That's the question that Buttonwood asks in the Economist. And provides an interesting roundup of evidence that many emerging markets aren't as vulnerable as they were when the Asian crisis hit, with follow-on waves of Russian and Latin American contagion.

In addition to the benefits of having pursued sounder macropolicies, the emerging markets as a group are enjoying a far healthier composition of the money that's been pouring into emerging markets assets recently, attracted by better returns than in more developed markets.

In a study released last week, Christian Stracke of CreditSights, a research firm, compares emerging economies’ dependence on portfolio inflows now and eight years ago. (Portfolio investment—as opposed to foreign direct investment—is generally fast and easy to liquidate, and so includes the sort of “hot money” that travels fast and upsettingly.) Looking at 25 countries, he finds that dependence is generally much lower, but patchily so.

As the table shows, portfolio liabilities in the 18 months to June 2005 for the group as a whole were $118.5 billion, far less than the $170.7 billion that came in before June 1997. This averages out some very different experiences: both Argentina and Brazil have seen liabilities decrease sharply, while India, Poland and Hungary have had just the reverse. What is more, the “hotter” sort of portfolio investment—debt securities—has fallen most (from $116.6 billion to $66.7 billion) while equity investment has stayed almost the same.

On another measure, the ratio of foreign-exchange reserves to recent inflows, things look sturdier still. In June 2005, the median emerging country had enough reserves to cover 529% of the past 18 months’ portfolio inflows, compared with just 222% in June 1997. This average again masks some big differences: oil-rich Russia’s reserves are a staggering 2,093% of flows, while Turkey has either 161% or 249%, depending on how one treats the bulky “errors and omissions” category of its current-account figures.

Buttonwood speculates on what might generate changes in investor sentiment:

But it would not take much to produce that—higher real interest rates in America, for a start (and rate rises look likely to continue). The impact of dearer oil is harder to judge. High oil prices should be a plus for emerging producers such as Russia and Venezuela, while heavy importers such as South Korea have enough other attractions to get away with it. But money managers are beginning to look askance at emerging-market guzzlers who have subsidised energy use and may no longer be able to afford it. [Brad Setser has an interesting post on the differential impact of rising oil prices on various emerging markets]

Paradoxically, globalisation may also dim the appeal of emerging markets by increasing the correlation between developed and developing assets. Mexico, some say, is beginning to pay the price for its lockstep with the United States. A sharp increase in risk aversion would make that matter more: at the moment, investors ask only to be led to the next frontier, but a few more terrorist attacks in big financial centres could change that.

Yet for those of us who have long followed the emerging markets, it's hard not to be hopeful that this time it's different in the sense that hard-won gains in attracting long-term investment won't be wiped out by another round of emerging markets contagion. At the very least, a more mature market for emerging markets assets may produce greater discrimination by investors among countries when the inevitable turn in sentiment arrives. As Buttonwood concludes:

The broad picture is nonetheless revealing, and, within limits, encouraging: a sell-off rather than a rout may be the worst that happens if foreign investors turn tail.

Of course, all bets are off if long-delayed global adjustments -- with the US deficits at the center of the process -- produce the end of the current "Bretton Woods II" regime, as discussed by Nouriel Roubini and Brad Setser. Few emerging markets, regardless of their reserve positions or low portfolio liabilities, will find themselves unscathed in that scenario.

Well, not exactly. I am not a John Bolton fan, to put it mildly. But I actually think Bolton's getting a bum rap over the the recently leaked "mark-up" containing the extensive US comments on the draft declaration for the UN Summit.

Given Bolton's record, it's not surprising that the US mark-up is being characterized as a Bolton special:

• John Bolton is doing exactly what his critics expected of him. He is sticking it to the world. . .hard and nasty. (Steve Clemons sitting in for Josh Marshall at TPM)


• John Bolton is the perfect messenger for the blunt challenge Washington has thrown down to the international consensus. (Guardian)


• America's controversial new ambassador to the United Nations is seeking to shred an agreement on strengthening the world body and fighting poverty intended to be the highlight of a 60th anniversary summit next month. In the extraordinary intervention, John Bolton has sought to roll back proposed UN commitments on aid to developing countries, combating global warming and nuclear disarmament. (The Independent)


• While Bolton ludicrously talks about seeking a "strong consensus," the objective is rather obvious: strong dissensus all around. [Hence, talking about the merits of this or that proposal totally misses the point. The proposed changes are tactical fig leaves fog sabotage.] (Stygius)

The extensive scope and degree of detail of the mark-up (some 750 comments, hardly a paragraph in 32 pages left untouched) -- especially in areas that appear non-controversial (at least by comparison with Kyoto or the ICC) -- have given rise to speculation that Bolton is off the (Condi) reservation again. Clemons, citing a briefing for NGOs held by Nicholas Burns and Philo Dibble, reports that Burns and Dibble were vague and seemingly unforthcoming in explaining why the Millennium Development Goals had disappeared from the US' preferred language. Clemons speculates that the civil wars within the State Department have begun, reasoning that Burns and Dibble couldn't shoot down Bolton in public, but they didn't support him either. Similarly, Stygius notes a NYT article at the time of the Bolton recess appointment, citing State Dept insiders' claims that the UN reform agenda had been proceeding well in the absence of a permanent ambassador. Based on Bolton's patterns of past behavior, Stygius understandably draws the following conclusion:

John Bolton wants to escape the cage that's been built around him. Thus we see him emphatically trying to inject himself into a reform process that is already well underway, one controlled by those within a Bush Administration that have deliberately (and pragmatically) excluded him in the interests of UN reform.

I've taken a quick scan through the mark-up (pdf) provided via Steve Clemons. And I've looked with somewhat greater care at the development sections that seem to have provoked quite a bit of comment, especially the deletion of language regarding the Millennium Development Goals. I have quite a different take on the draft and the US position.

I was indeed shocked and dismayed, but not by the majority of US comments. Rather, I was flabbergasted that whoever has been shepherding the document through the bureaucratic process had thought that a draft at this late date, which had so many items that directly contradicted long-standing US positions -- including on topics that had just received world-wide attention at the Gleneagles G-8 summit -- had the remotest chance of survival.

Let's focus first on process. The Guardian offers two possible explanations for this state of affairs.

The US delegation says it was raising its objections informally at meetings to discuss the draft, and was forced to circulate its blunt list of deletions and additions only after those objections were ignored.

The account provided by European officials at the UN explains the late timing of this intervention by turmoil inside the US foreign policy establishment. For the first seven months of this year, as the draft was being hammered out, the US had no full permanent representative at the UN. John Danforth retired in January, and the White House's attention was focused on persuading the Senate to confirm John Bolton. A career diplomat, Anne Patterson, led the delegation in the interim, but reportedly received little political guidance from Washington.

When Mr Bolton arrived this month, finally forced in by the president with a temporary executive appointment, the change was dramatic. The leadership shifted from a non-political diplomat to one of the most ideological and partisan US permanent representatives in recent history.

Let's be clear, folks. A large number of the proposed changes would require no, I repeat, no political guidance from Washington. They are no-brainers, pure and simple, for anyone representing the US in international fora. Many are on points where representatives from other countries familiar with the issues would know good and well that the draft language was a non-starter for the US. Not just for the Bush Administration, but for prior administrations or for a considerable majority of the US Congress.

The explanation offered by the US delegation, as reported by the Guardian, is plausible. The account provided to the Guardian by "European officials at the UN" is not. Unless, that is, what the officials meant when they said "little political guidance" was that State told Anne Patterson not to throw a public tizzy-fit until Bolton arrived on the scene.

Now for some substantive comments. Let's leave to one side the absolutely clear-cut non-negotiable US positions on hot-button issues -- such as Kyoto and the ICC -- where the positions in the draft were not couched in terms that could conceivably obtain US endorsement. Let's just focus on the development and poverty agenda, where it's already clear from the press comments that the proposed US changes will be viewed by some (especially NGOs and undoubtedly many developing countries) as backtracking on some sort of grand global consensus.

