2. 0. These are some of the current best selling nonfiction books according to the washington post. Thank you for that warm introduction. It is a pleasure to be here with you at rand. I am going to talk today about something that has unconsciously and indirectly led to a tyranny of experts. Lets call that the technocratic approach to Economic Development. The idea that poverty is the technical problem. So that for example there are a variety of Technical Solutions. One involves a chemical on walls of peoples houses, on the inside walls to kill mosquitos that kill malaria. Technical solution that helps fight malaria. And other technical solution might be to convert land to higher value uses like food crops with low value to Forestry Products that have higher value. Now let me tell you this purely technical approach, on the controversial items, not quite that easy. Let me tell you a story. This is not a happy story. This is not the runup to a punch line to joke. I will try to work in some joke later but this is not the happy part of the talk, i am sorry. On the morning of sunday, february 28, 2010, the villagers in you got the word in church when they heard the sound of gunfire outside and they came out and find men with guns were burning down their homes and forcing their crops, shooting their livestock, keeping them at gunpoint from rescuing their burning homes and marched them away at gunpoint, 20,000 farmers lost their land. This happened in the guise of a World Bank Forestry project. The forestry project was a technical solution to raise peoples incomes. Obviously it did not work out as intended. A couple of additional things. This is obviously an extreme story, a war story and there are additional things that are somewhat revealing of what this book calls the forgotten rights of the poor. The right of the 4 are so often neglected, ignored, forgotten. Two things will happen next. Unlike many other Rights Violations that happen, this one made it to the front page of the new york times, you would think that would have led to some collective response in this case. The world bank, a with doing an investigation, sounded like the right response at the time. And that is an investigation to what happened. That was the first event for the forgotten rights of the 04. The second non event, hardly anyone protested. The last thing that is revealing is the story is literally forgotten by almost everyone except a few people paying attention on the outside and the victims themselves. This story is illustrative in that you cannot do what the world bank has always tried to do from its very founding. The articles of agreement have this clause in them. The World Bank Project shall be designed, loans shall be granted, project interventions shall be made, not taking into account the political characteristics of the government of the event. Not considering the political character of the government whether it is an autocracy or men with guns or whether it is a democratic government that recognizes political and economic rights. The world bank seems to have the illusion of something called economic considerations that can be separated out and economic considerations do not include the political character of the government. The political character of the government is not itself something that could be entering or helping Economic Development. This separation is what i am calling the technocratic approach of the government, the illusion that Technical Solutions can ignore the political system in which they operate. What are the consequences of this . Lets get a couple things clear. One is development is not always very open about this but it is a field that is making recommendations about how to make People Better off. In order to make normative recommendations you that have to state your own normative values so for example, i personally would consider this rights violation i just described upfront in and of itself, i would consider the rights of look for that were violated, the political right to protest what happened to them and the economic rights, property right they held over the land that was taken away from us. I would openly state that those rights are in and of themselves, the principle of freedom of choice, the next consent, of individuals is a value in and of itself. I dont want to kind of play fast and dirty and say the moral statement automatically wins the argument for the rights of the poor because there could be other competing moral goods that maybe there is a tradeoff with other morally good things we are trading off. We cannot ignore the normative value of the rights of the port in and of themselves. That is primarily the way the rights have spread historically, people treat them as something good and and of themselves that they want for themselves. The second thing to consider is a system based on political and economic rights, isnt it more likely to foster Economic Development. And maybe it is the reverse. Maybe you need an autocrat to implement Economic Development, and Higher Standards of living that have already been met. This is a debate we need to have and this is not a normative debate, do political and economic rights and Economic Development. Economic development, and is autocracy to make the development happen. What does this need to have in the Economic Development . What has happened by having a technocratic approach, they are not having that debate. This article is still in agreement. The world bank is not allowing itself to openly talk about the issue of democracy or autocracy. And the past two World Bank President s. And democracy in a speech. And a four or five term for democracy. And i talk to the world