comprehensive discussion of how we can bring Ostrom’s insights more into the mainstream of the development policy and implementation discourse; more information about the book is available on this website.]

A few years ago, I began asking colleagues within the development community how one might tell the difference between those political and bureaucratic leaders who were doing what was necessary to achieve developmental goals in settings where formal institutions were weak – and those who had crossed over to the ‘dark side’ of impunity and predation. It took many months before I finally came across a colleague who (based on his many years of experience in an African country which had experienced both types of leadership) provided a compelling answer.  “It’s easy”, he said. “In the former case, the informal rules of the game are clear, and the leaders play by them. In the latter, the rules are not clear – and, whatever, they might be, they do not apply to the leaders themselves”.

Compelling, yes – but how can activists translate the above into a strategy which provides a ‘tripwire’ in the face of impunity but, at the same time, sustains a positive discourse for the development endeavor as a whole? Reflections appreciated – and more on this in subsequent posts….

The end of history has been postponed. Now what?

November 5, 2014 By in development, institutions Tags: Leave a comment

fukuyama orderIn Political Order and Political Decay, the second volume of his magnum opus on the underpinnings of liberal democracy, Francis Fukuyama makes the case that “just outcomes in the present are often the result of crimes committed in the past.” How, then, are we to act?

I pose this question in a review article, “Fukuyama’s Fatalism”, which I published on November 4 in Foreign Policy’s Democracy Lab. In the article, I contrast Frank Fukuyama’s commitment to telling hard truths unflinchingly with the great twentieth century development economist Albert Hirschman’s lifelong effort to find “avenues of escape from exaggerated notions of absolute obstacles, imaginary dilemmas, and one-way sequences.”  CLICK HERE to view my full review article in foreignpolicy.com.   [And before you go, if you haven’t already done so, do sign up to receive my future blog posts…….]

The Chad-Cameroon Project — a glass partly full??? (WWG Implementation series #1)

October 5, 2014 By in governance, institutions, Working with the Grain Tags: , 2 Comments

chad cameroon pipelineI increasingly find myself wondering whether those of us who have tried to achieve development gains in difficult governance environments have framed our interventions in ways which almost ensure that they are judged as failures – and leave us (and the development community more broadly) feeling dispirited. But perhaps beneath the blanket judgment of ‘failure’, if one looked closely one might find valuable partial successes – which, if we were willing to embrace as such, could offer a sense of hope and possibility.  (Surely, in a complex, difficult world partial successes are worthwhile!). Take the example of the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline Project.

[An extract of the discussion of  the Chad Cameroon pipeline project in Working with the Grain is available in the “specific themes” section of this website. Click here for easy navigation to the detailed Chad-Cameroon discussion. ]

Many of us will remember the Chad-Cameroon project  as an enormously ambitious, and enormously controversial effort to support a very large investment in oil extraction, in a very weak institutional environment – and to do so in a way which ensured that Chad would realize the fiscal benefits, and leverage them to support poverty reduction.  But, with the  World Bank pulling out prematurely in 2007, we are likely to also think of it as a grandiose, expensive, hubristic failure.

Interestingly, though, when I teach the case to my students at Johns Hopkins SAIS students, this is not their conclusion. (The average student in SAIS’s International Development program is in his or her late 20s, has spent time in the developing world, and is committed to a career in international development; fewer than half are Americans.)  I explain the design and intent of the project, and detail what had been the impact as of 2010 (what I found on this came as something as a surprise to me…..).  I then ask them whether (i) knowing what the World Bank did at the time it was right to support the project? And (ii) knowing what was the project’s consequences, they nonetheless think it was worth supporting? Strikingly, the vast majority come out in favor of the project.

I am eager to hear from others who are familiar with the project whether you agree with my students, or think that they (and I) are being blindly overoptimistic. So do please post a comment – either here or on my blog site, where you will find further detail on the project and some of its consequences. (And while you’re at the blog site, I’d be thrilled if you signed up to receive the blog on a regular basis — on one of the links at the side or the bottom of this page.

Also, for a comprehensive  elaboration of the idea that we are unwilling to embrace as worthwhile outcomes where the glass is half-full, take a look at my new book — by exploring the other pages of this website, or purchasing the book itself (including a Kindle version, available at Amazon).