Some of the proposed additions or deletions are undeniably chippy -- the US substituting its preferred formulation that publicizes its own programs or philosophies rather than use more generic language that would incorporate a wider variety of approaches that have broad support in the development community. A wordsmith would have few difficulties coming up with language that is widely acceptable to both the US and the original drafters in many of those cases. Some of the changes are stylistic -- toning down the sweeping generalities and grandiose sentiments but more accurately reflecting the reality of what the document represents and is likely to achieve in practical terms (e.g., "all" is invariably struck; "recognize" and "resolve" are often substituted for "agree" and "commit"). Even after the US' proposed amendments, however, it's a pretty ambitious laundry list of hopes and dreams.

But if we take a large step back from the specific clauses and look at the overall thrust of the draft, it's easy to see why the US viewed it as troubling, to say the least. The draft is a major attempt to shift responsibility for defining and overseeing the development/poverty agenda, and controlling the resources for that agenda, from the current system of bilateral aid politics and multilateral institutions (especially the IMF and the World Bank) to New York. The alleged "backtracking" by Bolton on the MDGs should be seen in this context.

The draft for the UN Summit, before the US started whacking away with a red pen, covered a whole host of topics that are currently being debated within the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO (and occasionally the G-8, G-22 etc) -- such as debt relief and what it will mean for the capital structure of the lending institutions, changes in the architecture of the international financial system, coordination of national development and poverty reduction strategies with bilateral and multilateral assistance, improving the mechanics of aid delivery, the big Doha Round agenda. No one who included these issues in the draft for the UN Summit could have expected that these complex topics -- which have been discussed non-stop for years, with progress made incrementally, and which will be discussed for years to come -- could be brought profitably into the UN Summit process.

The proposed draft can only be fully understood if you've got a feel for the sort of debates represented by Jeffrey Sachs' gargantuan scheme to "end poverty in our lifetime." The scheme was set forth in a special report overseen by Sachs for Kofi Annan earlier this year that's an "action plan" for the MDGs. I am extremely uncomfortable with the entire Sachs approach, which is far too top-down (in the sense of planning, not necessarily implementation, and rapid scalability), too focused on box-car dollars, and much too heavy on actions directed at eliminating "poverty" rather than integrating more of the poor into a long-term positive-feedback process that promotes sustainable economic development. Caveat -- Sachs does have lots of interesting diagnoses of problems and specific ideas for ways to make drastic improvements in peoples' lives, his recent book is worth a quick read, and some of the specific chapters and Task Force reports that are components in the grand UN scheme are full of good insights.

It is my personal opinion -- and apparently the position of the US government -- that the world doesn't need more grandiose schemes. But it is not simply a matter of opinion that there is a complete absence of a "global consensus" on development and poverty reduction which the US (or Bolton) is purportedly opposing. In fact, it's an absolute canard to suggest that such a consensus exists. Surely the recent debates spawned by the attention to assistance in Africa at the recent G-8 summit should have made that clear to one and all. Reasonable people who are passionately committed to development and poverty reduction have major differences about what sorts of assistance or actions by developed countries are effective and desirable.

But in addition to my allergy to a development philosophy that's excessively "planned," overly concerned with fund-raising, and focused heavily on "poverty" per se, the biggest problem I have with Sachs' proposals is that it would put the UN in the driver's seat. As most fights over institutional arrangements, the Sachs proposal isn't framed as New York-centric in so many words. But the reality of the institutional agenda is plain to discern for anyone with experience in institutional battles when (1) the driving goals/metrics are "owned" by the UN (the MDGs), (2) the "coordinating" mechanisms are ten-year national development plans tied to the achievement of the UN-owned goals, (3) UN Country Teams are responsible for ensuring "coordination" of both bilateral and multilateral assistance, and (4) the Bretton Woods institutions (IMF, World Bank) and regional development banks are supposed to derive much of their agendas from the MDGs. The Sachs' report's ten recommendations for transforming aid -- although accurately identifying several legitimate issues -- together if adopted would produce a major institutional power shift under the technocratic guise of clearer objectives and better coordination. The indicative, not mandatory, aspirational benchmarks that were the MDGs have become the vehicle for a nice little power struggle.

A shift in center of gravity from the specialized international financial institutions (IFIs) towards the UN in New York may appear to be attractive for a lot of NGOs, who think they'll be able to more readily influence the agenda and ensure "accountability" of the development institutions. It's also superficially attractive to developing countries that have less voice within the board rooms of the IFIs, where the donor countries have the greatest power, and the particular developmental flavor-of-the-year in the donor capitals will often have more influence on the type and timing of assistance than needs as perceived by recipients of that assistance. Indeed, the entire issue of inadequate voice of less-developed countries within international organizations, and the erosion of legitimacy of those organizations due to inadequate voice, is a very real concern.

Robert Keohane addresses the issue of "accountability" of the IFIs in a provocative article in the most recent issue of the Harvard International Review (Kennedy School) that focuses on "defining power" in international relations. Keohane's topic is "Abuse of Power: Assessing Accountability in World Politics." Unfortunately, the issue is not yet online. Here's some of the bit on multilateral organizations, which are the frequent object of wrath and scorn as "unaccountable," especially by NGOs.

Consider the entities conventionally held accountable on a transnational basis. The most prominent, judging from demonstrations, press coverage, and even scholarly articles are major inter-governmental organizations concerned with economic globalization: the European Union, World Bank IMF, and WTO. Champions of "more accountability" make these organizations major targets, which certainly have deficiencies in accountability and certainly do not meet the standards of accountability for the best-functioning democracies of our era. But ironically, these entities seem to be relatively accountable compared with other key global actors.

These economic institutions are internally accountable to states on the basis of authorization and support. States must create them and continue to fund them. Externally significant accountability gaps exist. Indeed, many poor people affected by the policies of the IMF, World Bank, and WTO lack any ability to hold the organizations accountable. Nevertheless, there is a vaguely held notion that these people should have some say in what the organizations do -- that the "voice of the poor," in the World Bank's words, should be heard. Many feel, then that these organizations should be externally as well as internally accountable.

Various NGOs purporting to speak for and promote principles that help affected people gain legitimacy on the basis of this widespread belief. One result of the endeavors is that the decision-making process of many multilateral organizations have become remarkably transparent. Indeed, in transparency they now compare well to the decision-making processes of most governments, even some democratic ones. When their process are not transparent, the chief source of non-transparency is governmental pressure for confidentiality.

But the decentralization and discord characteristic of world politics mean that these organizations cannot keep secrets very well. ... Leaders then spend much of their time answering charges that are made against their organizations, and seeking to persuade constituencies that the organizations are actually constructive, responsive, and legitimate.

These organizations are therefore anything but "out-of-control bureaucracies" accountable to no one. Indeed the real problem appears quite different. A large number of would-be principals, led by a variety of NGOs, demand accountability. But the NGOs are weak compared with governments, to which these organizations are chiefly accountable. When they lose the battle due to their institutionally weak positions, NGOs condemn the organizations as "unaccountable." [emph supplied]

Keohane doesn't directly raise the other accountability question at the heart of many debates over the roles of NGOs and the newly-fashionable "civil society" organizations -- who elected them? This is a critical issue, because advocacy groups by their very nature are not effective vehicles for accommodating conflicting interests. The "accountability" problem presented by NGOs themselves may be equally applicable to governments of developing countries in which the interests of substantial portions of a country's population may be poorly represented in the political system. But that particular accountability challenge is not central to those who would hope to use the UN to shift the power equation within the world of development assistance, since state sovereignty is a core principle of the UN system.

