POLICY RESEARCH WORKING PAPER   2693
Helping People Help                                                    How can an outside party
('helper"J assist those
Themselves                                                             attempting to undertake
autonomous activities (the
"doers") without overriding or
Toward  a  Theory  of                                                  undercutting their autonomy?
Autonomy-Compatible Help                                               The answers could have
implications for the helping
David Ellerman                                                         agency itself.
The World Bank
Development Economics
Office of the Senior Vice President
October 2001



PoIi(y RESFARCH WORKING PAPER 2693
Summary findings
If development is seen basically as autonomous self-            One major application of helping theory is to the
development, then there is a subtle paradox in the whole      problems of knowledge-based developniei- assistance.
notion of development assistance: How can an outside          The standard approach is that the helper, a knowledge-
party ("helper") assist those undertaking autonomous          based development agency, has the "answe:s" and
activities (the "doers") without overriding or                disseminates them to the doers. This correnDonds to the
undercutting their autonomy? This conundrum is the            standard teacher-centered pedagogy. The a ternative
challenge facing a theory of autonomy-compatible              under helping theory is the learner-centered approach.
development assistance-that is, helping theory.               The teacher plays the role of midwife, catalyst, and
Starting from a simple model of nondistortionarv aid,       facilitator, building learning capacity in the learner-doers
Ellerman explores several themes of a broader helping         so that they can learn from any source, incl iding their
theory and shows how these themes arise in the work of        own experience.
"gurus"~ in different fields-John Dewey in pedagogy and         Development assistance is further compli :ated by the
social philosophy, Douglas McGregor in management             local or tacit nature of much relevant know/ edge. A
theory, Carl Rogers in psychotherapy, Soren Kierkegaard       knowledge-based development agency might function
in spiritual counseling, Saul Alinsky in community            better nor simply as a source of knowledge hut as a
organizing, Paulo Freire in community education, and          broker connecting those who face problem, with those in
Albert Hirschman and E. F. Schumacher in economic             similar situations who have learned how to address the
development. That such diverse thinkers in such different    problems.
fields arrive at very similar conclusions increases             Changing to the approach of helping the( rv entails
confidence in the common principles. The points of            changing the helping agency itself, transforr ling it into
commonality are summarized as follows:                        an organization that fosters learning internally as well as
* Help must start from the present situation of the         externally-as in a university, wlhere profeswors engage in
doers.                                                        learning and foster learning in students but the
* Helpers must see the situation through the eves of        organization does not adopt official views o i the
the doers.                                                    complex questions of the day. This means fi stering
* Help cannot be imposed on the doers, as that              competition in the marketplace of ideas wi6tin the
directlv violates their autonomy.                             organization and taking a more Socratic starce with
* Nor can doers receive help as a benevolent gift, as       clients, who will then have to take responsiHilirt for and
that creates dependency.                                      have ownership of their decisions.
* Doers must be in the driver's seat.
This paper-a product of the Office of the Senior Vice President, Development Economics-is part of a large r effort in the
Bank to understand the intellectual foundations for autonomy-compatible assistance as espoused in the Comprehensive
Development Framework and the Bank's Mission Statement. Copies of the paper are available free from the World Banik,
18 18 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20433. Please contact Beza Mekuria, room MC4-358, telephone 202-458-2756, fax
202-522-1158, email address bmekuria(a worldbank.org. Policy Research Working Papers are also posted ( n the Web at
http://econ.worldbank.org. The author may be contacted at dellermanCa worldbank.org. October 2001. (4 q pages)
Th7e Policy Research Wforking Paper Series dissemninates the findings of work in progress to encourage the excIanmqe of idc;s abowt
development issoies. A-i objective ofthe series is to get the findings ouft quickly, eveni if the presentations are less than fullv polished. The
papers carry the tiames of the auithors and should he cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this
paper are entirely those of the auithors. They d<o not necessarily represent the view, of the World Bank. its Executive Director;, or the
couintries they represent.
Produced by the Policy Research Dissemination Center



Helping People Help Themselves:
Towards a Theory of Autonomy-Compatible Help
David Ellerman, World Bank*
"The best kind of help to others, whenever possible, is indirect, and consists in such modifications of the
conditions of life, of the general level of subsistence, as enables them independently to help themselves."
John Dewey
Table of Contents
Intellectual Background
An Initial Look at Non-Distortionary Aid
ANon-Distortionary Interventions
Intrinsic or Own Motivation
Towards a Broader Helping Theory: Five Themes
Theme I Starting From Where the Doers Are
Theme 2. Seeing Through the Doers'Eyes
Theme 3: Helper Cannot Impose Change on Doers
Theme 4: Help as Benevolence is Ineffective
Theme 5 Doers in the Driver's Seat
Helping Theory Applied to Development Assistance
Development Intervention as an "Agency" Relationship
Theme I Applied: Startingfrom Present Institutions
Theme 2 Applied Seeing the World Through the Eyes of the Client
Theme 3 Applied: Transformation Cannot be Externally Imposed
Theme 4 Applied: Addams-Dewey-Lasch's Critique of Benevolence
Theme 5 Applied. Applying An Activist Philosophy of Social Learning
Knowledge-Based Development Assistance: Methodology
The Standard Theory-in-Use
Ownership Problems
Self-Efficacy Problems
Cognitive Dependency Problems
Moral Hazard Problems
Types of Development Knowledge
Universal versu s Local Knowledge
Codified versus Tacit Knowledge
Implications for "Knowledge Bank " as Storehouse or as Brokerage
Knowledge-Based Development Organizations
Introduction. A "Church" versus a Learning Organization
Roadblock to Learning #1: Branded Knowledge as Dogma
Roadblock to Learning #2: Funded Assumptions as Dogma
Roadblock to Learning #3: "Social Science" as Dogma
Roadblock to Learning #4: The Rage to Conclude
The Open Learning Model
Competition and Devil's Advocacy in the Open Learning Model
Non-dogmatism and Socratic Ignorance in Organizations
Towards an Open Learning Agency and Autonomy-Compatible Assistance
Revisiting Hirschmanian Themes of Social Learning and Change
Reframing the Debate about Conditionalities
flirschman's Theory of UInbalanced Growth
Conclusion: The Two Paths
Bibliography
Appendix: Eight Authors in Search of Helping Theory
The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those of the author and should not be
attributed in any manner to the World Bank, to its affiliated organizations, or to the members of its Board of Directors or the
countries they represent.






Intellectual Background
The World Bank, the leading multilateral development agency, begins its Mission Statement with a
dedication to helping people help themselves, and Oxfam, a leading non-governmental organization
working on development, states that its "main aim is to help people to help themselves." ' There is
broad agreement-at least as a statement of high purpose-that helping people help themselves is
perhaps the best ("best" in perhaps both a normative and practical sense) methodology for development
assistance in the developing countries. That is our topic.
The main goal is the "doer" (e.g., person, group, or country) being "in the driver's seat" and actively
helping itself. This is a central idea expressed in the World Bank's Comprehensive Development
Framework (CDF).2 If development is seen basically as autonomous self-development, then there is a
subtle paradox or conundrum in the whole notion of development assistance: how can an outside party
("helper") assist those who are undertaking autonomous activities (the "doers") without overriding or
undercutting their autonomy?3 How can a development agency actually help people help themselves-
as opposed to giving various forms of unhelpful help? The topic is related to the presumption in favor
of inclusion, popular participation, involvement, and ownership as well as the suspicion that externally
applied "carrots and sticks" do not "buy" sustainable policy changes. Our approach uses the (Kantian)
notion of autonomy [see Ellermnan 1988] and has much overlap with Albert Hirschman's approach to
development (see last section) and with Amartya Sen's emphasis on capabilities and agency.4
We cast a wide and vigorously multidisciplinary net to construct the intellectual background. Helping
theory is approached by looking at the commonalties in quite different examples of relationships where
one party, the "helper," is trying to help certain others, here called the "doers," to better help
themselves. The target example of the helper-doer relationship is the relationship between a
development agency and a client country but the theme is also explored in pedagogy, management
theory, psychotherapy, community organization, and community education. The helper-doer
relationships and prominent authors or "gurus" are (see Appendix for representative quotes):
- Albert Hirschman on the relationship of a development advisor and a government,
- E.F. Schumacher on the relationship between a development agency and a developing country,
* Saul Alinsky on the relation of a community organizer to the community,
*  Paulo Freire on the relationship between an educator and a peasant (or urban poor) community,
* S0ren Kierkegaard on the relation between a spiritual counselor and a student,
* John Dewey on the teacher-learner relationship,
* Carl Rogers on the therapist-client relationship, and
* Douglas McGregor on the (Theory Y) relationship between a manager and workers.
The argument is not that all these relationships are the same, but that there are commonalties when the
party in the "helper" role acts so as to help the parties in the "doer" role to help themselves. The fact
that such diverse thinkers in different fields arrive at interestingly similar conclusions increases our
'Oxfam 1985. 14.
2 See Wolfensohn 1997, 1998, 1999a and 1999b and in Stiglitz 1998.
3See Ellwood [1988] generally on the "helping conundrums."
4 Sen's notion of freedom in Development as Freedom 1999 is closely related to our notion of autonomy.



confidence in the common principles.5 The text is liberally sprinkled with quotations and footnotes so
that the interested reader can follow the Ariadne's thread of the themes back into the original texts.
An Initial Look at Non-Distortionary Aid
Non-Distortionary Interventions
Our first task is to fix the sense of an intervention by the helper that most respects or is most
compatible with the choices of the doer in certain simple models of the doer's decisions. The doer's
decision-making is assumed to be given as a relationship between resources and decisions: given the
resources available to the doer, the optimal decision is determined. An intervention by the helper is
non-distortionary (ND) (a necessary condition for autonomy-compatibility) if it does not affect the
relationship between resources and decisions although it may affect the resources. In other words, a
ND intervention is one that does not change what the doer would do-given sufficient resources. In
that sense, the intervention does not distort the original motivation of the doer.
This notion looks only to the mode of intervention by the helper, not to the preferences or choices.
There is no assumption that the choices of the doer are in any sense autonomous, e.g., a monetary gift
to a drug addict or an unrestricted grant to a country "addicted" to aid would be ND. Choices that are
autonomous in the sense of being based on intrinsic or own-motivation will be considered later.
Moreover, "non-distortionary" is an autonomy-related characteristic of interventions by some human
will (e.g., the helper), not natural events.
'The nature of things does not madden us, only ill will does', said Rousseau. The
criterion of oppression is the part that I believe to be played by other human beings,
directly or indirectly, with or without the intention of doing so, in frustrating my wishes.
[Berlin 1969, 123]
Natural events on Crusoe's island might affect his choices but would not be classified as
"interventions" at all.
If we think of the doer as a consumer allocating fixed income between goods, then a "lump-sum"
income tax or subsidy would be an example of a ND intervention in contrast to an excise tax or subsidy
attached to particular uses or goods. The relationship between income and consumer choices is the
"income-consumption curve", so a ND intervention (e.g., a lump-sum change in income) is one that
does not shift the income consumption curve.6
5For instance, here is the helping conundrum that arises in education. This "learning paradox" was clearly posed by the
early twentieth century Socratic-Kantian Leonard Nelson:
"Here we actually come up against the basic problem of education, which in its general form points to the
question: How is education at all possible? If the end of education is rational self-determination, i.e., a
condition in which the individual does not allow his behavior to be determined by outside influences but
judges and acts according to his own insight, the question arises: How can we affect a person by outside
influences so that he will not permit himself to be affected by outside influences? We must resolve this
paradox or abandon the task of education." [Nelson 1949, 18-9]
6 In more general mathematical terms, suppose the decision problem is to maximize an objective function subject to some
constraints. An intervention would then be " non-distortionary" if it relaxed or tightened some constraints but did not affect
the first-order marginal conditions for optimization.
2



Let us now turn to yes-or-no decisions about undertaking a project or activity (e.g., making a certain
reform). Given the relationship between resources and yes-or-no decisions, a ND intervention is one
that affects the decision only by affecting the resources, not by changing the relationship between
resources and decisions. For instance, an unrestricted grant of resources would be ND but aid with
conditionalities would probably not be ND (unless the conditionalities were in effect vacuous). Non-
distortionary aid might make a worthwhile project possible while distortionary aid aims to make some
project "worthwhile."
Numerical Example: The development agency wants the doer to undertake a certain
project where the doer lacks a necessary resource. The resource has a value of 75 which
represents the alternative value of the resource without the project. There are two cases.
In the 1st case (top row) the benefit of the project for the doer is 100, and in the 2nd case
(2nd row) the benefit to the doer is 50 (although we could again take the total social gain
as 100 so the agency would still have reason to give aid). If the agency charges 75 for
the resource (say, with the cost paid out of benefits), the doer will undertake the project
in the first case but not the second. But suppose the resource is given for free as aid.
The resource-as-aid could be conditional on undertaking the project or could be
unconditional. This generates a 2 x 2 table of possibilities.
Table 1                      Conditional Aid         Unconditional Aid
Case 1:                       Project = Yes            Project = Yes
Benefit= 100                   Gain= 100                Gain= 100
Resource = 75                 Aid is "ND."              Aid is ND.
(but condition is pointless)  Agency gives aid.
Case 2:                       Project= Yes             Project = No
Benefit = 50                   Gain= 50                 Gain = 75
Resource = 75             Aid would not be ND.   Agency would probably not
Give aid or not?       give unrestricted aid.
To make the comparison with the distortionary versus non-distortionary (lump-sum)
taxes or subsidies, the conditional aid is like a distortionary subsidy to the yes-option
but not to the no-option. The unconditional aid is a non-distorting lump-sum subsidy
which could be applied to either option. The unconditional aid is thus ND but the
agency would not give unconditional aid in the 2nd case since the doer would cash in the
resource for a gain of 75 and the project would not be undertaken. The important case
of distorting aid is the aid in the 2nd case (private benefit = 50) when the aid is
conditional on undertaking the project. Then the conditionality "supplies motivation" to
change the "no" to a "yes" and is thus distorting.
In the remaining instance of conditional aid in the 1st case, the aid is conditional but is
ND because the condition does not actually change or distort the yes-or-no decision and
is thus pointless. Thus the conditional aid is "fully effective only when it does not
achieve anything... ." [Hirschman 1971, 204] Indeed there might be a negative
reactance effect on the part of the doer who bears the "insulting" conditionality to do
3



what the doer wanted to do anyway. The controversy, however, centers on the clear
case of distorting motivation (conditional aid in the 2nd case).
We have defined a ND intervention given the framing of a decision but much controversy arises from
different interpretations or frames for a decision. An optimistic observer might picture The doer as
being genuinely motivated to undertake a certain autonomy-enhancing action or reform, but that action
requires a certain amount of money. Hence the helper might provide the monev withou: strings
attached as ND help and then hopefully the action would be undertaken.
A pessimistic observer might offer a different way to frame the situation that would give a different
result. The doer is motivated to undertake the autonomy-enhancing action partly because otherwise the
doer would suffer certain consequences of not reforming. When the helper offers the nci-strings-
attached aid, then the aid could be used to soften or avoid the adverse consequences so t lie doer is no
longer as strongly motivated to undertake the action or reformii.
In Case 2, the helper might be inclined to offer the aid conditional on taking the action, but then the aid
is distortionary. The reform, which is typically hard to monitor, mighit not be performed very
effectively since the doer is undertaking it only because of the "supplied external motivation"-not
because of the doer's "own" motivation. Indeed, from a dynamic perspective, there is ar. incentive for
failure so that the doer will still qualify for the aid the next time around.' Charles Murray traces this
failure to: "The Law of Unintended Rewards. Any social transfer increases the net value of being in
the condition that prompted the transfer. ... The program that seeks to change behavior nmust offer an
inducement that unavoidably either adds to the attraction of. or reduces the penalties of engaging in, the
behavior in question." [Murray 1984, 212-5] In an actual situation, where the benefits are not directly
observable, the helper may not know if Case 1 or 2 applied.
Taking an analogy between aid for reform and a wage for labor. it is useful to review thc economic
analysis of a wage increase in terms of a substitution effect and an income effect. The wage increase
heightens the reward for labor so the substitution effect is an increase in labor offered. EIut if the labor
is motivated to get income for other purposes, then the wage increase allows the same income to be
received with less labor so the income effect is to decrease the labor offered. The two effects go in
opposite directions so their relative strengths will determine if the labor offered increases (upward
sloping supply curve) or decreases (backward bending supply curve).
Another useful model is the problem of moral hazard in insuranice. The action or reform in this case is
the set of precautions that one might take to avoid accidents. If those precautions are moitivated by the
adverse consequences of accidents that might otherwise lhappen and if those adverse consequences can
be covered by insurance payments, then complete insurance would remove the motivation to take
precautions. Thus insurance might increase the probability of accidents (since it removes the
motivation for the "reform" of taking precautions) and that is called "moral hazard." On the moral
hazard interpretation of Case 2, the unrestricted aid covers the downside of not taking th.- action so
non-action becomes the preferred option.
Let us return to the helping conundrum. If the doers have sufficient own-motivation to help themselves
then non-distortionary aid to supply the means would indeed help the doers to help themselves. But if
Testimony to this incentive is given by the worry about "punishing" successful reformers by not renewing aid.
4



