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The Politics of Development1

Fall Term 2014Widner

T, Th 9:00-10:00Preceptors: Brandon Miller de la Cuesta,

Marcus Johnson, Xander Slaski, and Vinay Sitapati

The political philosopher Thomas Hobbes once asked how humanity could escape a world in which life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Leviathan, chapter XIII, 1651). This quest lies at the core of the “political economy of development.”

Institutions have played a pivotal role in shaping human welfare and resolving—or deepening—the dilemma Hobbes identified. Governments can help create a world where people invest because they believe they will see the fruits of their labor and where standards of living rise in consequence. But governments can also become predators or bandits and perpetuate the infamous “war of all against all.” This course asks what shapes institutional effectiveness and accountability—and what leaders can do to help societies out of some of the governance traps that often sabotage development.

The initial lectures, precepts, and assignments consider what we mean by development, entertain several explanations for divergent patterns, and assess the various ways in which context may make the challenges of building effective and accountable government especially difficult. We then ask each of you to put yourself in the place of a leader who wants to improve the provision of public goods and serve an inclusive political community: What can you do to promote institutional change—or does history make a break with the past enormously difficult, as several scholars have recently suggested? The assignments include biography, conceptual and theoretical readings, some classic social science analysis, and practical case studies.

In addition to mastery of assigned reading selections, requirements include three auto-graded exercises (5% each), one 6-page data paper from list A (may be prepared by teams of up to three people, 15%), two 8 to10-page papers, one from list B and one from list C (15% each), a final take-home examination (25%), and class participation (15%). Note: Supplementary reading is completely optional unless you know the assigned selections already.

Introduction: Patterns of Peace & Prosperity (September 11)

Reading Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, “The Economic Lives of the Poor,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 21, 2 (Winter 2007): 141-167.

1 This course draws partly on the syllabus Evan Lieberman developed for this course in previous years but it diverges in several ways and includes new material. Feedback is welcome throughout the term.

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Amartya Sen (1990). Development as Capability Expansion. In Human Development and the International Development Strategy for the 1990s. K. Griffin and J. Knight. London, Macmillan: 41-58.

Angus Deaton, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality. Princeton University Press, 2013, chapters1 and 2 (pp. 1-56).

Familiarize yourself with the Millennium Development Goals at http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

Explore data sources: World Bank World Development Indicators and United Nations Development Program, The Human Development Report, 2013. Download the entire report for reference http://hdr.undp.org/en/2013-report and read the Overview and Introduction; and the technical note (200-204)

SupplementaryHans Rosling TED Talk: Stats That Reshape Your World View, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w (if you like data visualization, see the Gapminder site with more of the kind of analysis Rosling offers: http://www.gapminder.org/ )

Cass Sunstein, “It Captures Your Mind,” review of Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, Scarcity, September 26, 2013. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/sep/26/it-captures-your-mind/?pagination=false

Precept: Please sign up for a precept if you have not done so

Explaining the Patterns (September 16)Why Institutions Matter (September 18)

(Paper options A1 and A2 available, due by September 22 at 5:00 p.m.)

Reading:Debate: Jeff Sachs, “Making the Investments Needed to End Poverty, chapter 13 in The End of Poverty, Penguin Books 2005 and William Easterly. “Solow’s Surprise,” chapter 3 in The Elusive Quest for Growth, MIT Press, 2002.

Douglass North, “Institutions,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 5 (1991): 97-112 only 97-102 required). (optional)

Mancur Olson. “The Logic of Power,” from Power and Prosperity, New York: Basic Books, 2000 and “Iraq Insurgents Reaping Wealth as They Advance,” The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/21/world/middleeast/isis-iraq-insurgents-reaping-wealth-as-they-advance.html?_r=0

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Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven: Yale University Press, pp. 1-32 and 59-71.

Supplementary:Conflict, Security, & Development, 2011 World Development Report, chapter 1, pp. 51-68.

Precept: Conceptualizing and measuring development

Part I: Predicaments

The Politician’s Dilemma/The Reformer’s Calculus (September 23)Historical Legacies (September 25)

ReadingAcemoglu & Robinson, Why Nations Fail, chapters 1 through 4 and 9.

Atul Kohli, "Where do high growth political economies come from? The Japanese Lineage of Korea's Developmental State." World Development 22 (9):1269-93.

Robert Jackson and Carl Rosberg. “Why Africa’s Weak States Persist: The Empirical and the Juridical in Statehood,” World Politics, 35, 1 (October 1982).

