What We Are Reading 27/04/2013
1. Move towards Inclusive Institutions or Iron Law of Oligarchy in Mexico?
2. Why did Cuba become healthier during the economic meltdown of 1990s?
3. End of the Road for Runaway Factories? by Immanuel Wallerstein
4. Coffee for a Cause: What Do Those Feel-Good Labels Deliver? at NPR
5. What Causes What? About Causation and Correlation
Setting Boundaries: Who is Inside the Nation?
Identity Today: the Challenge in Somalia . Menkhaus, an expert about Somalia, argues that the biggest challenges that Somalia faces today is the definition of identity and rights in a federal or confederal system (which is often put forth as the alternative to a central nation building project). A federal solution is perceived by many as code for clan-based regions and therefore begs the question of who has the right to live or make full political claims in these entities. If one opts for territorial entities which are also ethnic entities then one opts for an exclusivist view of national identity in which political rights derives from belonging to a particular clan situated in a specific territory: this is called rights by blood. This exclusivist form of identity is adopted in Somaliland and Puntland where members of other clans are treated at best as guests and at worst as foreigners. A homogenous and unique identity, so the argument goes, vies for loyalty to the state institutions and authorities and therefore the formula is one citizenship for one national identity. The alternative to a particularist/exclusionist forms of identity is an identity which is more inclusive and does not collapse a unique national identity into citizenship: from this angle rights are to be given on the basis of citizenship.
The book Colonial Effect analyzes the making of national identity in Jordan and it holds interesting lessons for Somalia. The book describes how Jordan is a country where the idea of Jordanian has been an ever shifting and historically contingent concept. An analysis of the making of national identity in Jordan can help to sketch out the opposition between particularist vs inclusive identities and pinpoint the pros and cons of each form of national identification.
Jordan Today (source fanack.com)
Identity in the Making: Elastic Territories and Demographics. The history of Jordan is punctuated by historical moments which corresponded with the contraction or expansion of the territorial and demographic entity. The first territory known as Jordan was created by the British and the Amir Hijazi ‘Abdullah in 1921: before that date there was no territory, people or nationalist movement known as Jordanian. It encompassed a territory which was to expand and contract with time. In 1948 the occupation of Palestine by the Zionist caused millions of Palestinian to flee to Jordan and the de-facto annexation of the Central Palestine renamed as West Bank. Jordan assimilated the people whose origin was outside the 1921 territorial entity called Transjordan and by so doing it expanded both territorially and demographically. Palestinians became part of Jordan because the king claimed that people from both banks (the West and the East) were the same people. In 1967 the war with Israel cost Jordan the de fact loss of authority over the West Bank thus triggering a de-facto demographic and territorial contraction. In the same period the rise of the PLO and its claim to represent all Palestinian challenged Jordan’s claim to speak on behalf of Palestinian who are now Jordanian. The tension between the Jordanian monarchy and the Palestinian guerrillas which begun to encroach on the state authority inside Jordan culminated with the civil war in 1970 in which Jordan armed forces fought against Palestinian guerrillas. In 1989 and following the first Intifada in Palestine, Jordan severed its ties with the West Bank, disengaged de jure from the West Bank and denationalized the Jordanian population of the West Bank. Every territorial and demographic contraction and expansion was associated with a redefinition of national identity and a redefinition of who was the other against whom define itself.
Identity in Jordan. The other was initially conceived as the British colonial power as the nationalist movement drew on a pan-Arabic identity. Who is Jordanian was therefore defined against the British and it materialized into a struggle to end British occupation after independence. The events in 1948 inaugurated a trend which departed from the pan-Arabian Jordan identity: it was a particularist/exclusivist Jordanian identity. This identity saw the Palestinian Jordanians (i.e. those annexed to Jordan after 1948) as the other against whom define itself. This trend consolidated in the 1960s with the emergence of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) which threatened Jordanian regime claims to represent Palestinian land (West Bank) and the Palestinian people (those who became Jordanian citizen after 1948). This particularist/exclusivist Jordanian identity trend solidified in 1970 when the Jordanian armed forces fought against the Palestinian guerrillas. What ensued the civil war was the switch from an external other, the British, to an internal one, namely, Palestinian Jordanians which continues until today. A switch in other words from an inclusive identity to an exclusivist one.