the doers are motivated to help themselves primarily in order to avoid certain adverse consequences
and if unrestricted aid could itself alleviate those consequences, then the aid would subsidize the doers
not helping themselves. Thus the aid agencies and international finance institutions "should help
finance the costs of change-and should not cover the costs of not changing." [Stem 2001]
Once the helping conundrum is understood, there are essentially two possible paths that helpers can
take. One path might be called the direct or social engineering approach to "supply the motivation" to
undertake the reforms by imposing the distorting conditionality in order to receive the aid. This is the
most common approach in the "development assistance business." By supplying the motivation, the
helper essentially takes over "the driver's seat" in a principal-agent relationship to distort the doers'
motivation toward compliance and to monitor their compliance.8
The other path is our topic of helping theory, autonomy-compatible (e.g., non-distorting) modes of
helping people help themselves. This path is more indirect; motivation is to be found and fostered
rather than supplied by the helpers. Indeed, intrinsic, internal, or own motivation on the part of the
doers could not, by definition, be "supplied" by the helpers. Bought virtue is faux virtue. If the doers
are intrinsically motivated to undertake the action or project, then the external aid will be enabling
rather than "motivating."
Intrinsic or Own Motivation
There is now a large body of literature in psychology, sociology, and organizational behavior on
intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as well as the closely related notions of self-determination,
autonomy, and internal locus of causality.9 Although considerations of intrinsic motivation have
figured prominently in the Romantic critique'° of classical economics, the topic has until recently only
received sporadic treatment in economics literature." Bruno Frey's recent Not Just for the Money
[1997] is the first book-length treatment of the topic of intrinsic motivation in the economics literature.
In the literature on aid for economic development, a substantial body of research now questions the
effectiveness of conditionalities."2 What is the distinction between genuinely wanting to change or only
wanting to make certain changes because of various "carrots and sticks"? Conditionalities and aid
provide only external or extrinsic motivation; genuine change requires a more intrinsic motivation.
An intrinsically motivated activity is an activity carried out by individuals for its own sake. The
activity is an end in itself, not an instrumental means to some other end (such as satisfying biological
needs or "tissue deficits"). The factors that determine the meaning of "for its own sake" are usually
based on the self-identity of the person or persons carrying out the activity. An intrinsically motivated
activity might be accompanied by extrinsic motivators if the latter are not controlling and operate
8 It will be noted that we are unrealistically modelling the "doers" as a homogeneous group whereas much of the work in
development assistance is in reinforcing the reform-oriented doers against the non-reforming doers within a government.
This neglect of coalitional politics is deliberate. Outside a narrow category of stroke-of-the-pen reforms, more institutional
reforms require a broader consensus and a deeper "buy-in" than can be provided with aid bribes.
9 See Deci and Ryan 1985, Elster 1983, Lane 1991, Candy 1991, Kohn 1993, and Deming 1994.
10 See, for example, Ruskin 1985 (1862), and for a recent broad approach, see Lutz 1999.
" See Titmuss 1970, Arrow 1972, Scitovsky 1976, Hirsch 1976, Sen 1982, Schelling 1984, Akerlof 1984, Hirschman
1992, Kreps 1997, and Prendergast 1999.
12 See the discussion and references in World Bank 1998 and Killick et al. 1998.
5



quietly "in the background," i.e., if they do not take over the locus of causality. 13 For instance,
professors typically pursue their professional work for its own sake even though there is a salary and
other emoluments in the background. Indeed much of the story is concerned with the question of the
locus of causality for an activity. Autonomous activity has an internal locus of causality. A bribe
(carrot) or threat (stick) to get one to do what one would not otherwise do (given the resources)
switches one from an internal to an external locus of causality (reverses foreground and background);
the activity is then non-autonomous or heteronomous. The classical sins such as greed, envy, and pride
could be rendered in this simple framework as the cancerous growth of extrinsic motivation into
passions that take over the foreground of motivation."4
Much of what I will say about "internal" and "external" motivation will be a reformulation, if not a
translation, of older philosophical concepts into "modern" psychological terminology [see Maslow
1968 for a recent version]. There is a very old philosophical theme, often associated with the Stoics,
that divides the self into a higher, inner, and "noumenal" self or "soul" and a lower, empirical, and
phenomenal self. The lower self is typically under the influence of the passions and irrational impulses
and sees the world only darkly through a veil of opinion and prejudice while the higher self can at least
potentially be free of being controlled these external influences, and can be guided by critical reason
and motivated by autonomous volitions. Much of what will be said about "external motivation" can be
taken a modern version of the influences of the lower self, while "internal motivation" represents the
volitional side of the higher self.
The roots of intrinsic motivation such as an individual's self-identity (including the larger social units
with which the person identifies) are typically not open to intentional and deliberate choice. One
chooses according to who one is, but one does not directly choose who one is. These basic
"preferences" can change but more as an indirect "by-product of actions undertaken for other ends"
IElster 1983, 43] than as the result of deliberate actions. For instance, one cannot simply decide to be
"in love" and thus one cannot "buy love." This "can't-buy-love" situation limits the domain of the
market and the reach of extrinsic motivators. "Carrots and sticks" might buy or induce compliant
behaviors, but they cannot directly cause changes in the determinants of intrinsic motivation.
In economics, individual human action is modeled as the maximization of utility or preferences within
constraints given by technique, institutions, and economic resources. "Utility" subsumes all as the
common coin of human motivation. Since intrinsic motivation can be seen as another source of utility,
why is it important to treat it separately? There are three broad categories of reasons: (1) extrinsic
incentives and choice-determined characteristics are only "half of the story" so "economic" and
"rational choice" approaches to institutional design will be somewhat incomplete, (2) a resentment or
negative reactance to a threatened loss of autonomy may result from using extrinsic motivation to try to
"take control" of a person's behavior (which in turn affects performance), and (3) extrinsic motivation
may crowd out and eventually atrophy intrinsic motivation."5
See Deci and Ryan 1985 for the notion of locus of causality and Lefcourst 1976 for the notion of locus Cf control. We
use the notions of having an internal locus of causality (or control), self-deterrnination, intrinsicly or own-rmotivated activity,
and autonomy as being synonymous for our broad purposes.
14 See Hirschman 1977.
Is Frey's "crowding-out effect" is what Lane 1991 calls the "hidden cost effect" following the idea of the "hidden cost of
rewards" as in Lepper and Greene 1978.
6



Towards a Broader Helping Theory: Five Themes
The quintessential problem of autonomy-compatible intervention is how to "help people to help
themselves." So far, we have used a simple one-dimensional model of help, namely giving a certain
amount of aid in a "non-distortionary" manner (that is, "lump-sum" or unrestricted aid). Now we
consider the general case of intervention with includes technical cooperation, dialogue, and capacity-
building in addition to simple resource transfers. We leave behind simple precise models to develop
five themes that describe autonomy-compatible help in a more general and realistic setting.
Theme 1: Starting From Where the Doers Are
A utopian social engineering approach tries to impose a clean model solution where, if necessary, the
old solution is wiped away to make room for the new. To use a building metaphor, the old building is
torn down to create a cleared space, a tabula rasa, upon which the new model building can be
constructed. There is no need to take the characteristics of the old building into account-other than
what is required to tear it down. The alternative non-utopian incremental approach would be to repair
one part of the building at a time-which over time can still completely rebuild the building. To use a
repairing the ship metaphor, the engineering approach would put the ship into dry dock so that standard
techniques can be used to repair the ship independent of the conditions at sea. The incremental
alternative is, according to Otto Neurath's metaphor, to "repair the ship at sea" taking into account the
available techniques and the conditions at sea [See Elster et al. 1998]. Rebuilding the old, rather than
destroying it to engineer a new model from the cleaned slate, is one way of introducing the theme of
"starting from where the doers are." For the helpers to help the doers help themselves, the helpers have
to design their assistance taking into account the current starting point of the doers, not an imaginary
clean slate.
Theme 2: Seeing Through the Doers' Eyes
Since the goal is for the doers to help themselves, any assistance provided by the helpers needs to see
the situation through the doers' eyes. The doers' actions will be guided by their knowledge, conceptual
framework, values, and worldview, not those of the helpers. The strategy of help used by the helpers
needs to be based on an empathetic understanding of the doers' viewvpoint in order to be effective.
Theme 3: Helper Cannot Impose Change on Doers
This is the counter-thesis to the direct or social engineering approach. Transformative change comes
from the internally motivated self-activities of the doers. Carrots and sticks (e.g., aid conditionalities)
used by the "helpers" will distort the own-motivation of the doers, externalize their locus of causality,
and may produce conforming surface behavior and cunning resistance rather than transformation.
Theme 4: Help as Benevolence is Ineffective
Autonomy-compatible assistance is neither an imposition (theme 3) nor a gift (theme 4). Benevolent
charity helps people, but it does not help people help themselves. It promotes dependency, not
autonomy. The helpers are self-satisfied that their charity is helping others, but the doers are in the
humiliating and degrading position of not helping themselves with the resulting resentment and
thwarted self-reliance.
Theme 5: Doers in the Driver's Seat
This central theme is simply a restatement of the goal of the assistance, to have the doers helping
themselves. "Being in the driver's seat" is the metaphor for autonomous self-activity. The car
7



metaphor comports well with the other four themes. The car must: (1) start its journey from where
doer-driver is, (2) the vision of the road ahead is from the vantage point of the driver, (3) it would be
folly for guides (or "backseat drivers") to grab the steering wheel and try to drive, and (4) being driven
by someone else weakens self-reliance and self-esteem.
Helping Theory Applied to Development Assistance
Development Intervention as an "Agency" Relationship
We now focus on elaborating the five themes in the context of community and economic development.
The assumed setting is now that of an external development organization (the "helper") trying to help
economic development in a less-developed country (the "doers"). We are concerned with development
projects that involve changing human institutions, not with physical construction projects. We begin
with what might be the standard implicit or explicit model of the relationship between the development
organization and the client country, namely the principal-agent or agency relationship [e.g., see Killick
et al. 1998]. How can the development organization as principal, design a package of incentives-
carrots and sticks-to induce the desired actions on the part of the client country as agent?
The economic theory of agency" is one of the most sophisticated forms of the carrots-and-sticks
engineering approach to human affairs so it will be worthwhile to examine it in a development context.
For example, Killick [1998] applies agency language where an international financial institution (IFI)
is the "principal" and the developing country is the "agent."
The first mistake in this approach is the model itself. In an agency relationship, "one person [the agent]
acts for or represents another by [the] latter's authority" [Black 1968, entry under "Agency"]. Yet, the
client country has no such agency relationship to the development organization; the client country does
not have a legal or institutional role to act for or represent the development agency. In general, the
creditor-debtor relationship is not, in the legal sense, a principal-agent relationship but is a more
general contractual relationship. If we analogize with, say, the doctor-patient or lawyer-client
relationship, then it is the other way around. If the development organization is seen more as a "doctor
for countries" in a doctor-patient relationship, then it should be noted that the doctor is ordinarily
considered the agent,'7 not the principal. The doctor or the lawyer is supposed to use specialized
expertise and knowledge in the interests of the patient or client by the latter's authorization.
Leaving aside the tellingly mistaken characterization of the relationship, the development agency might
be viewed as a doctor, therapist, teacher, or helper who would promote certain changes in the patient,
client, learner, or doer. The standard tools are economic incentives such as loans on favorable terms or
grants, both only if certain conditions or "conditionalities" are satisfied. Here we see the second
dubious assumption in the standard relationship between development agency and client country-
namely the assumption that the desired changes (e.g., institutional development) are the objects of
direct choice rather than the indirect "by-products of other actions." There are, of course, certain
16 The phrases "principal-agent relation" and "agency relation" have been imported into economics [see Ross 1973, Stiglitz
1974, Campbell 19951 from legal theory but are then used to denote contractual relationships that are not agency relations in
the original legal sense. Agency relations tend to arise from large asymmetries in knowledge and monitoring ability so the
principal cannot contractually specify the detailed actions of the agent (e.g., doctor or lawyer). Instead the agent takes on a
legal or institutional fiduciary role involving the trust to "act for or in the interest of' the principal. Since information is
always imperfect and each party to a contract would like to influence the behavior of the other concerning unspecified
actions, economists have applied the "agency" phraseology to the general economic theory of contractual incentives.
1' See Arrow 1963 or Pauly 1980.
8



stroke-of-the-pen reforms that are within the domain of a government's deliberate action (e.g., striking
down a tariff, setting exchange rates, changing tax rates).
Institutional reforms lie at the opposite end of the simplicity-complexity spectrum by
comparison with currency devaluations: they are not for the most part amenable to
treatment as preconditions; donor agencies are liable to have difficulties in keeping
track of the extent of compliance; and such reforms are often imperfectly under the
control of the central authorities, take time, typically involve a number of agencies and
are liable to encounter opposition from well-entrenched beneficiaries of the status quo.
[Killick et al. 1998, 40]'8
The institutions, not to mention the mindsets, norms, and culture, of a country are based in part on the
country's collective self-identity. To metaphorically carry over the notions of intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation from an individual to the collectivity of people who make up a country, we might say that
the culture and basic institutional habits are expressions of "intrinsic motivation" based on the country's
self-identity. Short-term behaviors can be "bought" with sufficient extrinsic incentives to temporarily
override the more intrinsic incentives of governmental policy-makers, but that by itself is not
transformative in the sense of changing the institutional and cultural roots of long-term behavior.
The standard model of development "assistance" tends to be heteronomous, and therein lies its
ineffectiveness. Long-term economic transformation grows, in the last analysis, out of autonomous
activity. One way or another, a country must find the internal loci of causality necessary for
autonomous development. External development assistance-to "do no harm," not to mention to be
effective-must be autonomy-compatible.'9
Theme 1 Applied: Starting from Present Institutions
To be transformative, a process of change must start from and engage the present endowment of
institutions. Otherwise, the process will only create an overlay of new behaviors that is not sustainable
(without continual bribes or coercion). Yet this is a common error.
An unwillingness to start from where you are ranks as a fallacy of historic
proportions;.... It is because the lesson of the past seems to be so clear on this score,
because the nature of man so definitely confirms it, that there has been this perhaps
tiresome repetition throughout this record: the people must be in on the planning; their
existing institutions must be made part of it; self-education of the citizenry is more
important than specific projects or physical changes. [Lilienthal 1944, 198]
There a number of reasons why development interventions are often not designed to begin with
existing institutions. Revolutionaries and reformers oriented towards utopian social engineering [see
Popper 1962] aim to wipe the slate clean in order to install a set of "ideal" institutions. Any attempt to
evolve out of the current "flawed," "retrograde," or even "evil" institutions is viewed as only staining or
polluting the change process. For instance in the transitional economies such as Russia, the "leap over
the chasm" imposed by institutional shock therapy fell far short of the other side since people "need a
18 See Israel [1987] for a specificity spectrum much like this simplicity-complexity spectrum.
9 Previous (non-mainstream) work in the direction of autonomous and self-reliant development includes Goulet 1971,
Kohr 1973, Galtung et al. 1980, Gran 1983, Korten and Klauss (eds.) 1984, Verhagen 1987, Rahman 1993, Eade 1997,
Carmen 1996, Uphoffet al. 1998, Black 1999, and Carmen and Sobrado 2000.
9



bridge to cross from their own experience to a new way." [Alinsky 197 1, xxi] It will take the country
much longer to climb out of the chasm than it would have taken if a bridge over the chasm had been
built incrementally in the first place.
In spite of a rather "moralistic" outlook, Woodrow Wilson nevertheless made a case for an incremental
approach in his first inaugural address.
We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it might be modified, not as it
might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to write upon; and step by step we shall make
it what it should be, in the spirit of those who question their own wisdom and seek
council and knowledge, not shallow self-satisfaction or the excitement of excursion
whither they cannot tell.20
Similar considerations argue for an evolutionary and incremental strategy in poor countries rather than
trying to "jump" to new institutions.
The primary causes of extreme poverty are immaterial, they lie in certain deficiencies in
education, organization, and discipline.... Here lies the reason why development cannot
be an act of creation, why it cannot be ordered, bought, comprehensively planned: why
it requires a process of evolution. Education does not "jump"; it is a gradual process of
great subtlety. Organization does not "jump"; it must gradually evolve to fit changing
circumstances. And much the same goes for discipline. All three must evolve step by
step, and the foremost task of development policy must be to speed this evolution.
[Schumacher 1973, 168-9]
Given a choice between the momentum of bottom-up involvement in "flawed" reforms and top-down
imposition of what reformers see as "model" institutions, the "start from where the doers are" principle
would argue in favor of using knowledge and experience to work to improve "flawed reforms" using
the bottom-up approach to transformation-rather than throwing it overboard in favor of utopian social
engineering based on the false hope of imposed "first best models."2"
Theme 2 Applied: Seeing the World Through the Eyes of the Client
If a utopian social engineer could perform an "institutional lobotomy" to erase the present institutions,
then development advice would not need to be tailored to present circumstances. Generic advice
would suffice; one message would fit all blank slates. But failing that, it is necessary to acquire a
deeper knowledge of the present institutions. This is done by, in effect, learning to see the world
through the eyes of the policy-makers and people in the country.
An autonomy-compatible interaction between teacher and learner requires that the teacher have an
empathetic understanding with the student. If the teacher can understand the learning experience of the
student, then the teacher can use his or her superior knowledge to help the student. This help does not
take the form of telling the student the answer or solution, but of offering advice or guidance, perhaps
away from a dead-end path, to assist the student in the active appropriation of knowledge. The teacher,
20 Quoted in Braybrooke and Lindblom 1963, 71-2 in the context of their treatment of "disjointed incrementalism." Also
quoted in Hirschman 1973, 249.
21 For recent literature on institutional reforms in a world of "second bests," see Komesar 1994 and Rubin 1996.
10



