Book Review on James Ferguson's 'Anti-Politics Machine' Essay examples

WORLD BANK: governments play an important role in development, but there is no simple set of rules telling them what to do.

In Encountering Development by Arturo Escobar, Escobar critiques the Development Project, a multi pronged initiative of socioeconomic management of the Third World, specifically Latin America, Asia, and Africa, via the First World powers, in question specifically the United States. The critique entails how industrialization and modernization of the Third World could be seen as the mode through which modernization could be achieved and this was enabled by bureaucratic entities, like the World Bank, whom subjected Third World economies to a heavy handed management via the modernization process which denied autonomy for Third World self sufficiency. The Development process thus denied any legitimate conceptualization of how to properly develop economic prosperity. The rapid “consolidation of power” into the hands of the capitalist First World Elite created a paradigm through which the support of cyclical poverty ensured a need for industrialization in order to fix defunct socioeconomic issues. By creating bureaucratic agencies, like the World Bank, which provided specific subscriptor projects, like DRI, allowed for the First World entities to to create and sustain an ongoing unequal distribution of power between the Global North and the Global South.

Whilst raising money for African charities at school I developed an interest in global inequality and alternative policies that can help low-income nations escape the poverty trap. Reading ’23 Things’ by Ha-Joon Chang, I was intrigued by his view on blaming free-market policies like SAPs that exposed sub-Saharan Africa to international competition, slowing economic growth. Hence, this extended my research to the other side of the

First, I will explain the role of empowered institutions and countries in limiting the economic activities of developing countries, impeding on their ability to survive. Afterwards I will explain the obligation people in privileged positions have to improve the lives of those in compromised positions, at a certain degree of self-sacrifices. Finally, I will critically analyze and disprove the counter argument, which attempts to relieve us of the aforementioned duties, by discrediting the roles of institutions and developed countries in the prolongation of impoverishment.

David Roodman’s argument that a pragmatic approach to development is the most agreeable proposition has merit, but it is extremely cumbersome. Even if a leader is corrupt, the type of development that Easterly argues for originates with the people; it is essentially “bottom-up” change. A corrupt leader would have very little power to stop or curb such change, and efforts to do so would likely incite the public against him. For these reasons, among others, pragmatism should not be the default approach to developmental

The book “Tyranny of Experts” by William Easterly provides a strong argument about how the technocratic approach to development forgoes rights of the poor. Rich countries provide aid to poor countries through outsider experts, who do not know about local realities. Easterly, targets international financial institutions as the main promoters of this approach. Easterly’s background enhances credibility to his arguments because he worked for the World Bank for 16 years . The author’s perspective to development must be acknowledged because historically the poor have been marginalized.

It is key to remember that this book is written as a personal account by John Perkins’ own perspective as a wealthy successful white US citizen. A lot of the problems he talks about in the book are not affecting him as directly as they are to the people living in the developing countries such as Indonesia and Ecuador. So when evaluating this take on development it come down to his opinion based on the experiences he has lived and not the lives of people constantly growing up and living in the countries who might see these issues differently. Additionally, he focuses on corporatocracy and only tells the side of the story he wants to share and does not include facts he finds

In Life & Debt, we see that as a Jamaica starts to gain ground against the IMF, it is pushed back such as the use of Free Trade Zones to provide employment while workers are paid less. In a similar context, the late Thomas Sankara was betrayed by his companion, Blaise Compaoré, president of Burkina Faso from 1987 to 2014, who was supported by the French government as they attempted to counter Sankara’s visionary attempts on creating a better Bukina Faso. Such political influence on the country leadership is a linchpin in every government as their attempts to recover are always thwarted by foreign

The book discusses about the interactions between nonconformist missionaries, British government, and the Tswana during the colonialism era, specifically in the nineteenth century. The ideologies and cultural differences led them to contradictions and conflicts, where the three actors disagreed and agreed upon certain aspects of their actions.

According to William Easterly, the consensus on global development is an axiomatically wrong and ostentatious position. This is not new to Easterly, who spent a number of disenchanted years as a senior advisor at the World Bank. These tumultuous years would certainly help formulate Easterly’s austere perception of technocratic solutions to global poverty. Easterly’s contentious view of technocrats becomes a focused thesis in his book, The Tyranny of Experts. In this book, Easterly argues that poverty is not a “technical problem amenable to technical solutions” (Easterly 6). Instead, poverty is a manifestation of brutish leaders quashing the rights of individuals. While Easterly presents a cogent argument against top down development, the lack

In his book, Collier explains that for the sub-Saharan countries conflict is not the only trap. he suggests that the natural resource trap, the trap of being landlocked with bad neighbors, and the trap of bad governance in a small country, might also explain the underdevelopment in sub-Saharan Africa. Traps often reinforce each other, and their combined effects condemn the bottom countries to poverty. Collier not only creates a deep analysis of the bottom billion countries; he also provides some practical policies to be implemented on the ground in order to save the bottom

The differences between standards of living in developed and developing nations have been made more evident by the rapid pace of technological innovation. Many world leaders consider the poor circumstances of developing nations to be tragedies that should be solved. Some altruistic organizations such as the World Bank have attempted to improve the conditions in developing nations through deliberate development, in which they would enable an all-encompassing plan aimed at efficiently reducing material suffering. However, in The Tyranny of Experts, Easterly argues that development approaches are flawed because they often emphasize material goods at the detriment of individual rights. Instead, he argues for giving developing nations the freedom to improve themselves by supporting democracy and personal rights. In explaining this idea, he comments on four aspects of the two differing methodologies: blank slate versus learning from history, nations versus individuals, conscious direction versus spontaneous solutions, and authoritarian rule versus free development.

Ferguson argues that international development projects tend to fail because they are "anti-politics machines"; they make decisions about the allocation of resources appear to be a solution, when in reality, this reallocation serves to leave some wealthy, and many others impoverished. Efforts in Lesotho served to strengthen the presence of the oppressive government in an

Critics of the aid make headlines with claims that say that long-standing political and social interest of the countries that aid the developmental efforts in Georgia has been to foster their political agenda, that political parties and interest groups in Georgia have manipulated with the “free cash” offered to guide the hands of people in the elections and that Georgian state has been notorious for spending aid to gain popularity amongst its citizens. Putting politics, press and popular opinion aside, real-world examples of development efforts and their relation to democracy and economic growth might be more telling than the pathos of the

During the week’s assigned reading for this course, I came across a project that was sponsored by the World Bank that involved developing land in the Brazilian Amazon (“International,” n.d., p. 16). This project, referred to as the Northwest Region Integrated Development Program, was brought into operation in 1980. The intention of this program was a noble one: to improve health services and infrastructure, and to assist migrant farming families in finding affordable land ("Projects & Operations," n.d., para. 1). On paper, this project appears to have no downsides and only benefits to the people of an undeveloped area of the world; a project that falls in line with the World Bank’s commitment to the reduction of poverty. In practice, however, this project wreaked havoc onto the people and natural resources of one of the most endangered areas of the world.