HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023480.jpg
2.63 MB
Extraction Summary
1
People
3
Organizations
4
Locations
2
Events
0
Relationships
3
Quotes
Document Information
Type:
Policy paper / academic report (house oversight committee document)
File Size:
2.63 MB
Summary
This page appears to be an excerpt from an academic or policy paper included in a House Oversight production. It critiques modern academic trends in economics and political science for focusing too much on micro-experiments rather than broad societal analysis. It further argues that development agencies like USAID and the World Bank fail to understand the political contexts of the countries they assist, citing examples in Haiti, Ukraine, and Georgia.
People (1)
| Name | Role | Context |
|---|---|---|
| Samuel Huntington | Academic/Author (referenced) |
Cited as an example of a scholar with 'breadth and depth of knowledge' that modern academia is failing to reproduce.
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Organizations (3)
| Name | Type | Context |
|---|---|---|
| USAID |
Critiqued for lacking political economy analysis skills despite supporting U.S. foreign policy.
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| World Bank |
Critiqued for lacking training in political economy analysis.
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| House Oversight Committee |
Source of the document (implied by footer stamp).
|
Locations (4)
| Location | Context |
|---|---|
|
Mentioned regarding the liberalization of ports and political corruption.
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|
Mentioned in the context of the Orange Revolution.
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Mentioned in the context of the Rose Revolution.
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Referenced via U.S. foreign policy.
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Key Quotes (3)
"We are not, in other words, producing new Samuel Huntingtons, with the latter’s simultaneous breadth and depth of knowledge."Source
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Quote #1
"Traditional development agencies like USAID already think politically to the extent that their aid projects are designed to support U.S. foreign policy."Source
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023480.jpg
Quote #2
"We call for the liberalization of ports in Haiti, for example, without trying to understand which particular politicians are benefiting from existing arrangements that keep them closed."Source
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023480.jpg
Quote #3
Full Extracted Text
Complete text extracted from the document (2,054 characters)
23
disciplines keep a chokehold on how younger academics think and do
research. Today, the single most popular form of development
dissertation in both economics and political science is a randomized
micro-experiment in which the graduate student goes out into the
field and studies, at a local level, the impact of some intervention like
the introduction of co-payments for malaria mosquito netting or
changes in electoral rules on ethnic voting. These studies can be
technically well designed, and they certainly have their place in
evaluating projects at a micro level. But they do not aggregate
upwards into anything that can tell us when a regime crosses the line
into illegitimacy, or how economic growth is changing the class
structure of a society. We are not, in other words, producing new
Samuel Huntingtons, with the latter’s simultaneous breadth and depth
of knowledge.
On a policy level, we need far more mutual understanding between
those who promote socioeconomic development and those who work
on democracy promotion and governance. Traditional development
agencies like USAID already think politically to the extent that their
aid projects are designed to support U.S. foreign policy. But they,
like their counterparts in multilateral organizations like the World
Bank, are not trained to do political economy analysis; they do not
seek an understanding of the political context within which aid is
used and abused, and what is not sought is very rarely found. We call
for the liberalization of ports in Haiti, for example, without trying to
understand which particular politicians are benefiting from existing
arrangements that keep them closed. For their part, democracy
promoters focus on democratic transitions, providing help to
opposition parties and civil society organizations in authoritarian
countries. But once a transition occurs, as it did after the Orange and
Rose revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia, they have relatively little to
offer new democratic governments in terms of policy agendas, anti-
research. Today, the single most popular form of development
dissertation in both economics and political science is a randomized
micro-experiment in which the graduate student goes out into the
field and studies, at a local level, the impact of some intervention like
the introduction of co-payments for malaria mosquito netting or
changes in electoral rules on ethnic voting. These studies can be
technically well designed, and they certainly have their place in
evaluating projects at a micro level. But they do not aggregate
upwards into anything that can tell us when a regime crosses the line
into illegitimacy, or how economic growth is changing the class
structure of a society. We are not, in other words, producing new
Samuel Huntingtons, with the latter’s simultaneous breadth and depth
of knowledge.
On a policy level, we need far more mutual understanding between
those who promote socioeconomic development and those who work
on democracy promotion and governance. Traditional development
agencies like USAID already think politically to the extent that their
aid projects are designed to support U.S. foreign policy. But they,
like their counterparts in multilateral organizations like the World
Bank, are not trained to do political economy analysis; they do not
seek an understanding of the political context within which aid is
used and abused, and what is not sought is very rarely found. We call
for the liberalization of ports in Haiti, for example, without trying to
understand which particular politicians are benefiting from existing
arrangements that keep them closed. For their part, democracy
promoters focus on democratic transitions, providing help to
opposition parties and civil society organizations in authoritarian
countries. But once a transition occurs, as it did after the Orange and
Rose revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia, they have relatively little to
offer new democratic governments in terms of policy agendas, anti-
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023480
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