The "accountability" wars are not some minor skirmish. Sebastian Mallaby, in a September 2004 Foreign Policy article (sub req'd) took on the potential negative effects of NGOs on the developmental effectiveness of the multilateral institutions. This was a major theme in Mallaby's recent biography of James D Wolfensohn, in which a recurring critique of Wolfensohn's tenure as President of the World Bank was that he tried too hard to meet the insatiable agendas of NGOs. I would agree, while noting that in the process, Wolfensohn did help institutionalize a far more transparent process of considering a range of impacts of the Bank's projects on interests -- whether poor or indigenous peoples, minorities, or the environment -- that are often poorly represented in the political systems of developing countries. Listening to the "voices of the poor" and focusing on "pro-poor" ways of implementing reforms or building new projects has been "mainstreamed" in World Bank practice. Wolfensohn's emphasis on meaningful local partnerships was also a useful corrective for an institution renown for its arrogance. A similar sensitivity to a broader agenda of interests is belatedly beginning to be felt at the IMF, in part a recognition of the excessively narrow approach to macroeconomic adjustment that the Fund pursued in the Asia crisis, as critiqued most famously by Joseph Stiglitz. Heterodox policy approaches are also finding far more congenial homes within both institutions over the past decade. So these institutions can and do reform and reinvent themselves as they learn from experience and as the world changes around them.

Shifting the development agenda from the IFIs in Washington to the to-be-created UN development apparatus in New York is the last thing that should be embraced if aid effectiveness is a priority. Although considerable progress has been made in making UNDP a more dynamic and efficient UN agency, no one would confuse its experience, expertise, or intellectual leadership with the IFIs. There may indeed be a need for expanding the UN's own development capacity within Country Teams that deal with a host of closely intertwined development issues in the political, social and economic areas. There is certainly a need to reduce the number of separate aid organizations that governments in developing countries must deal with. And coordination to avoid overlapping and conflicting projects is always an objective. But assigning a coordinating role, and having the MDGs drive the development agendas, is a recipe for a bureaucratic nightmare. The objective of UN reform is to get the UN to focus on the things it does well, or that no one else can do, and reorganize its bureaucracy to address those tasks. Not to add on new tasks that are already in the reasonably capable hand of other institutions.

Setting to one side whether a shift in apparent power and influence over the development agenda would benefit the poor in developing countries, such a shift would be a Pyrrhic victory. Keohane's conclusion applies equally to NGOs and developing countries who demand more "accountability" from the multilateral institutions:

Certainly some real benefits could result from making the WTO and the IMF more accountable to a wider range of interests and values. However, we should be alert to the prospect that the political result of such a shift would be a reduction of states' interests in such organizations. If states get less benefit from international institutions, they will be less willing to provide resources and to accept demands on them., through these institutions, for accountability. The ultimate result of such well-meaning moves, therefore, could be a weakening of the accountability, limited as it is, that multilateralism imposes on powerful states. Those who believe in accountability as a way of limiting abuses of power should work to build support within powerful, rich countries for acceptance of more effective and legitimate multilateral governance to achieve human purposes, and for the increased external accountability that is likely to follow.

Agreeing with US criticisms of the UN draft on development doesn't mean that I support the Bush Administration's approach to foreign assistance (or the Bush Administration's policy on many of the other controversial items in the UN draft such as arms control). There are a host of changes I would like to see in US policy toward foreign assistance writ large, especially but not exclusively as pursued by the Bush Administration. Among a long list of things I'd like to see changed by the Bush Administration (recognizing that these are not necessarily unique to either the Bush Administration or to Republicans) -- an insistence on an extremely limited set of tools that fit their ideological biases; a defense in every possible circumstance of intellectual property concerns of US multinationals; a predeliction for bilateral over multilateral approaches (and the leverage/blackmail that often entails); the habit of setting priorities or attaching conditions to aid that please narrow vocal domestic constituencies (especially ethnic diasporas and religious groups); the inability to build lasting coalitions in Congress for long-term programs and international organizations; and their trumpeting of grand "innovative" schemes that promise billions and deliver nada. Unfortunately, not only is the Bush Administration unlikely to change its approach to foreign assistance significantly, even if it were willing to adopt the changes outlined in the draft UN Summit document, those changes wouldn't be for the better.

Unfortunately for the US' diplomatic position, Ambassador Bolton is the wrong person to be making the case for how and why the UN Summit draft needs to be changed. Stygius makes an excellent point -- the draft UN document as it currently stands is exactly the wrong sort of document for a major summit.

From the sound of it, a 39-page declaration of resolutions strikes me as utterly insane, drowning all of the urgent priorities in a sea of diplomatic ejaculation; but the immediate point is that waiting until just before a conference starts before deluging everyone else with proposed changes is a tactical maneuver to castrate the entire project before it even starts.

And that's the problem the US now has with Bolton in this position, because everyone assumes that he's simply engaging in obstructionist tactics. His reputation is such that he has little credibility presenting the American criticisms of what is claimed to represent a broad international consensus, even though such a consensus is bogus.

It is far too easy for those who would like to see the US squirm to make the US look bad via Bolton. I won't go so far as to say that those managing the drafting process at the UN set him (and the US) up with malice aforethought, but the more paranoid could make a case for that, since the inevitable result is going to be a great deal of finger-pointing and blame-casting. And who do you think the rest of the world is going to believe -- John Bolton and George Bush? Riiiiight...

---

A follow-up post on this story, how it's being played out in the press, and speculation about the role of the UK, here.

cross-posted at Liberals Against Terrorism

Justin Logan, sitting in at Unqualified Offerings, has fun with the pro-war folks who remain fantastically (in all senses of the word) upbeat about what the war in Iraq has wrought, no matter the evidence. He points specifically to Reuel Marc Gerecht's recent "don't worry" commentaries on the likelihood that Sharia law will have a prominent place in the new Iraq.

Gerecht's performance this weekend on Meet the Press has attracted considerable attention:

DAVID GREGORY: Fast forward to this morning. Gentlemen, we put this on the screen from The New York Times. "[American ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay] Khalilzad had backed language [in the constitution] that would have given clerics sole authority in settling marriage and family disputes. That gave rise to concerns that women's rights, as they are annunciated [sic] in Iraq's existing laws, could be curtailed. ... [The] arrangement, coupled with the expansive language for Islam, prompted accusations from [a Kurdish leader] that the Americans were helping in the formation of an Islamic state."

Mr. Diamond, is that a change of position?

LARRY DIAMOND: It would be, I think, a substantial change if it's true. We need to wait and see what exactly is true. All of these are just reports. Let me say, I don't think we have--and I think Reuel would agree with this--we don't have the power anymore to foreclose this, to veto this. We're not a veto player there anymore. But neither do I think the United States should be endorsing it. And I think our clear stand should be in favor of individual rights and freedoms, including religious freedom, as vigorously as possible. So I hope the ambassador on the ground is standing up for that principle.

MR. GREGORY: Mr. Gerecht, the consequences of this?

REUEL MARC GERECHT: Actually, I'm not terribly worried about this. I mean, one hopes that the Iraqis protect women's social rights as much as possible. It certainly seems clear that in protecting the political rights, there's no discussion of women not having the right to vote. I think it's important to remember that in the year 1900, for example, in the United States, it was a democracy then. In 1900, women did not have the right to vote. If Iraqis could develop a democracy that resembled America in the 1900s, I think we'd all be thrilled. I mean, women's social rights are not critical to the evolution of democracy. We hope they're there. I think they will be there. But I think we need to put this into perspective. [emph supplied]

I will give Gerecht this -- he's a bit more credible on this score than the johnnie-come-latelies who have recently discovered that Sharia law doesn't matter. For more than a year on the "expert panels" circuit, Gerecht has been making the case for aggressively supporting democratization in MENA, not just in Iraq, even though it will most likely involve Islamist parties gaining significant political power. And he's also been one of those pointing to ">Shi'a jurisprudential traditions (of which Sistani is a leading example) as in many ways more promising than Sunnis' in helping Islam to come to terms with the 21st century.