according to Dewey's learner-centered pedagogy, must be able to see the world through the eyes of the
students and within the limits of their experience, and at the same time apply the adult's viewpoint to
offer guide posts. Similarly, in Carl Rogers' notion of client-centered therapy, the counselor needs to
enter the "internal frame of reference of the client" in order that assistance can be given that respects
and relies upon the actual capacity of the person.22
In the context of adult transformation, how does the educator/investigator find out about the client-
student's world? That is the role of Freire's notion of dialogue. In the non-dialogical notion of
education, the teacher determines the appropriate messages to be delivered or "deposited" in the
students, as money is deposited in a bank. Instead of ready-made best-practice recipes, Freire, like
Dewey, saw the educational mission as based on posing problems, essentially the problems that were
based on the students' world.
In contrast with the antidialogical and non-communicative "deposits" of the banking
method of education, the program content of the problem-posing method-dialogical
par excellence-is constituted and organized by the students' view of the world, where
their own generative themes are found. [Freire 1970, 1 01 ]
Yet often to development "professionals, it seems absurd to consider the necessity of respecting the
'view of the world' held by the people." [Freire 1970, 153-4]
[D]evelopment experience has shown that when external experts alone acquire, analyze,
and process information and then present this information in reports, social change
usually does not take place; whereas the kind of "social learning" that stakeholders
generate and internalize during the participatory planning and/or implementation of a
development activity does enable social change. [World Bank 1996, 5]
Theme 3 Applied: Transformation Cannot be Externally Imposed
Externally applied carrots and sticks can only be applied to behavior within the scope of deliberate
action. Transformation is the indirect byproduct of one's authentic activities, not the direct object of
choice. External incentives can buy "loving behavior," "assertions of belief," or "gestures of faith"-
but being in love, believing in a principle, and having a faith all come by the "grace" of transformation,
not by the vagaries of consumer choice.
This much seems clear: effective change cannot be imposed from outside. Indeed, the
attempt to impose change from the outside is as likely to engender resistance and
barriers to change, as it is to facilitate change. At the heart of development is a change
in ways of thinking, and individuals cannot be forced to change how they think. They
can be forced to take certain actions. They can be even forced to utter certain words.
But they cannot be forced to change their hearts or minds. [Stiglitz 1998]
22 Maurice Friedman [1960] emphasizes the importance of seeing through the eyes of the other in Buber's notion of
dialogue. "The essential element of genuine dialogue ... is 'seeing the other' or 'experiencing the other side.' [87] This
'inclusiveness' is of the essence of the dialogical relation, for the teacher sees the position of the other in his concrete
actuality yet does not lose sight of his own. [177] Particularly important in this relationship is what Buber has variously
called 'seeing the other,''experiencing the other side,''inclusion,' and 'making the other present.' This 'seeing the other' is not
... a matter of 'identification' or 'empathy,' but of a concrete imagining of the other side which does not at the same time lose
sight of one's own." [188-9]
11



The idea that one person cannot simply change a judgment or preference at the behest of :nother has an
old and venerable tradition. Indeed, Martin Luther's principle of liberty of conscience was one of the
root principles of the Reformation and one of the main sources of the theory of inalienable rights
(which placed limits on the reach of the market). It is impossible for a person to alienate his decision-
making power to the Church on matters of faith.
Furthermore, every man is responsible for his own faith, and he must see it for himself
that he believes rightly. As little as another can go to hell or heaven for me, so little can
he believe or disbelieve for me; and as little as he can open or shut heaven or hell for
me, so little can he drive me to faith or unbelief. [Luther 1942 (1522), 316]
Authorities, secular or religious, who try to compel belief can only secure external conformity.
Besides, the blind, wretched folk do not see how utterly hopeless and impossible a thing
they are attempting. For no matter how much they fret and fume, they cannot do more
than make people obey them by word or deed; the heart they cannot constrain, though
they wear themselves out trying. For the proverb is true, "Thoughts are free." WI-y then
would they constrain people to believe from the heart, when they see that it is
impossible? [Luther 1942 (1522), 316]
Development agencies that try to "buy" policy changes "cannot do more than make people obey them
by word or deed; the heart they cannot constrain, though they wear themselves out trying.'
The opposite to an agency's autonomy-compatible interaction with a client is a heteronomous (external
compulsion) intervention based on the theory that the coerced client will then "see the light" and
continue along the reformed path without further externally applied "carrots or sticks." This might be
called the "bait and switch theory." External incentives ("bait") will lead to a transformation and
switch-over to something akin to intrinsic incentives that will thereafter suffice. This strategy is not
impossible but it is unlikely to lead to sustainable changes.
Moreover, the method of awakening and enlisting the activities of all concerned in
pursuit of the end seems slow; it seems to postpone accomplishment indefinitely. But in
truth a common end which is not made such by common, free voluntary cooperation in
process of achievement is common in name only. It has no support and guarantee in the
activities which it is supposed to benefit, because it is not the fruit of those activities.
Hence, it does not stay put. It has to be continually buttressed by appeal to external, not
voluntary, considerations; bribes of pleasure, threats of harm, use of force. It has to be
undone and done over. [Dewey and Tufts, 1908, 304]
Development agencies often have a short time horizon so they tend to interpret the purchased outward
performance as evidence for sustainable change and long-term transformation. Thus the bait and
switch theory is constantly pseudo-verified and reapplied again and again by a development agency-
much as a manager may "buy" outward obedience in the "spot market" for compliant behaviors and
then interpret that as successful organizational development or capacity-building.
12



Moreover, we have noted that the attempt to buy or force transformation with "carrots and sticks" can
lead to the threat-to-autonomy effect-a negative reactance, resentment, and pushback. Dewey noted
that extrinsic incentives administered in a controlling manner would arouse the "instincts of cunning
and slyness." [1916, 26] McGregor saw that such incentives would lead to "passive acceptance" at best
and more likely to "indifference or resistance." [1960, 68]
Eventually the reliance on external "carrots and sticks" or "bait" can induce the atrophy effect when the
original intrinsic motivation dries up and the party becomes an aid-dependent "marionette" responding
only to external strings-a condition perhaps approximated in some aid-dependent countries. In this
case, the "bait-and-switch" strategy ends up being all bait and no switch.
Nor is it only a problem in incentives. Similar problems arise concerning the cognitive (as opposed to
incentive) elements in the client country's or doer's decision-making. The imposition of "beliefs" in the
form of "best practice" recipes can temporarily override local judgment but will probably not lead to
any sustainable change in conviction. This carries us to the activist pedagogy and the reasons why the
Socratic guide or Deweyan teacher does not simply give the "answers" (even assuming the "answers"
are available).
Learning is not finding out what other people already know, but is solving our own
problems for our own purposes, by questioning, thinking and testing until the solution is
a new part of our lives. [Handy 1989, 63]
Through direct observation and structured experiments, the learner is guided to actively rediscover and
reappropriate knowledge with ownership-which at the same time will be adapted to local
circumstances. This pedagogy puts the learner in the active role, i.e., "in the driver's seat."
Theme 4 Applied: Addams-Dewey-Lasch's Critique of Benevolence
We have focused mostly on how the help might not be autonomy-compatible by being an imposition
that is controlling. However, there is also a "soft" form of control through "gifts," paternalism, and
benevolence that is perhaps even more insidious.23 How can we differentiate those forms of help that
are compatible with the autonomy of the beneficiary from those forms that are paternalistic and
controlling? John Dewey developed a critique of oppressive benevolence, and Christopher Lasch
juxtaposed the "ethic of respect" to the "ethic of compassion" [Lasch 1995].
Dewey's thinking about the controlling aspects of paternalistic employers was prompted by the Pullman
Strike of 1894 and by the critique of Pullman's paternalism in the Chicago reformer Jane Addams'
essay "A Modern Lear" [1965], an essay that Dewey called "one of the greatest things I ever read both
as to its form and its ethical philosophy." [quoted by Lasch in Addams 1965, 176]
As its title suggests, Addams's essay was based on an extended analogy between the
relationship between King Lear and his daughter Cordelia and that of Pullman and his
workers. Like Lear, Addams suggested, Pullman exercised a self-serving benevolence
in which he defined the needs of those who were the objects of this benevolence in
23 In addition to being wary of "Greeks bearing gifts," Thoreau noted "If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to
my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for fear that I should have some of his good done to
me." [See Carmen 1996, 47]
13



terms of his own desires and interests. Pullman built a model company town, providing
his workers with what he took to be all the necessities of life. Like Lear, however, he
ignored one of the most important human needs, the need for autonomy. [Westbrook
1991, 89]
Jane Addams' Hull House in Chicago was one of the leading examples of settlement hout es in the turn-
of-the-century settlement movement [see Davis 1967]. The settlement workers by living with and
working with the poor tried to use an ethic of respect in contrast to the ethic of benevolerce
exemplified by the charity organizations of the day. Respect, starting with the self-respect of the poor,
is related to their working to improve their own affairs, not being a target for "betterment."
Self-respect arises only out of people who play an active role in solving their own crises
and who are not helpless, passive, puppet-like recipients of private or public services.
To give people help, while denying them a significant part in the action, contributes
nothing to the development of the individual. In the deepest sense it is not giving but
taking-taking their dignity. Denial of the opportunity for participation is the denial of
human dignity and democracy. It will not work. [Alinsky 1971, 123]
Dewey developed at some length his critique of "oppressive benevolence." According to Westbrook,
Dewey held that
self-realization was a do-it-yourself project; it was not an end that one individual could
give to or force on another. The truly moral man was, to be sure, interestecd in the
welfare of others-such an interest was essential to his own self-realization-bun: a true
interest in others lay in a desire to expand their autonomous activity, not in the desire to
render them the dependent objects of charitable benevolence. [Westbrook 1991, 46-7]
Too often social workers and reformers treated the poor as an inert or wayward mass to be improved or
bettered. An incapacity for beneficial self-activity was assumed to be part of the poor's condition so
reformers would treat them accordingly.
The conception of conferring the good upon others, or at least attaining it for them,
which is our inheritance from the aristocratic civilization of the past, is so deeply
embodied in religious, political, and charitable institutions and in moral teachings, that
it dies hard. Many a man, feeling himself justified by the social character of his ultimate
aim (it may be economic, or educational, or political), is genuinely confutsed or
exasperated by the increasing antagonism and resentment which he evokes, because he
has not enlisted in his pursuit of the "common" end the freely cooperative activities of
others. [Dewey and Tufts 1908, 303-4]
Aid granted out of benevolence without "carrots and sticks" has the adverse effect of reinforcing the
lack of self-confidence and doubts about one's own efficacy. Eleemosynary aid to relieve the
symptoms may create a "moral hazard" situation to weaken reform incentives and attenuate efforts for
positive change [see Maren 1997]. "It tends to render others dependent, and thus contradicts its own
professed aim: the helping of others." [Dewey and Tufts 1908, 387] This is the self-reinforcing cycle
14



of "tutelage"24 and dependency. Thus an autonomy-compatible interaction would work to establish the
conditions "which permit others freely to exercise their own powers from their initiative, reflection,
and choice." [Dewey and Tufts 1908, 302]
The best kind of help to others, whenever possible, is indirect, and consists in such
modifications of the conditions of life, of the general level of subsistence, as enables
them independently to help themselves. [Dewey and Tufts, 1908, 390125
Otherwise the prayer of a freeman would be to be left alone, and to be delivered, above
all, from "reformers" and "kind" people. [Dewey 1957, 270]
This problem suggests the possibility that the post-WWII development assistance effort from the
developed countries to the developing world has created a massive generalized moral hazard problem
(quite aside from any non-benevolent self-serving motives of the developed countries). Surely the
Marshall Plan, in many ways, provided a model for later development efforts. Yet it too contained the
seeds of moral hazard. Robert Marjolin, the French architect of the Marshall Plan, noted in a 1952
memo that continuing American aid could have precisely that effect.
Although American aid has been a necessary remedy over a period, and will continue to
be for a time, one is bound to acknowledge that in the long run it has had dangerous
psychological and political effects. ... It is making more difficult the task of the
governments of western Europe trying to bring about a thorough economic and financial
rehabilitation. The idea that it is always possible to call on American aid, that here is
the ever-present cure for external payments deficits, is a factor destructive of willpower.
It is difficult to hope that, while this recourse continues to exist, the nations of western
Europe will apply, for a sufficient length of time, the courageous economic and
financial policy that will enable them to meet their needs from their own resources
without the contribution of external aid. [Quoted in: Marjolin 1989, 241]
Fortunately the demands made by the Korean War resulted in the winding down of American aid. If
the industrial countries of western Europe faced moral hazard problems in the short-lived Marshall
Plan, one can understand the extent of the moral hazard problem in developing countries that face well-
established professional aid-providers in the developed countries who need to constantly reinvent ways
to "move the money" to justify their own jobs with the accompanying prestige, salary, and benefits.
Theme 5 Applied: Applying An Activist Philosophy of Social Learning
This central theme of "country in the driver's seat" results from applying the activist philosophy of
education to social learning. Instead of being externally imposed, transformation can only come from
within as a result of activities carried out by an individual-or a larger organization, government, or
24 In 1784, Immanual Kant wrote a short but influential pamphlet What is Enlightenment? "Enlightenment is man's release
from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another.
Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without
direction from another. Sapere aude! 'Have the courage to use your own reason!'-that is the motto of enlightenment." [See
Schmidt 1996]
25 This is perhaps the best one-sentence version of helping theory. All quotations from Dewey and Tufts [19081 are from
the chapters written by Dewey.
15



country. Thus any intervention on the part of the development agency should be autonomv-compatible.
While compliant behavior can be elicited from the outside, a country must "be in the driver's seat" in
order to undergo a sustainable transformation. Similarly, "ownership" of an outcome comes from the
outcome being the fruits of the activities of the individual, organization, or country, not from being a
gift or an imposition.26 Development assistance should focus on changing the institutional matrix of
policy-making (i.e., the local "intrinsic motivation") which is a more subtle and longer tern affair,
indeed a "by-product of other actions." Social learning resulting from an active learning strategy will
cut deeper into the institutional matrix than will passively acquired doctrines.
If the client country should take the initiative and be in the driver's seat then how should a development
agency initiate a project? One strategy is expressed in Schumacher's favorite slogan "Find out what the
people are doing and help them to do it better" or in the slogan "Only jump on board moving trains."
Look for the positive changes already starting to take place in the underlying institutions (a "moving
train") and then apply development incentives ("jump on board") to strengthen those pre-existing
tendencies. The development aid should not be controlling in the sense that the train should be moving
anyway (i.e., by virtue of the country's "own motivation"). That is, the "moving train" should not be
extrinsically motivated as a means to get the aid. If no trains are moving, then motion induced by
"bribes" is unlikely to transform the underlying institutions.
There is a real danger that a development intervention, instead of acting as a catalyst or midwife to
empower change in an autonomy-compatible manner, will only short-circuit people's learning
activities and reinforce their feelings of impotence. The external incentives may temporarily
overpower the springs of action that are native to the institutional matrix of the country, but that will
probably not induce any lasting institutional reforms. As these reforms were extemally imposed rather
than actively appropriated by the country, there would be little "ownership" of the reforms.
Compliance might be only perfunctory; the "quick" transplant might soon wither and die---to then be
reinstalled" in an "improved" form by the next generation of agency task managers.
Knowledge-Based Development Assistance: Methodology
The Standard Theory-in-Use
The problem is that of a development agency trying to help some group, the "doers of development,"27
in need of development assistance (e.g., policy-makers and government officials in a developing
country). The agency is attempting to provide knowledge-based assistance (in contrast to only
financial or material aid). One prominent case in point is the vision of the World Bank operating as a
knowledge bank.
26 Success for a leader or, in general, a helper may be paradoxical in the sense that the helper creates the situation where the
doers take success as their own accomplishment [see Edmunson 1999 for a practical overview of such paradoxes]. Charles
Handy notes these results after the doers internalize the activity as their own. "Internalization ... means that the individual
recipient of influence adopts the idea, the change in attitude or the new behaviour, as his own. Fine. He will act on it
without pressure. The change will be self-maintaining to a high degree. ... The successful psychotherapist is the one whose
patients all believe they cured themselves-they internalized the therapy and it thereby became truly an integral part of
them. Consultants suffer much the same dilemma of the psychotherapist-the problem of internalization. If they wish the
client to use the right solution with full and lasting commitment then they must let him believe it is his solution." [1993,
145] This echoes the notion of the Taoist ruler who governs in such a way that when the task is accomplished, the people
will say "We have done it ourselves." [Lao-Tzu, Te-Tao Ching, Ch. 17]
27 See Wolfensohn 1999.
16



