Smart rules and stupid outcomes: the Skip Gates teachable moment

This teachable moment is not only about race. It includes understanding why the Cambridge MA police department would arrest Skip Gates for breaking into his own home, and then continue to insist after a huge outcry that they did the right thing.

My guess is that Sergeant James Crowley was following an inflexible rule that you arrest anyone who shouts angrily at a cop. This may be a good general rule to identify dangerous persons, and having many such rules allows the department to cope with an enormous policing task with limited staff. The support that Sergeant Crowley attracted from other policeman elsewhere may reflect their sympathy with such rules (although the New York Times found wide variations in the extent to which this particular rule is followed).

All organizations have rules for their staff, whose purposes is saving on costs and staff time by prescribing routine responses to different situations. McDonalds makes a ton of money by having rules that can be implemented on a large scale by a relatively small and unskilled staff. As usual in economics, however, there are tradeoffs. Robotic rules may lead to stupid outcomes, outraging and driving away the customers.

I once had a customer service person insist that I could not return a bookcase because I had already opened the box. She admitted I had a valid reason for returning it -- that it was missing a crucial set of screws -- which I could only have discovered by opening the box. But no amount of argument could make her depart from the rule against open box returns. (After further persistence, I eventually got the company to give me the missing screws.)

So organizations choose rule policies that find the sweet spot trading off lower costs of inflexible rules against possibly even higher costs of outraging the customers with stupid outcomes. For private firms, the sweet spot is determined by supply and demand – consumers may be willing to put up with a small amount of stupid outcomes from rules that get them a cheaper product. So a rule is not automatically bad because it leads on a few occasions to a stupid result.

Obviously, the police rule in Gates’ case led to a stupid outcome. The question is what is the sweet spot for police departments? Public bureaucracies don’t respond directly to customer demand in finding their sweet spot, it’s politically determined. Since many of the suspect “customers” are poor and powerless, police departments likely choose to err on the side of sticking to the rules and putting up with the outraged suspects. And historically, they were more likely to perpetrate outrages on black suspects than on white suspects.

All of which suggests something more damning than stupid behavior by one policeman – it looks like the Cambridge, Massachusetts police department has chosen a sweet spot very easy on its own officers and very hard on its customers – and perhaps even harder on the black customers. This is morally and politically unacceptable; the Cambridge Police seem more insulated against democratic accountability than they should be.

Of course, there are a lot of parallels in unaccountable aid agencies. This blog has pointed out cases where USAID refuses to change even when outside critics point out egregious misbehavior. They follow the low-effort rule “just keep doing what you are already doing,” because the critics have little political power over them.

So perhaps as Obama, Gates, and Crowley share a Sam Adams, they can move beyond who said what and discuss making public bureaucracies more politically accountable to the citizens.

Africans already got the idea: “Africa does not need strong men, it needs strong institutions”

A reaction to President Obama’s speech in Ghana by Leonard Wantchekon, NYU Professor of Politics Overall, I like the theme of the President Obama’s speech in Ghana. Africans must own their future by strengthening democratic institutions and the rule of law in their countries, and by becoming less reliant on assistance. I also like the idea of a real partnership between Africa and other developed countries based on trade. It is very much in line with what most of us would think. He said:

America can also do more to promote trade and investment. Wealthy nations must open our doors to goods and services from Africa in a meaningful way.

As Africans reach for this promise, America will be more responsible in extending our hand. By cutting costs that go to Western consultants and administration, we want to put more resources in the hands of those who need it, while training people to do more for themselves.

What I find a bit questionable is this:

Africa is not the crude caricature of a continent at perpetual war. But if we are honest, for far too many Africans, conflict is a part of life, as constant as the sun ... These conflicts are a millstone around Africa's neck.

My sense is that in saying this he has helped to perpetuate, perhaps unwittingly, the very caricature that he questions. Conflict is NOT as constant as the sun in Africa. While this may have been the reality of the 1970s and the 1980s, it is certainly no longer the case. He forgot to add that many of these conflicts were proxy wars between the US and the former Soviet Union (such as that in Angola), or were manufactured by France (such as that in Congo Brazzaville).

The average African country is at peace. Moreover, it is a democracy, albeit one with relatively weak state capacity, such as Liberia, and Mali. Zimbabwe is the exception, not the rule. And even in Zimbabwe, where there is 90% unemployment, incredible hardships and repression, most people want democracy, not another war.

