The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor 1st Edition

The Tyranny of Experts is a good read, and I recommend it to anyone interested in economic development and political change (specifically democratization). Although at times his prose comes across as overly pedagogical, Easterly's writing is entertaining as he pulls together various development histories ranging widely across time - from Northern Italy's free cities in 1154 A.D. to the British Empire in the early 20th Century to Uganda in 2010. The central argument is that the development community that has engaged the "developing world" since the end of World War II (specifically from Truman's initiation of post-war foreign aid in 1949) has focused on economic growth to the exclusion of political rights for the people in countries that are being developed. According to Easterly, development experts have made three critical mistakes: (1) development programs have treated countries/cultures as if they are "blank slates," ignoring specific historical circumstances and dynamics; (2) policies and measurement of "development" have focused on the national level, whereas development may be at the same time more localized (progress taking place within specific communities) as well as more regional (the broader economic/environmental/social setting of development clearly has a strong regional component) than this analysis acknowledges; and (3) development experts have chosen to consciously design solutions to problems, whereas historically a free market has been the best problem-solver.

To make his point, Easterly examines a broad range of statistics, anecdotes, documents and quotes from development experts and organizations. Criticizing the supposedly apolitical approach of organizations like the World Bank, he shows how development institutions have undermined individual rights. In this he is certainly not alone - much of the book reminded me of a kind of cross between Michael Goldman's "Imperial Nature" and any of Paul Farmer's books about individual rights and development (perhaps "Pathologies of Power" would be a decent comparison). A significant contribution Easterly makes to this body of development literature is that he includes a brief and selective analysis of how cultural values, individual rights, and economic growth go hand in hand. Drawing on academic studies, he shows how democracy and cultural freedom work in a virtuous feedback loop; where oppression has taken place, social trust tends to be very low, which hinders the development of democracy and individual rights. This is a significant insight, although clearly made previously by the studies that Easterly cites.

Surprisingly, while Easterly examines the British Empire and American international engagement from the standpoint of political rights, tracing the strand of imperial-minded racism that tainted the origins of the development community, he attributes economic growth in Britain and America almost solely to political freedom (more by declining to mention empire and territorial expansion outside of the political context than by making this argument explicitly). Yes, there is a statistical link, as he recognizes, between the existence of checks on authoritarian power in Western European countries at the beginning of Atlantic trade and their benefit from that trade (p. 137-139). Furthermore, individual incentives play an important role in invention and technological development as well as trade and weathering economic shifts. Yet I feel that this book comes up short by being somewhat selective in the histories that it tells as well as glossing over the exploitation permitted (some would say created) by markets. We can agree that individual rights are essential and valuable as ends in themselves. While criticizing the development community for overlooking history, Easterly holds up the countries with individual rights for their citizens as examples for other societies/political entities to follow yet gives short shrift to the history of economic development in these countries themselves. America grew to its current status as a world economic leader because of individual rights, but also because of the expropriation of land in North America, the development (alongside individual rights) of an expansionist attitude in culture, and financial power that extracts value from beyond its own borders. Individual rights in Britain at the beginning of Atlantic trade may have helped the island nation gain technological advantages and dominate sea trade, but raw materials from the empire and the exploitation of workers in Manchester factories also played a large role in getting Britain to where it is today. Easterly's selectivity suggests that there is a lot of work to be done in bringing a broader history of development to light.

To a large extent, development has become a business that is about sustaining itself, whereas it should be about ultimately eliminating the need for a development community. In advancing this viewpoint, Easterly is doing a service to many. Having worked in both local and international development organizations, I will say that despite my reservations, Easterly achieves his goal of contributing to the development debate in a way that opens the floor for future conversation and research.

The bottom line: While it may not be completely groundbreaking, I do think Easterly's latest book does a good job synthesizing information on the recent history of development and pulling together various strands of theory (economic, political, and cultural) into the development debate. It is a worthwhile read.

This book is full of surprises.

In The Tyranny of Experts, the author of the seminal book The White Man’s Burden drills down into the history of economic development around the world in search of its causes. What he finds has little to do with any of the factors bandied about among contemporary development professionals.

“The conventional approach to economic development, to making poor countries rich,” William Easterly writes, “is based on a technocratic illusion: the belief that poverty is a purely technical problem amenable to such technical solutions as fertilizers, antibiotics, or nutritional supplements . . . The technocratic approach ignores what this book will establish as the real cause of poverty — the unchecked power of the state against poor people without rights.”

