You’re an insanely, mindbogglingly rich, eccentric philantropist with a huge amount of political clout. You don’t own whole countries but you possibly could. You decide to take a country like say the Central African Republic and you decide you want to nation-build it into a 1st world/developed country as fast as possible. This country will in the end have a varied and thriving economy, good health care, a stable, democratic government and a 1st world infrastructure. How long would it take you to turn a country like the CAR into such a country, given that money isn’t really an object for you? Would it actually be possible to nation-build in such a manner that would create lasting prosperity in that or a similar country? Are there any real world examples of a country developing at a break neck speed from 3rd world to 1st (with or without the help of eccentric zillionaires)?
Sure there are examples. Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea for instance.
The problem is the political structure of the country. If the zillionaire takes over the political apparatus of the country, he’s a dictator. If he leaves the political apparatus intact, then they’re just going to steal everything. There has to be indigenous political control, and if the indigenous political culture isn’t up to the task, then it’s pretty much a waste.
Your premise fails, because it cannot be done with any amount fo money. This does not mean it cannot be done at all.
let me explain: money is not relevant here. With two or three generations, you can turn a developing nation into a thriving developed one. You need education, an honest government which accepts, supports, and promotes capital development and investment, and a reasonable expectation of peace. That’s all. However, it is extremely hard to develop these things, and as more than a few people are finding out (Greece, America), rather hard to keep them as well. But do them and the money will take care of itself.
Immigration from all the crappy countries surrounding it would destroy it fairly quickly, as soon as it’s standard of living began to rise.
Start with building high-quality schools, attracting teaching talent from around the world. Make sure all females are literate. Then wait 20 years.
The basics you need to introduce:
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Sufficient education that people can produce wealth.
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Sufficient rule of law and protection of property rights that people will find it worthwhile to produce wealth.
Both of these take years to work, even if implemented perfectly – it takes time for people to learn useful skills, and to un-learn the notion that there’s no point creating anything because some criminal (with or without an official title) will just steal it.
So, first, let me say that I’ve spent the last two years working on my masters in public policy, with a focus on international development. I spent two years as a community development worker in Eastern Europe, and I interned with a development NGO in India. I’ve also done in-depth research on development in the Philippines, specifically into human rights and how they interact with economic development. And that’s just the stuff I’ve done outside of the classroom. So I have a little bit of a background on this issue.
So. I would say that there isn’t a single thing you can point to that develops a country, and what aspects are most important depend on what is going on in a country. There isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” solution. (Greg Easterly goes on about this at length in his book White Man’s Burden, if you’re interested; he used to work for the World Bank, and he claims that the failures of the the Bretton Woods institutions are due to their inability to deal with fluid situations and dependence on economic models that make sense in a computer but not in the real world. It’s an interesting book; I recommend it.) I would therefore say that the premise of the OP is flawed in that you can’t just choose a set of policies that will work in any given situation.
What is necessary to develop, say, Afghanistan or Colombia or Guinea-Bissau, all of which have major drug problems? Improved security and economic alternatives that are unrelated to the narcotics trade. (This is working well in Colombia, less well in Afghanistan, and not at all in Guinea-Bissau because as far as I can tell, no one gives a shit about Guinea-Bissau.)
What is necessary to develop, say, Uganda? Improved access to ARVs and increased use of anti-malarial nets would help. A country with a sick citizenry cannot grow economically. Obviously, this is a total oversimplification, I’m just saying that something that is vital in one part of the world is not going to help development in another part of the world. For instance, Russia is also facing a major public health crisis, but it needs to be handled very differently.
IN GENERAL: the basics of development are, IMHO, education, health, and governance. Like Bryan Ekers says, educating women is incredibly important (studies have shown that in terms of children’s health and education, two literate parents > literate mother/illiterate father > literate father/illiterate mother > two illiterate parents). However, this isn’t really enough. Women are now outperforming men in terms of education all over sub-Saharan Africa. Maybe in ten or twenty years, we will see the benefits of the increase of women’s education in the region. However, I would suggest that it’s imperative for there to be other factors at work. It doesn’t matter how well-educated everyone is if the government is corrupt.
To give an example, I spent seven weeks doing a massive amount of research on human trafficking in the Philippines and provided our ideas on what could be done to improve the situation. My group and I wrote a 20-page paper on the topic - and then we actually went to the Philippines and interviewed government officials, NGO workers, and researchers at the US Embassy. And we had to throw our whole 20 fucking pages out the window because everything we had was wrong. None of our ideas would work because corruption and a terrible court system made all of them unworkable. We ended up losing a lot of moral ground in our final paper because we had to work in so much compromise.
