The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good
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Wants to be two different books Jun 17, 2010 William Easterly's book "The White Man's Burden" is a fascinating and engaging read about the reasons why the efforts of many well meaning aid organizations have done so little to battle poverty throughout the developing world. The book however sounds like it wants to be two different, yet interconnected books. The first two-thirds of the book present a very detailed if long winded view of why the big goals of Planners at the UN, World Bank and other aid organizations in the Western world fail to improve the poor. Some of these reasons include: putting money in the hands of bad governments that are corrupt and will use the aid to line their own pockets, imposing Western solutions on societies where they are in incompatible, and the broadness/impossibility of the utopian goals themselves.
The last third of the book becomes a critique of colonialism and Western particularly American interventions through both aid and military means. Although I enjoyed the section, it felt like it was the foundation for another book on the legacies of colonialism and military intervention by Western powers into the developing world. I understood the point that he was generally making that military intervention and Western support for dictators has undermined our efforts to do larger scale good within the developing world. However, the linkage between the two ideas needed to shored up a little bit more instead of here are a few case studies and these show that military interventions have done more to hurt those we seek to help [even though there's truth in the statement.] What I might have done is write two books because the link between the two parts could've been better stated.
0 of 3 found the following review helpful:
Ask the Wrong Questions, Get Meaningless Answers. Why This Book is Irrelevant. May 06, 2010 Easterly's framework for analysis is what seems most impoverished here. Professor Esther Duflo of MIT (a bit more prestigious and rigorous than NYU) has better questions, better stats and more interesting observations that blow Easterly's intellectual dishonesty out of the water. There are obviously many reasons that certain regions may be impoverished, but to say aid has "failed" is a statement without meaning or scientific basis. As one cannot know what things would be like if there had been no aid, how can one judge or define failure? See Duflo's fascinating TED talk here: [...]
Pointing out the obvious is obviously not obvious. Apr 21, 2010 Easterly winds(could not resist the pun)up this critical analysis with some recommendations to reform Western foreign aid - which he repeatedly reminds us - does not work the way it should. How should it work? Well the poor ought to benefit at some elementary level at least, say having their educational and health needs met. This a worthwhile read just for the history of this screwed up mess. The only faults with the book are its length, sometimes tedious going, and the eyewash (i.e. small captions on some diagrams). After digesting the politics behind foreign aid one wonders are people really this stupid or is there some evil genius behind these machinations? For another take on this subject, I recommend "World on Fire" by Amy Chua.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Essential reading for everyone working in international development Dec 29, 2009 The New York University professor and former World Bank economist, Bill Easterly, provides a scathing critique of the grand plans to transform entire Third World societies through development aid, as promoted by academic and other luminaries such as Jeffrey Sachs and Bono, as well as by many bilateral and multilateral development agencies. Building on a thorough historical analysis and deep understanding of how the development business works, Easterly convincingly argues that such utopian plans have never worked--despite all the billions of dollars put into development aid, poverty is still rampant and many countries (especially in Africa) remain destitute and the Millennium Development Goals remain elusive. He divides the people and organizations working in development into `Planners' who promote a vision of instant and complete transformations through a big bang; and `Searchers' who seek solutions to concrete problems that actually can be solved.
Unlike Dambisa Moyo, whose much less sophisticated book `Dead Aid' received wide attention for her extreme views, William Easterly does not condemn development aid as the cause of all evil in the poor countries. He sees a role for development aid, but is concerned about its effectiveness (or rather the lack of it). He advocates for focused aid that addresses concrete development problems facing the poor, such as health, education, roads or water. He also calls for innovative ways of approaching development, especially at the local level, arguing that local people know their own problems better than planners in some faraway capital (one of the last chapters is called `Your Ideas Are Crazy, but Are They Crazy Enough?'). One of the problems is that official development aid always goes through the government, no matter how inefficient or corrupt it is, with the result that the poor people who are intended to benefit from the aid never see any of it.
A Leitmotif in the book is accountability towards the intended beneficiaries, giving them what they want and need--and making sure that it is delivered to them. Therefore, he sees independent evaluation of aid programs as one of the most crucial solutions to ensure that aid is effective in helping those it is intended to help.
The book is written in a very lively manner drawing directly from the decades of experience in Africa, Asia and Latin America that Easterly has. He gives credit where credit is due, but does not spare anyone--left or right--from a piercing look into the motivations and results of their actions. His prose is at times outraged and irreverent, often laced with humour, always well argued. Everyone working in international development should read the White Man's Burden.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
Tells it like it is Dec 21, 2009 William Easterly doesn't pull any punches in this well-written book, and perhaps that's why it has been so polarizing. Of course, the aid community doesn't like reading about their failures, and so I understand why many of them have given this book unfairly low reviews. However, unless we can actually face our shortcomings we will never learn from them, and this book is spot-on when it comes to identifying shortcomings in the way donor money is so often wasted needlessly by those in the aid community Easterly calls the "Planners."
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Ask the Wrong Questions, Get Meaningless Answers. Why This Book is Irrelevant. May 06, 2010
Essential reading for everyone working in international development Dec 29, 2009