Freedom, especially freedom of the press, has also drastically improved in the majority of African countries, to the point where Reporters Without Borders have ranked several African nations above developed countries such as Italy and Japan.

Of course, democracy is—as Obama put it—“more than holding elections - it's also about what happens between them”: good governance, human rights, etc. But I see no path to good governance, human rights, and even conflict resolution in Africa unless elections are held regularly. In addition, elections are intrinsically valuable, beyond their potential effect on governance. I am sure Nelson Mandela would agree with that. In fact, various Afrobarometer surveys from 1999 to 2009 suggest that nearly 70% define democracy purely in terms of political rights, not in terms of governance. Perhaps surprisingly, there is no significant difference between rural and urban citizens, or between more educated and less educated citizens.

In terms of the strongman syndrome, things have changed for the better. All across Africa courts and unions have tried (most of the time successfully) to block and prevent constitutional changes that would allow the sitting president to run for an additional term (African presidents have therefore been less successful than the Mayor of New York City in this regard!). Afrobarometer surveys suggest that 75% of Africans reject military rule, 73% reject a one-party system, and 79% reject strongman rule.

I would like the President to acknowledge more clearly that Africans have already got the idea that “Africa doesn’t not need strong men, it needs strong institutions.”

Links from Around the Web

Blood and Milk blog calls out a boneheaded Enough Project basketball jersey distribution at a refugee camp in Chad, starts a comment writing campaign, and gets a sincere apology. Nicely done. Oh, turns out the problem is that no one wants the job...Clinton blames lack of willing candidates and "nightmare" vetting process for delay in appointing USAID administrator.

Solid, practical advice from the Good Intentions are Not Enough blog on how to evaluate an NGO before giving them your money (like: check out what kinds of pictures they use to represent their beneficiaries, and look for honest evaluations of past projects, not just happy success stories). Or, you could ask Givewell, which has rated its top 5 international aid charities.

Funny-sad post from an aid worker abroad: Afghanistan: my part in its downfall.

Grading Obama's Africa Speech

Let’s grade Obama’s speech in Ghana on Saturday, July 11 relative to findings from the academic literature on aid & Africa. This is conveniently self-promoting as the current issue of the Journal of Economic Literature has a long literature survey article by yours truly, “Can the West Save Africa?” (Ungated version of the entire article here.) Of course, this is MY particular take on the literature, but it had to satisfy some hypercritical referees and editors who had no agenda.

“Africa’s future is up to Africans.”

A+. This is the big message of Obama’s speech and he nailed it. No, the West cannot save Africa. The JEL survey reviewed disappointments of the Big Push of foreign aid, structural adjustment, governance assistance, and post-conflict reconstruction, which makes it clear that Western actors do not have the knowledge or power to transform African societies, even if West can do some modest things to help African individuals (where there has already been success, especially in health and education).

“What we will do is increase assistance for responsible individuals and

institutions, with a focus on supporting good governance …. concrete solutions to corruption like forensic accounting, automating services, strengthening hotlines, and protecting whistle-blowers to advance transparency and accountability.”

B. On plus side, nice modesty of aid ambitions. On the minus side, seems to imply bad governance can be corrected with technical fixes, which overlook the systemic incentives that motivate the bad guys (as JEL lit review makes clear). Also assumes outsiders can tell good guys from bad guys, and surgically isolate them.

“Our $3.5 billion food security initiative is focused on new methods and technologies for farmers.”

C. Those who forget the past are condemned to hear a Santayana quote. The JEL survey makes clear the great efforts already expended on “new methods and technologies” for African agriculture (some going as far back as 1938), along with the universal agreement among observers that these efforts failed. Next step is to learn from this failure, try something new, not just repeat past attempts.

“Yet because of incentives – often provided by donor nations – many African doctors and nurses …work for programs that focus on a single disease. This creates gaps in primary care and basic prevention.”

A+, Obama nails another one. JEL survey makes clear the collapsing payoffs to the “vertical” approach to health (focusing on diseases rather than patients.)

“We welcome the steps that are being taken by organizations like the African Union and ECOWAS to better resolve conflicts, keep the peace, and support those in need. And we encourage the vision of a strong, regional security architecture that can bring effective, transnational force to bear when needed.”

