Don't Just Do Something - Sit There!

The Boston Review has an excellent discussion forum of Paul Collier's new book that includes an essay by the author as well as comments by Bill Easterly, Nancy Birdsall, and others. The discussion provides a meta-discussion of international development itself.

Collier makes some observations about poor countries and then draws what seem to be ineluctable conclusions about what the richer countries should do (in this case, intervene militarily). Those who read his first book, The Bottom Billion, found his arguments very compelling. The problem was that his observations were flawed statistically, and the conclusions he drew were flawed logically, as Bill Easterly has pointed out on many occasions (including here).

There is a strong human tendency to want to do something when one sees a bad situation. It is very hard for us to just sit there and do nothing. In some sense, the history of the World Bank is a reflection of the (admirable) instinct we have to try to make bad situations better. The problem, as Easterly has pointed out, is that honorable intentions do not necessarily make for effective interventions. In fact, some interventions can make things worse, via the law of unintended consequences. The larger the intervention, the more severe the possible negative consequences.

Nonetheless, it is unlikely that the human instinct for action will go away even in the face of ferocious debunking of effectiveness by Easterly and others. So we need places where that human instinct can be channeled in ways that may be modestly effective and are unlikely to have catastrophic consequences. Nancy Birdsall, the head of the Center for Global Development, provides one of the levelest heads around on this front, by acknowledging the role that Collier has played in raising the issues and suggesting some more modest interventions that are better supported by the evidence.

Which makes me wonder why Birdsall has not yet been appointed the aid czar for the US.

[GlobalGiving]

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Comments

[Dennis Whittle - Huffpost Blogger]

Good points, both mamacat and yenjh....

One of the hardest things to do when confronted by problems or suffering is...nothi­ng. Leaders and aid agencies face tremendous pressures to DO SOMETHING! Yet sometimes doing nothing is the least-bad response.

[yenjh]

While we cannot idly stand by when over 1 billion of the world's people are living under $1.25 per day, it would be morally unacceptable to engage in military activities in an attempt to alleviate their already dire situation. The military is designed to fight and defend not develop and build infrastructure and whole countries. What would invading a poor country do? It would displace people, anger neighboring countries, begin a humanitarian crisis, inflict unnecessary death on the population, etc. It may seem tempting to use our military might to set the world right and give a country a "clean slate" to start building, but the truth is using our military might will set them back and tie our hands in their business. Not to mention that conducting war is costly (Exhibit A: Iraq). There are more proven and effective tools at our disposal than military that will provide security and accountability. Microfinance and education come to mind. Together they are powerful and peaceful initiatives that can profoundly change the direction in which a community is headed. We need to pressure our leaders to support programs that will expand microfinance in the world and provide basic education to everyone and especially girls through a Global Fund for Education.

[mamacat]

There is a saying in medicine, 'First, do no harm.'

So much of our foreign aid and intervention in other country's affairs has resulted in more suffering than if we had done nothing at all. War should always be the option of last resort, such as our entry into World War II, not something done in order to get the president re-elected, such as Bush's war in Iraq. Too many of our foreign interventions have been counterproductive both for the U.S. and for the country we were allegedly helping.