Sat 20 Oct 2012
Why academic and implementation debates diverge in development
Posted by Ed under Academia, development, Development Institutions, Higher Education, policy, research
[4] Comments
I just witnessed a fascinating twitter exchange that beautifully summarizes the divide I am trying to bridge in my work and career. Ricardo Fuentes-Nieva, the head of research at Oxfam GB, after seeing a post on GDP tweeted by Tim Harford (note: not written by Harford), tweeted the following:
To which Harford tweeted back:
This odd standoff between two intelligent, interesting thinkers is easily explained. Bluntly, Harford’s point is academic, and from that perspective mostly true. Contemporary academic thinking on development has more or less moved beyond this question. However, to say that it “never has been” an important question ignores the history of development, where there is little question that in the 50s and 60s there was significant conflation of GDP and well-being.
But at the same time, Harford’s response is deeply naive, at least in the context of development policy and implementation. The academic literature has little to do with the policy and practice of development (sadly). After two years working for a donor, I can assure Tim and anyone else reading this that Ricardo’s point remains deeply relevant. There are plenty of people who are implicitly or explicitly basing policy decisions and program designs on precisely the assumption that GDP growth improves well-being. To dismiss this point is to miss the entire point of why we spend our time thinking about these issues – we can have all the arguments we want amongst ourselves, and turn up our noses at arguments that are clearly passé in our world…but if we ignore the reality of these arguments in the policy and practice world, our thinking and arguing will be of little consequence.
I suppose it is worth noting, in full disclosure, that I found the post Harford tweeted to be a remarkably facile justification for continuing to focus on GDP growth. But it is Saturday morning, and I would rather play with my kids than beat that horse…
Thank you for this post. I like neat summaries, and I think it’s a good thing to be reminded of this (sad) divide.
However, I don’t see exactly how it relates to the title of your post: where is the “why”?
Thank you,
Shaz
Shaz:
Sorry, probably left the “why” too implicit. For me, the why lies in the total disjoint between Ricardo’s question and Tim’s response. Tim completely dismissed the question, rather than address it – which is a huge problem. Ricardo is a smart guy with a lot of experience, so if he is asking this question, it deserves attention…even if that attention eventually goes toward redirecting the line of inquiry to something more productive. Academics, however, are terrible at this – we tend to dismiss those who know less than us. At the same time, after spending two years at USAID, I can also say with confidence that it would help if the donors and NGOs allowed their employees time to actually read the literature, as this would also serve to facilitate more focused, productive conversations…
Ed, Thank you. Several academic studies have also explored the limitations of GDP as a proxy for well-being. More recently, the work of Partha Dasgupta on inclusive wealth (summarized here http://www.economist.com/node/21557732) and the World Bank’s on total wealth focus more on stocks of wealth rather than flows. But that’s not really my point. You are right that my bias is towards policy. Measuring progress solely based on GDP growth can be dangerous. GDP growth is good but I ask, is it all there is? Ignoring the trade-offs (GDP growth vs environment, for instance) or the elements that GDP growth cannot measure (political participation, for instance) does not make justice to the complex nature of well-being. And even more, focusing on growth only could serve as a justification to repressive or discriminating governments that achieve good economic performance, measured by GDP growth alone.
Ricardo:
I am in complete agreement with you here. I have long been deeply concerned with the growth focus of development discourses – as if growth has no negative consequences, or as if it was a reasonable proxy for well-being…and of course, neither of those is true. Tim’s point was correct in that there is little credence given to GDP as a proxy for well-being in the contemporary literature – but who reads the literature? This is a big problem – most academics do not understand the constraints under which most implementers work, and so they have overly-optimistic expectations of their colleagues with regard to the ability to stay up on the literature, etc. But as I said in my response to Shaz below, this is the whole reason I put this post up. If you are raising this issue, it deserves to be addressed in a conversational, interesting way – you are hardly ignorant of the literature, so there must be a good reason you brought this up (and indeed there was) – to dismiss your question out of hand is to dismiss an opportunity to engage the world of implementation and policy on its terms, which is something that development studies must do better…