D. Sigh. Obama seems to fall for the myth of the benevolent, neutral, outside, rapid-response “peacekeepers,” which is a leap of faith relative to the historical record that outside military intervention is rarely neutral and rarely available rapidly “when needed” (JEL article). Any given African country will not automatically see an outside force as neutral just because it is made up of other Africans.

“our Africa Command is focused not on establishing a foothold in the continent, but on confronting these common challenges to advance the security of America, Africa and the world.”

F. Double sigh. Why is Obama continuing Bush’s terrible idea of an Africa Command? Despite goodwill for Obama, goodwill for US military is nonexistent after a long history of Cold War Africa interventions, post-Cold War interventionist fumbles, reinforced by the more recent fiascos of Iraq and Afghanistan. Africans will never see US military (or any other Western force) as a neutral and benevolent force. They understand Great Power incentives better than the Powers themselves seem to.

“You can … make change from the bottom up…Freedom is your inheritance. Now, it is your responsibility to build upon freedom’s foundation. And if you do, we will look back years from now to places like Accra and say that this was the time when the promise was realized – this was the moment when prosperity was forged; pain was overcome; and a new era of progress began. This can be the time when we witness the triumph of justice once more. Thank you.”

A. Obama returns at the end back to his central idea. The speech seems written by different people with different views, which I’m sure it was. Let's hope the other advocates lose out to this closing inspiration of Bottom Up efforts of creative, free individuals -- contradicting the Top Down ideas like military intervention or expert fixes for corruption or agriculture -- hopefully the view closest to Obama’s personal vision.

Joe Stiglitz preaches markets to poor countries!

Stiglitz in the current issue of Vanity Fair is afraid how poor countries will respond to the global crisis and the record of American hypocrisy on economic policy (like what America prescribed for itself in 2008-2009 vs. what it prescribed for Asia during 1997 crisis). All of this will tarnish market economics so much, fears Stiglitz, that poor countries will turn away from markets altogether in favor of some heavy-handed state planning and socialism. Stiglitz, who is not usually considered market economics’ best friend, is right to be scared.

It’s rare for your regular working-class economist to be the FIRST to worry, so forgive me if I point out that I expressed almost identical fears to Stiglitz’ fears nine months ago in the Wall Street Journal. (On the minus side for crystal ball-gazing, one of my star exhibits for socialism noveau was Honduran president Zelaya, who was just overthrown last weekend.) And then I worried some more about this in Foreign Policy (January/February 2009).

One of the reasons to be worried is the precedent from the 1930s Depression – not the usual worry about a huge wave of global protectionism. No, the worry is about the intellectual precedent that the Depression so discredited markets that government planning and intervention became the default model of development economics for the next 30 years – the 1950s through the 1970s.

I’m thrilled to have a heavyweight like Joe Stiglitz to make this case better and more credibly than I could (along with providing a cheap excuse to recycle a couple of my old columns). The issue now is not subtleties about the right type of financial regulation, global vs. local standards, or calibrating fiscal stimulus. The issue in development now is the revival of the big markets vs. state planning debate. Let’s hope it comes out differently this time than it did for early development economics after the Depression.

Links to other blogs to make you taller, happier, smarter

Secret to development is to be taller! taller makes you happier, richer, smarter – thanks a lot from us short people, tall Anne Case and Angus Deaton! False pessimism exposé: American children still doing better than their parents (Café Hayek) are they taller?

FT first newspaper to figure out that other countries’ banking crisis experience might be relevant (Brazil) and that it might help to consult experts on such experience (Ross Levine, Brown University)

Economists' own record on addressing current crisis is good (Economist’s View)

Chris Blattman reviews new book on corruption crusader John Githongo by Michela Wrong (the Empress of serious journalistic writing on Africa – read her previous two books on Eritrea and Zaire also!)

Thank goodness Wronging Rights is back, after some wedding thing. Who else can you count on to cover war criminal Charles Taylor’s conversion to Judaism?

Will Wilkinson is rare non-hysterical voice on whether Mexican immigrants are altering our culture (on development-relevant values)

Darfurian asks “Are we part of Sudan”? (Alex de Waal)

Contrary to conventional wisdom, there is no evidence that better health causes development (David Weil, Brown University)

Economists have hearts! Greg Mankiw celebrates his spouse on their 25th anniversary

(with 5 dozen cyber-roses also to my own amazingly wonderful spouse)

Is there any way that our efforts will end well in Afghanistan?

