Aid Thoughts

There’s an enormous amount that we don’t understand about development, which allows us to avoid some of the more sensitive questions concerning the relative success and failure of nations to develop. I’ve written before about the role of culture in development, but there’s a related issue that needs to be tackled but often isn’t because it can be so easy to slip into pejoratives: inaction and apathy.

Apathy is simply not caring. Sometimes it’s striking how simple things are neglected altogether, and the easiest diagnosis for this is that the people concerned don’t care enough. This can be problematic though, because apathy is easily mistaken for the manifestation of a range of issues: poor incentives, complex relationships between rival or symbiotic groups, weak civic consciousness and an incomplete conception of state responsibility from both sides of the relationship; all of these can present in the same form of simple inaction. I was recently discussing this with a colleague, arguing that in Zanzibar despite a range of confounding issues, there is a problem of apathy among decision makers and those who hold them to account which does retard development outcomes. Despite this, understanding the roots of this apathy leads us away from pejorative judgement, not towards it.

In Zanzibar, there are two such manifestations: from the decision makers and leaders, who sometimes let long periods of time elapse before action (sometimes shockingly simple) is taken, and a kind of political apathy from the general population, which is extremely reluctant to demand its rights or better performance from its leaders. When Zanzibar had a three month power cut in 2009-10, the root problem was that the central cable that provides power to the island was ten years past its advertised lifespan and despite at least one previous occurrence and general knowledge of this problem, no action for its replacement had begun. Smaller examples abound: generators not being fixed until power outages actually occur, medicine not being ordered until it’s actually finished. These problems are not unique to Zanzibar (as this week’s bomb explosions in Dar Es Salaam, the second time they’ve occurred due to apparent negligence, suggests), but are amplified when the results are so concretely felt by the entire population.

It’s important to consider all of the contributing factors to this phenomenon of inaction, however. One of the first is lack of education. One the side of the state this may affect planning and implementation of plans for the kind of work we’re talking about: ordering medicine, repairing or maintaining infrastructure. A weak education system could contribute to a systematically weak ability to perform such functions. This argument doesn’t wash with me. While it may be true that education systems are weak, the kind of things we’re talking about are extremely basic: simple replacement of goods with a calendar-defined shelf life. This kind of planning is observable in virtually any society, as anthropologists will know. What’s more, it’s simply not a tenable argument that those in decision making roles have lacked access to good education. No-one in such a role in Government would have anything less than a good undergraduate degree and a decade of work experience, and most will have advanced degrees (some from overseas).

Lack of education could also be a barrier for civil society, denying the population the confidence and knowledge to demand better performance from the state. Again, this strikes me as a weak argument. While education certainly improves the articulacy of demonstration, it has never been a necessary condition for discontent with the state to be expressed. Food riots in the 18th Century weren’t exactly teeming with the intelligentsia, and even today, the power of demonstration and revolution is normally provided by the least-educated segment of society, even if leadership is rarely drawn from there. As such, a lack of education would more likely affect the way in which grievance is expressed, rather than its existence in the first place. Education explains neither the failure of certain state actions, nor the acquiescence of the wider population.

Far more convincing is the argument that inaction is a product of bad incentives, restricted options for action and heavily involved patronage networks. For a state to function effectively it needs to have incentives that motivate it to do so. If the incentives of the state are to remain in power and to enrich those individuals who constitute the state, then inaction may be a default setting if the grasp on power of the state is precarious enough that any action that demonstrates favour to one group or another can bring the state down. Similarly, if developmental action carries with it too little chance of success and economic progress, the state and elite groups may choose to devote state power and resources to destructive accumulation or kleptocracy. This may explain the failure of Government to power economic transformation, but loses credibility when the failure of more mundane actions of state is considered. The electricity cable would have been a win all around, and was always going to be paid for by donors, so there was no incentive-based reason not to undertake it – it would not have caused social instability or favoured any one group over others, nor would it have reduced opportunities for rent-seeking by Government officials.

The incentives argument holds more weight from the side of civil society. If the general population, or a significant section of it, is tied to the Government through networks of patronage they may be much less willing to protest on certain issues as long as what they gain privately from the state outweighs what they should be getting from public state action. This lack of civic action removes a significant incentive for the state to act decisively. Yet the importance of this is greatest if we start from the assumption that for basic actions to be undertaken, the state needs to be prodded into action. This isn’t always the case, though it can be. Plenty of states that were not under significant popular pressure have done very well in providing basic services (Egypt before Tahrir Square springs to mind); there must be other factors weakening the initial impulse to act as well.

Part of this may be down to a limited conception of the State’s role. If there is a cultural norm that considers kinship or other socially defined, informal, groups as the primary source of support, then the pressure on the state will be correspondingly weaker. This links back to education, since civic rights and the role of the state are reinforced through the education system. This again could stimulate inaction directly (as state action is sanctioned less) and indirectly (through less civic pressure). But once again, for me it has limited truth. Regardless of social conceptions of the state’s role, once the state has taken on a responsibility, such as the provision of power as through a nationalised industry, social conceptions of the state go out the window. People may wish that this be undertaken privately, but until is, the openly recognised reality is that the state is obliged to act in the interests of the people in the provision of these services.

These arguments are all moving towards the conclusion that while inaction may be loosely attributed to a range of factors, none of them have a very strong claim to explain it entirely, even in concert. My feeling is that apathy plays a major part. I find it very hard to come up with any credible explanation for basic, simple, actions not being taken except for a lack of concern on the part of those responsible, and lack of pressure on them by those affected. These two conditions probably exist to some extent for some issues in all states.

This may seem strongly judgmental, but it needn’t be. I raised these questions with a few friends of mine this week, some of whom lived through the Revolution in Zanzibar. They painted a very interesting picture: of a society whose solidarity and ability to act in concert underwent a cataclysmic shock through this single event, and which has never recovered. This is a subject for another article another day, but the strong message was that some people don’t care enough, but if they don’t it’s largely because of the deep and profound divisions that hamper their empathy for other groups and their ability to join together with them for progressive action. Perhaps the Unity Government will help heal these rifts; if it does the benefit will almost certainly outweigh the costs that I fear it brings.