Im going to talk today about something that has unconsciously and indirectly led to a tyranny of experts. Lets call it the technocratic approach to Economic Development. Its the idea that poverty is really just a set of technical robs, so that, for example problems, so that, for example, for malaria theres a variety of Technical Solutions. One of them involves spraying a chemical on the walls of peoples houses, on the inside walls of peoples houses to kill mosquitoes that carry malaria. Thats a technical solution. Another technical solution might be to convert land to higher valueses like from food crops that have low value to Forestry Products that have high value. Now let me tell you why this might, this purely technical approach to development which seems so appealing, so straightforward, so countercontroversial might, in fact, be not quite that easy. So heres the story. And this is not a happy story. This is not like do not think this is the runup to a punch to a joke. Ill try to work this some jokes later, but this is not the happy part of the talk, im sorry. On the morning of sunday, february 28, 2010, the villagers in uganda were in church when they heard the sound of gunfire outside, and they came out, and they found that men with guns were burning down their homes. And torching their crops, shooting their livestock, keeping them at gunpoint from rescuing their purpose purposing homes x then the men marched them away at gunpoint. 20,000 farmers lost their land. This happened in the guise of a World Bank Forestry project. The World Bank Forestry project was designed as a technical solution to raise peoples incomes. Obviously, it did not work out as intended, and a couple of additional things that where this is, obviously, an extreme story, a horror story, and yet theres a couple of additional things that are somewhat revealing of what this book calls the forgotten rights of the poor, that the rights of the poor are so often thing elected, ignored, forgotten. So two things that happen next. One is unlike many other Rights Violations that happen, this one actually made it onto the front page of the new york times. So you would have thought that would have led to some kind of corrected response in this case. The world bank on twitter the next day said they would do an investigation into what what had which sounded like the right response at the time. Its now been four years, and theres never been a world Bank Investigation into its own actions of what happened. That was the first nonevent thats revealing of the forgotten rights of the poor. The second event was hardly anyone protested. And the last thing thats revealing is that this story is literally forgotten by almost everyone except a few people paying attention on the outside and, of course, the victims themselves. So this story is illustrative in that you cannot do what the world bank has always tried to do from its very founding, the World Bank Articles of agreement have this clause in them. The world bank project, they shall be with designed, loans shall be granted, project, interventions shall be head not taking into account made not taking into account the political character of the government of the aid recipient. Not considering the political character of the government whether its an autocracy or whether its a democratic government that recognizes political and economic rights. And the world bank seems to have the illusion that something called economic considerations can be separated out, and that economic considerations somehow do not include the political character of the government. That the political character of the government is not itself something that could be hundtering or helping hindering or helping Economic Development. This kind of separation is what im calling the technocratic approach to development, the illusion that Technical Solutions can ignore the political system in which they operate. And what are the consequences of this . First, lets get a couple of things clear. One is that development is not all the very open, but development is partly a field that is making normative recommendations about how to make People Better off. And we too often forget that news of the world to make normative in order to make normative recommendations, you have to state your own normative values. So, for example, i mean, i personally would consider this rights violation that i just described abhorrent in and of itself. I would consider the rights of the poor that were violated here, both their political right to protest what happened to them and their economic right; that is, the property right that they held over the land that was taken away from them, i myself would openly state that those rights are good in and of themselves. The principle of freedom of choice and of consent of individuals is a value in and of itself. Now, i dont want to kind of play fast andtity and say dirty and say that 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 some other morally good thing that were trading off. But all im saying is we cannot ignore the normative value of the rights of the poor, that the rights of the poor are in and of themselves. And that is primarily the way the rights have spread historically is that people treat them as something good in and of themselves, that they want for themselves. And then, of course, the second thing that we have to consider is, is a system based on political and economic rights, is it more likely to Foster Economic Development . Or is it maybe, maybe its the reverse. Maybe you need