Great FT column by Clive Crook

The forthcoming civilian surge .... Most westerners in Afghanistan live inside a security bubble. If they leave their compounds at all – and many never do – they drive around in armoured Toyota Land Cruisers from one fortified location to the next. Again, the perception is that the foreigners’ security is all important, whereas ordinary Afghans can take their chances. Aside from their servants and guards, the foreigners mix mainly with each other. Among the Afghans I met, it was a universal perception that the western aid effort is feeding mainly itself, not the country. I heard many anecdotes to bear this out.

One dreads a civilian surge of highly paid westerners, spending all their time behind barricades in meetings with other westerners, drawing up work plans and draping themselves in red tape while dirt-poor Afghans look on in dismay. This would be worse than useless. Money, with strings, yes. Genuine technical expertise, where needed, yes. But for heaven’s sake spare Afghanistan a new surge of the self-perpetuating, self-consuming international aid bureaucracy.

Stories from around the web

"US food aid is all in bags labelled 'From the American People'....it might be less misleading if it were labelled 'From the American People, mainly to the American People.'" World Bank employees give up on their own bureaucracy, use Wikipedia to find World Bank reports.

The Economist profiles Jacqueline Novogratz, "'The financial system is broken, yes, but so too is the aid system,' so 'a moment of great innovation' could be at hand."

Good Intentions are Not Enough Blog tells the WSJ what they can do with their bad advice on charity evaluation.

Serial Moyo attacker attacks again.

The UN goes on strike, nobody notices.

BREAKING NEWS: Nation’s senior diplomat talks sense, inspires, is not babbling nonsense

On Wednesday night, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged in a commencement address to NYU graduates to help “improve the world” AS INDIVIDUALS ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING about hunger and extreme poverty.

[T]hese challenges … can no longer be seen just as government-to-government. There is a time and an opportunity, and with the new technologies available, for us to be citizen diplomats, citizen activists, to solve problems one by one that will give in to hard work, patience, and persistence, and will then aggregate to the solutions we seek.

Stunned aid watchers could not remember any previous occasion where a senior rich country diplomat talked about individual initiative as one possible solution to world poverty, or for that matter any previous occasion where any such official went beyond noncommittal platitudes about international action to achieve Millennium Development Goals.

Rumors are spreading throughout the old guard aid obstructionists at USAID that this remarkable woman might actually be their boss.

Stories from around the web

First do no harm In today's FT supplement "The Future of Capitalism," Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy urge caution on government interventions designed to resuscitate the global economy. In the rush to do something rather than nothing, we run the risk of maiming the only system that can deliver growth to those parts of the world that have so far missed out on the gains of global capitalism. (The previously published online version is here.)

Moyo vs. Maathai: the next big debate in development?

On Slate.com, Frank Fukuyama argues that despite obvious differences, Dambisa Moyo and Wangari Maathai actually “have more in common than their authors may admit":

Both women see sub-Saharan Africa's fundamental problem not as one of resources, human or natural, or as a matter of geography, but, rather, as one of bad government. Far too many regimes in Africa have become patronage machines in which political power is sought by "big men" for the sole purpose of acquiring resources—resources that are funneled either back to the networks of supporters who helped a particular leader come to power or else into the proverbial Swiss bank account. There is no concept of public good; politics has devolved instead into a zero-sum struggle to appropriate the state and whatever assets it can control.

Keeping a watchful eye on the Gateses

Here and on this vigilant blog.

Can Twitter be a force for good in development?

Or is it just for self-serving or fraudulent celebrity positioning? Does anyone have some good counter examples to share?

Breaking News from the Onion: Ugandan Ambassador Seizes Control of the UN and Declares himself Secretary-General for life

Reporter: It’s extremely tense, Brandon, there’s no telling what a madman like Mtambe will do! As Secretary-General he has the ability to do anything, from outline the UN’s year long goals, to propose agenda items for consideration by the Security Council!

Anchor: I can’t imagine what it must be like for those ambassadors inside, having no idea what this maniac will decide to place on the preliminary list of matters to be included in the provisional dockets.

Reporter: It’s terrifying!

(Via Michael Kleinman)

How much is too much?