To Exclude or To Include? A particularist/exclusivist Jordanian identity rejects the criterion of residency as a basis to establish Jordanianness, using instead the idea of origin. By defining as Jordanian only those who originally resided in the 1925 Transjordan territory it questions the Jordanianess of some of today citizens whose geographic origins within living memory are located outside the borders of the nation-state (Syrian-Jordanian, Chechens-Jordanian, Circassian-Jordanian and even some Bedouin tribes). It questions also the identity of those who, given their origin outside the original territorial core, refuse being uniquely Jordanian today (the Palestinian Jordanians who feel Palestinian and Jordanian at the same time). This exclusivist identity advocates for rights by blood or rights by origin and therefore it leaves out those who are outside the original territorial or demographic core, however this core is defined (Transjordan in 1925 in the case of Jordan). If one brings this identity to its logical conclusions one would advocate for a contraction of the nation into smaller and smaller segments and tribes into a never-ending spiral.
An inclusive Jordanian identity on the other hand substitutes origin with residency: as Colonial Effects explains
“The territorial division was therefore taken as starting point and the system introduced by which citizens exercised their public rights and duties where they took up residence, without regards to gens and tribe”.
As Palestinian Jordanian argues today Jordan is to include all of those who are citizens. This position is epitomized by King Husayn who in 1993 stated his support for the equality of all Jordanians “of all origins and birthplaces”[1] (p.272). From this angle, citizenship does not equal a unique identity and recognizes that also those groups with a diverse identity could be loyal to the state. Kurdish in Turkey today are another good example as they are citizens of a state which defines itself as Turk yet they affirm their Kurdish identity. As the Turkish president put it
The Ottoman Empire may have been a Turkish state but that didn’t mean every single one of its citizens was a Turk.
[1] This dictum is also enshrined in the 1946 Constitution which prohibits discrimination on the basis of “origin, languages, or religion”. Colonial Effects, p.41
What We Are Reading 19/04/2013
1. A Q&A with Ghana’s Vaccine King
2. Is the ICC Really Picking on Africa?
3. The Anatomy of Protests in Egypt and Tunisia: Who Was Protesting?
3. Who Needs the Bahrain Grand Prix?
4. HIV, Hair Salons and Condom: Caution When Applying Impact Evaluation Lessons Across Contexts
The Chinese government is making significant steps towards the abolishment of one of its most contested policies: the one-child policy. The discussion which ensues will lay out what have been the real consequences of the one-policy, it will highlight how the policy was linked to economic growth and will exposes the problems that the one-child policy poses for the Chinese state and society today.
One Child Policy and its Effects. The one-child policy in China is held by many as the decisive igniter of the steep decline in fertility rates – defined as the number of births per woman during her lifetime – in China. Contrary to the common understanding, the one-child policy introduced in 1979 did not precede the fertility transition – i.e. transition from high to low fertility rates – but instead followed its onset by 16 years in urban areas and 10 years in rural areas. Increase in female education attainment, female participation in the labor market and increased age at marriage were other circumstantial factors which ignited the fertility transition in China. The main consequence of the introduction of the one child policy was to hasten – not to spark – the fertility transition thus achieving exceptionally low fertility rates in the Chinese rural population within a very short period[1]. The pace and rapidity of this transition created an economic gift which today is dissipating.
Age Structure and Economic Miracle. China was able to achieve miraculous rates of economic growth because its cohort of working-age population increased at a faster pace that the youth cohort did. This was the economic gift that a hastened fertility transition produced. As the youth dependency burden decreased the growth of per capita income accelerated. In this way less resources were to be spent on dependents such as children. The decisive factor of a rapid demographic transition therefore is that it changes the age profile of a population.
