Wish I Were Still In Baja...

Countries that comprise what Easterly calls the Rest have consistently pushed to change their positions in the international economic order, while industrialized countries have attempted to preserve the status quo. Easterly explains the Rostovian take-off model of economic growth, which argues that economic modernization occurs in five basic stages of varying length - traditional society, preconditions for take-off, take-off, drive to maturity, and high mass consumption. Reminiscent of comparative advantage theses, Rostow’s model of economic growth assumes that economic growth must be led, at least initially, by only a few sectors. Rostow’s model is a descendant of the liberal school of economics, emphasizing the efficiency of free trade. It denies the dependency theory argument that countries reliant on trading raw materials may become unable to diversify their economies into manufacturing sectors. The basic assumption is that countries understand modernization in the way Rostow describes modernization, namely that society ascends to materialistic norms of growth. The linearity of the model neglects to consider possible transgressions based on the culture or political structure of a society. Unlike other theorists, Rostow fails to understand intra- and inter-country dynamics, dynamics which are critical in Easterly’s examination.

Easterly is decisively opposed to the way in which the West has framed the issue of foreign aid. The racist, colonial motivated terminology of the pre-WWII era was replaced by an equally objectionable “paternalistic and coercive strain” which assumes that because those in the developed world have incidentally found themselves in a society of peace and prosperity that they can plan other societies’ ascent to a comparable position. The West still ascribes to a fantasy which presumes that the “west can change complex societies with very different histories and cultures into some image of itself.” These modern versions of the White Man’s Burden makes questions like “how should we approach population growth in the third world?” seem paternalistic and intrusive. Easterly cites the success efforts of The Gang of Four (Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan) to participate in markets without “significant Western assistance as a share of their income.”

The rules of the game have been skewed in strong disfavor to the developing world. Between 1974 and 1984, developing countries maintained an interest in promoting the principles of the New International Economic Order—which replaced the Bretton Woods system of international political economy—and began to see the impediments of population growth on the process of development. Even evolution away from the Bretton Woods system did little to enhance the bargaining power of developing countries. As William Easterly comments, “the needs of the poor don’t get met because the poor have little money or political power with which to make their needs known and they cannot hold anyone accountable to meet those needs.” While poor countries chose to participate in the international institutional regime, the current international economic order leaves them with few viable alternatives. Most developing countries lack the economic or political bargaining power to effectively negotiate for greater access to rich countries’ markets without unfavorable quotas, tariffs, duties, and export credits. Nor can they adequately protect their own emerging markets from the corporations and banks of the affluent countries. Furthermore, the political power in the developing world is unevenly distributed. The international order depends on diplomatic recognition of the governing in a country, regardless of whether the party holds majority political support. The dilemma becomes one of upholding international institutions or holding people to rules that are disadvantageous to them when they did not agree to the rules in the first place. A tyrant’s success in subjecting a population is rewarded within the current system.

In 2000, world leaders developed eight goals for development, including: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary-school enrollment, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability, and develop a global partnership for development. Easterly suggests that the Millennium Development Goals are the next sweeping, utopian Plan. He recommends that aid agencies focus on feasible, accountable projects: “aid agencies could do more on these problems if they were not diverting their energies to utopian Plans and were accountable for tasks such as getting food, roads, water, sanitation, and medicines to the poor.” While he claims that “aid agencies cannot end world poverty,” he does say that “they can do many useful things to meet the desperate needs of the poor and give them new opportunities.” He seems to suggest that a more focused, task-specific approach to development is needed.

In 2004, the Copenhagen Consensus, in line with much of Easterly’s analysis of the dynamic of Planners and Searchers in the foreign aid realm, set priorities among a series of proposals for confronting the global challenges of malnutrition and hunger, communicable diseases, governance and corruption, education, conflicts, sanitation and water, financial instability, subsidies and trade barriers, climate change, and population/migration by considering the economic costs and benefits of each. Certainly one can argue the faults of a cost-benefit system of analysis, but the Copenhagen Consensus gave “weight both to the institutional preconditions for success and to the demands of ethical and humanitarian urgency.” Each of these challenges has particular relevance to population growth. Of the highest priority were new measures to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, policies to address hunger and malnutrition, and policies promoting trade liberalization.