Precept: Social science reasoning and the logics of state formation/state capacity

5-question auto-graded Exercise 1, self-scheduled

Global Orders (September 30)Geography (October 2)

Reading:Valenzuela and Valenzuela. "Modernization and dependency: Alternative perspectives in the study of Latin American underdevelopment." Comparative Politics 10.4 (1978). Read pp.543-550 (skim 535-543,550-556.)

Jeff Herbst, States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, chapter 5.

Jeff Sachs, A.D. Mellinger, and J.L. Gallup. 2001. "The geography of poverty and wealth." Scientific American 284 (3):70-5.

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Jared Diamond, Guns, germs, and steel: the fates of human societies. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, chapter 4.

Supplementary: See also, exchange with William McNeill: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1997/jun/26/guns-germs-and-steel/

You might also read the exchange between Diamond and Acemoglu and Robinson in the New York Review of Books: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/jun/07/what-makes-countries-rich-or- poor/ and http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/aug/16/why-nations-fail/.

Precept: Testing theories about geography: hypotheses, correlations/associations

Ethnic diversity (October 7)Thresholds (October 9)

Reading:Edward Miguel, "Tribe or Nation? Nation Building and Public Goods in Kenya versus Tanzania." World Politics 56 (3):327-62.

Ashutosh Varshney, “Ethnic Conflict and Civil Society: India and Beyond”, World Politics, April 2001.

Michael Kremer, “Making Vaccines Pay,” pp. 417-429 in William Easterly, ed. Reinventing Foreign Aid, MIT Press, 2008 or/and Michael Kremer, “Pharmaceuticals and the Developing World,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 16, 4 (fall 2002): 67-90.

Precept: Causal mechanisms: cultural diversity & public goods provision

Part 2: Generating political will

Why Political Leaders Don’t Always Seem to Care (Oct. 14) Competition and Counter-pressures (October 16)

Reading:Robert Bates, Markets & States in Tropical Africa (a very short book, which we treat as a case and discuss in class)2

Supplementary (if you have read the Bates book, focus on these instead)Anne Krueger, "Government Failures in Development,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 4, 3 (1990): 9-23.

2 If you have taken African Politics with Professor Widner then we will use you as an advisor in this exercise.

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Joel Hellman, Geraint Jones, and Daniel Kaufmann, “Seize the State, Seize the Day,” Journal of Comparative Economics, 31, 4 (2003).

Dani Rodrik, “Goodbye Washington Consensus, Hello Washington Confusion? A Review of the World Bank’s Economic Growth in the 1990s: Learning from a Decade of Reform, Journal of Economic Literature, XLIV(December 2006): 973-987.

Precept: Markets v administered systems, the pros and cons

Auto-graded Exercise 2, self-scheduled.

Elections, Incentives, & Performance (October 21)Civic Engagement, Social Capital, and Development Outcomes (October 23)

(Paper options A3 and C1 available, due October 22 by midnight)

ReadingRobert Putnam, Making Democracy Work3

Supplementary (read these if you have already read Making Democracy Work):Adsera, A., C. Boix, and M. Payne. 2003. "Are you being served? Political accountability and quality of government." Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 19 (2):445.

Paul Collier, “Votes and Violence,” chapter 1 from Wars, Guns, and Votes: Democracy in Dangerous Places, Harper Collins, 2009.

Precept: parsing the argument in Making Democracy Work

Fall Break (October 25-November 2)

3 Yes, this book is set in Italy. “Development” is not an issue that goes away once and for all as countries get richer. The book introduces concepts and theories that feature in many discussions about development.

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Part 3: Making Government Work: A “Science of Delivery?”

(Paper Option C2 available, due November 5 by midnight)

The Reformer’s Dilemma (November 4)Cardoso in Brazil (November 6)

Reading:Acemoglu & Robinson, Why Nations Fail, 11 (just pp 332-4), 13, 14 (just pp404-414), 15.

Innovations for Successful Societies video: Reformers speak (about 6 minutes; accessible through Blackboard)

Fernando Henrique Cardoso, The Accidental President of Brazil, A Memoir

SupplementaryAudio Segment, Intro and “The Lie That Saved Brazil” From This American Life. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/423/the-invention-of-money Helpful for understanding one part of the Cardoso story.