Gerecht argues against the sort of policies pursued with respect to Algeria when the government halted the electoral process as Islamist parties were winning victories at the ballot box. He argues that political transformation will not happen through liberal reformers taking over -- they won't get the votes -- or hoping that the current entrenched authoritarian regimes get hit by a bolt of enlightenment and suddenly transform themselves into liberal systems. Instead, transformation to a more democratic order will only occur if the Islamist politicians and clerics are made part of the system.

Gerecht is of the "give them enough rope they'll hang themselves" school. Leading Islamist political groups in most countries right now don't really have a platform -- they're mostly just opposing the current regime with vague calls for a system based in Islam which would magically be more harmonious and virtuous. Gerecht's theory is that when the Islamists have to face the hard facts of governing, they'll also have to face the reality of keeping voters happy. So democratic accountability will serve to moderate the Islamist parties over time.

I have a lot of sympathy for the broad approach of bringing the Islamist parties into the system rather than continue to try to marginalize them -- that's just putting off the inevitable and increasing the odds that when regime change finally happens it will be violently revolutionary with decades of turmoil to follow. I have also long shared Gerecht's admiration of Sistani. I must add, however, that I think Gerecht puts an excessively high premium on political freedoms relative to other freedoms.

But I'm far less relaxed about the mechanisms by which Sharia law is incorporated into a system -- it's hard to keep it limited to just dealing with "social" rights and freedoms. The temptation becomes great to have the clerics involved in the "judicial review" of the whole shooting match, which is what the really critical debate has been about over the past few days in Iraq. It's all well and good to say that the system has to be consistent with Islamic law -- the key is who decides and under what mechanism. Billmon, in his recent series on the realpolitik of Iraq's constitutional process, details the threat of a slippery slope to theocracy when clerics start getting rights of "judicial review."

The other Iraq-specific objection I have to Gerecht and his fellow-travelers is that Iraq is decidedly different from other countries in the region on the women's rights front. It's one thing to take a gradualist approach to securing and expanding women's rights as the political, social and economic cultures evolve. For example, some Arab "feminists" have had more success achieving changes in women's status laws through an appeal to Islamic principles than Western-style liberal concepts. But it's another thing altogether to take a giant leap backwards, as is being proposed in Iraq, and expect women to start all over in a gradualist process. If the proposed reversal of women's legal status is accepted, it will serve as a strong rationalization of the severe extra-legal restrictions and intimidation that, since the US invasion, have been increasingly felt across all spheres of women's lives.

Gerecht seems to think that as long as women have some minimal rights of political participation, they'll be able to eventually demand and reclaim the legal, social and economic status they enjoyed under the previous regime. But he ignores how, once the overall status of women has declined and their ability to protect themselves reduced, those minimal participatory rights to which Gerecht refers are unlikely to be very effective vehicles for making themselves heard.

Butterflies and Wheels provides the example of this problem in practice -- this week's local elections in the North Western Frontier Provinces in Pakistan. Women are legally entitled to vote, and in fact over a quarter of the candidates are women. But tribal elders took it upon themselves in some areas to ban women from voting. The national government seems to have tried to intervene to halt the denial of women's suffrage, but one would expect that there was a significant suppression of women's participation, and a number of irregularities were noted in women's (segregated, of course) polling places.

Even where women's participation is not so severely circumscribed, it's a giant leap to assume that they will be able to effectively reclaim through the political process their prior status and freedoms. A recent study of women in parliaments in Egypt, Syria and Tunisia identified a number of reasons why they have had "little legislative or political influence." First, of course, is that in most such legislative bodies, they represent a small percentage of total members. But other factors are also involved that won't be "cured" simply by mandating a certain percentage of seats go to women.

• Second, female MPs tend to avoid focusing on gender-related legislation such as women's labor rights and family laws, and instead direct their efforts to less controversial [read safer] matters....
  
  
• Third, because most women MPs belong to the ruling party, and in some cases have gained their seats through presidential appointment, they overwhelmingly support regime policies and rarely challenge the government through questioning ministers or a vote of no confidence. [This has certainly been the case for most of the women who won seats in Iraq's interim parliament as part of the national electoral lists, and it would be surprising if that pattern did not continue under the new constitution .]
  
  
• Finally, women do not coordinate among themselves on legislation, further diluting their influence. [Lack of coordination is not surprising, given the second and third factors identified above.]

If the clerics dominate "social" law and acquire strong influence over the legislative and judicial systems, then whatever pretty "equality of rights" language may be contained in the constitution will be worthless window-dressing. "Just be patient little ladies" or "go spend decades fighting to get back what you used to enjoy" isn't an adequate response.

We're looking at a tragedy, quite simply. Larry Diamond is almost certainly right -- the US doesn't have a "veto" anymore. The outcome may, by now, be unavoidable. And in the great grand "perspective" of trying to tamp down the further spread of inter-tribal warfare, sacrificing the lives of the women of Iraq may be collateral damage. But Larry Diamond had the good sense and basic humanity to hope that the US would not endorse this "compromise."

Gerecht & co should be ashamed of themselves for so lightly dismissing the terrible costs that will be borne by Iraqi women in the years ahead.

cross-posted at Liberals Against Terrorism

Within China's top officialdom, a more open debate appears to be is emerging over the tensions between growth and stability. So discerns Eric Teo Chu Cheow, in an IHT op-ed, from a reading of several recent columns appearing in the Chinese press. A recent front page commentary in the People's Daily, on the authorities' commitment to enforcing the law in the interest of stability, took the position that "widening inequality is an inevitable phase of development." By contrast, the threats to social solidarity from a focus on profits by greedy hospitals was criticized by the Health Minister in a newspaper report. And the Culture Ministry is trying to "safeguard national cultural safety" by increasing controls over foreign television programming.

Of course, tensions between growth and stability have long been of concern at the highest levels of Chinese policymaking. Managing those tensions has been a major factor in the methods adopted to introduce reforms into the Chinese economy, especially the penchant for local "experiments" that are tested and, the thinking goes, "understood" before they are allowed to be rolled out on a wider scale or eventually become national policy. What is "new" is that the degree of inequality and threats to stability are becoming more visible and pronounced. Economic growth is no longer producing the sort of significant reductions in poverty levels and infant mortality rates that China enjoyed during its earlier reform periods. The crisis in the countryside over land and incomes -- which could be compared to England's enclosure movement of the 18th century -- and the strains in the cities from China's awesome pace of urbanization are threatening the "Latin Americanization" of China. Reports are increasingly making it into the Western media of local protests over corrupt officials taking land, or working conditions in factories, or degradation of environmental resources, especially water. Indeed, a top agriculture expert astonished (and bemused) many commentators when, in a recent interview, he praised peasants "for their democratic awareness as well as the willingness to fight for their rights." For a useful overview, see Sharif Shuja's The Limits of Chinese Economic Reform (August 2 2005 Jamestown Foundation China Brief).

Eric Teo Chu Cheow suggests that these issues are starting to shape a debate that will have major implications in two key areas: battles for political power inside China's leadership, and the broader trajectory of China's economic, social and political development in the coming years.

These signals point to the tension that currently underlies Chinese society. There is clearly a growing contradiction between the ideological tenets of the Communist Party and Deng Xiaoping's philosophy that "to grow rich is glorious." This ideology-versus-economics debate will ultimately determine the direction of China in the next decades, as social tensions increase in a society that is revolutionizing much faster than Western societies have in the past century.

This growing debate could accelerate in the lead-up to the 17th Party Congress in autumn 2007, at which President Hu and his team are expected to fully consolidate their power. Potential rivals of Hu could exploit this debate to challenge his power, especially if the Chinese economy falters or social stability deteriorates.