an autocrat to implement Economic Development, to make the hard choices. Maybe people dont care about their rights until theyre at some higher standard of level, higher standard of living, their material needs have already been met. Maybe only then. So this is a debate that we these to have, and this one is not a normative debate, its a positive debate. Do political and economic rights facilitate Economic Development . They make Economic Development happen or is, in fact, autocracy a better system to make it happen . Thats a debate that we need to have in Economic Development. And what has happened is that by making statements by this, by having a technocratic approach to development, were not openly having that debate. The world wang bank is not even allowing itself to openly talk about the issue of democracy or awe tock autocracy. In fact, ive been following the past two World Bank President s, president zoellick, who has held the office for five years, and dr. Kim who holds the office now. Neither one has openly used the word democracy in a speech. Zoellick, since he was there for five years, that was particularly impressive. And just to make sure i wasnt missing anything, i talked to the World Bank Press spokesman, and the press spokesman confirmed to me that he said, well, the president s not allowed to use the word democracy. Havent you Read World Bank article iv, section 10 is, you know . [laughter] so that is not an acceptable state of affairs. This article should not be binding either the operations of people who want to promote development, or certain he should not certainly should not be binding the rest of us about development. We should be able to openly debate whether democracy, whether individual rights for the poor are a good thing or not for promoting development. And the primary complaint of this book is that that debate has not happened anywhere near enough. Theres not been taken anywhere near seriously enough an Economic Development. Let me give you a little bit of history on the technocratic idea. Where did it come from, and how has it held on so long so that this article has never been changed, and the technocratic approach is being followed by a lot of people still today. One fun thing that authors get to do when they do research for books is they get to do a 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. And one thing i found is that it went, it was not a new idea. Anytime recently. It actually went back deep into colonial times. Here im showing a technocratic report that was done in 1938 by the British Colonial office, a British Colonial officer named lord haley did this report in 1938. The report is 1,837 pages long. A very long list of Technical Solutions to poverty in africa which reeds remarkably reads remarkably like a report that was done in 2005. That was kind of the closest similar thing i could find. The u. N. Report was authored by an economist at, whos a professor at columbia whose name i cant remember right now [laughter] i think Angelina Jolie supplied a Consultants Report for this. So the only thing i want you to take away from the slide is that the technocratic idea that what is missing is the technical solution doesnt fare too well in this light, because these particular four problems and these four Technical Solutions have been around for 70 years. And so its hard to argue that the problem was that, just that the Technical Solutions were missing until the experts came along. So it doesnt seem like the problem was a shortage of experts. Weve had experiences more 70 years. Another thing to notice is apparently it was not be all that successful because were still talking about the same solutions 70 years later, now almost 80 years later. The other way in which this history is interesting is this technocratic approach actually formed a lot of the justification for the British Empire by the time of world war ii. The old justification for the British Empire was kind of openly racist, that the british were a superior race helping inferior races to develop. That kind of language was becoming politically kind of deadly by the time of world worr ii when you wanted the British Empire was in a fight for its life, and it wanted to offer a more benevolent vision that was not so openly insulting and racist. And so it offered this technocratic justification we are the people who are going to help you solve your material poverty with these long lists of Technical Solutions. Now, i think it helps to kind of see the debate today when we kind of see the same debate going on in a time like this, in a very different context. So let me you a little bit of that kind of perspective. So another set of people the british had to convince with their technocratic justification for colonialism which, by the way, the colonialism was one of the regimes that the world bank was at the time, in 944, was being neutral about. Not only dictatorship, fascism, communism, it was also colonialism was considered as a political character that could not be considered in a world bank loan, and there were some world bank loans made to colonial territories of the british and the french. So theres a sort of colonial mentality at that time which is somewhat, i dont want to be unfair and tarnish todays ideas by having erased colonialism. Thats unfair. But it helps to see what the issues are when we see the colonial debate. So the british had to convince the americans. One easy way that lord haley found, lord haley was very shrewd, and he found a way to convince the Roosevelt Administration