Interview with Cardoso: http://www.diplomaticourier.com/news/regions/brics/185-interview-his-excellency-fernando-henrique-cardoso-former-president-of-brazil

ISS Case Study, “Strengthening Public Administration in Brazil, 1995-1998.”

Precept: path dependency and its sources, pressures for innovation

Creating single-agency turnarounds or pockets of effectiveness (November 11)Short-route accountability (November 13)

(Paper Option B1 available, due November 10 by midnight; paper option B2 due November 12 by midnight)

Reading: John W. Pratt and Richard J. Zeckhauser. “Principals and Agents: An Overview,” pp. 1-22 (not the whole chapter), in Principals and Agents. Harvard Business School Press, 1991.

“Empowering Operational Staff: Land Registration in Sarawak, Malaysia, 2006-2009,” ISS Case Study.

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“Promoting Accountability, Monitoring Services: Textbook Procurement and Delivery in the Philippines, 2002-2005,” ISS Case Study

“Services for the People, by the People: Indonesia’s Program for Community Empowerment, 2007-2012,” ISS Case Study

Ben Olken. “Monitoring Corruption: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Indonesia,” Journal of Political Economy, 2007, v. 115, 2.

Supplementary:

Archon Fung, “Infotopia: Unleashing the Democratic Power of Transparency,” Politics & Society, 14, 2 (June 2013) and Archon Fung with David Weil and Mary Graham, “Targeting Transparency,” Science 6139 (June 2013).

Precept: Randomized controlled trials as a way to assess the effects of a policy intervention (focuses on the Olken piece, which pertains to the ISS case on Indonesia)

Capability traps (November 18)Norm coordination (November 20)

(Paper options B3 available, due November 17 by midnight)

Reading:Bo Rothstein, “Reflections After a Long Day in Moscow,” Social Traps and the Problem of Trust, Cambridge University Press, 2005.

“Conjuring and Consolidating a Turnaround: Government in Bogota, 1992-2003” ISS Case Study And “From Fear to Hope in Colombia: Sergio Fajardo and Medellin, 2004-2007,” ISS Case Study.

Sebastian Mallaby, “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty,” The Atlantic Monthly, July/August 2010 and/or Paul Romer TED talks: “Why the World Needs Charter Cities” and “The World’s First Charter City?”

Supplementary:On Mockus reforms: http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/03.11/01-mockus.html and http://freakonomics.com/2012/06/21/riding-the-herd-mentality-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/ (optional)

Sendhil Mullainathan, “Solving Social Problems With A Nudge,” TED Talk http://blog.ted.com/2010/02/01/solving_social/

Precept: Social norms v. opinions and how to modify social norms

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Institutional traps & the high politics of reform (November 25)

Reading: Robert Wade. “The Market for Public Office: Why the Indian State is Not Better at Development,” World Development, 13, 4 (1985): 467-497.

“Inviting a Tiger into Your Home: Indonesia’s Anti-Corruption Commission Cuts Its Teeth” and “Holding the High Ground with Public Support: Indonesia’s Anti-Corruption Commission Digs In,” ISS Case Studies

or

“Saving a Sinking Agency: The National Port Authority of Liberia, 2006-2010,” ISS Case Study.

Supplementary: Joel Hellman, “Winners Take All: The Politics of Partial Reform in Post-Communist Transitions,” World Politics, 50, 2 (1998)

Saumitra Jha on financial innovation as a way to create positive self-reinforcing incentives on WWS YouTube

Precept: none this week (Thanksgiving break)

Auto-graded Exercise 3, self-scheduled

The resource curse (December 2)Preserving forests (December 4)

(Paper Option C3 available, due December 3 by midnight)

Reading:Macartan Humphreys, Jeffrey Sachs, and Joseph Stiglitz, “What is the Problem with Natural Resource Wealth?” from Escaping the Resource Curse, chapter 1.

Paul Collier. The Plundered Planet: Why We Must—and How We Can—Manage Nature for Global Prosperity. Oxford University Press, 2010. Selections TBA

“Controlling Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon,” ISS case study

Supplementary: You may wish to visit the web pages for the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative,

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Revenue Watch, and the Kimberly Process.

Precept: The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative is a possible solution to a global public goods problem. To work, it requires some muscle. What muscle does the system employ? Are there other ways to induce compliance that are compatible with democratic norms?

