Helping people help themselves : from the World Bank to an alternative philosophy of development assistance / David Ellerman.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

David Ellerman relates a deep theoretical groundwork for a philosophy of development, while offering a descriptive, practical suggestion of how goals of development can be better set and met. Beginning with the assertion that development assistance agencies are inherently structured to provide help that is ultimately unhelpful by overriding or undercutting the capacity of people to help themselves, David Ellerman argues that the best strategy for development is a drastic reduction in development assistance. The locus of initiative can then shift from the would-be helpers to the doers (recipients) of development. Ellerman presents various methods for shifting initiative that are indirect, enabling and autonomy-respecting. Eight representative figures in the fields of education, community organization, economic development, psychotherapy and management theory including: Albert Hirschman, Paulo Freire, John Dewey, and Søren Kierkegaard demonstrate how the major themes of assisting autonomy among people are essentially the same.

David Ellerman is currently a Visiting Scholar in the Economics Department at the University of California at Riverside.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Foreword (p. xvii)
• Preface (p. xix)
• 1 Introduction & Overview (p. 1)
• Helping People Help Themselves (p. 1)
• The Fundamental Helping Self-Help Conundrum (p. 4)
• The Key Factor in Development Assistance: Autonomy-Respecting Help (p. 6)
• Unhelpful Help (p. 7)
• The First Don't: Don't Override Self-Help Capacity with Social Engineering (p. 8)
• The First Form of Unhelpful Help (p. 8)
• The Indirect Approach (p. 11)
• The Second Don't: Don't Undercut Self-Help Capacity with Benevolent Aid (p. 12)
• The Second Form of Unhelpful Help (p. 12)
• The Time-Inconsistency Problem of "Gap-Filling Aid" (p. 14)
• Relief Assistance as Generalized Moral Hazard (p. 14)
• The Scylla and Charybdis of Development Assistance (p. 16)
• Knowledge-Based Development Assistance (p. 17)
• The Cognitive Dimension of Development Assistance (p. 17)
• The Two Don'ts in Knowledge-Based Assistance (p. 18)
• Socratic Approach to Doers' Active Learning (p. 19)
• The Three Dos (p. 19)
• The First Do: Start from Where the Doers Are (p. 19)
• The Second Do: See the World through the Doers' Eyes (p. 21)
• The Third Do: Respect the Autonomy of the Doers (p. 22)
• Eight Thinkers Triangulate a Theory of Autonomy-Respecting Help (p. 23)
• 2 Internal & External Motivation: Beyond Homo Economicus (p. 25)
• Toward a Critique of Agency Theory (p. 25)
• Nondistortionary Interventions (p. 29)
• Nondistortionary Taxes and Subsidies (p. 29)
• The Common Pool Approach to Aid (p. 30)
• Independence Today, "Supply Effect" Tomorrow (p. 31)
• Independence and Moral Hazard (p. 32)
• Commitment Mechanisms to Show Own Motivation (p. 33)
• Gaming the Safeguards (p. 35)
• Internal and External Motivation (p. 36)
• Moving beyond Homo Economicus (p. 36)
• Foreground and Background (p. 37)
• Higher and Lower Selves (p. 39)
• Action = Behavior + Motive (p. 41)
• By-products Rather Than Products of Choice (p. 43)
• The Threat-to-Autonomy Effect (p. 44)
• The Crowding-out Effect (p. 45)
• The "New Year's Resolutions" and Internalization Theories of Conditionalities (p. 47)
• The Universal Solvent Fallacy in the Economic Design of Institutions (p. 49)
• 3 The Indirect Approach (p. 52)
• From Direct to Indirect Assistance (p. 52)
• The Indirect Approach in Strategy (p. 53)
• The Indirect Approach in Biological Learning Mechanisms (p. 54)
• The Indirect Approach of Selectionist Mechanisms (p. 57)
• McGregor's Theory Y: A Prototype Indirect Approach (p. 61)
• Step 1 Starting from the Doer's Problem (p. 62)
• Step 2 Seeing the Problem through the Doer's Eyes (p. 62)
• Step 3 Helping the Doer Pursue Their Own Ends to Best Solve the Organizational Problem (p. 62)
• Step 4 Helping the Doer to Implement, Test, and Refine the Doer's Solution (p. 63)
• Step 5 Helping the Doer Gain Autonomy and Take Responsibility for the Solution (p. 63)
• Intrinsic Motivation and Theory Y (p. 64)
• 4 Indirect Approaches: Intellectual History (p. 68)
• Background (p. 68)
• Taoist Antecedents (p. 69)
• The Socratic Method (p. 70)
• The Path of Stoicism (p. 73)
• Learning in Neoplatonism (p. 75)
• The Learning Paradox and Augustine (p. 77)
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Copernican Revolution in Pedagogy (p. 79)
• John Dewey and the Active Learning Pedagogy (p. 81)
• Carl Rogers' Nondirective Therapy (p. 83)
• Soren Kierkegaard and Ludwig Wittgenstein on Indirect Communication (p. 85)
• Gilbert Ryle and Michael Polanyi on Uncodified Knowledge (p. 89)
• Gandhi and Satyagraha (p. 91)
• Summary of Common Theme: B-ing and Non-B-ing (p. 97)
• 5 Autonomy-Respecting Development Assistance (p. 100)