This socio-ideological debate is critical not only for China but also for the rest of Asia, where a new socioeconomic model of development may emerge to "complement" the continent's expected rise this century.

As the winds of change sweep through China, it is this philosophical and social debate - and not the yuan revaluation or the Unocal debacle - that will ultimately determine the direction of China's economy and society, as well as its "peaceful rise" and its continuous social revolution.

Asia and the world should pay more attention to this fundamental debate, which could also determine the outcome of Hu's political position at the 17th Party Congress and hence the ultimate stability of Asia's rising dragon.

[IHT article via A Glimpse of the World]

US reconstruction efforts in Iraq are widely seen as critical elements of US policy, not only to improve the lives of Iraqis but as "pacification" tools -- to convince ordinary Iraqis that their lives will be better if they don't support the various forces opposing the US forces and the Iraqi government. Yet after billions of dollars already spent and far more billions allocated for reconstruction, the process is not going well, to say the least.

Most of the criticisms of Iraq reconstruction are aimed at poor planning and implementation by the US government and contractors -- inordinate bureaucratic delays in contracting and execution of projects, poor-to-nonexistent results in the most critical sectors such as utilities and the oil industry, sky-rocketing costs as security problems continue to mount, inadequate employment of Iraqis, etc.

Criticism from a different and refreshing perspective is offered by Cpt Christopher Ford, a Command Judge Advocate for a Brigade Combat Team in the 1st Cavalry Division stationed in Baghdad, in a recent article in Parameters. He describes how the design of reconstruction programs and the spending of project funds fail to work as effective "carrots" within an integrated counter-insurgency strategy. Several of his points echo comments I've made elsewhere, such as the need to think about not only how to "buy" supporters in a given locale, but how those supporters will "stay bought," as well as the importance of using reconstruction programs as a method for strengthening the capacity of the Iraqi government.

Never let it be said that the US Army doesn't try to learn from other disciplines or examine new ways of thinking about what they're doing. Cpt Ford's analysis reads as if it were written by someone with hands-on experience in political and economic development programs in developing countries. He pays attention to getting incentives right, gaining local buy-in, and building local institutional capacity.

The principles underlying Ford's recommendations apply to promoting sustainable political and economic change, whether the change is occurring in a peaceful environment or one of considerable political violence. And successful political and economic change is precisely what's involved in shifting the attitudes of key elements of a population from one of passive "neutrality" towards counter-insurgent forces -- which plays into the hands of the insurgents -- to one of "support" for the counter-insurgent forces. This isn't "winning hearts and minds" but rather persuading segments of the population that it's more in their interest to be with the authorities (Iraqi and, by association, US forces) than to remain passively neutral.

Cpt Ford's article covers other ways he would adjust US counter-insurgency operations so as to better "target a population’s neutrality to defeat an insurgency," especially distinguishing among different ways to use force. Although the rest of the article makes interesting reading, here's the bit I especially liked on getting the carrots right. He also makes an interesting argument about the efficacy/feasibility of involving civilian agencies in reconstruction in Iraq (see especially footnote below), which would equally apply to the US military's relationships with non-US agencies involved in reconstruction, such as the World Bank or other foreign donors.

The “carrot approach” presumes first a goal and second a motivating factor to encourage the people to work toward that goal. In Iraq, the goal is a supportive population that resists insurgent activity and fosters stability, and the motivating factor is billions of dollars of reconstruction projects. As noted earlier, the fallacy of this approach as frequently applied in Iraq has been threefold: (1) reconstruction projects are not incentive based; (2) the reconstruction process is not holistic in nature; and (3) the reconstruction process often undermines the authority of the Iraqi government.

Most critical, perhaps, is the general failure to establish the link between behavior and reward. Often, the reconstruction projects in a particular town or section of a city are not initiated as a reward for the peaceful nature of that geographic locale. Indeed, reconstruction projects are more frequently targeted at the most restless locales in an effort to persuade the people in those areas that the coalition is the better of the two sides because it provides projects and employment. This tactic provides little incentive for the people to turn against the insurgents and risk their lives for the benefit of the coalition. By merely remaining passive, they reap the benefits of the projects while maintaining their personal safety from the insurgent threat.

A more effective system would treat reconstruction projects as an incentive through which the incentive-giver can influence the activity or behavior of the population. Adopting this approach would require a cessation of all reconstruction projects in sectors or cities that present a level of violence above a threshold established by the local commander. The population would be given notice that the projects have stopped because the security situation does not permit their continuation.

The impact of reconstruction projects is often further diluted by awarding construction projects to those individuals claiming to represent the community, often Sheiks, Imams, or prominent businesspersons. The extent to which these individuals represent the people, or have the ability to control the people, can rarely be quantified. A stated goal of operations in Iraq is the restoration of the rule of law. Awarding contracts to allegedly well-connected persons simply widens the wealth gap, increases resentment toward the coalition, and strengthens the positions of people of unknown character. More critically, this process undermines the power of the government because the coalition is empowering nonstate actors (Sheiks, Imams, etc.) to act in a state-like manner—executing infrastructure projects, building and staffing medical clinics, maintaining security, and providing disaster relief. The reconstruction focus should shift from trying to appease powerbrokers to empowering the Iraqi government.

The way to achieve this end involves selecting construction companies based on competency not connections, managing fewer projects to ensure better quality, and training and empowering local and national governments to execute their own reconstruction projects. Further, just as the Iraqi army and police are provided with extensive military and police training, the Iraqi government should be furnished with reconstruction training. This latter point highlights the third issue with reconstruction assistance: the piecemeal nature of the reconstruction.

During the course of operations in Iraq, the vast majority of the reconstruction was, and continues to be, conducted and administered by the military. The Department of State and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have also contributed significantly to the reconstruction process, though their efforts have been limited at times due to the security situation and, initially, because of organizational obstacles.** The Iraqi government has participated on a somewhat diminished scale due to their lack of resources and lack of institutional skill and knowledge. The participation of the State Department and USAID largely has been a component of security and coordination, whereas the participation of the Iraqi government has been a function of resources and ability. Closer coordination between all parties and an emphasis on assisting the Iraqi government would produce more reliable projects, spread the wealth across the population, and empower the Iraqi government.

** The US Agency for International Development is the government agency charged with “long-range economic and social development assistance.” Despite this charge, the US military has taken the lead in both planning and executing reconstruction projects. The oft-stated reason is that only the military can operate in the present security situation. This is a common fallacy. The Department of State and USAID can develop and manage a comprehensive reconstruction program immaterial of the security situation. At the strategic level, the threat is minimal, and at the tactical level, military units are eager to support embedded USAID staff. That is not to say military participation is improper. 10 U.S.C., sec. 3062, and Department of Defense Directive 5100.1 specifically contemplate military participation in the advancement of US national policy.

[UPDATE] Just to clarify, I'd have a number of questions for Cpt Ford before I endorsed all of his specific recommendations. But I do think he's asking the right questions and thinking about the process in the right way.

cross-posted at Liberals Against Terrorism

Without comparisons we'd certainly not make much progress in understanding social, political or economic change -- we'd just have a collection of anecdotes. But as I noted yesterday, we should be cautious about using statistical methods to simplify comparisons, and doubly cautious about taking results as "proof" of generalizations like "aid is good/bad."

We should also be careful about whether countries are the proper unit of analysis, especially when considering institutional and cultural factors, as this nice essay from Robert Schiller points out. In examining the "culture of entrepreneurship," Schiller cites several studies that show, within a single country, significant regional or even municipal-level variation in amounts of and attitudes toward entrepreneurship. A recent study of entrepreneurs in Sweden found a variation in the percentage of the population involved in entrepreneurial activity varied across 289 municipalities from a low of 1.5% to a high of 18.5%. This variation wasn't a result of national policies. Rather, it reflected how different areas of Sweden responded to national policies in the 1980s and 90s that offered greater entrepreneurial opportunities and resulted in an overall doubling of entrepreneurship during that period.