bank spokesman, and he said he is not allowed to use democracy. Havent you Read World Bank article 4 section 10 . And that does not an acceptable state of affairs. And binding other operations who want to promote development. And caring about development, we should openly debate whether democracy, individual rights for the 4, are a good thing i not for development. And that debate as not happen anywhere near enough. And taken anywhere near seriously enough in Economic Development. Let me give you a little bit of history on the technocratic idea. How has it held on so long that it has never been changed and a technocratic approach is followed by a lot of people still today . One fun thing authors get to do when they do research for books is they get to do reading in areas that turn out to be fun and one area that turned out to be fun for me was studying the history of the idea of technocratic development. One thing i found was it was not a new idea any time recently. It went back deep into colonial times, here i am showing a technocratic report that was done in 1938 by the British Colonial office, British Colonial office lord haley did this report in 1938, this report is 1,837 pages long. A very long list of Technical Solutions to poverty in africa which reads remarkably like a United Nations report done in 2005. That was one of its thing i could find. The u. N. Report was authored by an economist to is a professor at columbia whose name i cannot remember right now. I think Angelina Jolie supplied a Consultants Report for it. The only thing i want to take away from this is the technocratic ideas that what is missing is a technical solution doesnt fare too well in this slide. This particular four problems and four Technical Solutions has been around 70 years. It is hard to argue the problem was a technical solution we were missing until experts came along. It doesnt seem theres a shortage of experts. We had experts in the next several years, it was not all that successful because we are still talking about the same solution 70 years later, now almost 80 years later. The other way in which this history is interesting, this technical approach forms a lot of the justification, by the time of world war ii. They were openly racist, the british were superior to inferior races to develop, and that was politically deadly by the time of world war ii, and wanted to offer a more benevolent vision to colonial subjects that was not so openly insulting and racist and technocratic justification. We are the people who are going to help you solve your material poverty, a list of Technical Solutions. And the debate going on, on a very different context. And that is the perspective. And for colonialism, that colonialism was one of the regimes, being neutral about not only dictatorship, it was also colonialism. The political character could not be considered in a World Bank Loan and their World Bank Loans to colonial territories of the british. A set of colonial mentality at the time which i dont want to be unfair and tarnish colonialism. And what the issues are when we see the colonial debate. They had to convince the americans, one easy way, bert ely was shrewd. And the technocratic justification, and it was a technocratic approach to one of the internally underdeveloped regions which were africanamericans, and Eleanor Roosevelt had lunch with a black leader during world war ii, and this was the reality. Can you postponed the challenge to segregation, the new deal will offer technocratic solutions to material poverty of black people in the united states. Think about this debate, and they saw the peril of colonialism and aaron treatment of blocks in the united states, offered Material Solutions to block poverty, not the rights to end segregation or the rights to vote. What happened after the end of colonialism . One thing you have to know is the end of colonialism was not anticipated by anyone during world war ii. It was a surprise collapsed, 15 years later. There are statements i could show you, the british expected their empire in africa to in dorr for generations if not centuries. This was justification for the empire but what happened after colonialism did collapse . A new set of parties found technocratic justification for authoritarian rule to be very helpful. This is called colonialism to be testified. A new set of autocrats came on this team which where the indigenous autocrats in africa. They found it they did not want to give rise to that either. And a new autocrat that could justify their own rules for technocratic ideas, let us autocrats be in power so that we can solve material poverty. Kind of like it used to be that divine right of kings, it became the development right of dictators that really justified dictators. The u. S. Was also happy about this because the autocrats make better allies than democrats during the cold war so the u. S. When it started getting into economics, saber happy to support autocrats during the cold war. A very wellknown story, the new angle i am suggesting you add is ideas that justify autocrats also have political motivation. This story is not only historical, we are in a new situation that is analogous to the cold war, the war on terror. It is used to justify autocrats and these lastly evolve to development agencies, Development Experts, philanthropists, because these ideas make the operation of philanthropy much easier that has direct appeal that never goes away. As one philanthropist never heard of named William Gates jr. Bill gates ring a bell . He said in 2012, a dictator in ethiopia had, quote, made Real Progress in helping the people of ethiopia. Bill gates said that the donors working on