The main problem in knowledge-based development assistance is the standard, default, or naive
theory-in-use (regardless of the "espoused theory") that the agency has "development knowledge" in
the form of answers that need to be taught, transmitted, and transferred to the target population of
trainees. That methodology is taken as so obvious that the focus is simply on how to "deliver" the
knowledge, how to "scale up" the knowledge transmission in the client country, and how to measure
and evaluate the impact of these efforts.
This "standard view" of knowledge-based development assistance is based on the pedagogy which sees
the learners as essentially passive containers into which "knowledge" is poured. It is the theory that
Paulo Freire called the "banking" theory since teaching was seen as depositing knowledge into a bank
account [1970]. The standard theory is also captured by the old Chinese metaphor of help as "giving
out fish."
Ownership Problems
In accordance with the principle of people owning the fruits of their labor, the doers will have
ownership when they are in the driver's seat (indeed, the description as "doers" would not be accurate if
they had a passive role). In the standard view of knowledge-based assistance, the helpers are teachers
or trainers taking the active role to transmit "knowledge for development" to the passive but grateful
clients. "Development" is seen almost as a technical process like building an airport or dam with the
agency having "technical social engineering knowledge" to be transmitted to the clients.
Since this "knowledge for development" is offered below cost or for free as a "global public good," it is
quite tempting for the developing countries to accept this sort of knowledge-based development
assistance. There are even positive incentives such as extensive travel, pleasant accommodations,
generous per diems, salary supplements, and other vacation-like benefits offered to those who
cooperate to undergo the training. From the supply side of training, management pushes task managers
to "show results"-particularly results that can be observed and evaluated back at headquarters (such as
the head count in training programs). The task managers need to show that they have "given out a
certain number of fish" or, even better, that they have helped set up a "fish distribution system" to scale
up the delivery of the knowledge to the client country. Thus the managers need to "take ownership" of
the process of assistance in order to "show results" and the clients are agreeably induced to go along.28
This is tutelage, not active learning; it develops dependency, not autonomy or self-direction.
Self-Efficacy Problems
The standard view of delivering knowledge for development leads to an impairment in the self-
confidence, self-esteem, and self-efficacy of the clients. The message behind the "main messages" is
that the clients are unable to organize their own learning process and to find out these things in their
own way. They need to be "helped"-to be shown the way. But the way in which the standard
methodology "shows them the way" only reinforces the clients' passivity and perceived lack of self-
efficacy.
28 McClintock [1982] tells the story in a broader historical context that "as passionate causes wracked human
affairs .. people found it hard to maintain restraint, they ceased to be willing merely to help in the self development of their
fellows; they discovered themselves burdened, alas, with paternal responsibility for ensuring that their wards would not
falter and miss the mark... .Pressures-religious, political, social, economic, humanitarian pressures-began to mount upon the
schools, and it soon became a mere matter of time before schools would be held accountable for the people they produced."
[60; quoted in Candy 1991, 32]
17



