JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY SPRING 2015
PED-308: Social Institutions and Economic Development
Instructor Michael Woolcock, PhD Lead Social Development Specialist, Development Research Group, World Bank Lecturer in Public Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University Office Littauer 116 Office Hours Friday 4:15 – 6:00, and by appointment Contact Cambridge: 617-496-8470
I. Description
Most people for most of history have deployed various social institutions – i.e., their kinship groups, community organizations, religions, norms, and social networks – as their primary resource for survival (‘getting by’) and mobility (‘getting ahead’); they have also regarded these institutions as intrinsically central to their identity, to shaping their values, aspirations and preferences, and to how they make sense of the world. Collectively, social institutions represent humanity’s greatest invention, but despite this importance – or perhaps because of it – social institutions have had a decidedly ambivalent relationship with development theorists and development organizations, and in turn those who have been the recipients (willingly or otherwise) of their actions. For our purposes, the central question remains one of discerning how to incrementally forge legitimate and complementary relationships between social and ‘formal’ institutions as the development process unfolds.
This class focuses on initiatives that seek to incorporate social institutions into development strategies in three key policy areas: risk management, dispute resolution and service delivery. To this end we explore the historical, empirical and practical foundations on which to think about designing, implementing, assessing, replicating and scaling such strategies. A strong emphasis is placed on developing the ability to integrate and interpret data from different sources and levels of quality; to communicate with diverse audiences (scholars, practitioners, and the general public); and to understand how ideas, coalitions of actors, organizational imperatives and political forces shape the nature and extent of support for (or resistance to) reform. An overarching objective is to contribute to new development strategies that connect twenty-first century technologies and sensibilities to twenty-first century manifestations of perennial problems, many of which stem from the discontents surrounding the challenges to and reconfigurations of social institutions during the development process. PED-308 Spring 2015
II. Objectives
My hope is that PED-308 will help students acquire a distinctive combination of skills (of analysis, critique and evaluation) and sensibilities (for engaging with development as an ongoing historical and political process). Upon completion of this course, students should be able to:
Appreciate that different types of decision-making and problem-solving skills are required for improving the effectiveness of development interventions generally, and those engaging with social institutions in particular Recognize the intrinsic importance of social institutions to people’s identities, aspirations, values and meaning, and how they make sense of what happens to them (and to others) Analyze how social institutions shape risk management (survival and mobility), conflict mediation, service delivery strategies in poor communities, and the transmission of ideas Articulate a range of key issues at stake when assessing the efficacy of social development projects Demonstrate ways in which development theory, research and policy from different disciplinary and sectoral perspectives can be coherently and usefully integrated Incorporate evidence from primary, secondary and web-based sources, and clearly communicate their ideas to different types of audience Contribute in their own way to reimaging development for the 21st century.
III. Format
PED-308 is a three-hour graduate-level survey course; it is a class for all HKS students (and cross- registrants) with a serious interest in development history, strategy, research and practice as it pertains to social institutions. I will give an interactive presentation for the first half of class on the topic of the week, which will be followed, after a short break, by a presentation and class discussion led by a small group of students. Their task will be to apply the general lessons emerging from the readings and class discussion to a particular social institutional problem/issue in a low-income country, with a focus on how these lessons can be applied to understanding the factors shaping the design, implementation, and evaluation of a specific development project or policy that engages with this problem. Remaining class time will be spent reflecting on the issues raised by the lecture, readings, and student presentation, and their implications for development theory and practice. In selected weeks we will have guests lead a discussion on social institutional issues as they encounter them in development practice. Note also that class will be held on Wednesday evening March 11 (from 6-9pm) the week before Spring break.
IV. Expectations of Students
As a graduate class in development theory, research, and practice, PED-308 assumes students bring a capacity to wrestle with abstract ideas, to marshal evidence from a variety of sources, and to apply these ideas and evidence to concrete and (often) complex policy problems in the developing world. PED-308 has no formal prerequisites, but students are expected to be conversant with the major theories, issues and policy debates in international development (at a level comparable to that outlined in PED-101) – these are needed to ensure that the significance of the issues we are discussing is fully apparent. Particular emphasis will be placed on integrating different methodological and theoretical perspectives from across the social sciences. Accordingly, students trained in a particular discipline (e.g., economics) are expected to be willing to be open to the insights and vocabulary (indeed, the ‘comparative advantage’) of alternative approaches. Students are expected to attend class each week (learning from
2 PED-308 Spring 2015 each other, and harnessing our diverse backgrounds, is a key feature of the Kennedy School experience), to arrive on time, to have completed as much of the weekly readings as possible, to stay for the duration of the session, and to have cell phones and internet connections turned off; the default assumption should be that we gather in accordance with the standards of a professional meeting. Students should inform me if they know in advance that they will be absent from class on a particular week.
