There’s been a lot to get outraged about on Aid Watch this week. World Bank leader calls for democratizing research while censoring research. USAID and NGOs urge transparency while egregiously non-transparent. Critics criticize our criticism of FAO hunger numbers that turn out to be even worse than we first suggested.
Our strongest supporters correctly point out that excessively bland and polite statements have little effect on the debate compared to outrage, and outrage is often justified.
At the same time, we try to hold ourselves to the same standards as those we criticize, and we acknowledge that our own critics sometimes have a point. We are doing our best in our little part of the debate to use outrage constructively, but we sometimes go too far and get it wrong too.
Most importantly, our outrage is directed at OUTCOMES not at PEOPLE. The staffers at USAID, NGOs, World Bank, or FAO are doing their best subject to severe political and donor pressures, and often sympathize with our criticisms (judging by public and non-public comments that we get).
Let’s fight together the political pressures and mistaken perceptions of donors that result in bad outcomes for the people that ALL of us in this debate care about: the world’s poor.
7 Comments
Aw shucks Bill!
How nice. You shouldn’t have …
Dear Mr. Easterly: I am a huge believer in outrage. Equally, I know that we have the intelligence and collaborative skills to use disagreement constructively to move to effective action. Effective action is after all the only thing that is going to make a difference in the end. Thank you for taking the high road.
It’s pretty hard to know what these organizations staffers and leaders really think. We have to remember that USAID, World Bank, the FAO etc are, above all, political organizations. The general public is extremely ignorant about development economics and the practice and efficacy of various aid interventions. The idea behind foreign aid seems like it should be obvious. A country is poor … solution? Give country money! It seems very intuitively plausible. Couple this intuitively plausible, though usual wrong, perception by the public with purely political organizations whose purpose is designed to carry out the public perceptions and it’s obvious reasoned critiques – or even reasoned outrages – are not going to get very far.
What’s really amazing about these organizations though is that we have been pouring billions and billions into foreign aid and poverty interventions for close to a half-century (maybe more?) with little to show for it. The most successful economic transitions have come from countries with little to no foreign aid. You would think at some point we would begin to re-evaluate our intuitive model.
Also, I remember a while back I criticized your tone (I rarely disagree with the actual content of your critiques) for being a bit too snarky. I don’t actually mind snark, but my concern was that you would turn off people who you would otherwise convince – and it’s important to convince people (or at a minimum consider your argument) since this is an important issue. I retract that though since in recent months you’ve definitely had just the right amount of sarcasm such that your point is there, without turning people off.
I’ve run into this problem as well, but I think we *do* need to remember that these innocents are voluntarily working for orgs within an institutional framework that may be broken. In that sense, they may be guilty. The Nuremberg defense (“I was just following orders”) does NOT apply when you have a choice over jobes, even if that implies lower-paid jobs without servants, free flights and canapes.
First, I honestly respect that the aidwatch team appears to at least read the comments – and occasionally retort. Some ‘blogs’ are really just press releases – and I couldn’t be bothered to follow them. In other words, kudos.
However, aidwatch has earlier been accused of cherry-picking the (easy prey) comments to which it responds.
So, will you perhaps share with us, which were the points you considered to hold some truth and maybe even respond?
Or, is ‘making nice’ the end of it?
If you can’t beat them, join* them! ???
* Contemporary substitution for join = ignore
I rest my case. (sigh)
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