Economists think of an "externality" as an effect that one party has on another outside of a market
interaction. But there is another use of the word "externality" in psychology that is also re evant.
"Externality" is the psychological condition of seeing whatever happens to oneself as havi ng external
causes. The locus of control over one's life is external; one's own actions are seen as being ineffectual.
At best, there is only a highly circumscribed sphere of personal or mental life where one nr ight be able
to exercise some internal locus of control. Externality leads to a condition of learned help essness,
apathy, and fatalism. In contrast, "internality" is the condition of seeing one's actions as having a real
effect-of having an internal locus of control over what happens to oneself.29
The conditions of externality and internality each tend to be self-reinforcing. Externality [leads to
resignation and fatalism so individuals will not make a concerted effort to change their con-dition, little
will thus change, and their fatalism will be confirmed in a continuing vicious circle. If, however,
individuals believe their efforts will make a difference, then they are more likely to make a concerted
effort and thus they are more likely to succeed so their internality may be confirmed in a v rtuous
circle.
The poor already have a history of ineffectual action to better their condition, so any kind of assistance
that reinforces that perceived inability to help themselves is simply the wrong kind of assistance, no
matter how "well-intended."
Cognitive Dependency Problems
Self-efficacy or the lack of it is usually considered as a matter of volition but a similar prollem arises
with cognition. A party might lack self-confidence in their own intelligence, judgment, ar!d other
cognitive skills in addition to lacking self-confidence about the efficacy of their actions. In an extreme
state of dependency, they might be like a marionette not only in their "actions" but also in their
opinions, views, and "knowledge." This cognitive aspect of dependence is clearly very relevant to
understanding the detrimental forms of "knowledge-based development assistance."
With the standard methodology of knowledge-based assistance, the "best learners" are often the most
marionette-like (or perhaps simply the most ambitious) trainees who quickly learn the new jargon to
parrot the main messages. Those "best learners" are then qualified to staff the local missions or
missionary outposts that are the staging areas and repeater stations for scaling up the transmission of
the main messages to others in the target population-all in the name of "capacity building." Those
local mission organizations might also be the gatekeepers for other aid and resources flow/ Ing from the
development agency to the client country.
The cognitively dependent recipients of the main messages will also play a role in perpetu3lting the
dynamics of stifling critical reason in favor of bureaucratic "reason" in the development agencies. As
such clients have become cognitively dependent, they would be distressed if they should lear the
"authorities" arguing among themselves about "development knowledge" and development strategies.
They are accustomed to being told the "best practices" to follow, so it weakens their faith 1 n the
prestigious authorities with the global purview to determine "best practices" if there is an) public
disagreement. How can the patient have faith in the doctors if the patient is exposed to arguments
among the doctors about the best treatment?
29 See Chapter 14 on "Localness" in Senge 1990; Chapter 9 on "Self-attribution: market influences" in Lane 1991; or
Bandura 1995.
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Moral Hazard Problems
The problem of reinforcing a perceived lack of cognitive and volitional self-efficacy is closely related
to what are called the "moral hazard" aspects of traditional aid and charity. The possibility of moral
hazard arises when people are shielded from the effects of their own actions as when over-insurance
leads people to act carelessly failing to take normal precautions.
Benevolent charity in the form of knowledge-based assistance as well as other forms of charity softens
the incentives for people to help themselves. If one analogizes between "taking normal precautions to
prevent accidents" and "taking normal actions to help oneself' then morally hazardous over-insurance
is analogous to forms of assistance that soften the incentives of self-activity and impair autonomy. In
the insurance example, the limit case of no insurance (which means complete self-insurance) certainly
"solves" the problem of moral hazard since the individual then has full incentives to take precautions to
prevent accidents. Yet the "no insurance" option is not optimal; it amounts to throwing out the baby of
risk pooling and diversification in order to get rid of the bathwater of moral hazard. Nor is there any
first best solution of complete insurance without moral hazard. There are partial solutions in the form
of co-payments and deductibles so that the insured party retains some risk and thus incentive to take
normal precautions.
In a similar manner, the extreme of "no assistance" could be seen as the limit case of autonomy-
compatible assistance. It certainly "solves" the problem of softened incentives for self-help but it
foregoes forms of positive assistance that might be autonomy-compatible. The idea of co-payments
carries over to the idea of partially matching funds from the clients as a commitment mechanism to
show that they are committed on their own account to the learning programs. The idea of deductibles
carries over to the concept of second-stage funding where the doer shows commitment by funding the
first stage of a project.
Types of Development Knowledge
Universal versus Local Knowledge
So far the focus has been on the standard methodology of knowledge-based assistance (transmitting
development knowledge from agency to clients) and how that methodology undercuts the ownership,
self-efficacy, self-direction, and capacity-building efforts of the developing countries. The standard
methodology is, however, also flawed in its implicit assumptions about the nature of crucial
development knowledge.
Can a money bank also function as a "knowledge bank"? Money travels better than knowledge.
General knowledge is knowledge that holds across countries, cultures, and times; local knowledge
takes account of the specifics of place, people, and time. "Every man is mortal" is general knowledge,
while "Every vegetarian is a foreigner" is local knowledge in Mongolia. A "best practice" might work
well in some countries but fail miserably when recommended in other contexts. One size may not fit
all. In questions of institutional development, it is very difficult to know a priori just how general is a
"best practice." Global "best practices" usually need to be locally reinvented.
The significance of this point of view is that contrary to the simplistic use of the term by
many economists, there is, in principle, no such thing as diffusion of best practice. At
best, there is only the diffusion of best practices, practices that evolve in the course of
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their diffusion. Contrary to popular wisdom, there are times when it pays to reinvent the
wheel! [Cole 1989, 117]
Prudent counsel is to scan globally for best practices but to test them locally since local adaptation
often amounts to reinventing the "best practice" in the new context. Scan globally; reinvent locally.
Many foreign experts have painfully discovered that the "devil is in the (local) details." It .s the local
component of knowledge that requires adaptation-which in turn requires the active participation of
those who know and understand the local environment. Local adaptation cannot be done by the
passive cognitively dependent recipients of "developmen-t knowledge": it must be done by the "doers of
development" in the course of their self-activity.
There are two points here that need to be teased apart: the necessity that knowledge be made locally
applicable and that the adaptation be done by the local "doers of development" (not given as a gift or
imposed as a conditionality from the outside). It is by the local selection, assimilation, and adaptation
of knowledge that local doers "make it their own." Even by taking a machine or device apart and
putting it back together again, one can more "make it one's own" even if there is little adaptation or
redesign. Thus it is not a matter of being "open" or "closed" to outside knowledge (as in much of the
globalization debate); it is a matter of being open to outside knowledge in a way that reaffirms one's
autonomy. For Gandhi, this was intellectual swara; (self-rule or autonomy). "I do not want my house
to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown
about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet" [Quoted in Datta 1961,
120] Only by remaining "on one's feet" from an intellectual standpoint can the local doers have the
self-confidence to select, assimilate, and adapt the external knowledge-instead of being overwhelmed
and rendered intellectually dependent and subservient.
Considerable effort is required to adapt development knowledge to local conditions and culture. Policy
research institutes (think tanks) are examples of local institutions that can play that important role. In
the developed countries, think tanks have proliferated and have become important agents t3 introduce
and adapt new policy initiatives. Think tanks or similar research institutions are no less needed to
transplant social innovations to new contexts. The Japanese use a metaphor based on the gardening
technique called nemawashi of slowly preparing and wrapping each root of a tree in order to transplant
it.30 The chances of a successful transplant are much larger than if the tree is pulled up in one place and
planted in another.
When advocating a certain type of organization (e.g.. local policy research institutes), it is necessary to
indicate what is not being advocated. In the relationship between the center (e.g., multilateral
development agency) and the periphery (e.g., developing country), there may be certain organizations
in the local country that are "legitimized" not by their role in the country but by their role as local
gatekeeper for the central authority. The center judges the local organization by its ability to faithfully
clone or parrot the "universal" messages from the center, not by the organization's ability to adapt the
experiences of others to the local situation and to thus earn an embedded legitimacy in the country.
If anyone in the center should doubt the applicability of the central messages, then the local
accommodating elite will always be more than willing to supply positive "local feedback" about the
applicability of the central messages-which also serves to vouchsafe the intermediary role of the local
30 See Morita 1986, 158.
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counterpart elite as "gatekeepers" for the resources and influence emanating from the center. This
mutual reinforcement locks in the relationship so the center ends up having little transformative effect
on the more embedded and indigenous local structures, all the while receiving positive feedback on
"the wonderful job it is doing." In some cases, the international agency even hires (directly or through
the local counterpart) a public relations firm to publicize "Potemkin villages" so that the rest of the
world will also hear about "the wonderful job it is doing."
Those in the center who are legitimated in their expertise, prestige, and privileges by the "universality"
of their messages are disinclined to recognize limitations or subtleties in the local applicability of their
"technical expertise." Novel complexity, genuine uncertainty, conflict of values, unique circumstances,
and structural instabilities are all down played or ignored since they might diminish the perceived
potency of the center's expertise and undercut the client's faith in that potency. The client often wants
the child-like security and comfort of being in the hands of the professional expert who will solve the
perplexing problems.3" Thus the center and periphery may well agree on establishing a "transmission
belt" between the "wholesale" source and the local "retailers" for all the universal expert messages and
best practice recipes, i.e., the standard knowledge-transmission methodology. These are some of the
strong institutional forces to under-appreciate the subtleties of local knowledge, to hamper the growth
of autonomous client ownership, and to stymie the development of indigenous local knowledge
institutions.
Codified versus Tacit Knowledge
Explicit or codified knowledge is knowledge that can be spoken, written, and codified to be saved on a
computer disk or transmitted over a telephone line. But we know more than we can say. We know
how to ride a bike, to recognize a face, or to tell a grammatical sentence in our native language, but we
would be hard put to turn this knowledge into explicit or codified knowledge to archive in a database
for dissemination over the Internet. Michael Polanyi [1962] pioneered the distinction between tacit (or
personal) and explicit knowledge in philosophy of science, and the distinction has since proven
important to understand problems in the transfer of technologies, not to mention the "transfer" of
institutions.32
There is much more to a technological system than can be put in an instruction book. The same holds
afortiori for "social technologies" or institutions. In a codified description of a "best practice" case
study, the uncodified tacit knowledge is often "the rest of the iceberg."33 Some tacit knowledge might
be transformed into codified knowledge [see Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995] so that it could be transferred
by conventional methods. But the remaining tacit knowledge needs to be transmitted by special
methods such as apprenticeship, secondments, imitation, twinning relations, and guided learning-by-
doing. These methods of transferring tacit knowledge will be called "horizontal" methods of
knowledge transfer-in contrast to "vertical" methods where knowledge can be codified, transmitted to
a central repository or library, and then retransmitted to students.
31 See Schon's treatment [1983] of the technical expert in contrast with reflective practitioner.
32 See Ryle 1945-6 for the earlier distinction between knowing how and knowing that, Oakeshott 1991 for a treatment of
practical knowledge versus technical knowledge, Schon 1983 for a related treatment of professional versus instrumental
knowledge, Marglin 1990 on techne versus episteme, and Scott 1998 on metis versus episteme/techne (see p. 425 on the
terminological differences with Marglin's usage).
33 Even the codified part may suffer from the "Rashomon effect" described in Schon 1971.
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The tacit component in local or general development knowledge is best learned through "horizontal"
methods such as study tours, cross-training, and twinning. International development agencies have
the perspective to know the success stories and thus to fruitfully play a match-making, facilitating, and
brokering role in horizontal learning-not a training role.
Implications for "Knowledge Bank" as Storehouse or as Brokerage
A development agency as a knowledge bank faces a choice; should it pursue the library-storehouse
model or the knowledge-brokerage model? In the brokerage model, knowledge still needs to be
catalogued but it is primarily the second-order knowledge of where to find the how-to knciwledge. To
analogize with web terminology, the storehouse model stores the documents while the broker model
stores the pointers. Since the storehouse model focuses on documents, it specializes in codified
knowledge available at the agency while the broker model focuses on codified pointers to sources of
knowledge and experience (which could be codified or tacit) throughout the world (including the
agency itself). In terms of pedagogy, the storehouse model sees the agency as the teacher transferring
knowledge from its storehouse to the passive student/client. The broker model sees the client in the
more active role of scanning for knowledge and relevant experience, and the agency in the more
intermediary midwife role of assisting in that search by helping to frame the questions and apply
experience in locating relevant sources.
The difference between the models should not be overdrawn. The storehouse model would not
suppress other knowledge sources or rule out referrals, but there is a very real difference in emphasis.
It will make considerable difference which model is the actual working model providing the strategic
direction for the development agency as a knowledge bank. But the approach of bureaucratic reason is
to "do both models" and thus to poorly implement the difficult brokerage model which does not glorify
the role of "experts" in the center.
As the information revolution rolls into the 21"t century, codified knowledge will more and more
approximate the theoretical limit of a free non-rivalrous good. Clients will have access to vast
storehouses of codified knowledge, and the agency's own storehouse will increasingly pale in
comparison. The scarce knowledge will be that of the reflective and experienced practitioners
wherever they are around the world. On the broker model, the knowledge bank would be a central
clearing house in that subtle form of professional expertise (which cannot be downloaded over a phone
line). It would play a key global role in putting those who have acquired practical development
knowledge at the disposal of those who are willing and able to learn.
Knowledge-Based Development Organizations
Introduction: A "Church" versus a Learning Organization
In the modern world it is now commonplace to accent the importance of "intellectual capital" and
"knowledge management." Most organizations want to be seen as "learning organizations." Yet many
old habits persist that are directly opposed to learning and to the advancement of knowledge. The new
rhetoric of "learning" is applied as a veneer onto a church-like or Party-like organization proselytizing
its own messages.
We have so far considered questions about the methodology of knowledge-based development
assistance and the subtleties introduced by different types of development knowledge. Now we focus
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on the organization or agency involved in knowledge-based development assistance.34 How can such
an agency function as a learning organization? The question will be approached by considering some
of the major roadblocks in the way of organizational learning.
Roadblock to Learning #1: Branded Knowledge as Dogma
To put it simply, the basic problem is that in spite of the espoused model of a "learning organization,"
the theory-in-use of a development agency is often a model of a "development church" giving
definitive ex cathedra "views" on all the substantive questions. As with the dogmas of a church, the
brand name of the organization is invested in its views. Once an "Official Agency View" has been
announced (substitute for "Agency" the name of the relevant development institution), then to question
an Agency View is an attack on the Agency itself and on the value of its franchise, so new learning at
the cost of old Agency Views is not encouraged. Thus when licensing an Agency View, the
authorities need to have what Milton called the "grace of infallibility and incorruptibleness"35 since any
subsequent "learning" would be tantamount to disloyalty.
When the Agency takes Official Views, then the discussion between the agency staff and the clients is
a pseudo-dialogue since the agency staff are not free to unilaterally change Official Views (just as
missionaries are not free to approve local variations in Church dogmas) or to get a project approved
that departs substantially from those views. The slogan is something like: "Give the clients an inch of
nuance, and they'll take a mile of status quo." [Kanbur and Vines 2000, 101] The clients are like Henry
Ford's Model T customers who were free to choose any color so long as it was black. The clients who
wish to receive assistance are free to "learn" and to "make up their own minds" so long as they do so in
conformity with Official Views.
There is little motivation for the staff to actively appropriate or understand any deeper rationale for the
Views since they must espouse the Official Views to the clients in any case. The views are generally
not those that the individual staff members individually decided upon based on evidence or
argumentation. In project design, the herd instinct takes over. If a project manager designs a project in
conformity with Official Views and the project fails, then the individual could hardly be faulted for
being a good team player.
Debate by agency staff publicly aired outside the agency on its Official Views is to be frowned upon.
The reasoning is standard: parents should not argue in front of the children; doctors should not debate
in front of the patients. There can be debate within the confines of the Party but when a decision is
made, then the members must publicly adhere to the Party Line. The church or Party model fits
perfectly with the standard "dissemination" or transmission belt methodology of knowledge-based
development assistance. The agency has the best "knowledge for development" and it is to be
transmitted through various forms of aid-baited proselytization to the authorities in the developing
world.
What is the alternative "ecology of knowledge"? The organization of science provides the paradigm
example where the open and public contestation of ideas and criticism of conjectures is essential.
Criticism of our conjectures is of decisive importance: by bringing out our mistakes it
makes us understand the difficulties of the problem which we are trying to solve. This
34 See also Ellerman 1999.
3 See Morley 1928, 218.
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is how we become better acquainted with our problems, and able to propose more
mature solutions: the very refutation of a theory-that is, of any serious tentative
solution to our problem-is always a step forward that takes us nearer to the truth....
Since none of [the theories] can be positively justified, it is essentially their critical and
progressive character-the fact that we can argue about their claim to solve our
problems better than their competitors-which constitutes the rationality of science.
[Popper 1965, vii]
"[A]mong contemporary social arrangements the modem Western university is the main one that has
endeavored to make intellectual criticism and innovation a legitimate and regular aspect of the
prevailing social order." [Moore 1972, 91] The university does not set itself up as an arbiter of truth,
but as an arena within which contrary theories can be examined and can collide in open debate. The
organization does not itself have Official Views or "messages" on the questions of the day-and thus it
does not need a special department to monitor and control the propagating of Official Views.
When an agency takes Official Views on questions or considers its views as branded knowledge, then
the genuine collision of adverse opinions and the rule of critical reason will tend to give way to the rule
of authority and bureaucratic reason within the hierarchy of the organization (e.g., the "Soviet Theory
of Genetics" or the "University of Utah Theory of Cold Fusion"). The authorities in the organization
naturally decide the Official Views of the organization and would tend to shut off or "embargo" any
feedback loops that might question the previous "Official Views" and thus might subtract from the
"franchise value" of the "brand name." Learning from errors which involves changing "Official Views"
and modifying "branded knowledge" is minimized so the organization tends to function more as a
secular church than as an open learning organization-regardless of the espoused theory.
The church/Party model of proselytizing directly contradicts autonomous or self-directed learning in
the client countries. The project manager from the agency wants the clients to "learn" so long as they
learn "the right thing." The gardener wants only her own seeds to grow; all else are weeds. Any
genuinely self-directed learning process in the client country might veer off in the "wrong direction"
which the project manager could not support. The project manager would return to headquarters as a
failure without a project. Therefore the flow of knowledge must be managed. The clients must be kept
from being distracted by non-sanctioned opinions. The standard transmission-belt methodology of
dissemination is thus a corollary of the church/Party model.
Roadblock to Learning #2: Funded Assumptions as Dogma
Why is it so necessary for a development agency to take an Official View on the One Best Way to
solve a development problem? One common answer is that a development agency is not a university;
the agency puts money as loans or grants behind projects based on various assumptions. University
professors do not "put their money where their mouth is" so they are free to debate questions forever.
Once an agency has committed significant resources to certain assumptions, then it is time to "fall in
line" and support the funded assumption.
There are obvious bureaucratic reasons why individual project managers and their superiors would like
a funded project assumption to be treated as "gospel" but they are not reasons why the whole institution
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should take such a stand. The commitment of funds and prestige even seems to alter perceptions.36 For
instance, subjective assessments of winning probabilities tend to increase after bettors at a race track
have placed their bets. But horses do not run faster when bets are riding on them. Theories are
corroborated by evidence, not by commitments of funds. Many businesses have come to grief because
managers would not revisit strategies after initial costs were sunk. In view of the record of
international development aid, there is little support for the similar practice of seeing project
assumptions as hardening into gospel because of the commitment of funds.
Roadblock to Learning #3: "Social Science" as Dogma
Today, "science" has long since replaced religious authority (the "Church") as the source of dogmas
that one can appeal to without further reason or corroboration. That style of argumentation completely
misrepresents the scientific method, not to mention the role of critical reason, but it is none the less
quite common. The all-too-human factors that previously led to an appeal to church dogma have not
suddenly disappeared in today's scientific age so one should expect the appeal to "science" to be
thoroughly abused. This is nowhere more true than in the social sciences [see Andreski 1972].
Economics is the "rooster ruling the roost" in the social sciences, so one should expect much to be
passed off in the name of "economics." Yet many of the theses imposed by bureaucratic power as the
"Truths of Economics" would not pass without serious challenge in any open scientific forum-
particularly when one goes beyond academic model building to policy applications.37
It is particularly unfortunate when a Tayloristic "One Best Way" (OBW) mentality creeps into
development policy-making in the name of "science." The problems of the developing and transition
countries are much too complex to yield to formulaic "best practices" and "magic bullets." Many
different approaches need to be tried on an experimental basis, so when a major development agency
stakes its reputation on the "One Best Way" then the development effort as a whole is impoverished.
Roadblock to Learning #4: The Rage to Conclude
Hirschman has often noted the problems created in developing countries by the tendency that Flaubert
ridiculed as la rage de vouloir conclure or the rage to conclude.38 But the same attitude is rampant in
development agencies. Indeed, this is another self-reinforcing lock-in between development agencies
and their client countries.
[Policy-makers] will be supplied with a great many ideas, suggestions, plans, and
ideologies, frequently of foreign origin or based on foreign experience....Genuine
learning about the problem will sometimes be prevented not only by the local policy-
makers' eagerness to jump to a ready-made solution but also by the insistent offer of
help and advice on the part of powerful outsiders.... [S]uch practices [will] tend to cut
short that "long confrontation between man and a situation" (Camus) so fruitful for the
achievement of genuine progress in problem-solving. [Hirschman 1973, 239-40]
36 When predictions fail, then skewed perceptions and rationalizations are a likely outcome. See Festinger et al. 1956,
Festinger 1957, Part It in Lane 1991, and Elster 1983. See Akerlof and Dickens 1982 for an economic treatment of
cognitive dissonance.
37 One example that springs to mind is the role in the Russian reform debacle of the Harvard economic wunderkinder and
the western agencies all of whom "of course" knew how to "install" the institutions of a market economy.
38 See Hirschman 1973, 238-40.
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The questions that face development agencies about inducing economic and social development are
perhaps the most complex and ill-defined questions facing humankind. Donald Schon [11971, 1983]
noted the novel complexity, genuine uncertainty, conflict of values, unique circumstances, and
structural instabilities that plague such problems of social transformation and that precluci definitive
blueprint solutions. Yet one must marvel at the tendency of the major development agencies to rush
forward with universal39 "best practices"-a tendency based not on any methods resembling social
science but on a bureaucratic need to maintain elite prestige by "having an answer" for the client. In
contrast, every field of science is populated by competing theories, and scientists do not f-eel the need to
artificially rush to closure just to "have an answer."
Consider, for example, the complex problem of fighting corruption. Economists might approach the
topic by trying to minimize government-imposed discretionary regulations which present rent-seeking
opportunities to officials who might offer to relax a restriction for appropriate consideratiin.
Accountants might emphasize transparency and uniformity of data and the independence of auditing.
Civil servants might emphasize codes of ethics, organizational morale, and disclosure req uirements.
Lawyers might encourage civil discovery procedures and criminal sanctions. Others will promote a
free and independent press, a high standard of public ethics, and a vigorous civil society. There are
clearly many ways to approach the topic and there seems to be no One Best Way so a multi-pronged
approach seems advisable. Yet the dogmatic mentality might express alarm and dismay when different
groups from an international development agency take different approaches to fighting corruption and
these different views are aired at international conferences. Why can't the international agency "get its
act together" and tell the client the One Best Way to address the problem?
When journalists try to "build a story" by pointing out differences within a development agency, then
agency bureaucrats should point out to the opportunistic journalists the necessity of the open clash of
adverse opinions to intellectual advance (with references to Mill's On Liberty). They sho .ld point out
that the real story is the intellectual honesty and integrity of an agency that would have such open
discussions that are the lifeblood of intellectual and scientific progress. Instead PR-oriented
bureaucrats are more typically alarmed at the lack of "coordination of messages" and rededicate
themselves to better vetting the public statements of agency officials and researchers, a tragi-comic
effort usually carried out in the name of "quality control." How can the passive dependent clients put
themselves in the hands of the international experts if the latter cannot agree on the One lBest Way to
fight corruption or to address other complex development issues?
The church approach has implications for the question of client-centered versus paternalistic
approaches to client learning. What would be "wrong" with two different parts of an international
development institution expressing at an international conference two different views on a complex
question? What would be "wrong" with the listeners or readers realizing that affiliation with an elite
institution is not the touchstone of truth just as publication in an elite journal is not the inmprimatur of
infallibility? Indeed, such a realization might have the rather positive effect of leading the listeners or
readers to think the matter over themselves and thus to take some responsibility in forming an opinion
for themselves.40 In short, it would foster active learning rather than promote passive acceptance of the
39 The universal suggestion that everyone wears a three-piece suit still requires local tailoring or adaptatior. to each person's
size and shape-and this is the fallacy in the argument that an agency does not recommend a "universal recipe" because it
recognizes the need to local adaptation.
40 Some of the best computer-based training programs have "experts" popping up on the screen giving contradictory advice.
"In other words, the program communicates that there's not always one right answer. It invites trainees to learn to use their
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"truth" promulgated by a church-like organization. Why should the organizations so fear such an
outcome all in the name of "quality control"?
Often the argument is that "Yes, there are doubts and differences within the Agency, but the Agency
must show a united front in order to steel the resolve of the clients trying to implement a difficult
program of social and economic change." Perhaps the clear resolve of the Agency's Official View and
the possibility of aid conditioned on acceptance of that View will tip the domestic balance in a
developing country and bring the internal advocates of that view to power. Firstly, this argument
implicitly assumes a Jacobinic (or market-Bolshevik) rather than adaptive and experimentalist strategy
of change. Yes, a Jacobinic strategy does assume a fanatical resolve that cannot publicly entertain
doubts, but that is one of the many problems with that philosophy of social change. An adaptive,
experimentalist, or pragmatic approach requires no such certitude and indeed it welcomes a variety of
parallel experiments in various regions or sectors to see what works (e.g., as in the Chinese reforms).4
Secondly, this argument assumes that the government is deriving its reform motivation from the
Agency, not from within-an assumption that by now requires no further comment. Thirdly, while
Hirschman notes that this imagined sequence is not impossible, "it is our conviction that this picture of
program aid as a catalyst for virtuous policies belongs to the realm of rhapsodic phantasy." [1971, 205]
The Open Learning Model
Surely much has been learned about economic development. What is wrong with espousing the best
practices from successful development as well as promoting the underlying guiding principles? Should
international development organizations just be agnostic on the questions of development and treat all
opinions as having equal weight? To approach these questions, it is useful to consider the
methodology of science. Science as a loosely structured international open learning organization is
hardly agnostic in any given area. All opinions are not given equal weight. Certain theories are the
"received" or current theories in a field. The difference from a "church" lies in the methodology used
to sustain or overturn the hypotheses. In mathematics, it is proof, not authority, that is the basis for
theorems. In the empirical sciences, hypotheses are developed on the basis of intellectual coherence
and factual cues, and are then openly subjected to experiments that can be intersubjectively verified
and reproduced.
This methodology of science shows, at least in general terms, how an open learning model of a
knowledge-based development agency might operate. The important thing is not to teach a client
country the "Truth" but firstly to see that the major positions on a controversial question are presented
to a country, and secondly (of greater long-term importance) to foster the active learning methodology
within the country to find and corroborate or disprove the hypotheses and theories. That means
capacity-building in the knowledge institutions of the country. For instance, if a knowledge-based
development organization wants to promote the OBW of reforming or changing certain institutions
(e.g., the "best" model of fighting corruption or the "best" form of privatization), then it should be
willing to share the source of that "knowledge," to promote some experiments in the country to
corroborate such a hypothesis or to validate a local adaptation, and to encourage horizontal cross-
learning from similar experiments documented in the organization's knowledge management system-
own judgment rather than rely on someone else's-especially when the someone else isn't as close to the situation as you are.
Organizations today are facing increasingly complex situations where there are many possible answers. Traditional training
that insists on right and wrong answers disempowers the individual-it robs people of their decision-making ability." [Schank
1997, 24]
41 See Rondinelli 1983 on an adaptive approach.
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all before the reform is accepted as a "blueprint" for the country as a whole. The message to policy-
makers is:
To the best of our accumulated experience (which we deem to call "knowledge"), [lere is
what works best in countries like yours. Why don't you study these principles tc1gether
with their corroboration to date (best practice success stories), take a look at the, e case
studies, contact these people who designed those reforms, set up horizontal learning
programs with those best practice cases, and try some experiments to see what \,.orks in
your own country? After carrying out this learning process on your own, you mic,ht call
us back if you feel we could help by partially but not wholly funding the Deform
program you have decided upon.
The most important thing is to get away from the model of "teaching" as the transmission of knowledge
from the development agency to the developing country. In a slogan: "Stop the teaching s,o that the
learning can begin!" As George Bemard Shaw put it: "if you teach a man anything he wi I never learn
it." [1962. 174] Ortega y Gasset suggested: "He who wants to teach a truth should place Us in the
position to discover it ourselves." [1961, 67] To impose a model without this local learmling process
would be to short-circuit and bypass the active learning capability of the local policy-makers. to
substitute authority in its place, and thus to perpetuate the passivity of tutelage.
Competition and Devil's Advocacy in the Open Learning Model
How can a large bureaucratic agency itself advance from the church model towards an open learning
model? One way is for the agency to take some of its own medicine in the sense of fostering
competition in a marketplace for ideas within the agency.42 For instance, the defendant's right to an
attorney in an American courtroom takes away from the prosecutor the monopoly right tc' present
evidence and arguments. A judge may not go to the jury before both sides of the arguments have been
heard, and a patient should not go to surgery before getting a second opinion. Even the F'Roman
Catholic Church, when considering someone for sainthood, has a "devil's advocate" (Adlvscatus
Diaboli) to state the other side of the story. A development agency should not pretend to greater
authority or infallibility when it canonizes a good practice success story as the OBW.
Thus devil's advocacy might not only be tolerated but fostered in a development agency tlunctioning as
an open learning organization.43 The political scientist Alfred De Grazia recommends su:h a
countervailance system as a part of any large bureaucracy. "The countervailors would be a corps of
professional critics of all aspects of bureaucracy who would be assigned by the representative council
of an institution to specialize as critic of all the subinstitutions." 11975] This idea goes b)ack to the role
of Socrates in Athens as a gadfly.
42 This is expressed in the "marketplace of ideas concept-the proposition that truth naturally overcomes faisehood when
they are allowed to compete.... The belief that competing voices produce superior conclusions [is]... implizit in scientific
reasoning, the practice of trial by jury, and the process of legislative debate." [Smith 1988, 31].
43 Devil's advocacy [see Schwenk 1984] is interpreted broadly to include a number of related techniques tc better elicit thc
main policy alternatives. A Cassandra's advocate [Janis 1972, 217] is a person who emphasizes alternati' e interpretations
of data and focuses on all the things that can go wrong ("Murphy's Law-yer"). The Rashomon effect [see ichon 1971, 2101
illustrates that the same set of circumstances and events can be interpreted very differently by different people. Discussion
organized as a debate between the proposed policy and the best alternative has been called the dialectical method [see
Schwenk 1989; or Tung and Heminger 1993]. Multiple advocacy [Haas 1990, 210] and double visioning [see Schon 1983,
281] refers to the practice of not only allowing but fostering the presentation of two or more policy options.
28