How can countries improve their governmental processes? It can come from the inside, but I would suggest that the best way is external pressure from donor nations and agencies. I lived in Bulgaria when it joined the EU. Part of the deal was that Bulgaria has to clean up its corrupt government. (BG was named the most corrupt country in Europe by Transparency International a couple years ago.) Well, they didn’t do what they said they would…and voila! The EU cut off a bunch of subsidies. That got them rolling again on improving clean governance. It’s a slow process, but it’s probably the best option. (On the other hand, getting funding cut off can have the opposite effect intended, of course. The Philippines is reaaaaalllllly close to getting all of its USAID funding cut off because they haven’t done enough to combat human trafficking - and if they do, all sorts of anti-trafficking programs that are funded by USAID will die. D’oh.)
Is there a way for a country to rapidly go to a developed country? Well, some of the Asian countries like Korea have moved pretty fast, so I guess it’s possible, but I think that it’s largely unlikely. Development is slow and frustrating and filled with compromises on things you would rather not compromise on, but most of the time you don’t really have a choice. It’s just a bunch of people floundering around, trying to do their best in an impossible situation. There’s no magic bullet.
Besides Easterly’s book, which I recommended above, I would suggest reading Jeffery Sachs’ The End of Poverty. Sachs does seem to think that a massive amount of money can cure poverty. (Sachs and Easterly have a bit of a feud going on.) Here are two PhDs in economics, both of whom have worked in development for years and years, and they’ve come away with drastically different ideas and think the other one is talking out of his ass. I think the disconnect right here shows how difficult this question is to resolve.
OH MY GOD I’M SHUTTING UP NOW.
I agree that there are no easy solutions. Kyla makes a good point. Development is a relatively new concept- we only really started getting serious about it in the 1970s. We’re still learning about this.
I’d argue that the first thing most countries need are open and fair business and property laws, so that people can open and grow their businesses. Taxes should be fairly assessed, business laws should be straightforward and enforced, opening businesses should not require too much paperwork, etc. Trade laws should encourage foreign trade, and foreign investors should feel comfortable investing in said country.
I’d also argue that environmental protections are critical at this stage, to keep rapid business development from digging environmental holes that will take decades to fill, as happened in China.
Then comes infrastructure- roads come first. Roads are what keeps trade working. Then comes electricity and the like. Education and health care are important, but those will improve as business improves- though places with one major problem, like malaria, may need to take care of that ASAP as it saps worker productivity.
The first step is to establish physical control of the state. You can’t just say, “I’m the new boss.” You need to have military and police to back it up, and they need to be honest organizations which promote based on leadership qualities, rather than on favors and connections. Once you have that, you can start looking at all that other stuff. But to get to that point, you need military might, and that’s something that is going to be very hard for a wealthy individual to accomplish. Finding a group of mercenaries who are honest and dependable and will keep misbehavior to a minimum is problematic.
Though, thankfully, you may not need a whole country’s worth. You just need enough to serve as the entire officer force. The military and police who were already in the country would need to all be busted down to the bottom rank or kicked out, and certainly you would have to interview each of them individually to make sure that they weren’t slimy and corrupt.
Can’t be done in the manner of the OP (i.e. no matter how rich some guy is, or how much of his wealth he is willing to spend, development can’t be imposed from outside, it has to come from within). The best thing the gigantigillionare in the OP could do for his target country would be to build some factories there that will produces goods and/or services desired by the rest of the world and using local labor and resources, and to use that as a kernel around which development can happen. As for how long it will take…it will take as long as it takes. It might never happen, or it might happen in a relatively short time, depending on how the local people progress and develop.
To be sure, building local infrastructure (especially as it relates to the factories producing those goods and services) would be a good thing, as would building local education (as mentioned by an earlier poster), but in the end the people have to develop on their own, and on their own path, not on the path laid out for them by even the best intentioned (and rich) outsiders.
-XT
Another thing you often need is good neighbors with a decent government. If the country next door is having a civil war, that will leak over to you. If you haven’t got a port, you need the country next door that does have a port to have roads and a working economy, so you can take your goods somewhere.