Learning & adaptation (December 9)Institutional transformation & development (December 11)

(Paper Option C4 available. Due by December 18 at 5:00)

Reading:Lee Kuan Yew, The Singapore Story (memoire).Times Editions/Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Pte Ltd, 2004, pp. 13-24, 315-327, 343-347, 556-569 and timeline 664-667. Also see Charlie Rose Interview with Lee Kuan Yew: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11573

Joseph Stiglitz and Bruce Greenwald, Creating a Learning Society, New York: Columbia University Press, 2014, chapters 1 and 2 (pp. 13-44)

Geoff Mulgan, “Positive Risks: Taking Innovation in the Public Sector Seriously,” chapter 8 in The Art of Public Strategy, Oxford University Press, 2009.

Muhammad Yunus, Banker to the Poor, pp. vii-ix, 45-58, 61-83, 219-231

Supplementary:Jonathan Morduch, “The Knowledge Bank,” chapter 13 in William Easterly, Ed., Reinventing Foreign Aid. MIT Press, 2008.

“Dubai, Once a Humble Refueling Stop, Is Crossroad to the Globe,” The New York Timeshttp://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/business/international/once-a-humble-refueling-stop-dubai-is-crossroad-to-the-globe.html?_r=0

Precept: Where is institutional transformation most likely to occur? In-class data exercise that pushes us to think about the conditions, circumstances, timing, and human elements behind the rise of common interest states.

Course Goals:This course tries to develop a basic vocabulary of concepts and theories, build

knowledge of a few iconic country cases and scholarly classics, provide some practical orientation for those who may someday work in the field of development, and introduce some current debates. Inevitably, there is an enormous amount of material left on the cutting room floor. In assembling the syllabus, I have tried to limit duplication with other

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courses and fill gaps I see in the offerings available at the university. Apologies in advance where I have misjudged! Those who have already taken African Politics with me may see some conceptual overlap but with a different mix of reading material and some new theories.

Expectations:At the end of each week I will post some guidance for the next. These reading

notes provide a quick orientation so that you can focus your work more effectively. Generally we ask that you complete assigned selections before your precept meets. If your precept is early in the week, you will have to start a little earlier. During the second half of the course we use case studies to evaluate key concepts and theories. The case studies come from a Princeton research program, Innovations for Successful Societies. If you have trouble finding a case or want to view other options on the same topic you may visit the website directly.

Lectures vary in format. Some provide background or extend some of the ideas in the reading. Others engage you in case discussion. Often we will look at data together. Everyone is expected to participate although the instructor will not “cold call” anyone.

The precepts focus attention on a single question or problem raised in the reading or the lectures. They are designed to amplify the lectures and foster creative thinking. All precepts cover the same ground in substantially the same way. All require participation. Each person has two “coast days”—allotted skips to handle illnesses and other complications. Remember that precepts are also an important venue for raising questions.

Assignments and ExamsThere are three types of assignments in this course, outside of the reading. Auto-

graded 5-question exercises are experimental. They help us understand whether the course is communicating key ideas. They help you lock in some of your knowledge as you read and listen. And they are supposed to be fun. They are hard to design, though, and sometimes we fail to write a question in a way that works. We adjust. The key is to remember that these are experiments, they don’t count heavily, and they reward a spirit of adventure.

Each person must submit three papers, one of which you may complete as a 2- to 3-person team project if you wish. There is a choice of topics and submission dates (see below), but everyone must submit one paper from list A, one from list B, and one from list C. The options help you tailor the course to your interests and your schedule. Because we give you this flexibility, we do not accept late submissions. Just move on to the next option in the list if you miss a due date.

Papers should be roughly 8 to 10 pages, with 1.5 line spacing, 12 point type, and 1 inch margins. Please submit papers through the Blackboard site. You may also email a backup copy to your preceptor if you wish. Please review the course guidance on originality and appropriate citation before you begin. For the data paper, please indicate the names of all team members on the paper if you work with others.

The final take-home exam includes paired comparisons, a data question, and two

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essays. It takes 3 hours. You may choose a 3-hour period between January 13 and January 19 during which you will take the exam. You will check out the exam from Blackboard and return it to Blackboard 3 hours later. We will provide review materials at the end of the lecture period, in December.

Thinking In this course we ask you to think like a social scientist and to engage a real world

problem in the light of reading assigned. Remember that any social science explanation has a couple of standard parts:

A theory always has a dependent variable (outcome), one or more independent variables (possible causes of variation in the outcome), and a story line that specifies the causal mechanism or shows by what means the dependent and independent variables link to each other. Ask whether the story is plausible.

