The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by Penguin (Non-Classics)

	Title: The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good Purchase Item Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics) List Price: $16.00 Our Price: $9.03
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The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by Penguin (Non-Classics) Easterly's usual rant
The main thing I do share with Easterly is his disdain for the rockers and the dreamers. However, beyond that, the main theme of this book is a simple tautology--if it works according to whatever criteria he stipulates, it's a "Seeker," if it doesn't, it's a "Planner." And lo and behold, the Planners are the bad boys, because they never succeed. There is nary a recognition of the fact that if you want to "seek" to help the poor somewhere, there are always those pesky governments to deal with. Just one example: he argues that the amounts of money that have been spent on roads in developing countries have ultimately had little impact in many situations, because roads deteriorate. So he recommends that donors need to build maintenance into their programs. Alas, in many parts of the world road maintenance is a job for the local government (which he acknowledges by citing how he deals with a pothole in the States). Now is his recommendation tantamount to suggesting that donors build up local government in developing countries, run by -- what, contractors? Interesting concept. The basic issue remains: the poor tend to be poor on a large scale largely because they live in countries with bad governments at all levels. The Seekers (sometimes known as do-gooders) can help provide bandaids, but lasting solutions depend on ratcheting up government performance in those countries. How to accomplish that? There are some answers to that, but don't turn to Easterly for guidance.
The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by Penguin (Non-Classics) Despite the title, a little to PC to be effective
Whilte the author has some important and sometimes hard-hitting points to make about foreign aid and its effectiveness (or lack thereof), it's obvious he still wants to get invited to the cool cocktail parties in New York. He correctly focuses on the aid community's penchant for big projects with no specific accountability vs. smaller, user-oriented ones. However, he seems obliged to maintain a veneer of "neutrality" by opposing military operations despite their proven success in cases like Japan and South Korea. He also over-uses statistics in questionable circumstances that make for heavy going and undermine his credibility. It's also a little pathetic that he has to make clear from little family vignettes that he is a vegetarian and imposes an artsy-fartsy lifestyle on his kids. Not a surprise that he's divorced. Still worth the read.
The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by Penguin (Non-Classics) Good...a little too far to the right for me, though
Provides a good balance to Jeff Sach's "The End of Poverty." If you haven't read Sach's book, read it first, then Easterly's "The White Man's Burden." Both provide a solution for increasing development among the world's poorest populations. As with most arguments, I think the answer lies somewhere in between their points of view. Read it with a grain of salt and it will temper your idea that MORE money is the ONLY answer.
The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by Penguin (Non-Classics) White Man's Burden
White Man's Burden - An absolute masterpiece. The book clearly describes the differences between the two main development-schools as represented by Easterly & Sachs. A must-read for anybody interested in the field of development.
The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by Penguin (Non-Classics) "idealism, high expectations, disappointing results, cynical backlash"
I have been a self-described Easterly fangirl since reading his excellent book The Elusive Quest for Growth. In that book, he had managed to be precise, supported, readable, humane and funny-- all at the same time. In the world of reading about development economics, this was no mean feat. I had known that this book was out for a while, but had only gotten around to reading it after seeing Easterly here in Amsterdam. He was debating Jan Pronk about what he calls the difference between Planner- and Searcher-based methods of developmental aid. Planners, in his terms, prefer the sweeping top-down approaches to poverty eradication-- all governed by a central committee somewhere else. Searchers adopt a more piecemeal approach to solutions, looking from the bottom up without benefit (or as much benefit) from Utopian ideals. It was a very interesting debate. The audience was full of folks working in various NGOs and developmental organization. It inspired me enough to go ahead and buy The White Man's Burden. The arguments that Easterly make feel so intuitively correct that they make me suspicious. The bottom line for him seems to be that real situations are individual, and solutions cannot be extrapolated from overriding principles. He is savage towards the unrealistic thinking of the neo-imperialists and unsparing of many of the political sacred cows. He points out that given limited resources, tradeoffs do have to be made. Too many people forget that even given unlimited funding (which is far from the case), resources can still be scarce-- attention, will power, distribution infrastructure, etc. He also says that if goals in aid programs are failing, then throwing more money at them will not help. I think that Easterly's stand is often miscontrued based on the last point. I have heard detractors say that he is arguing towards limiting aid to the needy poor. There is no substantiation of that-- at least not in his books or in the lecture I attended. Instead, what he argues is that if unrealistic goals and cumbersome structures prevent aid from reaching the poorest, then adding more money on top of the pile will not fix the problem. For any experienced project managers out there, this is going to feel very "right". Easterly is not calling for less spending; he is calling for more sensible spending. He is calling for accountability, practicality, focus and honest evaluation. These are things that should be self-evident, but are apparently very difficult to achieve. He asks the very disturbing question whether the developed countries are more interested in selling their personal ideology in the form of a Utopian vision than they are interested in achieving real change on the ground where it is needed the most. Other topics include examples of successful "Searcher" strategies for bringing change to the life of the poor; historical numbers looking at the effect of aid on growth; a discussion of the different aid agencies and their limitations; and some thinking about the role (or lack of one) in local governments when it comes to development initiatives. The White Man's Burden is, as The Elusive Quest for Growth, precise, supported, readable, humane and funny. I think that it is in many respects a stronger book as it better integrates the stories of the poor with the structure. There are many fascinating pointers for further reading. I would have appreciated an annotated bibliography instead of just pulling references from the notes, but I guess that you cannot have everything that you want in a single book. Recommended reading.
The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by Penguin (Non-Classics) Product Description
From one of the world’s best-known development economists—an excoriating attack on the tragic hubris of the West’s efforts to improve the lot of the so-called developing world In his previous book, The Elusive Quest for Growth, William Easterly criticized the utter ineffectiveness of Western organizations to mitigate global poverty, and he was promptly fired by his then-employer, the World Bank. The White Man’s Burden is his widely anticipated counterpunch—a brilliant and blistering indictment of the West’s economic policies for the world’s poor. Sometimes angry, sometimes irreverent, but always clear-eyed and rigorous, Easterly argues that we in the West need to face our own history of ineptitude and draw the proper conclusions, especially at a time when the question of our ability to transplant Western institutions has become one of the most pressing issues we face.

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