People had a lot to say to Chris Blattman’s question of whether development agencies should fly business class. One argument in favor of business class is that if development professionals aren’t well-compensated with perks and high salaries, aid agencies will lose out on the best talent and be stuck hiring third-stringers. Maybe these high salaries and deluxe perks are simply the price the market will bear for the most talented workers in the aid profession. But how much is too much? At what point does this outcome offend our sense of fairness and proportion? Canadian ICT blogger Steve Song poses a similar question about profits from Africa cell phone companies. When Kenyans are spending 50% of their disposable income on mobile communication from a part-government-owned provider with monopoly power, is it really a win-win situation?

Finally, a thoughtful post from Alex De Waal on the inverse relationship between violence and media attention.

Perhaps the most effective international measure to keep down lethal violence is the simplest: paying attention. And maybe everything else is secondary, including exactly what that attention is, and what is threatened in consequence….But if the intent is to solve the political problem generating the violence, then a different strategy is surely needed–one that is based on political analysis and diplomacy.

The vortex of vacuousness

A tragic law of global poverty is that the efforts of many well-meaning and accomplished people somehow get sucked down into meaningless activities and empty rhetoric. Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal carried an oped by uber-heavyweights Madeline Albright and Colin Powell about how we should not forget about the world’s poor during the crisis. Their solution – another summit! Addressing the previously unappreciated shortage of summits by the UN, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the G-7, the G-20, U2, and Bob Geldof, there is a two day summit starting today of something called the Initiative for Global Development (IGD) National Summit 2009 in Washington DC.

The closest thing to novelty about this summit is that the IGD includes (and was started by) leading business executives, some of whom apparently want to learn from diplomats and aid bureaucrats how to make compassionate statements about global poverty with no content. So Carly Fiorina on the IGD website proclaims “Reducing global poverty is in our nation’s best interest, and a sustained collaboration between the private sector and the government is needed in this regard.” (Presumably she had to be a tad more specific to get things done at HP.)

The IGD has been around since 2003, and includes a lineup of really big names from the worlds of business, government, and aid. Chairpersons Albright and Powell were able to distill all of this experience and talent in their signature Journal oped yesterday into new ideas like “we have to focus our efforts where they can have maximum impact, and draw on the strengths of the public and private sectors alike.”

(Maybe we should subject this statement to the NOT test for meaningful content we discussed in a previous blog post: Briefly consider whether there is anyone arguing “we need to focus our efforts where they can have MINIMUM impact, and draw on the WEAKNESSES of the public and private sectors alike.”)

The IGD helpfully provided Aid Watch some background materials on the 2009 Summit, which has the subtitle “Business leaders advance a bold strategy to reduce global poverty.” They acknowledge the critical need for foreign aid reform, so “Congress and the administration should work together to define a coherent strategy for U.S. foreign assistance and streamline its implementation.” (Reader exercise: apply the NOT test to this statement.) They only get a bit more specific when they endorse the ritual call for a doubling of foreign aid.

Something that sounds slightly more promising is that the IGD summit invited some 20 African CEOs of private businesses. Let’s hope they can get the things that real businessmen want, new deals and investments, in return for being subjected to two days of summiteering. Maybe a few CEOs at IGD are starting to get a glimmer of insight – business leaders should not imitate aid bureaucrats, it should be the other way around.

Stories from Blogs We Like

Maybe Also Fight Deadly Diseases that Don't Make Headlines: “Neglected Tropical Diseases are devastating, debilitating and deadly parasitic and bacterial infections that adversely affect the poorest 1.4 billion people worldwide living on $1.25 a day.” From the Global Health blog at Change.org. High Tech Sunshine on Violence: Extending the idea to other African conflicts of using cell phones and a web site that was already used to “map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008.” Could we try this with monitoring big aid projects? From the Freakonomics blog.

The Lysistrata Approach: Kenyan women deny their husbands sex until they resolve nation’s political standoff. From Chris Blattman’s blog. Would this work in Zimbabwe?

Dani Rodrik Asks: Why do poor nations continue to be enthralled with capitalism? His answer: “I am afraid one cannot rule out the possibility that poor nations are yet again falling behind the curve.”

My answer: “The previous times we scrapped capitalism because of a short time crisis didn’t work out too well.”

Where's Waldo? Find the missing USAID Head! From Views from the Center at the Center for Global Development.

Unlike Congress, Mexican Government is Competent: Actually had a decent response to Swine Flu. From Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution.

Growing Movement in UK and US to make Public Data, well, Public: I don’t think USAID has heard about this yet. From World Bank’s PSD blog.

