Book Report: The White Man's Burden

I finished another of the popular books on international development: The White Man's Burden by William Easterly. The main point of the book is how infrequently the money we spend actually delivers results. Therefore, instead of thinking that we can / need to save the developing world, we need to do what we can to help them help themselves. Before I started reading the book, I expected that I would appreciate its position but still disagree with it. Instead, I strongly agree with his call for humility in our aid efforts.

The more one learns about development assistance, the more obvious the extreme waste becomes. Part of that waste stems from aid that is most often delivered through corrupt governments. But aid is also wasted on programs that are not evaluated and not designed with feedback from, or deep knowledge of, the people we are helping. It is when Easterly highlights these flaws that he is most convincing.

He does not have grand solutions, but what he does propose could work. Particularly, he suggests allowing the IMF and World Bank to support private institutions, particularly in countries with terrible governments. He also recommends supporting smaller proven efforts by local actors. Finally, he proposes fewer conferences and frameworks but more serious evaluations.

Where Easterly is less convincing is when he uses the argument that because a certain policy has not worked it is clear it never will work. This logical statement does not account for the fact that those policies in the past may have been implemented poorly.

A perfect example of this is military intervention. The West has a terrible history of using military intervention. Past US military interventions include supporting authoritarian governments according our own interests (particularly during the Cold War) or ineffective interventions in the face of major crises (post-Cold War). However, I would strongly argue that if done correctly and for the right reasons, military interventions could be very successful. Instability is a major obstacle to development and often creates environments of continued instability (this was a conclusion of Collier's book and Nicholas Kristof argues this point in his review of Easterly's book in the New York Review of Books). Without successful interventions, countries in conflict may end up stuck in conflict with dire consequences for civilians caught in the middle.

Before I conclude, I need to mention that Easterly is not opposed to humanitarian aid such as medical and food aid (although he argues that these programs should also be strictly evaluated and conducted with real feedback). Instead it is the development aid he thinks needs to be reconsidered.

Overall the book is well written (although I did skim through many of his anecdotes and historical examples) and convincing. Unfortunately, I think his views do not play as well politically, since he is essentially calling for more modest goals and local control over Western money. With books like Dead Aid now coming out though, maybe his views will gain traction.