Singapore was a dictatorship and rapidly developed. A benevolent and mostly incorruptible dictatorship (because they genuinely care about development rather than short term personal gain) may well be the fastest path to develop a country.
I’m not buying the “no outsiders” thing, Xtisme. Post-war Europe and Japan sure seemed to benefit from outside influences. Grassroots movements are important and perhaps should be a primary developing force, but there is no reason why being an “outsider” automatically disqualifies you from doing anything useful.
As for building industry, this is important. But you need protections in place to make sure it won’t be arbitrarily nationalized, staffed by the local dictator’s incompetent friends, taxed out of existence, etc.
Singapore was not really a dictatorship, but rather a strongly one-party state. Looks unusual, until you realize that it’s just one big city, and most cities in the US have one-party rule.
Hong Kong did it too, under a benign colonialism that was not susceptible to the anti-market biases of even Singapore’s level of democracy.
As of 2003:
"We had many oppositionists, trade union leaders, journalists and activists imprisoned under the ISA for opposing the ruling PAP. The longest-serving prisoner is Mr Chia Thye Poh who was detained for 23 years without ever given a trial.
All newspapers, TV and radio stations are owned and run by the Government."
If it quacks like a duck…
Click on the link and read the source.
For a more unbiased perspective (though from an American POV) see here and here. It’s less liberal in certain important areas - mandatory military service and the strict libel laws come to mind - but it’s no dictatorship.
By the way, there are a few eccentric billionaires trying to save the world. Bill Gates is the most famous one, of course, and the Gates Foundation does a really massive amount of impressive work. But even they get criticized. For instance, they’ve come under fire for putting so much money into fighting HIV/AIDS and malaria that other diseases are being ignored by researchers who are hoping to get funding from the Gates Foundation.
George Soros has the Open Society Institute, which is doing a lot of work specifically in institution-building in the former Communist states, as well as pushing left-wing political ideas in the US. (My Drugs & Thugs professor, who’s on the International Narcotics Control Board, the commission that monitors UN anti-narcotics work, hates the OSI because they’re pro medical marijuana.)
And Mo Ibrahim, a Sudanese-born cell phone magnate, has set up a foundation that will reward African leaders who govern well and peacefully hand over their office after a democratic election. (The theory being that if dictatorship is so appealing in Africa because it’s the way to make money by robbing the country, Mr. Ibrahim will make you rich if you do a good job and leave office when your term is up.) It’s a pretty new foundation so it’s hard to say if it’ll work, but I think it’s a good idea.
I agree with sven regarding the influence of outsiders. Nations do not exist in a vacuum. Obviously, good bureaucrats and good leaders have to come from within, but an external motivators can be a useful push to get them there. And it can work.
from your own link all media is state owned and the state has a history of suing anyone who criticises the government (and winning) using defamation laws, and they also control the judiciary as well. (no separation of government). Do you honestly believe any kind of real democracy is possible with those restraints in mind?
Mind you theres a lot worse places to live than Singapore, if you want to work really hard and get rich (and keep your nose our of politics) it’s great.
Incorrect. You are perfectly within your rights to criticize governments, but politicians get a wider berth. Still not great, but you exaggerate by saying “suing anyone who criticizes the government.”
I want to second these book recommendations.
They come at the issue from completely different perspectives, which goes to show how divergent opinions are in the field. But you still should get a good idea of the important topics. Reading Easterly, you get nudged to the impression that Sachs is a pie-in-the-sky dreamer who isn’t willing to deal with the complications of the real world. Reading Sachs, the impression is that all the pessimists are pessimists only because they’re unwilling to think outside their preconceived notions. I’d like to believe Sachs is right, myself, but wishin don’t make it so. I visited the World Bank a few years back and had a brief conversation with a former Ghana finance official, and he knew and seemed to admire “Jeff”, but even he seemed to think that Sachs’s ideas weren’t practical, if only because those sorts of funds just aren’t broadly available.
And apparently Paul Romer (on the short list of likely future Nobel Prize winners, and husband of Christina Romer, chair of Obama’s council of economic advisors) is starting to work on development concerns. He seems to think that a sort of “Hong Kong” model might work, where a bunch of wonky types take control of a single city in a developing country (with permission of the government, natch) and implement liberal reforms, just as China’s move toward modernization started with free-trade zones in the coastal cities, based in part on mimicking Hong Kong’s success. Now if that ain’t big dreaming, I don’t know what is (especially given the problematic history of colonialism). Development is an exciting field in that way.