Owen, thanks for responding to our piece. Open debate is an important way to clarify issues and hold us all accountable for the integrity of our intellectual positions.
First off, you criticize us for getting our facts wrong on Ethiopia’s elections. We said:
Ethiopia’s autocratic government, which is inexplicably the largest recipient of UK budget support in Africa, won 99% of the vote in the last ‘election’.
And you say:
Nice point, except: a. according to the official results of the 2005 election, the ruling party won 59.8% of the votes…it is nonsense to say that the government received 99% of the vote.
I guess we really left you with a poor impression if you think we can’t even count votes! We were referring to the local elections of April 2008 (the more recent, and hence ‘last’). Human Rights Watch (the source of our original assertion) found, during two weeks of field research in the lead up to the elections, “systemic patterns of repression and abuse that have rendered the elections meaningless in many areas.
HRW concluded that the 2008 elections “provided a stark illustration of the extent to which the government has successfully crippled organized opposition of any kind—the ruling party and its affiliates won more than 99 percent of all constituencies, and the vast majority of seats were uncontested.” An Associated Press article from April 20, 2008 told the same story: “opposition parties said a systematic campaign of beatings, arrests and intimidation forced out more than 17,000 of their candidates.”
You also challenge us on another fact:
The UK does not give budget support to the Federal Government of Ethiopia… the UK Government provides finance to local government (albeit through the existing financial transfer mechanism via central government).
But wait, aren’t those the same local governments that just had the rigged elections? A recent article by Aalen and Tronvoll in the journal African Affairs points out that one of the reasons why the ruling party bothered to fix the local elections so thoroughly was precisely because international donors had cut off budget support to the federal government (in the political mayhem following the 2005 elections) and started channeling it to local government bodies instead. (Anyway, we never made any assertion about which level of government received budget support.)
You don’t think we developed our case enough that budget transfers to corrupt autocrats are bad. Fair enough, cases should always be developed more. But for now, which is more intuitive: your claim that aid to kleptocrats is “a way to make the government more accountable to its own citizens,” or our claim that aid money given directly to corrupt dictators is unlikely to reach poor people?
You continue:
The British Government’s approach of giving some aid in the form of budget support (too little, in my view) is motivated by evidence that in some circumstances this is an important way of building more effective, responsive and accountable institutions.
“Effective, responsive and accountable institutions”—wouldn’t that include democracy and freedom from corruption? The “evidence” you cite in your post is from a report commissioned by the donors to evaluate themselves. While self-evaluation raises suspicions of bias, even so the support for your claims from this report is a tad on the weak side: “Where a separate governance matrix has been developed, progress is slow…or donors are not satisfied with quality of dialogue…or implementation is weak.”
As for corruption, the same study said that “corruption, and anti-corruption measures, have featured explicitly in the performance matrices and prior actions linked to PGBS. Most often, prior actions related to legal measures, policy development and administrative actions, but, even when formally complied with, such measures have not been conspicuously effective.” Not too surprising—isn’t giving aid to corrupt officials for anti-corruption strategies kind of like giving aid to burglars to install burglar alarms?
You conclude your post by stating:
If Aid Watch wants to be taken seriously as an aid watchdog, then … they need to do some proper analysis of the costs and benefits of different choices for aid delivery in different contexts, rather than simply asserting that it is wrong to give aid to and through governments of which they disapprove.
Thanks for your helpful suggestions on how to ingratiate ourselves with the aid establishment by toning down our criticism of bad aid-receiving governments. However, what really matters to us is not whether WE disapprove of a country’s government but whether the CITIZENS of that country disapprove of their own government—and have the right to express it. Judging from recent election practices by the government of Ethiopia, most Ethiopians don’t have that right.
17 Comments
In an imperfect world full of uncomfortable trade-offs, there are potentially circumstances in which providing direct budget support to a non-democratic government might be the least-bad course of action. I agree that it “really matters” whether citizens approve of their own government and have the right to express it, but I need convincing that in all cases where citizens do not have that right, the government should get no donor support.
It’s always useful to know what a certain position (such as “odious regimes should receive no budget support aid”) rests upon – under what circumstances would it no longer hold? I’d be very interested to read Easterly and Freschi argue the other side for a while, and set out what, if anything, would make them change their stance. Under what circumstance might budget support to non-democratic regimes be advisable?
I’d like to see Owen write a bit more about what characteristics of the Ethiopian regime, in his view, mean that donors still ought to provide aid, too. And what line the Ethiopian regime would have to cross, before he’d change his mind. Even if donors are able to directly improve the lives of citizens, despite the regime, how should donors weigh up the countervailing effect of potentially helping an odious regime retain power?
One last point – how important is the debate over the extent to which the central govt controls the local? Even if the local is not under central control, if the local provides services, that may take pressure of the central govt and help keep it in power.
Owen Barder appears to favour ‘collective’ action (i.e. action taken by “wise” and “enlightened” people in the West for the benefit of the poor). For example, he talks on his website about how his work aims to meet the MDGs and says “which the world community has agreed”. Who is this world community? Who has agreed it? People in Ethiopia? On the one hand he compares Bush to Hitler, then on the otehr hand he is supporting key Bush policy – i.e. the MDGs.
Luis Enrique asks “Under what circumstance might budget support to non-democratic regimes be advisable?”