From the outset, I also want to stress the importance of upholding respect for the potentially very different views that will likely be voiced during the semester. Taking social institutions seriously means taking history, group biographies, cultural norms, religious beliefs/practices, ideological convictions, kinship systems and other related matters seriously; given their centrality to our lives – our cultures, convictions, identities and aspirations – it is likely that some of these views will be not only different but potentially strongly held and controversial. If you have not encountered some of these views before you may find them unsettling, perhaps even a little disorienting. In addition to upholding professional norms of respect – for each other and for the scholarly nature of our deliberations – in the classroom, I want you to know that you can discuss any concerns with me privately at a mutually convenient time.
Readings will be drawn from the works of scholars, journalists and practitioners, and students will be assessed on their capacity to respond to and communicate with the different audiences each represents. Most of the readings are of article length, but I have also chosen two books. The first (The Wayfinders) is relatively short and ‘popular’ (by Wade Davis, an anthropologist with the National Geographic Society), but provides a wonderful sense of the richness, diversity and fragility of social institutions over many millennia. The second book is relatively long and scholarly (by Chris Bayly, an eminent historian at Cambridge) but provides an extraordinary interdisciplinary account of how our world became the way it is in the ‘long’ nineteenth century; The Birth of the Modern World is widely acknowledged to be a classic, but frankly, if you don’t read such books in graduate school you probably won’t ever read them (!). I don’t expect you to read every word, but any investment made in working through it will, I hope, pay handsome intellectual dividends. If I ever have the privilege of visiting you later in life, I hope these books – on the distant past, the recent past and possible futures of ‘development’ – will have shown their enduring worth by remaining in your collection.
V. Grading
Your final grade in PED-308 will be determined by the following:
1. Class Attendance and Participation (15%) 2. Group Presentation: an analysis of a development project (20%) Three essays: 3. Short Paper (15%) 4. Medium Paper (20%) 5. Long Paper (30%)
For your individual essays, you are to select any three topics from the list of eight below and prepare, in sequence, a ‘short’, ‘medium’ and ‘long’ paper. The idea is that you select issues of concern to you and a particular audience you think needs to be targeted in order for your issue to have greater policy traction – this may entail writing for the general public, for development professionals, policymakers, or perhaps even researchers. (It is expected that you write for at least two different audiences over the course of your three papers; either way, you will need to clearly state who your audience is for each
3 PED-308 Spring 2015 paper.) Separate handouts will provide further details of requirements and options for each paper three weeks before the due date.
The eight general topics for your papers are: a. Select a contemporary development problem, as it pertains to engagement with social institutions, with an historical analogue (e.g., the provision of health care to the poor; managing common pool resources; constraining elite power; establishing property rights; assuring peaceful relations between ethnic groups). Compare and contrast the similarities/differences between these two manifestations of the ‘same’ problem. What can be learned from these cases for contemporary development policy? b. Document how a ‘traditional’ group has encountered and ‘managed’ its subsequent relationship with modernity. How does/did each side frame the problem, and the solution? What intra-group tensions were created or reinforced by this relationship? How and to what extent has the less powerful group succeeded in retaining or ‘adapting’ its cultural integrity over time? c. Critically review the literature that has assessed the impact of social development projects. How does this literature differ (or not) from evaluations of more orthodox development interventions? What shifts (if any) do you think are necessary to more appropriately assess the impact of social development projects? How do different types of development organizations (e.g., IFIs, NGOs, donors) differ with respect to the kinds of knowledge claims they make when assessing the efficacy of social development projects? d. Prepare a paper outlining the history of a concept or idea in development as it pertains to social institutions – e.g., ‘public education’, ‘project evaluation’, ‘poverty’, ‘honor’, ‘land’, ‘status’, ‘patronage’, ‘property rights’, ‘the rule of law’. (You can also explore a non-English-language concept.) When, where and by whom was this idea first coined? How did it gain traction? Who resisted it? How has its meaning changed over time? What forces propelled these changes? To what ambivalences or confusions (theoretical, measurement, policy) does it give rise today? e. Identify a one-time, seemingly intractable social institutional development problem that was (eventually, on balance, for the most part) resolved (e.g., slavery, ‘the divine right of kings’, Protestant-Catholic violence). How and through whom did the solution evolve and disseminate? Against what resistance? What are the ‘lessons’ (if any) for today? f. Select a development organization of interest to you that explicitly engages with social institutions. When was it founded, and by whom? From where were resources procured to fund it? How were/are staff recruited? What is its basic ‘business model’ today? How did it grow over time? Beyond this descriptive account, identify (i) key decisions made at critical junctures that could have led to alternative outcomes, and (ii) how your account contrasts with the dominant narrative (or ‘myth’) regarding this organization’s origins and emergence. g. For the most part, large development agencies (bilaterals, multilaterals, major NGOs) struggle to accommodate social institutions and the specific challenges they present. Explain why this is so, why it matters, what ‘improvements’ (if any) have emerged in recent years, and what needs to be done in the future to accommodate social institutions in more equitable, legitimate and effective ways. h. Make up your own question (in consultation with me) and answer it.