Freedom is a Work in Progress: US Supreme Court now hearing the case of a 13 year old girl strip-searched by school officials without notifying her parents. School’s assistant principal was looking for illegal drugs LIKE ADVIL. “Savanna, who was an honors student with no disciplinary record, was found not to have any dangerous over-the-counter painkillers in her underwear.” From Wronging Rights.

Kenyans seek to prosecute manufacturer of wedding dresses made out of malaria nets

A report in the Kenyan newspaper the Daily Nation:

Mosquito net manufactures are teaming up with the provincial administration and village elders in several parts of Kenya in an effort to apprehend and prosecute people who use the products for purposes other than covering beds.

According to Dr Elizabeth Juma, who is the head of malaria control under the Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation, there has been evidence of people turning the nets into fishing gear especially in Nyanza Province. Now a different group has discovered another lucrative business venture, and are using the nets to make wedding dresses.

Perhaps net education might have a bigger payoff than prosecution. Net promoters seem to consistently underestimate the challenge of spreading the scientific knowledge about the risks of getting malaria from mosquito bites. Traditional views of disease persist. As the Nation article tersely concludes:

Apart from individuals converting the nets into business tools, there are other beliefs in the country which are setbacks in fighting malaria.

Peter Sellers makes unexpected appearance at G-7 meetings

In today’s NYT:

Headline: World Finance Leaders Meet, and Cautiously Glimpse ‘Green Shoots’ of Recovery

“American and European officials embraced a hopeful new buzz phrase — the “green shoots” of recovery.”

My wife immediately noticed the exact parallel to the classic 1979 movie “Being There.” A mentally-challenged gardener played by Sellers winds up by accident in Washington elite circles and is quickly embraced as a sage as he mumbles gardening platitudes about spring-time growth, at a time when the economy is in recession. By the end of the movie, he is being mentioned as a presidential candidate.

Random Snippets and Miscellany

The FT has a great special section on malaria today (tomorrow is World Malaria Day). Their very sensible editorial says: “...malaria is becoming an industry in its own right. That brings responsibilities, including rigorous evaluation to ensure money is well spent.” There are plenty of other grounds for hope, let’s hope also that somebody will step up to hold this industry accountable. In another article, FT writer Andrew Jack quotes activist Louis da Gama: “The biggest problem has been lack of baseline data. The risk is that you underestimate the problem and overstate the success.” Unfortunately, a few paragraphs earlier, Mr. Jack repeats the old claim that Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Zambia have sharply reduced national mortality from malaria, which this blog pointed out was based on fake WHO data that the WHO subsequently withdrew. Even a second round of discussion on this blog did not suffice to clear this up, although the facts are not in dispute. Sigh.

A mass email went out to journalists yesterday from The Centre for Development and Population Activities: “Expert Refutes Bestselling "Dead Aid"; Available for Background and Interviews”. The available expert was Carol Peasley, President & CEO, The Centre for Development and Population Activities. Among the expert arguments refuting “Dead Aid” (from Peasley's piece in the Huffington Post) was that “Child deaths [in Malawi] have been reduced by nearly 100 percent (from 221 per thousand in 1990 to 120 in 2007).” I guess the expertise being made available did not include math.

Life in the Aid World: Caught Red-Handed, No Consequences

Last week, a report in USA Today brought to light a story of aid funds going badly astray. In case you have not followed the story, it seems that back in 2003, USAID contracted with the UNDP and UNOPS to complete a series of “quick impact” infrastructure projects in Afghanistan, to build badly needed roads, bridges, and community buildings. A US government report on the project, sparked by a tip from an anonymous complainant, found that many of the projects reported as “complete” by the UN were in fact unfinished or had such “life-threatening oversights” that they could not be used. The USA Today reporter filed a Freedom of Information Act Request to access the government report, which he then published along with the article.

Here are a few highlights of the report:

• According to a former UNOPS employee, some $10 million of the USAID grant funds was diverted to projects outside of Afghanistan, in Sudan, Haiti, Sri Lanka and, most memorably, Dubai.
• The UNDP withdrew $6.7 million of project funds in 2007, after the project had ended and without USAID’s knowledge. The investigators could not pin down how those funds were spent.
• A bank was built for $375,000 without electricity, plumbing or proper drainage. The report found that the basement had flooded, destroying stacks of money, and the walls were rotting.
• A $250,000 bridge, reported as “completed,” was dangerous and unusable, having been designed too small for the site where it was built.
• An airstrip budgeted at $300,000 actually cost $729,000 to build. After a description of the major engineering flaws in the construction of the airstrip, the report concluded that military planes cannot safely land there and that “erosion rills or ruts will continue to expand until they reach the runway itself, destroying it completely.” In other words, USAID paid $729,000 for a patch of mud.
• There may be more to come: “questions remain unanswered” because several UN officials refused to be interviewed and the UN failed to provide requested documents during the investigation.