Instead, Easterly maintains, the fundamental pre-condition for successful development is democracy paired with deep understanding of local history. He calls the establishment of the World Bank “the moment of original sin . . . in which the Bank disavowed the ideals of freedom . . .”

Academia has been good to William Easterly. Presumably, when he was forced out of the World Bank because of his outspoken criticism of the Bank’s support for corrupt regimes and pro-Western favoritism, he was looking for a platform on which he could continue his campaign to shift the consensus among development professionals from top-down “solutions” to support for bottom-up, grassroots initiatives. He’s gotten that platform, but his position on the faculty of New York University has also moved him to dig more deeply into the intellectual roots of his thinking. The Tyranny of Experts is one result.

This book is intellectually very ambitious. Easterly finds the common denominator for successful development not in policies, procedures, or leaders but in an environment in which the rights of poor people are respected. On the most fundamental level, he insists, the biggest success stories in development are to be found in what we’ve grown used to calling “the West.” In these rich countries, democratic government accountable to voters left them essentially free to exercise their genius for innovation. Variations on the capitalist system provided the incentives for individual initiative and hard work, the result of which has been a meteoric increase in per capita income during the past two centuries in the West, compared with a slow increase for the Rest. Yet development professionals ignore the stunning, long-range success of the West and turn instead to models based on short-term (and usually temporary) growth spurts.

In recent decades, it has been fashionable to point to China as proof that development is best facilitated by “benevolent tyrants.” Easterly finds this argument unconvincing for at least three reasons:

(1) The major boost to Chinese productivity, and hence the biggest factor in increasing the country’s per capita income, was the grassroots movement among farmers freed from collective farms to till their own land. This development began taking hold in 1978, at the same time as Deng Xiao Peng’s accession to power, but had as much to do with the Chinese breakthrough as Deng’s actions as Secretary of the Communist Party. In fact, it was only in 1982 that the Party made official the dispersion of landholding that was already widespread throughout the country.

(2) Easterly proves that the only factor that correlates closely with sustained, high-octane development is regionalism. China, after all, lies in East Asia, home of what Easterly calls the “Gang of Four” breakthrough economies (otherwise known as the “Asian Tigers”): Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Statistical analysis proves that’s no accident.

(3) The anonymous spread of the potato “increased the calories, vitamins, and nutrients produced by a given amount of land, thus sustaining a larger population” and offers “more evidence for attributing the rise of China as an economic superpower” than any conscious policy of the Party, much less of Premier Deng. I found this claim so puzzling that I checked out Easterly’s facts: lo and behold, the American Journal of Potato Research reported more than a decade ago that “China is now the world’s largest potato-producing country, and nearly a third of the world’s potatoes are harvested in China and India.” (Who knew? I can’t recall ever seeing potatoes in a Chinese meal!)

One of the most valuable aspects of this book is Easterly’s habit of finding revealing truths in areas others never consider. The importance of the potato to China is just one example. Another is his conclusion that “one of the regional factors that held back African development was that Africa had too many nations.” (It’s obvious — once you read the book.)

The Tyranny of Experts is a brilliant inquiry into economic history, with excursions into political science, sociology, and other disciplines. By making a solid case for individual initiative as the driving force in development rather than the policies of leaders, William Easterly has made a major contribution to the field. However, there in one major area in which I take issue with the author.

Economist that he is, Professor Easterly uses per capita income as the exclusive measure of development. This choice is problematic both because it’s a poor reflection of the well-being of poor people (who are, after all, the principal concern of the field) and because it presumes that economic growth — the output of more and more stuff — is necessarily good. If I earn $700 per year (about $2 per day) and Bill Gates earns $2 billion, it’s small comfort to me that our “per capital income” is $1,000,000,350. And if Mr. Gates consumes enough water and electricity to maintain his 66,000-square foot house that could otherwise meet the needs of . . . well, lots of people, that’s far from good for the planet — or for you or me. (Not so incidentally, Easterly calls out Bill Gates for special criticism for his exaggerated faith in quantifying change.)

Incidentally, I also note that in two references in his book to those who comprise “development professionals” Easterly includes only staff of the World Bank, the United Nations, and the overseas aid agencies of national governments. He excludes NGOs, many of which employ large numbers of professionals working in development programs throughout the Global South. I find this peculiar.

There is so much more that’s worthy of comment in this outstanding book that I can’t possibly do justice to it in this short review. All I can say is, if you’re involved in any way in economic development work, or simply concerned about ending poverty, The Tyranny of Experts is essential reading. Despite its flaws, it’s simply brilliant.