You should discuss with me any creative but instructive variations on these themes you wish to explore (e.g., you might prepare a blog entry for your short paper). Students – especially those for whom English is not their primary language – are strongly encouraged to use the resources available at HKS to
4 PED-308 Spring 2015 help with the structure and content of their essays. Clear, coherent and compelling writing is a vital professional skill, and I will grade your papers accordingly. You should also work closely with the CAs to design the content and sequencing of material for your student presentation (see separate handout). The distribution of final grades will be awarded in accordance with the Dean’s guidelines.
Length and Due Dates
1. Short Paper: 1500 words, due Week 6 (Thursday March 5, 1pm), worth 15% 2. Medium Paper: 2000 words, due Week 10 (Thursday April 9, 1pm), worth 20% 3. Long Paper: 3000 words, due Week 14 (Friday May 8, 1pm), worth 30%
Please use the ‘word count’ function to cite the length of your essay on the cover sheet. The acceptable length is within 10% of the stated limit (e.g., for a 1500 word essay the length should be between 1350 and 1650 words). Please be sure to include your name, the title of your paper, and the audience to whom it is directed.
VI. Books to Purchase
Bayly, C.A. (2004) The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons Oxford: Blackwell Davis, Wade (2009) The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in a Modern World Toronto: House of Anansi Press
VII. Syllabus
All readings marked with a bullet point are ‘required’, but they are listed in order of importance, so you should start at the top of each week and go as far down as your time and inclinations allow. Additional background readings are provided should you wish to pursue a particular topic in greater depth. I’m always on the look-out for manifestations of social institutional issues in the media, so will periodically send these to you during the semester.
PART A: HASTENING THE DAY
The day is not far off when the economic problem will take the back seat where it belongs, and the arena of the heart and the head will be occupied or reoccupied, by our real problems – the problems of life and of human relations, of creation and behavior and religion.
John Maynard Keynes, First Annual Report of the Arts Council (1945-1946)
Week 1 (January 30): Introduction, Overview – ‘The Best Time to be Alive, Ever’
Welcome. Defining social institutions; a brief intellectual history of how they have been understood by scholars and policymakers; a summary of contemporary debates as they pertain to social institutions and their policy manifestations; overview of key issues, terms, questions and problems to be covered. Course expectations, logistics, assessment, etc. Invitation to embark on
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an ‘epic adventure’, to building a sound, supportable and implementable new approach to development. Three great moments in world history to be alive; why this is one of them. Davis, Wade (2009) The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World Toronto: House of Anansi Press (chapters 1 and 2) Woolcock, Michael (2007) ‘Higher education, policy schools, and international development studies: what should Masters degree students be taught?’ Journal of International Development 19(1): 55-73 Adichi, Chimamanda Ngozi (2009) ‘The danger of a single story’ TED Talk; available at: http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html Blattman, Chris (2015) ‘Grading the 2015 Bill and Melinda Gates letter on poverty alleviation’; available at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey- cage/wp/2015/01/23/grading-the-2015-bill-and-melinda-gates-letter-on-poverty-alleviation/ Cronon, William (1998) ‘Only connect’ The American Scholar 67(4). Available at: http://www.williamcronon.net/writing/Cronon_Only_Connect.pdf
For detailed background reading, see also: Moore, Mick (1997) ‘Societies, polities and capitalists in developing countries: a literature survey’ Journal of Development Studies 33(3): 287-363
Second half of class Outline and expectations of student presentations; selection of dates and groups Discussion of segments from ‘Even the Rain’
PART B: ‘THE EPIC ADVENTURE OF DEVELOPMENT’
Over and above the overt purpose of my work—the analysis of development and the advice on policy—I came to see it as having the latent, hidden, but overriding common intent to celebrate, to “sing” the epic adventure of development—its challenge, drama, and grandeur.
