AID, like so many other aid agencies, often tries to use money and technical assistance to promote development in environments where the primary constraints on development are not financial or technical, but political. Given the complications and potential for unintended consequences that go along with political engagement this is understandable, but it often produces very unsatisfactory returns on aid investment.
Dahayun:
i.e., Massive corruption comes from massive unconstrained US spending.
How do we cure corruption?????
I wouldn't say that corruption is a consequence of US spending, though large amounts of externally sourced money do increase the opportunities for corruption.Originally Posted by Steve the Planner
I was thinking more of the reality that economic development requires change, and change often threatens the position, prosperity, and even the survival of local and national elites. These elites may not openly oppose development efforts, especially if they have uses for the incoming funds, but they are likely to actively manipulate the process to ensure that their interests are not compromised, which often also ensures that the aims of the funding agency are not met. We need to be able to recognize divergent goals, and in cases where the interests of the local elite are completely incompatible with development goals it may be better to simply put the money somewhere else, where it might have some chance of accomplishing something.
Unfortunately it's often more important to be able to say we sent x hundred million to a certain utterly miserable place than to be able to point out what that money actually accomplished.
We don't, unless it's our own corruption. We can't cure anyone else's.
STP and Dayuhan; define corruption. Different cultures have different definitions as we all know.
Dayuhan, I am still reflecting upon the Philippine Politics and the Rule of Law paper (perhaps you could provide a link in this thread as well) which you shared the other day; here is a political analysis (TTP's) paper which you might find to be of interest:
Reidar Visser's Iran's Role in Post Occupation Iraq Enemy, Good Neighbor, or Overlord?
The subject of Iran’s role in Iraq—what it is, and what it should be—is a hotly contested one. Some analysts stress the role of Shiite identity and religion as a unifying bond between Iran’s approximately 60 million Shiites and the 15 million strong Shiite majority in Iraq, mostly concentrated in Baghdad and areas south. A few suggest the existence of even vaster schemes of cooperation, with Shiite solidarity extending from Iran via Iraq to the Alawite minority that rules Syria and into the south of Lebanon, which is also dominated by Shiites—a “Shiite crescent” that seems ideally positioned to dominate the entire Middle East through its hold on strategic territory and with its control of combined oil resources that rival those of Saudi Arabia. At the same time, other scholars reject the idea of any particular closeness between the Shiites of Iran and those of Iraq. These analysts tend to stress the Arabness of the Shiites of Iraq—who in many cases descend from recently settled nomadic tribes whose conversion to Shiism took place within the past couple of centuries—and point to historical facts such as the loyal Shiite participation on the Iraqi side in the eight-year war against Iran in the 1980s as proof of the Iraqiness of the Shiites and as a formative experience in its own right. Often, this kind of perspective goes hand in hand with a view that Iraqi Shiites are actively hostile to the model of government instituted in Iran after the 1979 revolution, and that they in particular despise the idea of clerics holding political office. It has even been suggested that the current government of Nuri al-Maliki, after its turn against certain internal Shiite contenders, constitutes a contemporary example of what this attitude to Iran means in practice.
In this report, a synthesis of these two positions is offered. On the one hand, the Iraqi identity of the Shiites living in the country seems firmly established at the popular level. Historically, the Shiites of Iraq have always shied away from all kinds of schemes that would create a sectarian enclave south of Baghdad or unite the Shiite portions of the country with Iran, and the spectacular failure of the scheme to create a federal Shiite entity in post-2003 Iraq (which was tentatively launched in the summer of 2005) seems to attest to the endurance of an “Iraq first” attitude among the Shiite population. However, on the other hand, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 set in motion a formidable process of upheaval and such tremendous pressures from the outside that internal Shiite elite politics in Iraq changed beyond recognition and shifted away from its historical trajectory.
Last edited by Surferbeetle; 05-11-2010 at 05:53 AM.
Sapere Aude
Two definitions:
1. The use of institutional resources for individual advantage.
2. The other guy's hustle.
I personally think that what we think of as "traditional corruption"... bribes, kickbacks, etc is often less damaging to an economy than the use of State power, including coercive force, to maintain elite control of the means of production. They often go together, of course, and it's a fairly poisonous combination.
I don't think the full text of the Philippine paper is available online...
Pity, it's a good paper...out somewhere between the roar of generator and the plaintive cry of an UPS it's helped a dim bulb to flare at least momentarily.
Hmmm...after reading this...the acronym OPEC springs to mind.
So, with this definition of corruption (#1 in particular) at hand how do we approach the concept of State Owned Enterprises (or hybrid SOE's) such as China Telecom, Lenovo, Deutsche Bahn, GM (?), certain banks, certain oil companies, and other smaller versions of the same concept in a conflict zone?
How about our approach to private businesses in a conflict zone?
We might say that we have two basic choices when it comes to SOE's or private entities in a conflict zone: ignore or enable.
My assumption is that if the majority of the workforce demographic in a city or town are indeed working the opportunities for mischief makers are decreased. Workers can find typically work in both SOE's or private business if they are present.
My assumption is that SOE's are typically inefficient and so they may be seen as typically employing more workers than would a comparable private business. SOE presence does not depend as greatly upon a stable environment as does a private institution.
My assumption is that private businesses typically use capital fairly efficiently (depending upon the economic framework in which they must work) and their presence is indicative of a fairly stable environment.
So...if a grunt (standing in as proxy for the typcial USG actor) ignores both the SOE and private business in a particular conflict zone does that mean the problems associated with unemployment go away? Is there an economic choice to be made which can help to pacify a conflict zone?
Do the concepts of Jugaad, Guanxi, or Shanzhai apply in a economic context in a conflict zone? How about the primarily post conflict experiences of W. Edward Demming and Jospeh Juran?
Last edited by Surferbeetle; 05-11-2010 at 09:14 AM.
Sapere Aude
Whose conflict zone are we talking about? Assuming it isn't ours...
If the area is stable enough to permit a functioning economy, there's almost certainly local governance of some sort in place, in which case economic policy is their business and our role would be to advise cautiously.
If there is no local governance in place the chances are that economic activity is pretty rudimentary (can't have a state owned enterprise without a state), in which case our role would be to provide as much security as possible and try to at least stay out of the way of whatever economic activity is going on.
As a general rule, I'd say we should at any level be very wary of trying to dictate economic policy for anyone else, and at the military level we shouldn't do it at all.
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