I can’t think of any circumstance under it can be advisable by any who does not start out from that old sad premise of “but he is our s.o.b”
I really like the open discussion/back-and-forth format – please consider incorporating more of it.
I agree that the really interesting debate is in the gray area – is it ever okay to give aid to corrupt, undemocratic regimes? If a percent of it goes to basic services programs while some is skimmed off, is that acceptable?
There’s a difference between winning 99% of consituencies (HRW’s words), and winning 99% of the vote (Your words). In a first past the post system, you could win 99% of constituencies with 51% of the vote. If you have confused the two, would it hurt to fess up to a small inaccuracy?
I’m not comfortable with editors getting into a debate with dissenters and keeping the last (snarky) word for themselves. It’s the tempting thing to do, but it’s not the right one. Everyone wants the last word in a debate, but if you look at magazines, most letters from readers are not answered – certainly not because the editors think that they were wrong, but because it’s the respectful thing to do to give voice to dissent and let readers make up their mind.
yes, I’ll add to the chorus of mild disapproval about that last para – Owen’s call for proper cost benefit analysis of giving aid via budget support to non-democratic regimes is not the same thing as asking for criticism to be toned down. Blog exchanges are much more edifying when everybody refrains from point scoring.
…. here is a recent contribution to this debate from Kaufmann
Rosa
Good point Mozza.
You began this piece praising open debate and ended with a snarky, rather rude statement which was uncalled for and which seemed to indicate that you don’t like being criticised. Would you like all responses to this blog to be ones that “ingratiate” themselves with your estabilishment?
The response was needed, with clarifications of your points. But the final attack was silly and juvenile.
I’ll add my voice to the growing chorus of disapproval for how this rejoinder ended. The authors come across as rather holier-than-thou, amusing given their position of criticising anyone coming in from the West proferring to have the answers (or, indeed, the questions).
With discussion of the Lugar-Casey bill picking up steam in the US Congress, there could be some very interesting conversations happening in the States. Yesterday I covered a hearing at Foreign Relations on global ag development. Former US Ag Secretary Glickman called for a “development czar” and subsequent restructuring of US aid agencies. I wonder if any restructuring would challenge the MCC model. Here is a bit: http://www.america.gov/st/foraid-english/2009/March/20090318094012mmkcirreh0.5831873.html?CP.rss=true
Yeah, me too. The final paragraph was gratuitously insulting. It spoiled a good rebuttal of the rebuttal. I had thought that Owen Barder was too easy to take personal offence with the last line of the original post. He would be right to be unhappy with the last para of this one. I still think he’s way wrong though.
This discussion is fascinating but I think its missing a big part of the debate – looking at the pros and cons of budget support doesn’t mean anything without looking at the alternatives. There is project-based aid, but then that is fungible and may not be so different to budget support in its effects on government accountability. How about something new and more radical like a large scaling up of direct cash transfers to individuals?
Lee Crawfurd says “How about something new and more radical like a large scaling up of direct cash transfers to individuals?”
Yes! How about that? What is wrong with supporting the citizens?
So everyone else has already commented on this, but…
“Thanks for your helpful suggestions on how to ingratiate ourselves with the aid establishment by toning down our criticism of bad aid-receiving governments.”
Ingratiate yourselves with the aid establishment? Tone down criticism? He asked you to get your facts straight and to do some more careful analysis; it’s not fair to characterize what he said like this.
Non-democratic governments can, and sometimes do, build functioning institutions that provide their citizens with public services. In addition, many autocratic (non-totalitarian) governments are accountable to their citizens to some degree with respect to provision of services–its an important means to them maintaining power. Furthermore, there are a number of examples of autocratic governments (Chile, Indonesia, Korea) developing effective institutions which have persisted after democratic reforms. In fact, many Indonesians would argue that public services were more effectively provided during Suharto’s regime than they are now.
Assessing that reality against the cost of supporting regimes that are likely to be corrupt and definitely suppress the freedoms of their citizens is likely the type of cost-benefit analysis that Owen was referring to.
This post was disappointingly glib coming from Easterly and Co.
Owen is basically right on this one. And I agree with the above criticisms of the tone of this rebuttal.
The whole democracy-promoting corruption-reducing agenda that underlies these arguments is patently ridiculous. Corruption is a structural feature of poor countries, and it has never, and can never, be reduced through making officials more ‘accountable’ i.e. by holding free and fair elections.
Let’s forget the cat calling over that last paragraph: there are much more serious issues at stake.
“The “evidence” you cite in your post is from a report commissioned by the donors to evaluate themselves.”
Indeed. What’s more, the report was published some five years ago since when there have been numerous examples of grand corruption in states which continue to benefit from budget support.
Oxford Policy Management, the consultancy who conducted much of the work, depended at the time (and probably still do) on DFID for much of their income and had a very close relationship with the department. For this reason alone, they were hardly likely to find flaws in the policy although as I noted in a comment on Owen Barder’s thread it’s not the economics that’s at fault, it’s the real world. It’s rather like the banking crisis in that respect.
I was told recently by a DFID officer in a country which has been a major beneficiary of general budget support that their in country staff have less and less direct contact with their government clients.
Anyone working on the ground knows that all government contracts in Africa involve large backhanders (20-30) and that locally employed consultants are hit particularly hard.
But DFID cannot afford to acknowledge that the majority – if not all – of the governments it supports in Africa are systemically corrupt and that statistics and government accounts are faked to please the donors.
So, quite simply, it doesn’t.