The variables are indicators used to “tap” underlying concepts. Ask whether the indicators are valid and reliable.

A theory helps us frame expectations about the world around us. The observable expectations that flow from a theory are hypotheses. Ask whether the author’s hypotheses really follow from the theory (are they reasonable deductions from the general claim)? Are there other hypotheses or propositions that might flow from the same theory?

Often the reading or lectures will refer to a test of a theory. We usually want to know whether analysis of the data reveals the correlations or associations the theory leads us to expect, or whether the anticipated correlations are absent (therefore disconfirming the theory). We also want to know whether the proposed causal mechanism is really active (hence case studies). What do the data say? Do you trust the data source or the data collection strategy?

One of the nicer concise guides to common pitfalls recently appeared in a small nutrition newsletter. You can find the neat chart in e-reserves under the title “Non-Trivial Pursuit.” It’s a fun checklist of the ways studies can go wrong.

The course also requires you to think about how to break out of some of the constraints that social scientists identify. You must think creatively as a manager and leader but ground your ideas in ways that make sense to a social scientist.

GradingThe members of the teaching staff meet each week to agree on a plan for the next

week’s precept and to check uniformity in grading standards. We spell out the criteria for papers in advance and mark accordingly, though we allow for flashes of brilliance that take off in an unusual but interesting direction. We curve the grades for individual assignments if necessary.

If you feel a grade is in error, please take up the issue first with your preceptor. The teaching staff will discuss the matter as a group if necessary. If we re-grade, the evaluation may go up or down. There is no guarantee that re-grading will lead to a higher grade.

Office Hours/Communicating

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Professor Widner has office hours on Tuesdays from 2-4 at 441 Robertson Hall. Please sign up for time through the web at https://wass.princeton.edu/pages/login.page.php Because of very heavy work commitments, it isn’t possible to meet at other times. To accommodate those who cannot attend on Wednesday afternoons, Professor Widner also has three alternative meetings during the term, TBA.

All of the instructors will try to reply to emails with questions that can’t be answered by reading the syllabus or instructions. Please be judicious in your use of email, however.

Paper Topics

List A, Concepts & Data(Do one. You may complete this exercise as a 2- to 4-person team project.)

Option A1Samuel Huntington’s classic, Political Order in Changing Societies, identifies several characteristics institutions must possess in order to facilitate peaceful adaptation to economic growth or economic change. Put yourself in the shoes of a social scientist who wants to test Huntington’s theory using data currently available. Think about the concepts behind the characteristics Huntington highlights. 1) How would you “operationalize” these concepts? That is, which indicators from the datasets below best tap each characteristic and why? If you cannot find indicators that suffice, explain why the available measures don’t work and propose alternates. 2) Create an appendix that shows the values of these variables for six countries to which we refer often in this course plus three comparison countries from the developed democracies. Choose at least one from each of the following categories: a) India, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa, or Malaysia, b) Estonia, Mexico, Jordan, or Morocco; c) Tanzania, Ghana, Albania, Georgia, or Colombia; d) Afghanistan, Liberia, or Bangladesh—with the U.S., Denmark, and Spain as comparison countries. In your discussion, explain the patterns you would expect your indicators to display if Huntington’s theory is right or wrong. Note that there are a number of “right answers” to this question. In order to answer this question, you will need to visit three websites.

Worldwide Governance Indicators (World Bank) http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/index.aspx#home

Bertelsmann Transformation Index explanation http://www.bti-project.org/index/ and atlas http://www.bti-project.org/atlas/

Doing Business Indicators http://www.doingbusiness.org/data

Option A2Samuel Huntington’s classic, Political Order in Changing Societies, offers a critique of a theory of political development called “modernization theory.” Popular in the late 1950s through the early 1970s, this type of explanation has had a lot of staying power. The basic

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idea behind one popular form of this argument is that urbanization and industrialization encourage people to abandon ascriptive identities such as ethnicity in favor of economic identities and ultimately increase support for democracy. The general form is Industrialization/Urbanizationsocial mobilization/cultural changea higher probability that democracy will emerge. If the theory has merit, we should see certain patterns in the data over time. Explain the correlations (associations) we should anticipate. Then use the data available under “assignments” in the course Blackboard site and the simple instructions that accompany the data to assess whether those correlations are present or absent. Report the results and explain what additional steps you would take to test the theory that Huntington dismisses.