Albert Hirschman, Preface to Development Projects Observed
Week 2 (February 6): Deep History – ‘The Sociological Equivalent of Splitting the Atom’
Sixty thousand years of human history in an hour, culminating in the invention of ‘organizations’ and ‘individuals’; and of social science, which tries to understand, harness and constrain these immensely powerful new forces Davis, Wade (2009) The Wayfinders (Chapters 3, 4 and 5) Woolcock, Michael, Simon Szreter and Vijayendra Rao (2011) ‘How and why does history matter for development policy?’ Journal of Development Studies 47(1): 70-96 Bayly, C.A. (2004) The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons Oxford: Blackwell (Introduction) Other good books/articles to know about and read sometime: Nicholas Ostler (2006) Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World (Harper); Nicholas Wade (2006) Before the Dawn:
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Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors (Penguin); Guy Deutscher (2006) The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind’s Greatest Invention (Holt); Alice Roberts (2009) The Incredible Human Journey (Bloomsbury); Francis Fukuyama (2012) The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); Jo Guldi and David Armitage (2014) The History Manifesto (Cambridge)
Second half of class
An overview of requirements and expectations regarding written assignments Excerpts from The Incredible Human Journey (BBC Productions, 2009)
Week 3 (February 13): Entering the Modern World – ‘Great Transformations and their Discontents’
Navigating the vicissitudes of economic, administrative, social, ideological and political change, at different speeds at different times and in different directions, generating in the process both wondrous creations and (often) violent destruction. Are we paving paradise to put up a parking lot? Bayly, C.A. (2004) The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914 Oxford: Blackwell (Part I) Greif, Avner and Murat Iyigun (2013) ‘Social organization, violence, and modern growth’ American Economic Review: Papers & Proceedings 103(3): 534–538 Polanyi, Karl (1944) The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time Boston: Beacon Press. Just read this excellent review essay by Anne Mayhew (2000) http://eh.net/?s=The+great+transformation ; it is the fastest way to get the essence of one of the 20th century’s great books on the social foundations (‘embeddedness’) of markets. Scott, James (2009) The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia New Haven: Yale University Press (Chapter 1: An Introduction to Zomia) Rodrik, Dani (2014) ‘When ideas trump interests: preferences, world views and policy innovations’ Journal of Economic Perspectives 28(1): 198-208
Other wonderful ‘big picture’ books to know about and read sometime: Barrington Moore (1965) The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Beacon Press); Albert Hirschman (1977) The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism Before Its Triumph (Princeton University Press); Kenneth Pomeranz (2001) The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton); Mahmood Mamdani (1996) Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton); Joel Mokyr (2004) The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy (Princeton); Jeffry Frieden (2006) Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century (Norton); Timothy Blanning (2008) The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions that Made Modern Europe (Penguin); Douglass North, John Wallis and Barry Weingast (2009) Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History (Cambridge University Press); Joyce Appleby (2010) The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism (Norton); Paul Seabright (2010) The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life (rev. ed.) (Princeton); Robert Bates (2010) Violence and Prosperity: A Political Economy of Development, 2nd ed. (Norton); Francis Fukuyama (2014) Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
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Week 4 (February 20): And then there was Development – ‘All that was Fluid Freezes into Slush’
How to make sense of all this? A brief history of the idea of development, culminating in contemporary development theory and practice, which oscillates between two master narratives (‘Big D’ and ‘small d’ development), but in the process leaves us suffering from three pervasive schizophrenias: Everyone and no-one believes in modernization; Small is and is not beautiful; Building ‘the rule of law’ as the most supported and least accomplished development priority Bayly, C.A. (2004) The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914 Oxford: Blackwell (Parts III and IV, or as much as you can get through!) Pritchett, Lant, Michael Woolcock and Matt Andrews (2013) ‘Looking like a state: techniques of persistent failure in state capability for implementation’ Journal of Development Studies 49(1): 1-18 Douglas, Mary (2004) ‘Traditional culture—let’s hear no more about it’, in Vijayendra Rao and Michael Walton (eds.) Culture and Public Action Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 85-109 Swidler, Ann and Susan Cotts Watkins (2009) ‘“Teach a man to fish”: the sustainability doctrine and its social consequences’ World Development 37(7): 1182-1196 Swidler, Ann (2010) ‘The return of the sacred: what African chiefs teach us about secularization’ Sociology of Religion 71(2): 157-171 Woolcock, Michael (2011) ‘Development practitioners: missionaries, technocrats or diplomats?’ Guest contribution to the World Bank’s governance blog (June 2) http://blogs.worldbank.org/governance/development-practitioners-technocrats- missionaries-or-diplomats