USAID is also to blame for choosing such a bad contracting arrangement, and for not having procedures to catch this earlier and seek full compensation. USA Today reported:

Federal prosecutors in New York City were forced to drop criminal and civil cases because the U.N. officials have immunity. USAID has scaled back its dealings with the U.N. and hired a collection agency to seek $7.6 million back, Deputy Administrator James Bever said. The aid agency hasn't heeded its inspector general's request to sever all ties.

"There are certain cases where working with the U.N. is the only option available," Bever said in an e-mail.

At a UN briefing last week, the UNDP spokesman said that “there have already been a number of meetings, including at the highest level of UNDP and USAID, to work through this matter.” He said that he expected that the UNDP would have to pay USAID no more than $1.5 million.

A disastrous aid outcome, exposure in the mass media -- so what were the consequences? A number of meetings, possibly some money back, USAID disregards its own Inspector General’s request to break off ties with the UN (some unspecified “scaling back” except in other unspecified “certain cases”), and yet more meetings “at the highest levels.”

Since the initial reports, there has been no further media coverage or commentary except for an editorial critical of USAID in the Las Vegas Sun on April 17th. The USAID web site accessed on Monday, April 20, 2009 still listed as implementing partners UNDP (who announces it “remains responsive to the changing needs of a nation still in transition from conflict to peace”) and UNOPS (“we help our clients turn ideas into reality.”)

The USA Today story broke the same day that a USAID rep presented at a meeting in Washington called "Open Innovation for Government: Answering President Obama's Call for More Open, Effective Public Service."

The 50th Anniversary of The Answer: Muddling Through

John Kay in the Financial Times today celebrates the 50th anniversary of a classic article by the American political scientist Charles Lindblom, column in the New York Times last week about agricultural aid (Sachs seems to have at least briefly returned to aid after a prolonged foray into global warming and commenting on rich country macroeconomic policy vis-à-vis the Crash). A bit of the “root” planning method seems evident:

The {aid} recipient countries should be invited to prepare plans and budgets that would be reviewed by independent experts. These plans would describe the inputs needed by the farmers, the expected increase in production, how the strategy would be put into place and how much money would be required.

So I guess Professor Lindblom’s battle is still not yet won. I salute the 92-year-old Professor Lindblom, and hope he is hearing about some of the 50th anniversary celebrations by his many fans.

Did “Save Darfur” Lose Darfur?

I have long been a fan of Mahmood Mamdani. His new book Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror is very critical of the Western approach to Darfur. In brief, he accuses advocacy campaigns like Save Darfur of making the achievement of peace in Darfur more difficult by portraying the conflict simplistically between “bad Arabs” and “good Africans,” and by advocating foreign military intervention. I’ll repeat just a few points from Mamdani that stuck in my mind, but I encourage you strongly to pick up the book.

• The Save Darfur campaign repeatedly ignored and distorted the facts on the ground.
• Darfur is an insurgency and an extremely vicious counter-insurgency, but there was never the intent to eliminate any specific group and so the word “genocide” is inappropriate. But the word “genocide” gave the West and the UN a free hand to intervene.
• The prospect of foreign military intervention encouraged the rebels to hold out rather than agreeing to a peace deal, while hardening and attracting additional support for the position of the government to “defend national sovereignty.”
• There were also terrible atrocities on the “good African” side.
• The “good African” side includes one key player, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), that is an opposition Islamist movement that was previously on the “bad Arab” side in the North-South civil war between “bad Arabs” and “good Africans.”
• There was a sharp decrease in violence after 2005 just as the Save Darfur campaign picked up steam.
• The ICC is not credible to much of the non-Western world as a judge of war crimes since the US itself does not subject itself to the ICC, and since the ICC seems to selectively prosecute US enemies and turn a blind eye to war crimes by US allies.
• The Western pressure based on distorted facts has set back attempts within Sudan and within Africa to reach a peace settlement in Darfur, which is the only way the tragedy will end.

