Lawrence on Collier and Mintz on Haiti
The field of economic development has more popular books in print than was the case ten or twenty years ago. In fact, the last decade where such a volume of print existed on poorer countries and their prospects was the 1970s. That previous era, however, generated a more critical perspective on the promises of “catching up” to the wealthy Northern states. Now, within the popular debate between, say, Jeffrey Sachs and Bill Easterly, there are huge assumptions underpinning both “sides” that are left unspoken.
Peter Lawrence, a geographer, takes on such assumptions in the latest development fad to hit your airport bookshelves: Paul Collier and his solutions for the “Bottom Billion.” This short piece from New Left Review is one of the most trenchant critiques of the current development field that I have read. Obviously the methodological criticisms are the easy ones - the application of econometrics to problems of political sociology is economic imperialism of the highest order. But more substantively, the unmasking of Collier’s theoretical assumptions is what makes this review great. The task left wanting by Collier’s work is that we still need to explain the “independent” variables that Collier uses for his explanations of endemic poverty and war - GDP levels, “bad governance,” etc.
What Lawrence does not touch on in this piece, and something I would add, is that using PPP-adjusted growth rates as a correlative measure for any social outcome is highly suspect, given that they are doubly distorted. They are distorted the first time when the World Bank issues them (and continually changes the historical record of GDP levels without telling anyone or explaining why). The second order of distortion comes from using PPP-adjusted income levels on top of that. To say something like, “For every 1% increase in GDP growth rates, one would expect 0.5% better governance” is a ludicrous statement on so many levels. If you don’t believe me on the World Bank’s changes in its historical GDP data, go take a look at how the GDP for large Southern states such as China and India for the year 1960, say, keeps changing over time. This is their GDP at foreign exchange levels, before they are even adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity.
Lesson to Iranians who often use indexes of business freedom and transparency when discussing their country: these scales are not very useful in understanding why countries are richer or poorer.
On a different note, the anthropologist Sidney Mintz has a wonderful essay in the Boston Review on his field work in Haiti from the 1950s. In it, we get a sense of the importance of markets to subsistence production by the rural sector in an impoverished country like Haiti. Mintz recounts the strategies of income pooling by women market sellers and the sophistication of the networks that existed. It reminded me of something Giovanni Arrighi once told me, which was that peasant/rural life requires far more “skills” than urban life. Put any of us in their position and we would starve shortly thereafter.
Implications for Iran from this piece: rural-urban linkages and peasant production are a source of vibrant social activity, not a traditional backwater. Individuals who take part in such economic activities are likely more savvy than anyone (including the state) gives them credit for. Notions that the rural areas are bought off by the state, or duped, are therefore suspect.