Who Is to Support the Elders? (source ladiesagainstfeminism.com)
Fast and Furious: the Economic Gift Dissipates. The disproportionally high share of working age adults does not last forever however and the economic gift can soon dissipate. When the fertility transition advances to later stages, the ratio of young and elderly population (the dependent population) increased vis-a’-vis the working-age cohort. In China in particular the number of births dropped in a drastic way in the last 30 years: it took China 20 years to reach an age profile which took Britain 60 years. As the population ages and the number of births declines, the current model of elderly depending on the family fits ill with the current demographic trends and socioeconomic changes. Firstly, with a departure from the model one-family-under-one-roof towards nuclear households, a majority of the elderly is living in different cities from their offspring (the problem is more acute in rural areas than in urban areas). Secondly, as a result of the one-child policy which means one child per couple, the future cohorts of elderly will depend on a smaller number of offspring as compared to the present cohort. Thirdly, as life expectancy is increasing the elders are to be sustained longer by their offspring. The rising ratio of the elders in the Chinese population poses the question of how elders are to be offered financial support. Welfare and pension systems are not in place to fill the void left by shrunken families. A rapidly ageing population poses other problems too: as the number of births dropped, the supply of young, cheap labor is drying up, which in turn poses problem to the prospects of economic growth. China, many analyst say, became old before it became rich.
[1] “Demographic Transition in Asia and Its Consequences”. Hussain, Dyson and Cassen
What We Are Reading 12/04/2013
1. Clansmen into Englishmen. Acemoglu and Robinson on the question of identity and nation-building
2. Playing it Safe. Condoms and HIV in Vietnam
3. Libya Looks to Spain as Model for State-Building
The Justice for Aid Tradeoff
I read this article by a former prosecutor at the ICC and I found the argument very interesting and timely. The author discusses whether the quest for justice and accountability should be put on hold if this can improve the humanitarian conditions of the affected population; in other words should one settle for a political deal through concessions (e.g. promise to prosecute in any international tribunals) if this deal facilitates the access of humanitarian aid to certain areas. Even if the author recognizes that the justice for aid tradeoff might be an option in some contexts he argues that in Darfur the prolonged inaction approximates to condonance of impunity and therefore justice should always be prioritized. He makes two points to substantiate his position:
1. without addressing the root issue of impunity, there is no real impetus for the Sudanese government to genuinely engage in peace talks. Accountability is thus necessary for real, long-term change towards peace to take place in Darfur.
2. international spotlight and pressure have important implications on the protection of civilians, as many commentators have noted that this pressure correlates positively with a refrain fron massacres of civilians, at least in the case of Sudan.
I am curious to find out what readers out there think about these positions. As for the first statement under what circumstances one can confidently expect that accountability is conducive to peace and under what circumstances this pressure could be instead counter-productive? To translate this position in another context, why a president such as Assad should be incentivized to engage in peace talks while he stands the risk of being prosecuted at the ICC?
As per the second statement, what is the mechanism by which international spotlight can lead to the protection of civilians? Syria has been continuously under the international spotlight and the massacre of civilians has not abated. How can one isolate the impact of the international community (particularly US) pressure in Sudan and affirm with confidence that it is positively correlated with increased protection of civilians ( in the sense that the government retreated from its more destructive practice)? If this was the case in Sudan, as the author argues, why then this does not happen in Syria? Other commentators have observed that fighting groups step up the atrocities committed in order to draw the attention of the international community (this was the case in Sierra Leone): from this angle then the spike in atrocities is caused by the intent to be in the spotlight and the subsequent drop of violence cannot be attribute to the international pressure. If this is the case how one can disentangle the effects of international spotlight (i.e. increase or decrease of massacres)?
Lastly, when the author phrases the question in terms of “humanitarian or accountability first?”, one finds difficult to understand who has the power to answer the question. If a country is not a signatory of the Rome Statute then it is the Security Council to refer the case to the ICC. Now let’s say the majority of a population at a very specific point in time might prefer to prioritize the stability of a country (let’s say a transitional government with Assad, despite him having committed atrocities) who is to decide what is the priority? Could one say that there is a shortfall in accountability in the sense that other states are left to decide what comes first, humanitarian, stability or justice?
