We have just finished the annual ritual in which Hollywood pretends that its job description is making quality indie movies, instead of what it is actually good at — producing crowd-pleasing blockbusters. Avatar was not only in the latter category by $2.5 billion or so and counting, it even got good reviews from critics. But it couldn’t win Best Picture under Hollywood’s hypocritical self-fantasy that rewards what they think they SHOULD be doing.
Wait, I feel another Aid Watch metaphor coming on. How many aid agencies and NGOs have tried to do what they SHOULD be good at, instead of what they are actually good at? Just because a cause is worthy, or of critical importance to development — does NOT mean that YOU are good at producing what the customers want in that area at a reasonable cost. Women’s empowerment, fixing failed states, promoting good governance, community-driven development, social services for the poor – all sound like things your agency SHOULD do. But where is your evidence that you are any good at doing any of these things? What if you are good at something else?
An interesting case in point is New Zealand aid. Before a major reform, its largest program was givng college scholarships to poor Pacific Islanders. I don’t have any decisive evidence on how good they were at doing this, so this example is only suggestive, but a priori a scholarship sounds like a relatively effective way to help somebody help themselves — the ideal formula in aid. Then the “SHOULD” nannies took over, and now the tiny New Zealand budget is divided among ALL the fashionable causes in development. (The picture below shows the breakdown between 37 possible sectors in foreign aid.)
As the New Zealand example shows (and it is characteristic of most aid agencies), the SHOULD criteria defeats the whole idea of specialization, and even tiny agencies wind up giving 5 percent of the budget each to 20 different causes. Since there are fixed overhead costs of operating in a sector (like employing sector specialists), this means that a lot of the aid budget is going to be wasted on overhead costs.
Who in aid and philanthropy will have the courage to stick to what they are actually good at? and resist pressure to pretend to do what they SHOULD be good at?
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I guess the Oscars could just track box office receipts, but then we going just look at revenue and forget about the Oscars. Can you allow the Best Film Oscar to be anything other than a replication of box office receipts, and yet not be a “hypocritical self-fantasy”?
Now this is all true. The SHOULDS end up frustrating EVERYBODY. I personally do not believe aid can bring on the changes it claims to have as goals. The fulfillment of rights, equitable societies etc. Just bc these are GOOD ideas (of course) – it doesn’t mean our risk-averse bureaucracies can bring them on. Gender equality through national workshops? Huh?
I think it would be best for everyone if big aid agencies (in their current incarnation as publicly funded bureaucracies) stuck to basics that are (relatively) simple to deliver and implement. While that is more band-aid and less “radical” – at least it would be an honest assessment of what we CAN do, at a reasonable cost.
As aid officials, we are not allowed to be heros, mavens, rebels – the sorts of people that bring on change – the kind of people that protest in the street, lose their jobs, and go to jail for a cause they believe in….we can barely criticise a govt without fear of having our visas revoked.
So really…let’s call a spade a spade and until we are ready/able to be more than band-aids – let’s not pretend to be casts. It just confuses everything and it is EXACTLY what leads to the current aid world as being little more than simulacra.
I’d vote for Back to Basics.
There is an award where people vote called the People’s Choice Awards and Avatar won that. The Oscars are an award where the industry votes and the biggest chunk of voters are actors….who might not be that into a movie that doesn’t use…..actors…all that much.
Great chart.
There are two things going here:
1) Boards tend to be targeted for penetration by special interest groups seeking to expand their rent-seeking opportunities; over time, if successful, they will shift, or reinterpret, a board’s original Terms of Reference in their own favour.
2) The board’s bureaucracy will try to expand its budget by taking on responsibilities beyond its original Terms; this has the added benefit of expanding its bases of political support among more special interest groups thus insuring its long-term survival and greater clout in its annual fight for budget monies.
Referring back to the chart – poor Pacific Islanders are likely to be a weak special interest group in New Zealand; my guess, if you identify the other colours which have captured pieces of the 1999 pie, that there are now represented special interests which have far stronger followings in New Zealand than poor Pacific Islanders.
Maybe the reason “Hurt Locker” did so well against “Avatar,” similar to last year’s “Slumdog” surpassing the more popular “Benjamin Button,” is that the Academy knows that they will make more money promoting a small time project that is yet to gain any monetary momentum than a record-breaking blockbuster that has already brought in great profit. Just an idea, but I always look at motive from the perspective of “where da money at?”
While this might be a valid argument for specialized NGOs, it makes no sense for larger bilateral aid agencies. Programming should be based on need (thus the SHOULD), not on supply i.e. professional capacity of donors. And being responsive to beneficiary needs should guide the human resource policies of these agencies.
This post would make sense if you showed that the money spent in 2008 had worse development impacts than in 1999. But you don’t. Presumably the so called SHOULD nannies are doing something reasonable–talking about what aid should do for people. The US is really really good at delivering foreign assistance in the form of direct supply of military equipment. I guess the SHOULD nannies would be better off telling them to focus on their comparative advantage, deliver more of this.
…we all agree that Avatar was trash, right?
I totally agree with everything you’ve said, well put!
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