For if you kill me you will not easily find a successor to me, who, if I may use such a
ludicrous figure of speech, am a sort of gadfly, attached to the state by God; and the
state is a great and noble horse who is rather sluggish owing to his very size, and
requires to be stirred into life. I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and
all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading
and reproaching you. [Apology, 30-1]
Devil's advocacy might provide a constructive alternative in addition to negative criticism of the
proposed policy. In economics, the opportunity cost doctrine evaluates an option by comparing its
value to the value of best alternative. If plan B is the best alternative to plan A (and the plans are
mutually exclusive), then the opportunity cost of choosing plan A is the value foregone by not choosing
plan B. Plan A is preferable if its value exceeds its opportunity cost (assuming both can be
quantitatively measured). The application of the opportunity cost doctrine requires the analysis and
evaluation of the best alternative-and that is the more general role of devil's advocacy even when
quantitative values are not available. By eliciting plan B, devil's advocacy generalizes the opportunity
cost doctrine from cost-benefit analysis to general policy analysis. In a rivalrous market or in a multi-
party democracy, competition provides the B plans so organizational devil's advocacy could be seen as
an attempt to provide benchmark competition within an organization.
The general case for a more systematic devil's advocate or countervailance role in an organization is
much the same as the case for genuine debate and open discussion. The locus classicus for that
argument is John Stuart Mill's 1859 essay On Liberty. If little is known on a question, then real debate
and the "clash of adverse opinions" are some of the best engines of discovery. If "partial truths" are
known, then the same is necessary to ferret out a clearer picture and to better adapt theories to new and
different contexts. Mill argued that even in cases of settled opinions, debate and discussion serve to
disturb the "deep slumber of a decided opinion" so that it might be held more as a rational conviction
rather than as an article of faith.
So essential is this discipline to a real understanding of moral and human subjects, that
if opponents of all important truths do not exist, it is indispensable to imagine them, and
supply them with the strongest arguments which the most skillful devil's advocate can
conjure up. [Mill 1972, 105]
Non-dogmatism and Socratic Ignorance in Organizations
I have argued that organizational learning can best take place if open competition, devil's advocacy,
and the collision of ideas is allowed instead of being suppressed in favor of an outward show of
allegiance to Official Views. This openness is now taken for granted in the institutions of higher
learning as well as in the informal communities of the scientific disciplines but many development
agencies still operate on the basis of the church/Party model regardless of the espoused theory.
I now turn from that class of competition- or rivalry-based arguments to a different type of argument
against having Official Views in an organization aspiring to be a learning organization and aspiring to
fostering learning in its clients. We are accustomed to themes developed both volitionally (changing
the world to agree with a desired representation) and cognitively (changing a representation to agree
with the world). One theme was that the helper should not impose actions on the doers. In the
cognitive version of that theme, the helper needs to refrain from trying to teach or impose a certain
29



representation or view on the doers.44 That will call for the helper to display a non-assertiveness, non-
dogmatism, cognitive humility,45 tolerance, "egolessness,"46 or Socratic ignorance.47 This Socratic
humility or ignorance is the cognitive counterpart to the forbearance of material assistance in a way that
would undercut the volition of self-help on the part of the doers.
Towards an Open Learning Agency and Autonomy-Compatible Assistance
The idea that a development agency has to always have an Official View (rather than house competing
views) is about as scientific as the "scientific" socialism of the Communist Parties of the past. John
Dewey quotes the English Communist John Strachey's statement that the communistic parties' "refusal
to tolerate the existence of incompatible opinions ... [is] simply asserting the claim that Socialism is
scientific." Dewey goes on to comment that it "would be difficult, probably impossible, to find a more
direct and elegantly finished denial of all the qualities that make ideas and theories either scientific or
democratic than is contained in this statement." [1939, 96] Critical reason and scientific iethodology
go in quite the opposite direction of fostering the
willingness to hold belief in suspense, ability to doubt until evidence is obtained;
willingness to go where evidence points instead of putting first a personally preferred
conclusion; [and] ability to hold ideas in solution and use them as hypotheses to be
tested instead of as dogmas to be asserted;...[Dewey 1939, 145]
This part of the scientific attitude is translated into the policy domain with such suggestions as multiple
advocacy [Haas 1990, 210] and double visioning [see Schon 1983, 281]. It is not some w& anton
perversity that prevents this scientific attitude from being implemented in a large organization such as a
major development agency. There are quite human impulses that push for conformity and rigidity.
To hold theories and principles in solution, awaiting confirmation, goes contrary to the
grain. Even today questioning a statement made by a person is often taken by him as a
reflection upon his integrity, and is resented. For many millennia opposition to views
widely held in a community was intolerable. It called down the wrath of the deities who
are in charge of the group.... Baconian idols of the tribe, the cave, the theater, and den
have caused men to rush to conclusions, and then to use all their powers to defend from
criticism and change the conclusions arrived at. [Dewey 1939, 146]
44 The Socratic-Kantian Leonard Nelson emphasizes this aspect of the Socratic process of instruction. "Philosophical
instruction fulfills its task when it systematically weakens the influences that obstruct the growth of philosophical
comprehension and reinforces those that promote it. Without going into the question of other relevant influences, let us
keep firmly in mind the one that must be excluded unconditionally: the influence that may emanate from the instructor's
assertions. If this influence is not eliminated, all labor is vain. The instructor will have done everything possible to forestall
the pupil's own judgment by offering him a ready-made judgment." [Nelson 1949, 19]
45 "But all true effort to help begins with self-humiliation: the helper must first humble himself under him he would help,
and therewith must understand that to help does not mean to be a sovereign but to be a servant, that to help does not mean to
be ambitious but to be patient, that to help means to endure for the time being the imputation that one is in the wrong and
does not understand what the other understands." [Kierkegaard in: Bretall 1946, 334]
46 Davenport and Prusak 1998, 113.
47 "True Socraticism represents first and foremost an attitude of mind, an intellectual humility easily mistaken for arrogance,
since the true Socratic is convinced of the ignorance not only of himself but of all mankind. This rather than any body of
positive doctrine is the contribution of Socrates." [Guthrie 1960, 75]
30



If development agencies are to promote knowledge-based development as education writ large, then
they might learn organizational lessons from educational institutions such as universities about the
need to foster open debate and competing theories within the organization. The scientific method
demands no less.
If the development agency can move beyond the church (or science-as-dogma) model to an open
learning model, then it can also move from the standard knowledge transmission-belt methodology
towards autonomy-compatible knowledge-based development assistance.
The aim of teaching is not only to transmit information, but also to transform students
from passive recipients of other people's knowledge into active constructors of their
own and other's knowledge. The teacher cannot transform without the student's active
participation, of course. Teaching is fundamentally about creating the pedagogical,
social, and ethical conditions under which students agree to take charge of their own
learning, individually and collectively. [Elmore 1991, xvi]
That activist pedagogy adapted to developing countries as the learners would constitute autonomy-
compatible knowledge-based development assistance.
Revisiting Hirschmanian Themes of Social Learning and Change
Reframing the Debate about Conditionalities
In these last sections, the task is to map helping theory back into the Hirschmanian approach to
development. Conditionalities on development loans or donor grants are much like the plan
specifications in a model of centrally planned and socially engineered reforms. In the literature on aid
for economic development, a substantial body of research now questions the effectiveness of
conditionalities in policy-based lending such as structural adjustment loans (SALs).48 The doubts apply
less to the "pro forma," "stroke-of-the-pen," or price-based conditionalities than to those aimed at
institutional reforms. In the face of these doubts, what is to be done?
Some practitioners plod onward thinking that they only need to make conditionalities "tougher" and
more "performance-based." Such practices do little to address some of the basic reasons for the
ineffectiveness. Tougher performance-based conditionalities do not solve the basic motivational
problem. This may seem strange from the narrow economic viewpoint, e.g., agency theory. Doesn't
the carrot of aid provide the motivation? In psychological terms, the problem is that the aid only
provides extrinsic motivation. Real reforms beyond the stroke-of-the-pen variety will usually require
some own-reasons or more intrinsic motivations for successful implementation. Otherwise there is
only the motivation to make the minimal outward changes to get the aid. In addition, there is a
negative reactance against the attempt to externally impose changes. Making conditionalities "tougher
and more performance-based" does not even attempt to solve these underlying motivational problems.
Another approach to the doubts about aid-baited conditionalities is to emphasize that aid works best in
countries that have good policies and that aid is largely wasted in countries with poor policies. In light
of the doubts about conditionalities turning around poor policies, it is suggested that aid should be
focused where it is most effective independent of conditionalities, i.e., on the countries with good
48 See the discussion and references in Mosley et al. 1991, World Bank 1998, and Killick et al. 1998.
31



policy environments. This might be interpreted as suggesting a good-policy screen as one large ex ante
or 'front-loaded' conditionality so that other conditionalities are not needed thereafter. But this would
more finesse the problem than solve it. The problem is the social learning process to get a country
from poor policies to better policies. This one-big-carrot approach has the same if not worse
motivational problems as the many-small-carrots approach. Moreover it is doubtful that it would be
sustained under real world conditions of partial fulfillment. If the list of good policies was partly but
not completely fulfilled, then strong political and disbursement pressures would build (from both sides)
to give at least "half a carrot" and we are in effect back to the many-small-carrots approach.
Aid agencies have their preconceptions of "virtue" in the sense of good policies. They tr) to "buy
virtue" by imposing conditionalities on program aid geared to "virtuous behavior" defined by various
outward acts of allegiance to and implementation of "good policies." But if we take "virtue" as being
defined not just by behavior but also by the right internal motives, then aid can only buy a faux virtue.
Such aid pushes the extemal motive of receiving the aid into the motivational foreground and thus
establishes external control-the lack of autonomy.
Autonomy-compatible aid would remove impediments and thus enable "virtuous action" where the
internal motive was already present in accordance with the idea of finding out what people are already
motivated to do and helping them do it better.49 "In these situations, the donor would set himself the
task of rewarding virtue (or rather, what he considers as such) where virtue appears of its own
accord."50 This leads straightaway to the "paradox" that aid is only autonomy-compatible when it does
not do what is conventionally taken as a major purpose of program aid-to tip the balance of motives
in favor of reforms and good policies.
Paradoxically, therefore, program aid is fully effective only when it does not achieve
anything-when, that is, no quid pro quo (in the sense of a policy that would not have
been undertaken in the absence of aid) is exacted as the price of aid. [Hirschman 1971,
204]
Moreover, once it is known that "virtue" is being rewarded by the donor, then mimicry in the form of
"virtuous behavior" may be elicited in order to also be rewarded. This supply effect of such externally
motivated mimicry greatly complicates the provision of aid.
External interventions by other people intended to change a person's behavior pose a threat to
autonomy. The threat-to-autonomy or reactance effect results from using external motiv,ators-carrots
and sticks-to shift the locus of causality from internal to external. The effect shows itself in a poor
quality and low effort performance, in sullen and perfunctory behavior fulfilling the letter but not the
spirit of an agreement, and perhaps even in the urge to defiantly do the opposite just to show one's
autonomy.5' Hirschman refers to these effects as the "hidden costs" [1971, 207] of program aid while
Lepper and Greene [1978] called them the "hidden costs of rewards."
49 " The first task is to study what people are already doing.. .and to help them do it better....
The second task is to study what people need and to investigate the possibility of helping them to cover more of their needs
out of their own productive efforts." [Schumacher 1997, 125]
50 Hirschman 1971, 204. Italics added.
5' "Whatever task is not chosen of man's own free will, whatever constrains or even only guides him, does not become part
of his nature. It remains forever alien to him; if he performs it, he does so not with true humane energy but with mere
mechanical skill." [von Humboldt 1963, 47]
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In the aid context, "good policies" bought by conditioned aid are usually not effective. If the policies
adopted by the government were distorted by aid conditionality, then the policies would tend to be
adopted by aid-hungry governments in spite of continuing doubts of the policy makers
themselves, resistance from some quarters within the government, onslaught against the
"deal" from the opposition, and general distaste for the whole procedure.
Naturally, doubts and reservations are not voiced at the moment of the aid
compact; hence the delusion on the part of the donor that there has been a full meeting
of minds. But soon after virtue has been "bought" through aid under these conditions,
the reservations and resistances will find some expression-for example, through half-
hearted implementation or sabotage of the agreed-to policies-and relations between
donor and recipient will promptly deteriorate as a result. [Hirschman 1971, 205]
The debate about conditionalities is to some extent ill-posed. In 'psychological' terms, the question is
how to best indirectly foster the country's own motivation for reforms as opposed to the agency theory
question of how to best impose carrots and sticks (extrinsic motivation) to promote reforms. Where
are the possible reforms that have some rootedness or embeddedness in the country and are not in
response to an offer of assistance? The best way to assure that a reform project has some "intrinsic
motivation" or rootedness is not to start a project but to find it.52
I began to look for elements and processes.. .that did work, perhaps in roundabout and
unappreciated fashion. [T]his search for possible hidden rationalities was to give an
underlying unity to my work. ... [T]he hidden rationalities I was after were precisely and
principally processes of growth and change already under way in the societies I studied,
processes that were often unnoticed by the actors immediately involved, as well as by
foreign experts and advisors. [Hirschman 1984, 91-3]
With this reframing, the conditionality debate joins an older debate between balanced and 'unbalanced'
notions of growth.
Hirschman's Theory of Unbalanced Growth
From the earliest postwar discussions of growth, it seemed clear that developing countries were caught
in many vicious circles of poverty and that coordinated actions along a broad front-a big push-might
be necessary to exploit the many mutually supporting complementarities and to thus escape the low-
level trap. Formal growth models emphasized the efficiency properties of balanced growth paths and
development planning models also reinforced the mental image of coordinated action across sectors.
All of these fell into the general category of balanced growth models.
All the balanced growth models suffered from the same problem of in effect assuming that which
needed to be developed. A country with the wherewithal to carry out a coordinated 'big push' of
across-the-board developmental actions would already be well on its way to development (particularly
in terms of capability), not languishing in a low-level poverty trap. These models also made the more
subtle but equally if not more dubious assumption that all the relevant agents in a country would
52 Note the contrast with the project manager in the agency who wants to show his boss that he "made a difference" by
starting a project in the country.
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simultaneously undergo the required social learning and transformations of habits that would be
required for the big push to succeed (as if a school of fish would altogether decide to jump out of the
water and become a new species of amphibians). That is not how social learning tends to take place.
Albert 0. Hirschman53 was one of the few voices dissenting from the then near-litany of balanced
growth, big push, and national planning models: "if a country were ready to apply the doctrine of
balanced growth, then it would not be underdeveloped in the first place." [1961 (1958), 53-4] In terms
of the conditionalities debate, if a country could actually fulfill the typical "Christmas tree" of
conditionalities attached to multilateral lending, then it would not be in a low-level developmental trap
in the first place.
In contrast to the balanced growth approach, Hirschman developed a theory of unbalanced growth
which might usefully be viewed as a theory of social learning and social change.54 In the 1961 preface
to the paperback edition of The Strategy of Economic Development, Hirschman restates the essential
point of the theory.
True, automotive vehicles are not much good without highways and modern highways
are rather useless without vehicles. But this does not mean that the only or even the best
way in which we can develop our transportation system is by expanding simultaneously
and evenly both the automotive industry and the highway network. Why not take
advantage of the stimulus that is set up by expansion of the one toward that of the other?
In other words, I do not deny by any means the interrelatedness of various economic
activities of which the balanced growth theory has made so much. On the contrary, I
propose that we take advantage of it, that we probe into the structure that is holding
together these interrelated activities. As in the atom, there is much energy here that can
be and is in fact being utilized in building up economic development nuclei. Later on
these nuclei look as though they could never have been separated even for a single
instant when in actual fact they might never have been assembled had not a sequential
solution, i.e., an unbalanced growth sequence been found, by accident, instinct, or
reasoned design. To look at unbalanced growth means, in other words, to look at the
dynamics of the development process in the small. But perhaps it is high time that we
did just that. [Hirschman 1961, viii-ix]
The emphasis on the "dynamics of the development process in the small" has not been well received by
university economists devising formal macroeconomic models of growth55-nor by those who try to
apply these models in the work of multilateral development institutions.
Learning and change is driven by problem-solving. Not all problems can be attacked at once so
attention and aid is first focused in the small on the sectors or localities where some of the
preconditions are in place and where initiative is afoot on its own. The initial small successes will then
5 The locus classicus is his 1958 The Strategy of Economic Development but see also Streeten 1959 as well as a few of
Hirschman's self-subverting caveats in chapter 3 of A Propensity to Self-Subversion [1995].
54 See for instance Schon 1994.
5In effect, Hirschman said that both the theorist and the practical policymaker could and should ignore the pressures to
produce buttoned-down, mathematically consistent analyses and adopt instead a sort of muscular pragmatism in grappling
with the problem of development. Along with some others, notably Gunnar Myrdal, Hirschman did not wait for intellectual
exile: he proudly gathered up his followers and led them into the wilderness himself. Unfortunately, they perished there."
[Krugman 1994, 40]
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create pressures through the forward and backward linkages to foster learning and change that is nearby
in sectorial or locational terms-all of which might lead to a growth pole or local industrial district. The
successes when broadcast horizontally to those facing similar problems will start to break down the
paralyzing beliefs that "nothing can be done" and will thus fuel broader initiatives that take the early
wins as their benchmark. Unlike a model that assumes large-scale organized social action directed by
the government under the pressure of external conditionalities, the parties are responding to local
pressures and inducements from their economic partners or to opportunities revealed by others in a
similar position.
One thing leads to, induces, elicits, or entrains another thing through chains of "tensions,
disproportions, and disequilibria." Hirschman at one point refers to the principle of unbalanced growth
as "the idea of maximizing induced decisionmaking" [1994a, 278]. The problem-solving pressures
induced by unbalanced growth will call forth otherwise unused resources and enlist otherwise untapped
energies. As a project moves from one bottleneck and crisis to another (in comparison with the smooth
planned allocation of resources in a project), then "resources and abilities that are hidden, scattered, or
badly utilized" [1961, 5] will be mobilized. Hirschman [1984, 95] notes the connections with Cyert
and March's notion of "organizational slack" [1963] based on Herbert Simon's theory of "satisficing"
[1955], with Nathan Rosenberg's theory [1969] that technological innovation is strongly influenced by
"inducing" or "focusing" events such as strikes and wars, and, above all, with Harvey Leibenstein's
theory of X-inefficiency [1966, 1980]. Israel [1987] addresses these issues under the notion of
"competition surrogates."
One can draw analogies to the process of individual learning. Suppose one takes a static snap-shot of a
person's beliefs before and after learning some new and complex interconnected subject matter. The
older set of beliefs might have certain self-reinforcing properties. It might at first seem difficult to
change one part of the set of beliefs since one would then have some cognitive dissonance with the
remaining older beliefs. One could imagine simply changing all the beliefs at once to arrive at a new
self-reinforcing set. But that is rarely how learning takes place. Against the forces of self-preservation
of the "whole cloth" of older beliefs, there are the incentives to solve problems for which the old
beliefs might be inadequate. Change might start in the small where problem-solving progress might be
made by unraveling and changing some of the beliefs. But now the interconnections can help to
unravel the older cloth. "Bottlenecks" or inconsistencies will appear between the old and new beliefs,
and problem-solving pressures will be transmitted forwards, backwards, and sideways to adjust other
beliefs. "One thing leads to another" and eventually the person will arrive at a new set of
interconnected beliefs.
Now consider the viewpoint of the knowledgeable outsider, a "teacher," who understood all along the
problem-solving superiority of the new set of beliefs. Why couldn't she just give a "core course" to
impart the new knowledge to the student and thereby save the pupil all the time, energy, and pain of
"learning the hard way"? Carrots and sticks, aid and conditionalities, could even incentivize the
"learning process." While a veneer of some "knowledgeable behaviors" might be incentivized-
particularly in "good students"-by such carrots and sticks, learning that transforms older beliefs does
not take place in that manner. In order for learners to have an "ownership" of new knowledge and for
the new knowledge to have a transformative effect, the knowledge must be more the fruits of the
learner's own activities. Such knowledge comes out of a constructivist active learning process, not out
of a pedagogy of the teacher imparting, transmitting, disseminating, or pouring new knowledge into
35