Cultural variables seem to explain a lot: religion and politics accounted for about half of the variation across municipalities. Municipalities tended to have more entrepreneurs if they had a high proportion of pensioners who were members of the Church of Sweden (the official state church until 2000) and a high proportion of right-wing voters. [ed. Max Weber, are you listening?]

Beyond that, a feedback mechanism appears to be in place: cities with more entrepreneurs tend to beget still more entrepreneurs. Once an entrepreneurial culture takes root, it typically spreads locally, as people learn about business and begin to feel attracted by it – even if it doesn't’t yield an immediate or certain payoff.

Indeed, Giannetti and Simonov discovered that the average income of entrepreneurs was lower in high-entrepreneurship municipalities than in the low-entrepreneurship ones. Similarly, studies from other countries show that entrepreneurs often have lower initial earnings and earnings growth than they would have as employees). [...]

... Giannetti and Simonov... argue that differences in the prestige of entrepreneurs across municipalities may account for differences in levels of entrepreneurship. In some municipalities, entrepreneurs enjoy high social status, regardless of whether they are already successful; elsewhere they are looked down upon and other occupations are more admired.

The idea that prestige is important is not new. In her book Money, Morals & Manners, the sociologist Michèle Lamont compared definitions of success in France and the United States. She interviewed people in both countries and asked them what it meant to be a “worthy person.” In essence, she was asking people about their sense of what is important in life and about their own personal sense of identity.

Lamont’s study confirmed the conventional wisdom that Americans value business success, while the French place greater value on culture and quality of life. Likewise, open contempt of “money-hungry” businesspeople and competition is expressed more often in France than in America.

But, while Lamont focused on differences between the French and the Americans, her study’s most interesting finding was that of significant differences between regions within France. She compared Clermont-Ferrand, the capital of Auvergne, in the center of France, with Paris. Auvergne’s inhabitants have a reputation for being parsimonious and stern, and, despite substantial recent progress, for a relative dearth of high culture.

Lamont found that people in both Paris and Clermont-Ferrand tended to express contempt for “money-grubbing.” But the Clermontois valued “simplicity, pragmatism, hard work, and resolve,” while the Parisians put more stress on “pizzazz and brilliance.” She concluded that, “In many respects the Clermontois are closer to the Hoosiers (as the residents of the US mid-Western state of Indiana are called) than to the Parisians.” Her evidence suggests that in Clermont-Ferrand, as compared to Paris, there is a higher intrinsic demand for starting small businesses.

Innovation, risk-taking and entrepreneurship are increasingly understood as building blocks of long-term economic growth. Politicians and academics, in both the developed and developing world, who are looking for ways to stimulate entrepreneurship will often consider building geographically concentrated "innovation centers" or hubs. Commonly-cited advantages of hubs include increasing social capital through cross-fertilizing knowledge and information, encouraging business connections such as supply-chains, attracting a sizable pool of qualified labor, and stimulating specialized services such as finance or transport. Schiller's observations give added support to the notion of geographic concentration. But Schiller's cultural factors also provide a note of caution -- he points to conditions that are likely to be necessary for geographic centers to take root and be sustainable, only some of which are in the control of policymakers.

Economists and others often tend to look at countries as a whole and emphasize national attitudes and national policies as the main factors in encouraging or discouraging entrepreneurship. But, in fact, the national success in entrepreneurship depends on the evolution of local cultures and their interaction with national policies. Entrepreneurship can take root in culturally congenial regions of any country after economic barriers against it are lifted [ed. critical caveat], and then feed on itself to grow to national significance.

These studies remind us that countries are actually what Schiller calls "a pastiche of local cultures that differ in how they motivate people and shape their personal identity.... define what it means to be a worthy person, and how worthiness is signaled...." This in turn has implications for how we approach development assistance.

First, as development focuses more and more on the institutional level, and on getting incentives right (or removing counter-productive incentives), the cultural dimensions that are part of individuals' incentives "calculus" must be taken into account. Assistance providers must be "culturally aware" -- in the sense not only of possessing a general body of knowledge about a country, but of knowing how to learn about and appreciate the importance of a range of (often conflicting) cultural dynamics within the country. Schiller's emphasis on culturally-based incentive structures is also consistent with one of my hobby-horses: that development is as much a change of "mentality" as it is a change in the more visible structures of social, political or economic relations. If a "culturally congenial" mentality doesn't already exist, changes may require a generation or more.

[ed. all emph added]

In "Testing Aid (to the point of) Insignificance" -- a roundup of links to a stream of studies purporting to demonstrate that foreign assistance for development is "good" or "bad" -- Adam Smithee captures my sentiments about the sheer lack of common sense in recent aid debates.

Does anyone really think that giving aid to Robert Mugabe would do much to increase the long-term growth prospects of Zimbabwe? Conversely, does anyone really think that money well invested in basic sanitation systems in urban slums in areas with strong governmental institutions that will sustain the network won't reduce disease, improve quality of life and increase worker productivity? Does anyone really think that US cold war aid to Zaire was primarily designed to promote economic growth, or that World Bank support for transport projects in Afghanistan is not in the slightest motivated by attempts to increase incomes?

So is anyone really that surprised that when you stick imperfect measures of aid flows into the right hand side of a regression along with a varying bunch of weak proxies for policy and institutional environments, poor indicators of educational and physical capital investment, and perhaps a few random variables covering geography and climate, then stick half-made-up and heavily manipulated figures for GDP per capita on the right hand side, then vary the country sample and the time period under investigation, and then vary the regression technique, your results sometimes suggest that aid can be harmful, and sometimes that it can be useful and frequently that we can't say anything with 95 percent confidence? If the results didn't suggest that, it would be the sign of a fix-up.

We all know that the answer to the question 'does aid work?' is 'that depends'. And the answer to the question 'does aid work better in good policy environments?' is 'that depends', as well. {emph added}

What William Easterly has called the "elusive quest for growth" is an understandable instinct for those committed to poverty reduction and economic development. Even with continuing increases in inequality in many developing countries, the rising tide does indeed lift the vast majority of boats, and few boats are going to be lifted in the absence of a rising tide.

Yet, given the vast number of variables and the imponderable causal links and feedbacks in even the smallest and least developed of economic systems, I've always found it misguided at best to focus on macroeconomic indicators as guides for assessing if, when, and how assistance is or is not "effective." Granted I have a strong personal bias for bottom-up, patient approaches, but why should we depend on macroeconomists to "validate" development policies? We have an ever-growing mountain of documented cases of development assistance -- with outcomes that are good, bad or ambiguous -- which can serve as inspiration and "lessons learned" for locals and assistance providers alike. Continuing to manipulate macrodata isn't going to give us reliable answers to "it depends on what?" As Adam Smithee notes:

It appears, sadly, that reality is ill-suited to the cross-country regression technique --so let's move on.

Via the blog of the UN Foundation, UN Dispatch, quoting an AP story:

Secretary-General Kofi Annan has announced the creation of a fund to promote democratic institutions and practices around the world - an idea first proposed by the United States.

President Bush suggested the creation of a fund in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly in September. He said it would help countries lay the foundations of democracy by instituting the rule of law, independent courts, a free press, political parties and trade unions.

Somewhat ironically, given the recent run of rather depressing news about the state of democracy in Africa, it was at the African Union summit earlier this week that Annan announced the initiative (pdf). It's also not entirely clear whether Africa is all that high a geopolitical priority for the Bush Administration in proposing the fund, given its strategic emphasis on promoting democracy in other regions. But Kofi, ever the diplomat, made the most of his announcement.

more below the fold   more »

This is one of those inside-baseball posts, but it's very good news for the development community.