PART C: BEYOND SMART CRITIQUE – BEATING SOMETHING WITH SOMETHING BETTER
Theory is when you know everything but nothing works. Practice is when everything works but nobody knows why. We have put together theory and practice: nothing is working… and nobody knows why! Albert Einstein
Week 5 (February 27): A Proto-Theory – ‘Solutions when the Solution is the Problem’
The contours of Problem-Driven Iterative Adaption (PDIA) as a coherent strategy for reconciling Big D and small d development, both of which do some things fantastically well but when applied to other problems (those that are ‘complex’ and ‘chaotic’) become themselves the problem; PDIA’s application to those classes of development issues for which social institutions are especially salient; from selling solutions to solving problems; development as “good struggles”, “good failures”, “iterative experimentation” Pritchett, Lant and Michael Woolcock (2004) ‘Solutions when the solution is the problem: arraying the disarray in development’ World Development 32(2): 191-212 Andrews, Matt, Lant Pritchett and Michael Woolcock (2013) ‘Escaping capability traps through Problem-Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA)’ World Development 51(11): 234-244
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Grindle, Merilee (2004) ‘Good enough governance: poverty reduction and reform in developing countries’ Governance 17(4): 525-548 Evans, Peter (2004) ‘Development as institutional change: the pitfalls of monocropping and potentials of deliberation’ Studies in Comparative International Development 38(4): 30-52 Booth, David (2011) ‘Aid effectiveness: bringing country ownership (and politics) back in’ London: ODI Working Paper 336. Available at: http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/docs/6028.pdf Others to know about: Dennis Rondinelli (1993) Development Projects as Policy Experiments: An Adaptive Approach to Development Administration (2nd ed.) (Routledge); Jeffrey Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky (1984) Implementation (3rd ed) (University of California Press); James Q. Wilson (1991) Bureaucracy (Basic Books); Mark Moore (1997) Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government (Harvard University Press); Peter Senge (2006) The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (Doubleday)
Week 6 (March 6): Some Evidence – ‘Getting By With a Little Help From My Friends…’
Social institutions as mechanisms for ‘getting by’ (as insurance mechanisms; as guarantors of savings and credit; as enablers of migration; as conflict mediation systems; as approaches to sense-making and meaning-making), ‘getting ahead’ (group cohesion, diverse networks and engaged communities as enablers, constrainers of growth) and providing the basis of a meaningful life; the bright and ‘dark’ sides of connectedness World Bank (2000) World Development Report 2000/2001: Attacking Poverty New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 135-59 (Chapter 8: Helping Poor People Manage Risk). Available online at: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTPOVERTY/Resources/WDR/English-Full-Text- Report/ch8.pdf Jha, Saumitra, Vijayendra Rao, and Michael Woolcock (2007) ‘Governance in the gullies: democratic responsiveness and community leadership in Delhi’s slums’ World Development 35(2): 230-46 Rao, Vijayendra (2008) ‘Symbolic public goods and the coordination of collective action: a comparison of local development in India and Indonesia’, in Pranab Bardhan and Isha Ray (eds.) The Contested Commons: Conversations Between Economists and Anthropologists New York: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 168-86. Available as Policy Research Working Paper No. 3685, Washington, DC: The World Bank Collins, Daryl, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford and Orlanda Ruthven (2009) Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (Chapter 1: The Portfolios of the Poor) Hoff, Karla, Mayuresh Kshetramade and Ernst Feyer (2011) ‘Caste and punishment: the legacy of caste culture in norm enforcement’ Economic Journal 121(556): F449-475 Prasad, Chandra Bhan, D. Shyam Babu, Devesh Kapur and Lant Pritchett (2010) ‘Rethinking inequality: Dalits in Uttar Pradesh in the market reform era’ Economic and Political Weekly 45(35): 39-49. Available at: http://casi.ssc.upenn.edu/system/files/Rethinking+Inequality+DK,+CBP,+LP,+DSB_0.pdf
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Others of interest (not required): Sara Berry (1993) No Condition is Permanent: The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Sub-Saharan Africa Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press; Tar-Der Luo (1997) ‘The significance of networks in the initiation of small businesses in Taiwan’ Sociological Forum 12(2): 297-317; Scott Wilson (1997) ‘The cash nexus and social networks: mutual aid and gifts in contemporary Shanghai villages’ The China Journal 37: 91- 112; Marcel Fafchamps and Bart Minten (2002) ‘Returns to social network capital among traders’ Oxford Economic Papers 54(2): 173-206; Stefan Dercon (2002) ‘Income risk, coping strategies, and safety nets’ World Bank Research Observer 17(2): 141-166; Lily Tsai (2007) Accountability Without Democracy: Solidarity Groups and Public Goods Provision in Rural China (Cambridge), Anthony Appiah (2010) The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen (Norton); Lawrence Rosen (2010) ‘Understanding corruption’ The American Interest March/April: 78-82