None of this is to deny the enormous human tragedy in Darfur. But Mamdani’s analysis makes one wonder: is it possible that ill-informed outsiders with the threat of military power on their side can make things worse rather than better?

The Unbearable Lightness of Summits

“International action” is something that everyone wants to resolve any major global problem. How well does it work in practice? We gleaned one small insight from Chris Giles’ brilliant article in the FT on the international finance ministers’ get together in advance of the April G 20 summit. The resulting joint communiqué was a meaningless piece of diplomatic doublespeak, he said, which failed the “five tests of relevance and importance.”

These included the rigorous “not test,” the “new test” and the “was it worth it?” test. We wondered how some recent aid summit documents would fare when put to some of these same tests.

Many of the documents we examined failed Giles’ “not test.” This test checks whether it is possible to negate the statement and create a sentence that any sane person would utter in public. We apply it here by giving the NOT statement for each statement that we review. Apply it to a sentence from last year’s UN summit declaration on food security, at a time when there was a major hunger crisis:

We urge national governments, all financial institutions, donors and the entire international community to NOT have a people-centred policy framework supportive of the poor in rural, peri-urban and urban areas and people’s livelihoods in developing countries.

This same document, which was agreed upon only “after hours of bickering over language” according to press reports, has a conclusion to which we give the NOT equivalent:

We firmly resolve to NOT alleviate the suffering caused by the current crisis, to NOT stimulate food production and to NOT increase investment in agriculture, to NOT address obstacles to food access and to NOT use the planet’s resources sustainably, for present and future generations.

This likely also flunks the "was it worth it" test: the outcome was roundly condemned for failing to require concrete action on any of the most pressing issues.

This is far from being water under the bridge, as today’s FT reports that the hunger crisis continues to worsen, with the chronically hungry worldwide passing 1 billion. In response to the farce of the previous summit, the head of UN Food and Agriculture Organization Jacques Diouf calls for another summit in November 2009.

Another example was the UN conference on drugs concluded six days ago in Vienna, but apparently the final declaration was so contentious that it still has not been released in final form. The UNODC did give a statement. Here it is in NOT form:

[The declaration] recognizes that countries do NOT have a shared responsibility for solving the world drugs problem, that a ‘balanced and comprehensive approach’ is NOT called for and that human rights do NOT need to be recognized.

That one does poorly on the “new test” to boot: the director of the Open Society Institute’s Global Drug Policy Program called it a “watered-down political declaration” that “fails to acknowledge crucial lessons that have been learned over the last decade,” and an article on openDemocracy.net complained that “government representatives at the United Nations's Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) have once again decided that the effluent empire of crime must be fought as it has always been.”

Just imagine how different these documents could be if they had to pass these simple tests. What if every “summit declaration” made an unambiguous statement that somebody could actually disagree with? And what if each “joint communiqué” had to require at least one of the parties to actually change their behavior in a concrete, measurable way?

Who's Worse, the Pope or the Condom Mafia, on AIDS?

A New York Times editorial today condemns Pope Benedict XVI for saying at the beginning of his current trip to Africa that condom distribution makes the African AIDS epidemic worse. His exact words were that AIDS was "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems." The Pope was completely right on the first two phrases in this sentence. Indeed the Condom Mafia, who are going through orgies of ritual abuse of the Pope today after this statement, have much to answer for themselves for obsessively pushing the Give Everyone a Condom model long after it became clear that it wasn’t working in Africa. The work of Daniel Halperin, Helen Epstein, and many others have made it clear that campaigns to reduce the number of concurrent sexual partners is probably a much more effective strategy than simply flooding Africa with condoms (the latter has been done already in many high AIDS countries like Botswana with seemingly no effect). If the Pope can help on the multiple lovers problem with some old-fashioned preaching about sexual fidelity, more power to the Pope.

Where the Pope got into trouble was with the last phrase, that condoms make AIDS worse. From the standpoint of the individual, this is obvious nonsense, you are much less likely to get AIDS if you use a condom. The reason that mass condom distribution has not worked is that far too many people don’t use the condoms. One among the many possible reasons that people don’t use condoms is that religious leaders like the Pope tell them not to, or they believe unscientific statements like the Pope’s that “condoms aggravate the problem.” So it is tragically circular for the Pope to condemn the condom campaigns for not working, when one reason they don’t work is that the Pope has previously condemned condoms.