their technocratic Solutions Together with the government they followed this approach, set clear goals choosing an approach, measuring results and then using those measurements to continually refine our approach, this helps us, sort of unwitting or may be waiting kind of coalition of the autocratic government, the donors, philanthropists, experts working together with autocrats, helps us to deliver tools and services to everybody who will benefit. Now, bill gates was partly enthusiastic because ethiopia had had a few years of good growth which he gave the credit for a few years of highgrowth and there are also a few years of measured reductions in Child Mortality which he gave the credit for, so lets talk about how much the Development Community has had this debate on the positive value of rights versus hypocrisy. In giving the credit to tomellis he is factually stating autocracies good or acceptable or neutral for development. One of the things about the debate in development is people always are looking either for autocratic Success Stories with in developing countries or if you challenge that they want you to provide democratic Success Stories from developing countries. One strange thing has been going on throughout the history of development, looking for possible models for how to succeed at development we have excluded the cases of all those who actually succeeded at development. This is pretty important so let me repeat that. Having any debate about how to succeed at development we excluded the models of those who succeeded at development. Very strange way to handle evidence so we excluded north america, australia, new zealand, japan, western europe, recently joined by other Success Stories within the developing countries that had greater political and Economic Freedom but the strange thing is the exclusion of the history of development, that excluded all of the successes shows you something in the way in which this debate has not really been happening enough. That we would treat the evidence in such a strange way and that we would this bill great would celebrate just a very few years of apparent success which he automatically without further evidence given credit to mellis senai without crediting democracy and development. One other bit of direct evidence is when you see something good happening in a country theres a tendency to infer that the leader must be a good guy because good things are happening. That is a very strong tendency in development. Even if you have direct evidence that the leader is not such a good guy. Zanaowi had been shedding his autocratic credentials over a number of years prior to bill gatess statement. His Security Forces had killed peaceful demonstrators in the streets after rig the elections in 2005. Manipulated famine relief in 2010 to go only to Winning Party supporters and the night it to the opposition in which he was caught red handed by humanrights watch, but there was the same sequence i described in you gone the. A promise to investigate and the investigation was quietly canceled and never happened and there was no protests. And the force to the. Program that involved resettlement, another were rights violation, financed by the world bank. Theres also a peaceful blunder, he served 18 years in jail, for unlike the president of the world bank he did use the word democracy and for that crime of which he was completely innocent, that crime is not serving 18 years in prison in ethiopia. The aleutians that we can ignore the rights of the poor is what i protest here. I really think we have to have this debate, we have been talking about development for so long and this debate has not happened. Everyone is happy with these technocratic ideas. And the British Colonial secretary on how well lord haley had done to find the british empire, how happy the americans were with technocratic development and how happy everybody was. That is an actual copy i find on the internet of the colonial secretary during world war ii. These ideas work for everyone, experts, agencies, autocrats, foreignpolicy, it also makes Foreign Policy easier because our National Security interests and development interests can be complementary, if we think autocrats are good allies in the war on terror, and with Development Aid and praise accomplishes killing two birds with one stone. If we had this inconvenient idea that autocrats are not the solution, that they are the problem, actually an obstacle development, we would be in a more difficult situation of having a tradeoff between whatever we think we are doing on the National Side supporting data supporting allies, each feel the and you gondola our major allies in the war on terror. They are both supportive of the u. S. Military command in africa than the u. S. Regional military command in africa and served in Un Peacekeeping troops and even the war in iraq. 7 the case of you gonna. Everything is easier, right thurgood thing and that world becomes more difficult. Many of you like i did for 16 years are involved in Development Efforts. You, the five. Points on how to operation allies these principles in foreign aid. Let me go immediately to that slide. [laughter] i dont have one. I have done something here which has already got me into a lot of trouble and will probably get me in more trouble here today. I have the heretical view. We have to get principles right before we talk about operational wising anything and what has not happened is not a lack of operational recommendations, not a lack of five bullet policy fixes, it is lack of agreement on the basic principles of whether we should have development that is the same way the u. S. Development, a high degree, high