Week 7 (Wednesday March 11): ‘Project-izing’ Social Institutions: Contemporary Debates
How orthodoxy (Big/small development) grapples with social institutions; how successes and failures in their respective projects are interpreted and ‘corrected’; making sense of the current debates around ‘community driven development’, ‘participation’, ‘empowerment’, ‘social capital’, ‘culture’, etc; why reviews of the efficacy of ‘deliberative development’ projects will forever be “mixed”; the utility of ‘essentially contested concepts’ Scott, James C. (2012) ‘Vernacular order, official order’, in his Two Cheers for Anarchism Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 30-56 Bebbington, Anthony, Scott Guggenheim, Elizabeth Olson, and Michael Woolcock (2004) ‘Exploring social capital debates at the World Bank’ Journal of Development Studies 40(5): 33-64 Mansuri, Ghazala and Vijayendra Rao (2012) Overview chapter of Localizing Development: Does Participation Work? Washington, DC: World Bank, pp. 1-14. Available at: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/bitstream/handle/10986/11859/9780821382561.pdf? sequence=1 Woolcock, Michael (2010) ‘The rise and routinization of social capital’ Annual Review of Political Science 13: 469-87 Rao, Vijayendra and Michael Walton (2004) “Culture and public action: relationality, equality of agency, and development”, in Vijayendra Rao and Michael Walton (eds) Culture and Public Action Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 3-36 Woolcock, Michael (2015) ‘Culture, politics and development’, in Carol Lancaster and Nicholas van de Walle (eds.) Oxford Handbook of the Politics of International Development New York: Oxford University Press (forthcoming). Working paper version available at: http://www- wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/IW3P/IB/2014/06/24/000158349_2 0140624102425/Rendered/PDF/WPS6939.pdf
SPRING BREAK
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Week 8 (March 27): Inference – ‘Lost Causes’ (or, ‘One Soft Cheer for Randomization’)
What works? What might work? A brief intellectual history of causality; exploring a diversity of “rigorous-enough” strategies from across the social sciences, history, medicine and law for drawing valid causal inferences about the efficacy of interventions; rapid assessments and experiential learning as crucial feedback mechanisms; projects as learning platforms Freedman, David A. (2008) ‘On types of scientific enquiry: the role of qualitative reasoning’, in Janet Box-Steffensmeier, Henry E. Brady and David Collier (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Political Methodology Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 300-318 Woolcock, Michael (2009) ‘Toward a plurality of methods in project evaluation: a contextualized approach to understanding impact trajectories and efficacy’ Journal of Development Effectiveness 1(1): 1-14 Bamberger, Michael, Vijayendra Rao and Michael Woolcock (2010) ‘Using mixed methods in monitoring and evaluation: experiences from international development’, in Abbas Tashakkori and Charles Teddlie (eds.) Handbook of Mixed Methods in Social and Behavioral Research (2nd revised edition) Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, pp. 613- 641. Working paper version available at: http://disde.minedu.gob.pe/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/1433/Using%20Mixed %20Methods%20in%20Monitoring%20and%20Evaluation.pdf?sequence=1 Deaton, Angus (2010) ‘Instruments, randomization, and learning about development’ Journal of Economic Perspectives 48(June): 424-455 Shaffer, Paul (2011) ‘Against excessive rhetoric in impact assessment: overstating the case for randomised controlled experiments’ Journal of Development Studies 47(11): 1619-1635 Pitticio, Robert (2012) ‘Experimentalism and development evaluation: Will the bubble burst? Evaluation 18(2): 213-229 Other sources to know about and read at some point: James Beebe (2001) Rapid Assessment Process: An Introduction (Altamira); Stephen Kern (2006) A Cultural History of Causality (Princeton); Nancy Cartwright (2007) Hunting Causes and Using Them: Approaches in Philosophy and Economics (Cambridge); Paul Feyerabend (2010) Against Method (4th ed) (Verso); Judea Pearl (2009) Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference (2nd ed) (Cambridge); Michael Bamberger, Jim Rugh and Linda S. Mabry (2012) RealWorld Evaluation: Working Under Budget, Time, Data and Political Constraints (Sage). See also James Mahoney (2009) ‘Toward a unified theory of causality’ Comparative Political Studies 41(4-5): 412-436. The delightful concept of ‘lost causes’ (the title of this week’s class) comes from a most thoughtful paper (actually a presidential address) by Kevin Hooper (2004) ‘Lost causes’ Journal of the History of Economic Thought 26(2): 149-164. From a donor’s standpoint, see also Elliot Stern et al (2012) ‘Broadening the range of designs and methods for impact evaluations’ Report of a study commissioned by the Department of International Development, UK Government. Available at: http://www.dfid.gov.uk/Documents/publications1/design-method-impact-eval.pdf
Week 9 (April 3): Extrapolation – ‘But How Generalizable is That? Can it be Scaled Up?’