to go along with the technocratic justification. Because the Roosevelt Administration was doing, taking the same technocratic approach to one of their internallyunderdeveloped regions and peoples which were africanamericans in the south. Eleanor roosevelt had had lunch with a black leader named ralph bunch during world war ii and said look, you know, roosevelt, i dont think shes quite this, honestly, but this was the reality. Roosevelt needs the votes of white segregationists to be reelected. Can you please postpone your challenge to segregation . In the meantime, the new deal will offer technocratic solutions to the material poverty of black people in the united states. So thinking of that parallel kind of helps us think about this debate. So that, in the end, fdr sort of went along because they saw the parallel between colonialism and their own treatment of blacks in the united states. It offered Material Solutions to black poverty but not rights, not the rights to end segregation, not the rights to vote. And then what happened after the end of colonialism . One thing in this story that you have to know is the end of colonialism was not anticipated by anyone. During world war ii. It was really a surprise collapse that it collapsed only 15 years later. There were statements that i could show you that the british expected their empire in africa especially to endure for generations, if not centuries. So this was sort of indefinitely justification for the empire. But then what happened after colonialism did collapse, there were a new set of parties that found justifications for authoritarian rule to be, to be very helpful. So the first, first there was the form of authoritarian rule called colonialism the technocratic ideas justified. Then a new set of autocrats which were the indigenous autocrats in africa after independence. They found it very they did not want to give rights to their own citizens either. They wanted to replace the empire as being the new autocrats that could justify their own rule with sort of technocratic ideas that, you know, let us autocrats be in power so that we can solve material poverty. So it was sort of like, you know, what used to be the divine right of kings in medieval times, and in our day after the end of colonialism, it became the development right of dictators. It really justified dictators. The u. S. Was also fairly happy about this because the autocrats make better allies than democrats do during the cold war, and so u. S. Was, when it started getting into development, economic ands be foreign aid, they were happy to support autocrats during the cold war. This is a very well known story, that the u. S. Supported autocrats during the cold war. Whats the new angle im suggesting you add is that the ideas that justified autocrats also had some political motivation. And, of course, this story is not only historical, today were in a new situation thats somewhat analogous to the cold war, the war on terror in which, again, the u. S. Foreign Policy apparatus, Foreign Policy implementers are somewhat happy with the ideas that justify autocrats. And these ideas also appeal lastly of all to the development agencies, the Development Experts, the philanthropists because these ideas make it much, make the operation of philanthropy and aid much easier, that you can, again, just ignore the world bank and the character of the government youre dealing with and just concentrate directly on Technical Solutions. That has a direct appeal that never goes away. So theres one philanthropist you may have heard of named William Gates jr. , bill gates, anybody ring a bell . Okay. He said in 2012 that 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 had followed this approach, quote they had set, quote, clear goals; choosing an approach, measuring results and then using those measurements to continually refine our approach. This helps us to deliver, helps us so theres this sort of unwitting or maybe witting kind of coalition with the autocratic government. The donors, the philanthropists, the experts working together with the ethiopian autocrat. 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 to the dictator for a few years of high growth. And there are also a few years of measured reductions in Child Mortality which he, again, gave the credit for to the dictator. So lets talk a little bit about how much the Development Community has had this debate on the positive value of rights versus autocracy. In giving the credit to millis, bill gates seems to be siding factually with the idea that autocracy is good or acceptable for development. One of the strange things about the debate in development is people always are looking either for autocratic Success Stories within developing countries or, if you challenge that, they want you to provide democratic Success Stories from within the developing cups. Theres countries. Theres one very strange thing thats been going all throughout the history of development, and that looking for kind of possible models for how to succeed at development, we have excluded the cases of all those who have actually succeeded at development. This is pretty important, so let me repeat that. In having any debate about how to succeed at development we exclude the models of those who have actually succeeded at development. Very strange way to handle evidence. So we excluded north america, australia, new zealand, japan, western europe, more recently joined by other Success Stories within the developing countries that have had greater political and