Option A3Robert Putnam’s Making Democracy Work is famous partly because of its “independent variable,” social capital. What is social capital and how can we best measure it? Is it the same as political culture or is it something different? How does Putnam measure it? Does his measure (measures) really capture/ “tap” the concept he sets forth? Discuss the pros and cons of the measure or measures he chooses. Under “assignments” on our blackboard site, visit the codebook for at least one recent survey. Choose three to five questions you think might help us measure social capital. Assess the strengths and weaknesses of each as a way to “operationalize” the concept in question here. Using excel, create a chart that shows the mean, median, and standard deviation for of your variable for major sub-regions within the country you have chosen.

List B Case study comparison (do one)

Option B1This week we discuss some of the principal-agent problems that bedevil organizations everywhere but are often harder to solve in resource-poor settings. Compare and contrast two efforts to create solutions. Open your essay with a short description of the general issue (find the quick description of a principal-agent problem in the week’s reading guidance). Create a sub-heading for the Sarawak case, a sub-heading for another case from the list below, and a sub-heading for a conclusion. For each case, identify a) the symptoms that tell you a principal-agent problem exists, b) each change the reformers introduce to solve the problem, and c) the result. In the conclusion, identify the similarities in the responses and then point to at least one difference and explain how that difference arose from the particular context of the case.

A Second Life for One-Stop Shops (Minas Gerais, Brazil)Creating a Citizen-Friendly Department (Jordan)Rejuvenating the Public Registry (Republic of Georgia)Reworking the Revenue Service (South Africa)

Option B2In class we discussed “short-route accountability.” One of the examples was community-driven development in Indonesia. After the Bonn Conference that helped re-establish a

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post-Taliban government in Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, then an adviser to the transitional authority, turned to the Indonesia example. The question was whether Afghanistan could use community-driven development to produce similar results. Read the Afghanistan case. Compare and contrast the two initiatives. Analyze how the incentive structures were the same or different—and with what likely consequences.

Option B3Arguably it is much easier to reduce the temptation to commit crime and to mobilize social pressure to comply with positive social norms than it is to run a police service. Use the preceding week’s discussion to analyze what makes policing especially prone to very tough principal-agent problems and other challenges. Then identify, compare, and discuss some of the possible solutions on trial in one of the case studies below.

Reclaiming the City (Mexico City)Building Strategic Capacity in the Police (Sierra Leone)Building the Police Service in a Security Vacuum (Kosovo)

List C Theory Focus (do one)Option C1Why Nations Fail and Making Democracy Work both employ the concept of path dependence to account for persistent patterns in institutional quality and development outcomes. What is path dependence? Briefly indicate the role it plays in these two works. Introduce at least three “causal mechanisms” or reasons why path dependence might exist, and then offer some general reasons why the extent of path dependence may be grossly over-stated (that is, why leaders and societies are not nearly so bound to the past as the theory suggests).

Option C2Fernando Henrique Cardoso was first a social scientist and then a president. In the opening of his book he expresses some uncertainty about whether Brazil will be able to sustain promising improvements in development outcomes. Read the book, find the passage indicated, and identify the sources of Cardoso’s concern. Relate these to ideas in Why Nations Fail or to other concepts and theories in the course so far. End your essay with one or more of Cardoso’s reasons why optimism may be justified.

Option C3Read the assigned passages in Collier’s The Plundered Planet. Then turn to the case study “Controlling Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.” In what ways does Brazil’s effort to limit the rate of deforestation illustrate concepts and theories that Collier discusses? In other words, identify the incentives built into Brazil’s policy and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the approach. If there are multiple enforcement strategies in play in this case, use the web to find information you need to describe these. (Note that there is a difference between “compliance” and “enforcement.” A person may comply with a rule voluntarily.)

Option C4

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A number of scholars have singled out merit systems as the reason why some governments perform better than others. Yet the World Bank’s independent evaluation group says most efforts to build such systems--the essence of much public management reform—have failed miserably. Read Peter Evans and James E Rauch, “Bureaucracy and growth: A cross-national analysis of the effects of ‘Weberian’ state structures…” (available on e-reserves), summarize the argument, and then offer a critique of the logic, drawing on real-world examples. You may wish to refer to a case study of Cardoso’s attempted reforms in Brazil or Mkapa’s reforms in Tanzania. (This paper is intellectually challenging, but students tell us they like the Evans and Rauch article. Pursue at your own risk!)