If something demonstrably “works” here, can it transferred there? If with this group, what about that group? If it works as a pilot, can it be scaled up? Identifying conditions under which it
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makes sense, or is nonsense, to replicate and expand development interventions, especially those pertaining to social institutions Rothwell, Peter M. (2005) ‘External validity of randomized controlled trials: “To whom do the results of this trial apply?”’ The Lancet 365: 82-93 Cartwright, Nancy and Jeremy Hardie (2012) ‘Causal roles: shared and unshared’, Chapter II.B from their Evidence-Based Policy: A Practical Guide to Doing it Better New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 76-88 Eppstein, Margaret L., Jeffrey D. Horbar, Jeffrey S. Buzas, and Stuart A. Kaufmann (2012) ‘Searching the clinical fitness landscape’ PLOS One, 7(11): e49901. Available at: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0049901 Woolcock, Michael (2013) ‘Using case studies to explore the external validity of complex development interventions’ Evaluation 19(3): 229-248 Pritchett, Lant and Justin Sandefur (2015) ‘Learning from experiments when context matters’ American Economic Association: Papers and Proceedings (forthcoming), 7 pages Rogers, Patricia (2008) ‘Using programme theory to evaluate complicated and complex aspects of interventions’ Evaluation 14(1): 29-48 Pawson, Ray (2008) ‘Invisible mechanisms’ Evaluation Journal of Australasia 8(2): 3-13
See also Daniel Steel (2007) Across the Boundaries: Extrapolation in Biology and Social Science (Oxford) For general interest: Daniel Engber (2011) ‘The mouse trap’ (esp. Parts I and II). Slate.com. (A discussion of ‘Black 6’, the mouse engineered for human biomedical research.) Available at: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_mouse_trap/2011/11/the_mouse_trap.html Only for the (very) technically-minded: Joshua Angrist and Ivan Fernandez-Val (2010) ‘Extrapo-LATE-ing: external validity and overidentification in the LATE framework’ Cambridge, MA: NBER Working Paper No. 16566
PART D: REMAKING THE DEVELOPMENT PROJECT
Week 10 (April 10): A Concrete Alternative – ‘The Only Thing Worse Than Being Wrong is Being Ignored’
The World Bank’s ‘Justice for the Poor’ program as one embodiment of a proto-paradigm- shifting strategy for engaging with the ubiquitous development problem of “building the rule of law”; how we designed it, how we funded it, how we implement it, how we assess it, how we manage critics, expectations, disappointments, frequent failures and alien administrative requirements; our scale-up strategy (generating impact at scale rather than operating at scale) Fukuyama, Francis (2011) ‘The origins of the rule of law’; chapter 17 of The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, pp. 245-261 De Soto, Hernando (2000) ‘Forgotten lessons of US history’; chapter 5 of The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else New York: Basic Books), pp. 105-152
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Menzies, Nicholas, Caroline Sage and Michael Woolcock (2010) ‘Taking the rules of the game seriously: mainstreaming justice in development’, in Stephen Golub (ed.) Legal Empowerment: Practitioners’ Perspectives Rome: International Development Law Organization, pp. 19-37 Sage, Caroline and Michael Woolcock (2012) ‘Introduction’, in Brian Tamanaha, Caroline Sage and Michael Woolcock (eds) Legal Pluralism and Development: Scholars and Practitioners in Dialogue New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-19 Adler, Daniel and Michael Woolcock (2010) ‘Justice without the rule of law? The challenge of rights-based industrial relations in contemporary Cambodia’, in Colin Fenwick and Tonia Novitz (eds.) Human Rights at Work: Perspectives on Law and Regulation Oxford: Hart Publishing, pp. 529-554 Hall, Margaux, Nicholas Menzies and Michael Woolcock (2014) ‘From HiPPOs to ‘best fit’: experimentation in alternative operational approaches in Sierra Leone’, in David Marshall (ed.) The International Rule of Law Movement – A Crisis of Legitimacy and the Way Forward Cambridge, MA: Harvard Law School Human Rights Program (forthcoming)
See also: Carothers, Thomas (2004) ‘Promoting the rule of law abroad: the problem of knowledge’, in Critical Mission: Essays in Democracy Promotion Washington, DC: Carnagie Foundation, pp. 131-144
Weeks 11 (April 17): What Any Alternative Must Do – ‘Enhance (State) Capability for Implementation’
Any would-be alternative to orthodoxy must facilitate the state’s capacity for implementation. Even in the most propitious of circumstances, however, certain tasks (such as ‘building the rule of law’) are likely to take decades, evolve along a non-linear trajectory, be contentious (so political pressure must be sustained far beyond traditional electoral and administrative cycles), and to be susceptible to ‘isomorphic mimicry’; and various strategies, for good and bad reasons, will need to be deployed to sustain external resource flows despite little discernible actual short- run improvement Pascale, Richard, Jerry Sternin and Monique Sternin (2010) The Power of Positive Deviance: How Unlikely Innovators Solve the World’s Toughest Problems Boston: Harvard Business School Press (Chapter 1) Pritchett, Lant, Salimah Sanji and Jeffrey Hammer (2012) ‘It’s all about MeE: Using structured experiential learning (‘e’) to crawl the design space’ Helsinki: WIDER Working Paper No. 2012/104 Guggenheim, Scott (2006) ‘The Kecamatan Development Program, Indonesia’, in Anthony Bebbington, Michael Woolcock, Scott Guggenheim and Elizabeth Olson (eds.) The Search for Empowerment: The Idea and Practice of Social Capital at the World Bank Bloomfield: Kumarian Press, pp. 111-144 Barron, Patrick, Rachael Diprose and Michael Woolcock (2011) ‘Contesting development: policy and practice as if social theory mattered’; chapter 8 of Contesting Development: Participatory Projects and Local Conflict Dynamics in Indonesia New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 247-270