passive students. With a constructivist pedagogy, the teacher is more a coach, guide, and midwife
helping the learners in a more indirect manner to help themselves.
Hirschman uses the metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle for the set of problems facing a developing country
[1961, 81-2]. One could imagine a rather superhuman act of putting all the pieces together at once to
solve the puzzle. Indeed don't those who have seen and studied seemingly similar puzzles put together
elsewhere have that knowledge? That is the comforting fantasy of those who promote integrated and
balanced reform programs. Do all these things together (so that it looks like the "picture on the puzzle
box") and you will have solved your problems! But for the variety of reasons outlined above, countries
cannot just solve all their problems at once. They must start with a few pieces that fit together and try
to work outward to find other pieces that fit. Not all starting points are equal. Certain pieces of the
puzzle may have nearby connections that allow building that part of the puzzle quickly-as opposed to
parts whose solution might give little insight or impetus to solving the nearby parts. Perhaps someone
who has seen similar puzzles solved would be a good coach to suggest promising starting points or
fruitful directions for progress. No doubt it would be helpful to study the "picture on the box." But the
actual solving of the puzzle is a piecemeal process starting in one or more propitious places and
working outward through fruitful linkages to finally arrive at the new overall configuration.
The Hirschmanian unbalanced growth approach to institutional change is an alternative to the planning
approaches that try to "do everything at once" for fear that piecemeal attempts will fail (as they
undoubtedly might). That is why it is important to choose the "pieces" of the piecemeal or incremental
approach quite carefully.
A comprehensive attack on all the problems faced by an institution cannot hope to
achieve "final" results in a specified time. Instead, a few aspects can be identified on
which progress is feasible given the general operational level of the institution, and the
program can concentrate on those aspects for a reasonable period, say, three years.
After that, the progress that has been made will have ripple effects on other parts of the
institution. At that point a new program can be designed that takes account of the new
realities-including changes in personnel-but that focuses on another limited nimber of
objectives. In sum, comprehensiveness in scope and in time should be abandoned in
institutional development efforts, and a partial, cumulative, and highly focused approach
pursued. [Israel 1987, 200]
As social learning processes develop largely on the basis of their own released energies, new demands
will be made on the center or government to reform institutions, to provide infrastructure, and to clear
away impediments,56 and that in turn will spur further progress on the ground.
There are many well-known public or semipublic goods of this sort, from power,
transportation, and irrigation to education and public health. Often designated as
56 Hirschman quotes approvingly a consulting engineer who suggests a road surface that would better elicit pressure for
maintenance on the public works authorities. "We assumed that, with the increasing truck and bus industry in Columbia,
local pressure would be applied to the Ministry of Public Works to repair the deep holes which will develop in cheap
bituminous pavements if maintenance and retreatment is delayed, and that such pressure would be greater than if a gravel
and stone road is allow to deteriorate." [1958, 143] This strategy might be compared in effectiveness to a "conditionality"
toward the same end.
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"infrastructure," as though they were preconditions for the more directly productive
activities, these goods have more usually been provided in response to urgent demands
emanating from such activities and from their need for consolidation, greater
profitability, and further expansion. [Hirschman 1981, 80-1]
These induced demands for reforms are quite different from the externally imposed conditionalities
that stipulate certain reforms or from reforms given by the benevolent "grace" of the rulers." In
psychological terms, the domestic induced demands for reforms supplies the government with a more
"intrinsic" motivation for reform in contrast to the "tough performance-based" carrots and sticks
imposed by external development agencies and donors, and in contrast to gifts from benevolent
benefactors. In making the reforms, the government is "in the driver's seat" and is doing its job of
responding to its constituents, not just caving in to foreign pressures. It is not just playing another
round in the aid game: "we will continue pretending to make the reforms so that you can continue
pretending to be buying reforns with your aid."
Conclusion: The Two Paths
In conclusion, we return to the two paths that diverge from a recognition of the basic conundrum of
helping people help themselves; how can external help support an internally-driven process without
overriding or undercutting it? On the direct or social engineering path, the "helper" helps the doers by
supplying distorted motivation (conditional aid) and "managed" knowledge (ex cathedra answers
buttressed by biased information and one-sided arguments) to deliver (what the helper takes as) the
right results. On the other indirect and autonomy-respecting path, the helper helps the doers to help
themselves by supplying not "motivation" but perhaps resources to enable the doers to do what they
were already own-motived to do. On the knowledge side, the autonomy-respecting helper supplies not
answers but helps build learning capacity (e.g., by enabling access to unbiased information and to
hearing all sides of an argument) to enable the doers to learn from whatever source in a self-directed
learning process.
Autonomy-compatible assistance cannot be reduced to a checklist or engineering plan to be enforced
by well-designed carrots and sticks. Direct methods can help others, but they cannot help others to
help themselves. That requires autonomy-compatible indirect methods on the part of the helpers and
autonomous self-activity on the part of the doers. People need not only to "participate" but to be in the
driver's seat in order to make their actions their own and to make their learnings their own. It is the
psychological version of the old principle that people have a natural ownership of the fruits of their
labor. The helpers can use indirect and autonomy-compatible enabling approaches to bring the doers to
the threshold; the doers have to do the rest on their own and that is what makes it their own
development.
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Appendix: Eight Authors in Search of Helping Theory
Helper cannot                    "Help" as
Themes   Starting from  where                See through the              impose change on                 benevolence is            Doers in the driver's
Author                       the doers are.                 doers' eyes.                      doers.                     ineffective.                      seat.
Helper-Doer                                                                              ("Neither an                  ("nor a gift.")
Helper-Doer                                                                              imposition...
Albert Hirschman    "I began to look for elements   "But word soon came from        "I reacted against the visiting-   "[T]hey will be supplied with   "In recent years, the concept of
and processes... that did work,  World Bank headquarters that  economist syndrome; that is,   a great many ideas,       dependencia-perhaps best
Development             perhaps in roundabout and     I was principally expected to   against the habit of issuing  suggestions, plans, and     translated as lack of autonomy-
Advisor-Govt.           unappreciated fashion. [T]his  take, as soon as possible, the    peremptory advice and    ideologies, frequently of     has been intensively studied in
Latin America. . . .With the
search for possible hidden    initiative in formulating some   prescription by calling on  foreign origin or based on   brightest members of [Brazil's]
rationalities was to give an  ambitious economic            universally valid economic    foreign experience. ... Genuine   younger generation almost all
underlying unity to my work.   development plan that would   principles and remedies-be    learning about the problem   going abroad for graduate
... [Tihe hidden rationalities I   spell out investments,  they old or brand new-after   will sometimes be prevented    studies, they assume upon
was after were precisely and    domestic savings, growth, and   a strictly minimal        not only by the local policy-    retuming (if they retum at all)
principally processes of      foreign aid targets for the  acquaintance with the          makers' eagemess to jump to   that, having sat at the feet of true
growth and change already     Colombian economy over the   'patient.'... I tried to identify    a ready-made solution but  knowledge in the university of
under way in the societies I  next few years. All of this  progressive economic and       also by the insistent offer of    some advanced country, they no
studied, processes that were  was alleged to be quite simple  political forces that deserved    help and advice on the part of  longer need to bother with what
their elder compatriots have to
often unnoticed by the actors   for experts mastering the new   recognition and help. This  powerful outsiders.... [Sluch   offer as a result of experience and
immediately involved, as well  programming technique:      position put me at odds with    practices [will] tend to cut  mature reflection. . was struck
as by foreign experts and     apparently there now existed    those who judged that the   short that 'long confrontation    and disturbed by the prevalence,
advisors." [1984, 91-3]       adequate knowledge, even     present society was 'rotten    between man and a situation'   in Latin America, of a style of
without close study of local    through and through' and that  (Camus) so fruitful for the  policy-making and problem-
surroundings, of the likely  nothing would ever change     achievement of genuine         solving that ostensibly denied the
ranges of... all the key figures  unless everything was    progress in problem-solving."  existence or even possibility of a
needed. ...                  changed at once. But this      [1973, 239-40]                cumulative learning process .It
My instinct was to try to     utopian dream of the 'visiting                             is possibn e that this style . arises
understand better their      revolutionary' seemed to me                                  internal communication
patterns of action, rather than   of a piece with the balanced                            characteristic of countries that,...,
assume from the outset that  growth and integrated                                        continue to rely in policy-making
they could only be 'developed'  development schemes of the                                on economic and social ideas
by importing a set of        visiting economist." [1984,                                  imported from abroad. It is not
techniques they knew nothing   93_4]                                                      an accident that the style is often
about." [1984, 90-1]                                                                      abetted by the foreign expelt who
is one of its principal
beneficiaries." [1973, v-vi]
43



Helper cannot                    "Help" as
Themes   Starting from  where                 See through the               impose change on                benevolence is             Doers in the driver's
the doers are.                 doers' eyes.                      doers.                      ineffective.                       seat.
Author                                                                                     ("Neither an                  ("nor a gift.")
Helper-Doer                                                                               imposition,...)
"Is it the pupil's own problem,  "When the parent or teacher    "We are even likely to take  "To 'make others happy'      "The essentials of the method are
or is it the teacher's or     has provided the conditions    the influence of superior force   except through liberating their  therefore identical with the
John Dewey        textbook's problem, made a    which stimulate thinking and    for control, forgetting that  powers and engaging them in   essentials of reflection. They are
Teacher-Learner          problem for the pupil only    has taken a sympathetic       while we may lead a horse to   activities that enlarge the    first that the pupil have a genuine
because he cannot get the     attitude toward the activities    water we cannot make him   meaning of life is to harm    situation of experience-that
requiredmarkorbepromoted of the leareer by entering into   drink; and that while we can    them and to indulge ourselves  which he is interested for its own
required mark or be promioted   oftelanrbtneigit             rn;adtatwiew   a              hmadt  nug   usle              hich he is cninteresated iorits own
or win the teacher's approval,   a common or conjoint       shut a man up in a             under cover of exercising a   sake; secondly, that a genuine
unless he deals with it? ... Is    experience, all has been done   penitentiary we cannot make    special virtue .... To foster  problem develop within this
the experience a personal     which a second party can do    him penitent. ... When we     conditions that widen the      situation as a stimulus to thought;
thing of such a nature as    to instigate leaming.... In such   confuse a physical with an  horizon of others and give    third, that he possess the informa-
inherently to stimulate and   shared activity, the teacher is   educative result, we always  them command of their own    tion and make the observations
direct observation of the con-   a learner, and the leamer is,    lose the chance of enlisting  powers, so that they can find    needed to deal with it; fourth, that
nections involved, and to lead   without knowing it, a      the person's own participating   their own happiness in their    suggested solutions occur to him
which he shall be responsible for
to inference and its testing?  teacher-and upon the whole,  disposition in getting the     own fashion, is the way of     developing in an orderly way;
Or is it imposed from without,  the less consciousness there    result desired, and thereby of   "social" action. Otherwise the  fifth, that he have opportunity
and is the pupil's problem    is, on either side, of either  developing within him an      prayer of a freeman would be   and occasion to test his ideas by
simply to meet the external   giving or receiving           intrinsic and persisting       to be left alone, and to be   application, to make their
requirement?" [1916, 155]    instruction, the better." [1916,  direction in the right way."  delivered, above all, from  meaning clear and to discover for
160]                          [1916, 26-71                  "reformers" and "kind"         himself their validity." [t916,
people." [1957, 270]          163]
Douglas                  "It is one of the favorite pas-   "Perhaps the most critical  "[The manager's] task is to  "Management has adopted        "The important theoretical
times of headquarters groups    point-and the one hardest to   help [workers] discover     generally a far more humani-   consideration, derived from
McGregor                 to decide from within their   keep clearly in mind-is that   objectives consistent both   tarian set of values; it has    Theory Y, is that the accep-
Manager-Workers   professional ivory tower what  help is always defined by the    with organizational               successfully striven to give   tance of responsibility (for
help the field organization   recipient. Taking an action   requirements and with their    more equitable and more       self-direction and self-
needs and to design and       with respect to someone       own personal goals, and to do   generous treatment to its    control) is correlated with
develop programs for meeting   because 'it is best for him,' or   so in ways which will    employees. It has signifi-    commitment to objectives.
these 'needs.' ...            because 'it is for the good of    encourage genuine          cantly reduced economic       Genuine commitment is
If the staff is genuinely con-    the organization,' may be  commitment to these           hardships, eliminated the     seldom achieved when ob-
cerned with providing profes-  influencing him, but it is not    objectives. Beyond this, his    more extreme forms of   jectives are externally im-
sional help to all levels of  providing help unless he so   task is to help them achieve   industrial warfare, provided a   posed. Passive acceptance is
management it will devote a    perceives it." [1960, 163]   those objectives: to act as    generally safe and pleasant   the most that can be expected;
great deal of tiniie to exploring                           teacher, consultaint, colleague,  working environment, but ;r   indifference or resistance are
'client' needs directly, and to                             and only rarely as             has done all these things     the more likely consequences.
helping the client find                                     authoritative boss. Ile will not  without changing its       Some degree of mutual
solutions which satisfy him.                                help them if he attempts to   fundamental theory of          involvement in the
Often the most effective                                    keep direction and control in    management. ... [The]       determination of objectives is
44