What We Are Reading 06/04/2013
1. High Food Prices and the Global Epidemic of Obesity ht to Duncan Green
2. Why President Kagame Runs Rwanda Like a Business
3. Patently Reasonable. India’s Supreme Court decision against Big Pharma
4. Unfair Trade. In the long term, the world needs free trade, not fair trade
5. Zaatari Camp. Another view from the “Hilton” refugee camp
6. Caution, Curves Ahead. Thomas Friedman on possible futures in Syria
When Kenyans went to vote for their new president many around the world asked whether Kenya would descend again into the same violence which ensued 2007 election. This question in turn is inscribed in a wider dilemma: what allows a democracy to survive? If the survival of the democracy in Kenya was never seriously questioned continous post-electoral violence are one of the predictors of a democracy death. The striking point of any discussion about the fate of democracy is their powerlessness in predicting if a democracy will survive.
Law of Large Numbers. One of the problem with such analysis is that they zoom in on a specific country and they draw lessons that are said to be applicable to other context. It was the rise of Jihadists and the arrival of weapons from Lybia which degenerated the situation in Mali. It was the land issue which inflamed Kenyans communities in 2007, it was said. The problem with restricting the analysis to a small number of observations is that one cannot be confident enough that what one observe will play out again in other countries or in the future. To have a high degree of confidence in the average value of the sample on the other hand, one needs to have very big sample. This is what political scientist Adam Przeworski and colleagues did in their book Democracy and Development. They look at cross countries data and ask the following research questions: what are the conditions that determine whether democracy or dictatorship prevails? What causes political regimes to rise, endure, and fall? Can their transformations be explained generally, or are they caused by circumstances idiosyncratic to each country and period? This question in particular allows to understand whether one can predict the fate of democracies regardless of the context in which they are. When looks across countries and over time one finds out that what we know is very little.
What Democracy? (source balooscartoonblog.blogspot.com)
Lessons from Around the World. Take for example income inequality: in democracies where income inequality is high, dominant social groups may seek recourse to authoritarianism the poor exercise their political rights to push for egalitarian reforms, as one of the hypothesis recites. The first finding is that there is no tenable finding: for many countries there is no information at all and for others only for scattered years; for other cases information about income inequality is collected with different methods and therefore is not comparable. When one wants to test if the level of income inequality causes regime transition one is left with only six observations of transition to dictatorship: keeping in mind the law of large number, one understands that any finding (e.g. democracy is more stable in more egalitarian societies) is very weak.
There are however some more robust findings: one is that democracy has the highest chances of surviving in affluent countries; in other words the level of income matters a great deal to predict the survival of democracy. What is not predictable on the other hand is what make democracy emerge: in fact it is not possible to identify any level of income threshold beyond which democracy emerges.
Another insightful observation is that when one put economic factors (i.e. level of income) in context by asking what is the impact of cultural, social and political conditions one finds out that economic factors continue to matter a great deal. As for social factors (e.g. ethno-linguistic fractionalization and religious heterogeneity) one finds out that their explanatory power is contigent upon the specification adopted (whether one includes one variable rather than the other). All in all however the authors conclude that the pattern is clear:
the level of economic development, economic performance, past regime instability (number of transitions to dictatorship in the past), and leadership turnover (changes of heads of government) tell almost all of the story.
Idiosyncratic Factors. Another important lesson is that such analysis works with chances and therefore necesseraly leaves out some other factors that matter. Some of these factors are idyosincratic that is specific to a particular context and therefore cannot be captured by a statistical analysis which looks for patterns across countries. In the case of Kenya political commentators have argued that the ability of political aristocracy to leverage identity has been a decisive factor in crystallizing the status quo and therefore in a certain sense to preserve the democratic order. When one asks whether democracy will survive in any specific countries one should keep these idionsyncratic factors.
What We Are Reading 30/03/2013
1. The Largest Financial Scam in Kenyan History
2. How North Korea’s leaders kept foreign currency flowing in their country
3. Doing Food Security Differently: Create exit options
4. The tyranny of human rights organizations: saving Africa from Africans by Andrew Mwenda
5. Informal Health Providers Treating TB Are Here to Stay, So How Do We Work With Them?
Tried Cash on Delivery for Vaccination? Try Again
Foreign aid program are often criticized for being weakly accountable: vis-à-vis both taxpayers from donor countries and citizens from developing countries. The problem with foreign aid programs, so the argument goes, is that they provide very opaque information about the implementation and the outcome achieved: one therefore does not know what the money have achieved. To address this problem the Centre for Global Development has proposed a new approach to foreign aid: cash on delivery (COD). This new model shifts the focus from the input (how much one spent) to the outcome (what has been achieved with the money). It does so because the donor will pay the money only upon delivery i.e. achievement of the agreed target. As they put it
We propose that donors offer to pay recipient governments a fixed amount for each additional unit of progress toward a commonly agreed goal, e.g. US$200 for each additional child who takes a standardized test at the end of primary school.