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Campos, J. Edgardo, Benjamina Randrianarivelo and Kay Winning (2013) ‘Escaping the capability trap: turning ‘small’ development into ‘big’ development’ Washington, DC: World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 6717 Ghani, Ashraf (2006) TED talk on rebuilding broken states: http://www.ted.com/talks/ashraf_ghani_on_rebuilding_broken_states.html Also worth reading: Denizer, Cevdet, Daniel Kaufmann and Aart Kraay (2011) ‘Good countries or good projects? Micro and macro correlates of World Bank project performance’ World Bank, Policy Research Working Paper No. 5646
Week 12 (April 24): Some Alternatives in Action, at Scale – ‘Building a New Operating System’
But development isn’t an iron cage; the camouflage can sometimes be sabotaged; there are encouraging examples of individuals, organizations and initiatives seeking to show that alternatives (plural) to orthodoxy are possible. What do they look like? How can more be encouraged? And why are they especially important for engaging with social institutions? The virtues and limits of ICTs as the basis of a ‘revolution’ in development Brafman, Ori and Rod A. Beckstrom (2006) ‘The combo special: the hybrid organization’, chapter 7 of The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations New York: Portfolio, pp. 159-178 Whittle, Dennis and Mari Kuraishi (2008) ‘Competing with central planning: marketplaces for international aid’, in William Easterly (ed.) Reinventing Foreign Aid Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 461-484. See also Dennis’s TED talk at: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=MvK7VK8hv70&feature=player_embedded Birdsall, Nancy and William Savedoff (2010) Cash on Delivery Aid: A New Approach to Foreign Aid Washington, DC: Center for Global Development (Chapter 1: Buying Things Versus Buying Development). Available online at: http://www.cgdev.org/doc/books/COD_Aid/01_COD_Aid-Ch1.pdf Booth, David and Diana Cammack (2013) Governance for Development in Africa: Solving Collective Action Problems London: Zed Books (TBA) Madrigal, Alexis (2013) ‘Toward a complex, realistic and moral tech criticism’. Atlantic Monthly (March 13). Available at: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/toward-a-complex-realistic-and- moral-tech-criticism/273996/ ‘Doing Development Differently’ A manifesto (October 2014). Available at: http://buildingstatecapability.com/the-ddd-manifesto/
See also: Thomas Dietz, Elinor Ostrom and Paul Stern (2003) ‘The struggle to govern the commons’ Science 302: 1907-13; Brian Levy (2014) Working with the Grain: Integrating Governance and Growth in Development Strategies (Oxford)
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PART E: CONCLUSION – ‘THEN MAY WE BOAST’
When it shall be said in any country in the world, ‘My poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want, the taxes are not oppressive’—when these things can be said, then may that country boast of its constitution and its government.
Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man
Week 13 (May 1): Going Forward – ‘Miles to Go Before We Sleep’
A summary of PED-308’s key messages and principles; from modernization to multiple ‘modernities’; some concluding remarks; reconciling big pictures, sharp imperatives, blunt instruments, creative responses; on wearing your Harvard-ness lightly – on recognizing that courage, persistence, wisdom and teams, far more than individual intelligence and privilege, changes the world for the better Klitgaard, Robert (1990) ‘Giving and receiving’; chapter 1 of Tropical Gangsters: One Man’s Experience of Development and Decadence in Deepest Africa New York: Basic Books, pp. 1-13 Woolcock, Michael (2009) ‘The next ten years in development studies: from modernization to multiple modernities, in theory and practice’ European Journal of Development Research 21(1): 4-9 Krznaric, Roman (2007) How Change Happens: Interdisciplinary Perspectives for Human Development (An Oxfam Research Report) London: Oxfam. Available at: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/issues/education/downloads/research_change.pdf Pritchett, Lant (2015) ‘Can rich countries be reliable partners for national development?’ Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development. Available at: http://www.cirsd.org/publications/magazines_article_view_short/english/45
And something a little different, if you have time… Lewis, David, Dennis Rodgers and Michael Woolcock (2008) ‘The fiction of development: literary representation as a source of authoritative knowledge’ Journal of Development Studies 44(2): 198-216 Lewis, David, Dennis Rodgers and Michael Woolcock (2013) ‘The projection of development: cinematic representation as an(other) source of authoritative knowledge?’ Journal of Development Studies 49(3): 383-397
Course Review and Evaluation is done online as part of the processes associated with submitting your final papers.
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