• Development Intervention as a Principal-Agent Relationship (p. 100)
• First Do: Starting from Present Institutions (p. 104)
• Second Do: Seeing the World through the Eyes of the Client (p. 107)
• First Don't: Transformation Cannot Be Externally Imposed (p. 109)
• Second Don't: Addams-Dewey-Lasch Critique of Benevolence (p. 113)
• Third Do: Respect Autonomy of Doers (p. 118)
• 6 Knowledge-Based Development Assistance (p. 121)
• The Standard Methodology and Its Problems (p. 121)
• The Standard Theory-in-Use (p. 121)
• The Volitional and Cognitive Sides of Helping Theory (p. 122)
• Ownership Problems (p. 122)
• Self-Efficacy Problems (p. 126)
• Cognitive Dependency Problems (p. 127)
• Examples of Building "In-capacity" (p. 129)
• Core Courses (p. 129)
• Training of Trainers (p. 130)
• Training Networks (p. 130)
• Fees for Service (p. 132)
• Evaluations (p. 132)
• Public Relations and Other Influence Activities (p. 134)
• Economic and Sector Work: A "Jobs Program" for Bank Economists (p. 135)
• External Aid Agencies Co-opting Local Talent (p. 137)
• Unsustainable Missionary Outposts (p. 138)
• Types of Development Knowledge (p. 139)
• Universal versus Local Knowledge (p. 139)
• Codified versus Tacit Knowledge (p. 143)
• Cargo Cult Reforms: "Where Is the Road That Leads to Cargo?" (p. 144)
• Knowledge Assistance: Brokering between Experiments, Not Disseminating Answers (p. 147)
• 7 Can Development Agencies Learn & Help Clients Learn? (p. 149)
• Introduction: A "Church" versus a Learning Organization (p. 149)
• Roadblock to Learning 1 Official Views as Dogma, with Examples (p. 151)
• Roadblock to Learning 2 Funded Assumptions as Dogma (p. 158)
• Roadblock to Learning 3 "Social Science" as Dogma (p. 159)
• Roadblock to Learning 4 The Rage to Conclude (p. 160)
• The Open Learning Model (p. 163)
• Competition and Devil's Advocacy in the Open Learning Model (p. 165)
• Devil's Advocacy and Countervailance (p. 165)
• The General Case for Devil's Advocacy (p. 170)
• Problems in Implementing Devil's Advocacy (p. 171)
• Devil's Advocacy as the Qualitative Version of the Opportunity Cost Doctrine (p. 172)
• Evaluation = Retrospective Devil's Advocacy (p. 173)
• Variations: Adversarial Legal Process, the Loyal Opposition, Separation of Powers, and Civil Society (p. 174)
• Nondogmatism and Socratic Ignorance in Organizations (p. 176)
• Rethinking the Agency-Country Relationship (p. 179)
• 8 Case Study: Assistance to the Transition Countries (p. 186)
• The Challenge of the Transition (p. 186)
• The Privatization Debates: Did History have a "Timeout" under Communism? (p. 187)
• Voucher Privatization (p. 189)
• The Ideas behind the Scheme (p. 189)
• The "Arguments" for the Scheme (p. 191)
• Voucher Privatization was a Political Strategy (p. 193)
• Institutional Shock Therapy versus Incrementalism (p. 195)
• China: An Incrementalist Transition (p. 196)
• Why an Incrementalist Approach Might Be Successful (p. 197)
• The Lease Buyout Counterfactual (p. 202)
• Closing Remarks on the Transition Case Study (p. 205)
• 9 Hirschmanian Themes of Social Learning & Change (p. 207)
• The Balanced Growth Debate (p. 207)
• Conditionality-Based Development Aid: The New Big Push (p. 210)
• Unbalanced Growth Processes (p. 213)
• Cognitive Side of Unbalanced Growth (p. 216)
• Bridges to Other Thinkers (p. 219)
• Herbert Simon's Theory of Bounded Rationality (p. 219)
• Charles Lindblom's Theory of Incrementalism and Muddling Through (p. 220)
• Burton Klein's Vision of Dynamic Economics (p. 222)
• Jane Jacobs's Vision of Development (p. 225)
• Donald Schon's Theory of Decentralized Social Learning (p. 227)
• Everett Rogers's Theory of Decentralized Innovation and Diffusion (p. 228)
• Just-in-Time Inventory and Continuous Improvement Systems (p. 230)
• Charles Sabel's Theory of Learning by Monitoring (p. 230)
• Parallel Experimentation as a Basic Scheme for Learning under Uncertainty (p. 234)
• 10 Conclusions (p. 240)
• Concluding the Example of the World Bank (p. 240)
• Can the World Bank Change? (p. 240)
• Structural Problem 1 Monopolistic Power (p. 241)
• Structural Problem 2 Affiliation with U.S. Policies and Interests (p. 242)
• Structural Problem 3 Money Is Not the Key to Development Assistance (p. 243)
• Structural Problem 4 Working through Governments That Are Part of the Problem (p. 244)
• Structural Problem 5 Trying to Control Bad Clients Rather Than Exit Relationship (p. 244)
• A Modest Proposal for the World Bank: Decentralization with Extreme Prejudice (p. 245)
• Concluding Remarks (p. 247)
• Appendix Eight Thinkers on the Five Themes (p. 253)
• First Do: Starting from Where the Doers Are (p. 253)
• Second Do: Seeing through the Doers' Eyes (p. 255)
• First Don't: Don't Try to Impose Change on Doers (p. 257)
• Second Don't: Don't Give Help as Benevolence (p. 259)
• Third Do: Respect Autonomy of the Doers (p. 261)
• Notes (p. 265)
• Bibliography (p. 301)
• Index (p. 327)

Author notes provided by Syndetics