The nominee for the new head of the United Nations Development Program -- replacing Mark Malloch Brown who has moved to Kofi Annan's chief of staff -- is Kemal Dervis from Turkey. For those of you who have read Sebastian Mallaby's book on Jim Wolfensohn's stint at the World Bank, you'll remember Kemal as one of the most colorful characters in one of Mallaby's most riveting tales. Kemal was the World Bank manager under whom the extraordinarily difficult and innovative Bosnia emergency assistance package was put together in 1994 -- which was crucial to the success of bringing Dayton to a conclusion. And as Mallaby notes [p. 121]:

a few years later, when he returned to Turkey to take up an appointment as his country's finance minister, the stock market jumped as his plane landed in Ankara and he was greeted as a savior.

I'm not going so far as to hail Kemal Dervis as UNDP's "savior," although given UNDP's leading role regarding the Millennium Development Goals and an uncertain mandate with respect to crisis prevention and recovery, this is one challenging job. It's great to see someone who is both a fine mind and a risk-taker in a major leadership role in the international civil service. Kudos to Kofi for selecting him from among 100 candidates.

Here's a snip from the UN press release today:

UNDP is the largest of the independently funded UN agencies and, under its special General Assembly mandate, leads the UN's work on eradicating extreme poverty and promoting good governance in the developing world. Its staff is active in 166 countries.

Mr. Dervis' current activities, such as participation in the Global Progressive Forum and the Progressive Governance Network, have been aimed at "finding ways to make globalization into a more stable and inclusive process and to further international cooperation," UNDP said.

He is the author of a book published last month called "For Better Globalization," speaks fluent English, French and German, besides Turkish, and holds a doctorate in economics from Princeton University and Master's and Bachelor's degrees from the London School of Economics (LSE).

{cross-posted at Liberals Against Terrorism}

Recently I've been feeling bombarded by a strange and perhaps unholy alliance of George Bush and Condi Rice, Kofi Annan, Jacques Chirac and Lula, Tony Blair, Jeffrey Sachs, Bono and assorted denizens of the op-ed pages. Although each speaker or author has a preferred emphasis and a few code words for his or her target audience, they share a remarkably consistent vocabulary and program. "Freedom" is extolled as humanity's universal goal, and we are reminded of the urgent need to promote human dignity and protect the rights of the vulnerable (especially women). The march of freedom is then -- to one degree or another depending on the political agenda of the speaker or author -- combined with exhortations to make hunger and disease a thing of the past. And all claim that we must seize a unique moment of opportunity to change the globe in the 21st century.

Development -- economic and social as well as political -- is back in the spotlight, and not only in the Middle East. Although the international community is still reverberating from the Iraq invasion and its aftermath and continues to grapple with "what is terrorism" and Iranian nukes, for the moment security issues are not crowding out the rest of the international agenda. Significant discussions have already begun and are scheduled in the coming months on specific UN programs and reforms and G-8 initiatives. And as Paul Wolfowitz indicated when the World Bank's Board approved his nomination last week, the annual meetings of the Bretton Woods institutions this year are going to have a hefty set of issues of their own.

In self defense, I've started to try to make sense of the various viewpoints and proposals -- where they overlap, where they conflict -- and the political positions being taken by major donor and developing countries as well as the broader development community. I've begun plowing through a whole host of background papers, assessments, reports and so forth. I've still got a long ways to go -- just locating the organizations and websites that have relevant documentation, to say nothing of inventorying all of Sachs' productions, is an undertaking in itself. From my initial forays into the piles of e-docs, however, I already have some common reactions and concerns.

These concerns coalesced for me when I came across an article in the CS Monitor on the surprisingly large advances being made in reducing the incidence of female circumcision in Senegal. The specific progress is itself noteworthy and encouraging. But more compelling for me personally, the brief description of how this program has been able to make major headway, dealing with what has been an intractable issue, reminded me of some of the lessons I've learned from experience about what development is.

The "secret" of informed choice -- changing mentalities in Senegal

Tostan is a human rights agency in Senegal that seems to have found a magic formula for eradicating the practice of female circumscion or female genetal mutilation (FGM). Their secret: encouraging people to choose within a context of extensive education and support on human rights, womens' health, and economic development.

Mike Crawley of the CS Monitor describes the scope of the problem and the changes being seen in Senegal:

Excision of all or part of the female sexual organs before puberty has long been considered a prerequisite for marriage among many of the pastoral cultures immediately south of the Sahara and in the Horn of Africa. Despite growing awareness of the health risks, which can affect childbirth, parents continue carrying out the practice because they fear their daughters won't otherwise be able to find a husband.
[...]
Back in 1997, 13 Senegalese villages publicly declared that they would no longer permit female circumcision, or female genital mutilation (FGM) as it's called by critics. In the eight years since, the number has grown to 1,527, representing 30 percent of Senegalese communities where FGM has been practiced. Dozens more villages are preparing to make similar declarations in the coming months.

Campaigners have tried for decades to bring an end to FGM. But their tactics of providing alternative employment to the circumcisers, introducing alternative rites of passage for girls, or demanding legislation to outlaw the practice have all failed to make a dent: an estimated 2 million girls in about 26 African countries are circumcised every year.

Tostan, by contrast, doesn't focus on FGM but rather on the broader place of women and children within the promotion of health and economic development of the community. according to Molly Melching, the Texas-born director of Tostan who has lived in Senegal for more than two decades.

Once Tostan commences its program of health, human rights education, and economic development in a village, it typically takes two to three years before citizens decide that they want to abandon FGM, says Ms. Melching. The public declarations the villages make, amid vibrant celebrations with music, dancing, and speeches from elders and prominent citizens, generally contain other statements about respect for women's rights and children's education.

The declarations are also coming from places where Tostan staff have never set foot. Enthusiastic villagers are taking it upon themselves to talk to neighboring villages, causing the movement to spread even more quickly.
[...]
As more villages publicly announce that they are abandoning the practice, Tostan says others begin realizing it may no longer be a marriage requirement, momentum builds, and the number of villages following suit snowballs.

Change is accelerating, and spreading beyond the original areas of Senegal to other countries in the region, as the pressures of social conformity shift. Gerry Mackie, a professor at Notre Dame, sees the process as eventually reaching a "tipping point," after which change becomes the new norm. He sees an analogy to foot-binding in China, where the practice was virtually eliminated within a generation.

Change doesn't come easily or automatically, however. These changes are not perceived universally as positive, especially at the beginning. They represent real threats to social structures, to idenity, to livelihoods, to the very ability to survive to the extent that girls depends on marriagability in a near-subsistence economy. The changes must confront and overcome very strong fears. A great deal of patient work is required. Even concrete positive experiences don't bring rapid acceptance. Mike Crawley explains that Tostan has become, in some sense, a victim of its own success as its reputation becomes more widespread.

Particularly in northern Senegal where resistance to ending the practice remains strong, some villages have protested and rioted to dissuade the organization from doing any sort of work.

Here in Ker Simbara there was similar - albeit less heated - initial refusal to listen to visiting women from nearby Malicounda Bambara, the village where the first anti-FGM declaration was made, says Imam Demba Diawara. But the public declarations soon made the issue of excision "the talk of the town," he says.

The debate that ensued was a big shift from the previously secretive approach to the practice, says Ramata Sow, who staffs the local clinic and nursery. "No one talked about the health troubles before - it's a difficult subject," she says.

Ker Simbara eventually declared in 1999 that its citizens would no longer practice female circumcision. Ms. Sow's family illustrates the transformation. She circumcised her eldest daughter, but her two youngest, Sadio, 13, and Nabou, 7, and her granddaughter Duma, 2, are not circumcised.

"I will never do it again," she declares. "Things have changed."

The United Nations Childrens' Fund (UNICEF) is looking to Tostan as a model.

"The Tostan approach is working because it's a holistic approach, and it works with communities," says Lalla Toure, UNICEF's regional adviser for women's health. "The starting point is not female genital mutilation; it's about rights, it's about health, it's about development. We think that's the best approach."