Helper cannot                  "Help" as
Themes   Starting from  where              See through the             impose change on               benevolence is           Doers in the driver's
Author                      the doers are.                doers' eyes.                   doers.                    ineffective.                     seat.
Authelpeo er                                                                         ("Neither an                ("nor a gift.")
imposition,...)
strategy for this purpose is                             his own hands; he will only    assumptions of Theory X   a necessary aspect of
one in which the client devel-                           hamper their growth and     remain predominant through-   managerial planning based on
ops his own solution with                                encourage them to develop   out our economy." [1960, 45-  Theory Y." [1960, 681
professional help." [1960,                               countermeasures against     6]
168-91                                                  him." [1960, 1521
Carl Rogers            "1 have not found psycho-    "This formulation would state  "The scientist with the   "[A]ttempts to produce these   "Individuals have within
therapy or group experience    that it is the counselor's  divided sea urchin egg ...  changesfor the community by  themselves vast resources for
Therapist-Patient    effective when I have tried to   function to assume, in so far   could not cause the cell to  means of ready made    self-understanding and for
create in another individual    as he is able, the internal  develop in one way or an-  institutions and programs  altering their self-concepts,
something that is not already   frame of reference of the  other, but when he focused  planned, developed, financed,  basic attitudes, and self-
there; I have found, however,  client, to perceive the world    his skill on providing the  and managed by persons  directed behavior; these
that if I can provide the   as the client sees it, to    conditions that permitted the    outside the community are not  resources can be tapped if a
conditions that allow growth   perceive the client himself as   cell to survive and grow, the    likely to meet with any more   definable climate of
to occur, then this positive  he is seen by himself, to lay    tendency for growth and the    success in the future than they  facilitative psychological
directional tendency brings  aside all perceptions from the   direction of growth were  have in the past. This    attitudes can be provided.
constructive results." [1980,    external frame of reference  evident, and came from  procedure is psychologically    These conditions apply
120]                        while doing so, and to      within the organism. I cannot  unsound because it places the   whether we are speaking of
communicate something of    think of a better analogy for    residents of the community in  the relationship between
this empathic understanding    therapy or the group      an inferior position and     therapist and client, parent
to the client." [Rogers 1951,   experience, where, if I can  implies serious reservations    and child, leader and group,
29]                         supply a psychological am-   with regard to their capacities  teacher and student, or
niotic fluid, forward move-  and interest in their own   administrator and staff."
ment of a constructive sort  welfare."[Clifford Shaw     [1980, 1151
will occur." [1980, 120-1]  quoted in Rogers 1951, 59]
" We cannot teach another
person directly; we can only
facilitate his learning.... 'You
can lead a horse to water but
you can't make him drink."'
[1951, 3891
45



Helper cannot                   "Help" as
Themes  Starting from where                   See through the             impose change on                 benevolence is            Doers in the driver's
Author                -      the doers are.                  doers' eyes.                     doers.                     ineffective.                      seat.
("Neither an                 ("nor a gift.")
imposition,...)
S0ren                    That if reat success is to   "For to be a teacher does not   "First and foremost, no     "If I [teacher] am disposed to   "For my own Error is
attend the effort to bring a  mean simply to affirm that   impatience. If he [teacher]   plume myself on my greater    something I can discover only
Kierkegaard             man to a definite position,   such a thing is so, or to     becomes impatient, he will    understanding, it is because I   by myself, since it is only
Spiritual Teacher-   one must first of all take pains  deliver a lecture, &c. No, to   rush headlong against [the  am vain or proud, so that at    when I discover it that it is
Learmer                 to find HIM where he is and    be a teacher in the right sense   other person's illusion] and  bottom, instead of benefiting    discovered, even if the whole
begin there.                 is to be a learner. Instruction    accomplish nothing. A direct   him, I want to be admired.  world knew of it before."
That is the secret of the art of   begins when you, the teacher,  attack only strengthens a  But all true effort to help  [1946, 1581
helping others. Anyone who   learn from the learner, put   person in his illusion, and at    begins with self-humiliation:    "The observer does not attain
has not mastered this is     yourself in his place so that    the same time embitters him.   the helper must first humble    a result immediately, but must
himself deluded when he      you may understand what he    There is nothing that requires   himself under him he would    himself take pains to find it,
proposes to help others."    understands and in the way he  such gentle handling as an   help, and therewith must      and thereby the direct
[Bretall 1946, 333]          understands it, in case you   illusion, if one wishes to    understand that to help does    relationship is broken. But
have not understood it        dispel it. If anything prompts   not mean to be a sovereign  this breach is precisely the act
before." [1946, 3351          the prospective captive to set   but to be a servant, that to  of self-activity, the irruption
his will in opposition, all is    help does not mean to be  of inwardness, the first
lost." [1946, 3321            ambitious but to be patient,    determination of the truth as
that to help means to endure    inwardness." [1946, 223]
for the time being the
imputation that one is in the
wrong and does not
understand what the other
understands," [1946, 334]
Saul Alinsky            "As an organizer I start from  "An organizer can            "If you respect the dignity of   "Self-respect arises only out    "After all, the real democratic
where the world is, as it is,  communicate only within the   the individual you are      of people who play an active   program is a democratically
Organiizer-             not as I would like it to be.  areas of experience of his   working with, then his        role in solving their own     minded people-a healthy,
Community               That we accept the world as it  audience; otherwise there is    desires, not yours; his values,   crises and who are not  active, participating,
is does not in any sense     no communication              not yours; his ways of        helpless, passive, puppet-like   interested, self-confident
weaken our desire to change    Through his imagination he is  working and fighting, not  recipients of private or public   people who, through their
it into what we believe it   constantly moving in on the    yours; his choice of         services. To give people      participation and interest,
should be-it is necessary to    happenings of others,      leadership, not yours; his    help, while denying them a     become informed, educated,
begin where the world is if we  identifying with them and  programs, not yours, are      significant part in the action,   and above all develop faith in
are going to change it to what  extracting their happenings  important and must be       contributes nothing to the    themselves, their fellow men,
we think it should be. That    into his own mental digestive   followed; except if his   development of the            and the future. The people
means working in the         system and thereby            programs violate the high     individual. In the deepest    themselves are the future.
system." 11971, xix]         accumulating more             values of a free and open     sense it is not giving but    The people themselves will
experience. It is essential for   society." [1971, 122]    taking-taking their dignity.    solve each problem that will
communication that he know                                 Denial of the opportunity for   arise out of a changing world.
46



Helper cannot                  "Help" as
Themes   Starting from  where              See through the            impose change on              benevolence is           Doers in the driver's
Author                     the doers are.                doers' eyes.                   doers.                    ineffective.                    seat
Helper-Doer                                                                         ("Neither an                ("nor a gift.")
imposition,...)
of their experiences." [1971,                           participation is the denial of    They will if they, the people,
69-701                                                  human dignity and demo-      have the opportunity and
cracy. It will not work."   power to make and enforce
[1971, 123]                the decision instead of seeing
that power vested in just a
.__________________________                                                                                      few."  11969, 551
Paulo Freire           "In contrast with the       "I repeat: the investigation of   "Unfortunately, those who  "[O]ppressors use the banking  "Authentic liberation-the
Educator-              antidialogical and non-    thematics involves the       espouse the cause of        concept of education in      process of humanization-is
communicative 'deposits' of    investigation of the people's   liberation are themselves  conjunction with a     not another deposit to be
Community             the banking method of        thinking-thinking which     surrounded and influenced by   paternalistic social action  made in men. Liberation is a
education, the program      occurs only in and among    the climate which generates    apparatus, within which the    praxis: the action and
content of the problem-posing  men together seeking out  the banking concept, and   oppressed receive the       reflection of men upon their
method-dialogical par       reality. I cannot thinkfor  often do not perceive its true    euphemistic title of'welfare    world in order to transform it.
excellence-is constituted   others or without others, nor   significance or its     recipients.' They are treated    Those truly committed to the
and organized by the students'  can others thinkfor me...  dehumanizing power.      as individual cases, as      cause of liberation can accept
view of the world, where their  The more educators and the    Paradoxically, then, they  marginal men who deviate  neither the mechanistic
own generative themes are   people investigate the      utilize this same instrument of  from the general configura-    concept of consciousness as
found." [Freire 1970, 101]  people's thinking, and are  alienation in what they     tion of a 'good, organized,  an empty vessel to be filled,
thus jointly educated, the  consider an effort to liberate."  and just' society....  nor the use of banking
more they continue to       [1970, 66]                  The solution is not to       methods of domination
investigate. Education and                              'integrate' them into the   (propaganda, slogans-
thematic investigation, in the                          structure of oppression, but to  deposits) in the name of
problem-posing concept of                               transform that structure so  liberation." [1970, 66]
education, are simply dif-                              they can become 'beings for
ferent moments of the same                              themselves.' Such
process." [1970, 100-1]                                 transformation, of course,
would undermine the
oppressors' purposes; hence
their utilization of the
banking concept of education
to avoid the threat of student
conscienztizaeao. " [1970, 60-
47



Helper cannot                  "Help" as
Themes   Starting from  where              See through the             impose change on               benevolence is           Doers in the driver's
Author         - -          the doers are.                doers' eyes.                    doers.                   ineffective.                     seat.
Helper-Doer                                                                           ("Neither an               ("nor a gift.")
imposition,...)
E.F. Schumacher    "It is quite wrong to assume    "Who are the helpers and who  "[Ifl the rural people of the  "Nothing becomes truly 'one's  "We should be talking about
that poor people are generally  are those to be helped: The    developing countries are    own' except on the basis of  getting the people to use their
Dev. Agency-         unwilling to change; but the    helpers, by and large, are rich,  helped to help themselves, I    some genuine effort or  own labor power, with their
LDC                    proposed change must stand    educated (in a somewhat    have no doubt that a genuine   sacrifice. A gift of material    own intelligence (which is not
in some organic relationship   specialized sense), and town-   development will ensue,  goods can be appropriated by   incapable of picking up
to what they are doing      based. Those who most need   [But it] cannot be 'produced'   the recipient without cffort or  improved methods from
already, and they are rightly    help are poor, uneducated,  by skilful grafting operations   sacrifice; it therefore rarely  outsiders), and their own local
suspicious of, and resistant to,  and rurally based.... The  carried out by foreign  becomes 'his own' and is all   resources and materials to
radical changes proposed by    methods of production, the  technicians or an indigenous   too frequently and easily  provide, in the first place, for
town-based and office-bound   patterns of consumption, the    elite that has lost contact with  treated as a windfall.... The  their own fundamental needs,
innovators who approach     systems of ideas and of values  the ordinary people. It can  gift of material goods makes    which are good, clothing, and
them in the spirit of: 'You just  that suit relatively affluent  succeed only if it is carried  people dependent, but the gift  shelter, and certain communal
get out of the way and I shall  and educated city people are   forward as a broad, popular    of knowledge makes them  assets like roads, wells, and
show you how useless you are  unlikely to suit poor, semi-    'movement of reconstruction'   free-provided it is the right   public buildings. " [1964,
and how splendidly the job  illiterate peasants. Poor    with the primary emphasis on   king of knowledge, of course.  370]
can be done with a lot of   peasants cannot suddenly    the full utilisation of the  ... This, then, should become   "The altemative to coercion
foreign money and outlandish  acquire the outlook and habits  drive, enthusiasm,     the ever-increasing          cannot be found when
equipment."' [1973, 200]    of sophisticated city people.   intelligence, and the labour    preoccupation of aid  spiritual realities are
If the people cannot adapt  power of everyone. Success    programmes-to make men    dismissed as being of no
themselves to the methods,    cannot be obtained by some    self-reliant and independent    account or treated as merely
then the methods must be    form of magic produced by    by the generous supply of the   subservient to economic aims.
adapted to the people. This is  scientists, technicians, or  appropriate intellectual gifts,   It cannot be found when the
the whole crux of the matter."  economic planners. It can  gifts of relevant knowledge  people are considered as
[1973, 1921                 come only through a process   on the methods of self-help."   objects to be driven, cajoled,
of growth involving the     [1973, 197]                  or manipulated. Perhaps the
education, organization, and                             best-perhaps even the
discipline of the whole pop-                             only-effective slogan for aid
ulation." [1973, 204-5]                                  is: 'Find out what the people
are trying to do and help them
to do it better."' [1964, 374]
48



Policy Research Working Paper Series
Contact
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WPS2667 Trade Reform and Household Welfare: Elena lanchovichina     August 2001        L. Tabada
The Case of Mexico               Alessandro Nicita                           36896
Isidro Soloaga
WPS2668 Comparative Life Expectancy in Africa F. Desmond McCarthy   August 2001        H. Sladovich
Holger Wolf                                37698
WPS2669 The Impact of NAFTA and Options for Jorge Martinez-Vazquez   September 2001    S. Everhart
Tax Reform in Mexico              Duanjie Chen                               30128
WPS2670 Stock Markets, Banks, and Growth:  Thorsten Beck            September 2001     A. Yaptenco
Correlation or Causality?        Ross Levine                                 31823
WPS2671 Who Participates? The Supply of    Norbert R. Schady        September 2001     T. Gomez
Volunteer Labor and the Distribution                                         32127
of Government Programs in Rural Peru
WPS2672 Do Workfare Participants Recover    Martin Ravallion        September 2001     C. Cunanan
Quickly from Retrenchment?       Emanuela Galasso                            32301
Teodoro Lazo
Ernesto Philipp
WPS2673 Pollution Havens and Foreign Direct  Beata K. Smarzynska    September 2001     L. Tabada
Investment: Dirty Secret or Popular   Shang-Jin Wei                          36896
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WPS2674 Measuring Economic Downside        Yan Wang                 September 2001     A. Rivas
Risk and Severity: Growth at Risk    Yudong Yao                              36270
WPS2675 Road Infrastructure Concession     Franck Bousquet          September 2001     G. Chenet-Smith
Practice in Europe               Alain Fayard                                36370
WPS2676 An Alternative Unifying Measure of   Philippe Auffret       September 2001     K. Tomlinson
Welfare Gains from Risk-Sharing                                              39763
WPS2677Can Local Institutions Reduce Poverty? Paula Donnelly-Roark  September 2001     E. Hornsby
Rural Decentralization in Burkina Faso Karim Ouedraogo                       33375
Xiao Ye
WPS2678 Emerging Markets Instability: Do   Graciela Kaminsky        September 2001     E. Khine
Sovereign Ratings Affect Country    Sergio Schmukler                         37471
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WPS2679 "Deposit Insurance Around the Globe: Ashl Demirguc-Kunt     September 2001     K. Labrie
Where Does It Work?               Edward J. Kane                             31001
WPS2680 International Cartel Enforcement:    Simon J. Evenett       September 2001     L. Tabada
Lessons from the 1990s           Margaret C. Levenstein                      36896
Valerie Y. Suslow



Policy Research Working Paper Series
Contact
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WPS2681 On the Duration of Civil War        Paul Collier             September 2001     P. Collier
Anke Hoeffler                               88208
Mans Sbderbom
WPS2682 Deposit Insurance and Financial     Robert Cull             September 2001      K. Labrie
Development                       Lemma W. Senbet                             31001
Marco Sorge
WPS2683 Financial Policies and the Prevention  Frederic S. Mishkin  October 2001        R. Vo
of Financial Crises in Emerging                                               33722
Market Economies
WPS2684 From Monetary Targeting to Inflation  Frederic S. Mishkin   October 2001        R. Vo
Targeting: Lessons from Industrialized                                        33722
Countries
WPS2685 Monetary Policy Strategies for      Frederic S. Mishkin      October 2001       R. Vo
Latin America                     Miguel A. Savastano                         33722
WPS2686 Education, Earnings, and Inequality  Andreas Blom            October 2001       S. Benbouzid
in Brazil, 1982-98: Implications for   Lauritz Holm-Nielsen                    38469
Education Policy                  Dorte Verner
WPS2687 Geographic Patterns of Land Use     Kenneth M. Chomitz      October 2001         S. Hendrickson
and Land Intensity in the Brazilian    Timothy S. Thomas                       37118
Amazon
WPS2688 Aid, Shocks, and Growth             Paul Collier            October 2001        A. Kitson-Walters
Jan Dehn                                    33712
WPS2689 Global Trade and Food Safety:       John S. Wilson           October 2001       L. Tabada
Winners and Losers in a Fragmented  Tsunehiro Otsuki                          36896
System
WPS2690 Ringing in the 20" Century:         Scot Wallsten           October 2001       FP. Sintim-Aboagye
The Effects of State Monopolies,                                              917644
Private Ownership,and Operating
Licenses on Telecommunications
in Europe, 1892-1914
WPS2691 Evolution of Earnings and Rates of   Gladys L6pez-Acevedo    October 2001       M. Geller
Returns to Education in Mexico                                                85155
WPS2692 Introduction to Property Theory:    David Ellerman          October 2001        El. Mekuria
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