The advantages are several and two stands out: COD emphasizes outcomes rather than inputs thus increasing accountability and it directs attention to measuring progress thus promoting learning by doing. The COD model can be applied to public health interventions and one of the potential candidate is a vaccination campaign. Vaccination lends itself to this model because the outcome, i.e. the number of children vaccinated, can be quantified and measured. The formulation of a COD for vaccination campaign can be as follows: US$5 are paid for each additional child who is vaccinated with measles and/or polio vaccines and/or receives vitamin A (the standard practice for vaccination in emergency situation). Easy right? When COD was tried out in practice for vaccination it turned out that paying cash on delivery is not that easy. Here are some of the possible bottlenecks.
What Delivery? Imagine that the donor discusses the issue with the director of the primary health care department at the ministry of health (MOH) and it explains how COD works: cash is conditional upon delivery i.e. vaccination of a child. COD however cannot be formulated as US$ 5 dollars per each additional child vaccinated as vaccination has one peculiarity: one has to reach 95% of vaccination coverage to avoid any outbreak. The delivery bit of the COD is therefore to be formulated as the total number of children to be vaccinated (and not as any number of children vaccinated). And this creates the first problem: if you have a delivery target you also have the possibility to fail; and nobody in the ministry of health wants to be responsible for any failure if there are political elections the following year. So a contract which is tied to a specific target (e.g. 500,000 children vaccinated) is not feasible as nobody in the MOH wants to hear about an overall target. This in turn breaks the accountability feedback loop created by the COD: if cash is spent on vaccines for 500,000 children (the desidered target) yet such target does not appear in any contract with the MOH then no-one is responsible for how the vaccines are used if let’s say only 300,000 children are vaccinated.
Hands-off? One of the feature of the COD model is that the donor embraces an hands-off approach in the sense that it gives to the government the full responsibility and authority to design and implement the program. In the case of vaccination one of the essential component is the incentives for the vaccination teams. Now imagine that the MOH communicates to the donor that it does not want to be involved in the payment of any incentives as it wants to stay away from the risk of fund siphoned off for other purposes or any complaints from the field staff. The donor now can either wash its hands and leave the responsibility to the MOH or step in and arrange for the payment of incentives. If it goes for option 1 it heads to failure if it picks option 2 it steps into quicksand and ticks off the hands-off/responsibility advantage of the COD model.
You Remember What I Said Yesterday?Forget About It. If the donor goes for option 2 then it partners with a local organization which will negotiate the contract with the MOH district physicians in each district. To do so one sets the target of how many children are to be vaccinated in each district and then explains that US$ 5 dollars will be paid per each additional child vaccinated. You start a 2 weeks vaccination campaign and after 1 week many district physicians realize that they will not achieve the target and therefore they will not get the full jackpot (calculated upon the district target was set by district physician himself; remember the hands-off). With no jackpot each district physician complains about the COD and accuses the donor of punishing the staff. The donor receives a phone call from the MOH director general who complains too. The donors backs off, commits to pay whatever the number of children vaccinated and COD is ticked off.
The COD model adopted for this specific public health intervention departs from the model outlined by CGD (the initial contract with the government was never detailed, verification of the progress against outcome was not done indipendently etc) yet it is usefuld to point to how the COD model can look like in the real world and what problems it can encounter. Agreeing on a delivery target is problematic and thorny, handing over responsibility to government can turn out not feasible in some situations and targets at the microlevel are never definitive. All in all, the COD model has much potential, however is not magic bullet, at least for vaccination.
Andrew W
Do No Harm Inc.
DESTIN Contributor
Craig M
Rajni C
Rida H. B.
Do No Harm 