Development at the "retail" level -- local ownership

Reading about the Tostan approach brought into focus what was bothering me about so much of what I'd been hearing from the promoters of freedom, human rights, the end of poverty, and global development. The implicit mental model behind so many of these strategies, challenges, initiatives and campaigns is that the world of the developed liberal democracies holds the keys to success. That postive development would result if "we" just got rid of the tyrants, or pushed harder for reforms, or gave more money, or were more "efficient" at planning and coordinating so that the money gets to the "right" people, (etc., etc., etc., as a certain King of Siam would say to his development adviser).

I don't want to suggest that the various "calls to action" are in themselves inappropriate or harmful. I believe strongly that development assistance is essential -- that indeed many countries or societies need an external push or a helping hand to break out of a host of circumstances in which they find themselves locked -- not just due to their history, culture or policies of their own devising but external condtitions beyond their control such as the "givens" of geography or the neighborhood they live in. The high-profile political initiatives are clearly the only way to draw media attention to critical global issues, and they are undoubtedly needed to mobilize attention, resources and action.

But I do think we risk doing considerable mischief, as well as failing to meet the high expectations being set by the politicians, if our mental model stays fixed at the "grand initiatives" level and doesn't start at the bottom with the individuals we are trying to help. We must be able to separate the "wholesale" function -- the critical role that central leadership must play in bringing issues to the fore and, during the brief moment the world is paying attention, mobiliizng political will and resource commitments for the future -- from the "retail" function -- the medium and long-term, patient support of emergent transformative processes that can't be sequenced or planned and that require decentralized, responsive, adaptable, highly flexible forms of assistance.

Focusing where "the rubber meets the road" has led development agencies to perhaps the most important lesson learned over the past decade or so -- the importance of "local ownership" of programs or initiatives to liberalize or create new political, economic and social structures. By "local" I don't t simply mean the head of the local government ministry. "Local" means truly engaging people who are actually going to be active in or affected by the initiatives or policies or projects. Because ultimately that's where meaningful, sustainable change occurs.

The developed liberal democracies can encourage positive change through providing resources -- ideas, know-how, experience, money, and sometimes security -- and cheerleading, the importance of which should not be underestimated. The developed countries and the international community more broadly can signal displeasure by withholding resources, expressingly loud disapproval, or putting assorted pressures on uncooperative regimes.

The development mantra must, however, be "it's their country, their society." That is certainly an important lesson from Tostan in Senegal. Similarly, the current political process in Iraq is reminding us daily that only the Iraqis can, in the final analysis, solve their own problems. We can make their job harder or easier; we can expand or limit the choices they have available. But only they can decide which of a multitude of competing objectives are their top priorities, and how to manage, for good or ill, the inevitable tradeoffs. Top-down, externally imposed development -- whether political, economic or social -- rarely works as well as expected, is only the first step of a long process, and is replete with unintended (often negative, sometimes positive) consequences. The same is often true within countries that attempt to impose top-down change.

Development at the "retail" level -- changing complex systems versus delivering projects

In addition to the need for "local ownership," the Tostan story highlights another important insight about the development process. First and foremost, political, economic and social development are changes of "mentality" -- shifts in attitudes, expectations and incentives that affect behavior. [see ftnt] Some of the most valuable outside interventions don't implement change directly. Their most powerful impact emerges from the ways they encourage a gradual erosion of mental prisons and give individuals a sense that they have more choices and more control over their own lives. To steal a phrase from Amartya Sen, it's "development as freedom."

Mental prisons constrain both imagination and action. They are constructed from a host of fears, anxieties, rigidities, and limits -- from fear of a dictator or of another ethnic group, from social conventions, from simple ignorance of alternatives, or from a sense of powerlessness that a society never rewards initiative or that opportunity is the privilege of a few. Each time we try to encourage positive change, we need to understand the nature of and connection among the constraints on both imagination and action -- and take them into account when we try to help. We also need to see something as seemingly simple as the political, economic and social development of a village as a complex system that is always changing, and our development interventions need to be continually adjusted and adapted to respond to those changes. That basic principle -- "mentality" is the primary means by which ongoing change of complex systems occurs -- is at play whether we're dealing with demands for fair elections, freedom of the press, the status of women, expanding economic activity, reforming the judiciary, AIDS, or access to clean drinking water. And that is the case whether changes in mentality occur at a glacial pace or are accelerated in response to some sort of exogenous shock.

This indirect, gradual, complex, "mentality"-based nature of the development process presents some real dilemmas for furnishing development assistance at the retail level. Clearly, "project design" is a major challenge if what we are dealing with are processes that depend on the interconnected effects of the unpredictable shifting of attitudes and behavior, which may not really be felt until "tipping points" are reached. Management "metrics," predictive models and accountability mechanisms are hard to apply to processes that lack a clear sequential logic or fail to demonstrate, at least at a project level, a close "causality" connection between specific inputs and outputs. Attempts to produce projects that can demonstrate to financial contributors (or members of Congress) "what I got for my money" may actually serve only to waste that money. Insistence on eliminating overlap or competing approaches may be faux efficiencies. Project selection is frequently more an art than a science -- the closest analogy I've found is to venture capital, where success is often as much a matter of betting on the right horse as on choosing the best business plan, and the number of "losers" far exceeds the number of "superperforming winners". Replicability and scalability are also, like VC, often a major challenge.

Yet simply because the transformation of "mentality" is too hard to control, measure or predict, and just because "results" may be only indirect and come years after a project completion report is filed, doesn't mean we can ignore it. Without putting mentality, incentives and behavior at the center of our understanding of development -- whether political, economic or social -- we risk wasting resources or, worse, violating the cardinal principle of development assistance, "first, do no harm."

Back to "wholesale"

The messy reality of the development process makes it difficult to communicate about development to the general public. I don't envy the "wholesalers" who have to imply that we have answers when the only thing we know for sure is that there are no easily duplicated recipes for success.

The "retail" issues are also hard to capture in stirring speeches that call the developed world to the glorious mission of making our inreasingly interconnected and interdependent globe a better place. And in a PowerPoint world, I won't hold George Bush or Kofi Annan to the details. I am encouraged that many recent speeches, even by US officials such as Condi Rice and Karen Hughes, are peppered with the code words that the development community uses when they talk about sustained, multifaceted engagement and complex systems, such as "partnership," "listening," "learning," "long-term," even "generations."

I'll just have to keep my "retail" principles in mind, with the switch on my hubris-detector in the "on" position, as I read the voluminous quantities of fine print.

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Note: I've chosen "mentality" because that is in fact the short-hand term most frequently used by clients with whom I've worked in developing financial and legal systems in a number of countries. It is truly striking how reformers, regardless of country, share the frustration that the true impact of changes they are tryiing to implement today will not be realized until a new generation emerges which isn't trapped in old ways of thinking. As I am using "mentality," it is shorthand intended to capture most of the elements development economists consider when they use the terms "incentives" and "institutions."

In The Elusive Quest for Growth, William Easterly's study of what development economists do and don't know about promoting growth, Easterly focuses on the importance of "incentives" to effective development, with which I wholeheartedly concur. I find, however, that "mentality" is more descriptive than "incentives" when going beyond the "growth conundrum" or the operations of specific economic institutions. When discussing development writ large, including political and social change, "mentality" more easily captures the importance of cultural worldviews and social and political expectations and conventions. The term "institutions" has become another important concept closely related to "incentives" in development economists' lingo, with the focus primarily on the creation or reform of formal political, legal and economic structures. Within the notion of "mentality," I am rather casually including "institutions" in their broader sense, including socially-shared "identity" factors such as religion, ethnicity and gender and informal social structures and conventions. That's not to suggest, however, that most aspects of social structures, attitudes and behavior that I'm including in "mentality" could not be expressed and analyzed in terms of incentives and instituitons. More on Easterly at a later date.