I didn’t mention the very real barriers they face because it was a comment on a blog post, not an entire book. But why didn’t you ask me to explain this point, rather than dismissing my comments as parochial or complacent? My reason for believing that governments can improve if the costs of being corrupt and self-serving are high is that this seems to be what has driven some governments to develop good institutions in the past, eg when the Europeans couldn’t exploit the local population they built good institutions, if a country has good natural resources it’s more likely to be poor and that’s apparently because the elite can just live off the natural resources rather than labour taxation so they don’t have to nurture the local population. Just because a country faces “very real barriers” doesn’t mean they are insurmountable – Scotland faced “very real barriers” (the kirk, the English parliament), Japan faced “very real barriers” (eg the power of the samurai), England faced “very real barriers” (Oliver Cromwell, Charles I, Henry VIII), etc.

Out of curiousity, Chris, do you think it’s possible for a poor country to improve its institutions?

Abb1 – if believing that governments should exist to serve their citizens, governments are capable of improvement, and everyone should have an bolthole if their country starts going down the drain makes me an extreme ideologue in your eyes then that’s fine with me.

OK, I’ll say that. It IS primarily their responsibilty. I believe what Jefferson and other Enlightenment scholars said about the people choosing their rulers, by rebellion if necessary. They must be held responsible for their choices in the sense that you have to be careful about what kinds of funding and support are appropriate, and sympathetic to people who don’t want to live there.

Now, remember, Tracy didn’t say that, I did.

I understand that it is hard for a resource-rich country like Nigeria, and that for 20-40 years after Imperialism, those echoes made it very hard to get responsible govt in former colonies, and that some places were affected badly by the Cold War as well. But, for example, even though the US arguably does bear secondary responsibility for Iran, does that mean we shouldn’t try to slow their nuclear development?

Mind you, I certainly don’t think it’s appropriate to use sub-genocidal human rights violations as excuses to invade or occupy, nor do I hold individual citizens responsible unless they themselves are personally contributing to abuses.

Resources aren’t impossible to deal with responsibly. Strange as it seems to accuse Texas of good government, it did make the important decision to fund education by giving schools and universities a proportion of oil lands in trust. It hasn’t been enough to give Texas good public school funding, but it has turned UT Austin into a good enough university to make Austin a place where innovation happens.

I’m curious what your view of human rights problems in poorly-run countries is. Do you think we should ignore them, or hold ourselves responsible for them?

Unluckily I don’t think that, so I still don’t know why you think my thinking is complacent and parochial. Governments respond to incentives is not the same argument as “just … lacking the will to put some decent institutions in place”. I don’t believe that placing the moral obligation on countries to make themselves attractive to any foreign-educated professionals they want to come home will cause drastic improvements in all of them, just that every bit helps. And, on a moral level, it seems just as sensible to demand host countries to change their behaviour.

If you disagree with my arguments that’s one thing. But I have put a fair bit of thought into them, and they are drawn from a great deal of reading around the world. My arguments may be wrong, but they’re not complacent or parochial in any sense I know of those words. I’d much prefer you engaged with them seriously rather than insulting them. I rather think that dismissing my arguments as complacent and parochial is rather complacent of you.

I’m sure you just mistyped Matt, but it is, of course arguments (plural) and I don’t think that Risse rejects the notion that the resource and borrowing privileges (features of the global order) operate to incentivize corruption and tyranny.

The idea that, for example, the existence of tyranny and corruption in Nigeria is just a matter of the Nigerians lacking the will to put some decent institutions in place would be an instance of the complacent and parochial thinking that I mentioned above.

Most relevent “Does the Global Order Harm the Poor?” and “Do we Owe the Poor Assitence or Rectification”? I don’t agree with all of Risse’s views (I think his argument that we infact are co-owners of the world and that interesting things follow from this is crazy, for example) but I think his critique of Pogge is right on and devistating.

My casual assumption is that all government starts out “corrupt” (aimed fundamentally at serving the interests and comforts of those in power) and that somehow ideas of social contract or accountability to an abstract mass of people/set of laws gain traction, but I have no idea how they do so. Obviously I’ve heard the old master narrative of Anglo Civilisation (Magna Carta, Civil War, Glorious Revolution, American revolution and constitution etc) but how does that map onto the emergence of a normative standard, against which “corruption” is a sin?

Dear abb1, I love this. At one extreme we have Stalinist Russia, at the other we have NZ in the 21st century. But hey, according to you NZ’s just another extreme – beautiful :)

Indeed it is (on average, anyway). Have you given any thought to why that might be?

Yes. This is a topic I could bore you on for days if I had the time. Rather than doing so, I’ll give you some of the writings and ideas I think are particularly interesting: – Guns, Germs and Steel – Understanding Prosperity and Poverty: Geography, Institutions and the Reversal of Fortune – The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith – the resource curse (just do a google search) – Douglas C North’s work on institutions – the Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some are So Rich and Some So Poor – Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism – more other articles than I can remember – the differences between North and South Korea, and East and West Germany – English history – Scottish history – the difference between the mass killing the communist revolution in Cambodia unleashed and the lack of same in Vietnam – the difference between Germany’s performance after WWI and West Germany’s performance after WWII.

I also did a course on it at university with a professor who would state some theory and then with a sneer point out that this implies that the rate of return on capital in the Phillipines is 3 times that of capital in the USA, or whatever.

Somewhere out of this I formed a view that wealthy countries is like recessions, they don’t have any one single cause. I may be wrong though. It’s not like anyone can do controlled tests to determine the exact real causes.

But I do think the evidence, especially from things like the resource curse and the European colonisation institutions hypothesis, is that governments respond to incentives and politicians do have choices. Raise the costs to them to get educated people, some of them will respond.

(Or are we going to hear more about how if only those countries would sort themselves out their skilled people wouldn’t want to leave.)

Personally I’m hoping to hear an answer to my questions as to why I’m being parochial and complacent in thinking that many world governments could do much better.

Indeed it is (on average, anyway). Have you given any thought to why that might be?

“People on the whole prefer to live in well-governed countries”

So they do. Any thoughts on why some countries end up being well-governed and others don’t?

(Or are we going to hear more about how if only those countries would sort themselves out their skilled people wouldn’t want to leave.)

This was absolutely the case for the Soviet Union and other former East Bloc countries.

Um, when? I’m just reading a history of the Stalinist purges. Professionals, foreign-educated or not, were of course more likely to be killed or imprisoned than peasants, but millions of peasants were killed or imprisoned too. I would not have called the Soviet Union in the 1930s a good place to be a home-educated local who never got past primary school, it was a terrible time and place to be any sort of human.

Once things settled down a bit, how many foreign-educated professionals were there, given the Communist rules? We are after all talking about a system of government that built the Berlin Wall to keep people in. I don’t recall ever hearing about large numbers of people being sent from the Soviet Union to study at university in the West. People escaping from the Soviet Union and later on studying at a Western university, yes.

Sure. And/or, they want affordable & deferential household servants, an assurance their kids will inherit their relative status, an inside track to political office & influence, politicians who will do what they’re paid to, and an exit option if their own society goes down the tubes. Just like the rest of us.

Most of the things you list are far more available for a foreign-educated professional in their own country than if they stay in the US: – inexpensive and deferential household help are a feature of third-world countries.
– politicial corruption is far larger in third-world countries. (See http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2006)

Foreign-educated professionals may want all the tings you list. But given that they don’t seem to be longing to live in the poor countries who have all those things, then it appears that those wants are less important than the things I listed. People on the whole prefer to live in well-governed countries, regardless of their education levels or where they were educated.

Oh, and personally I think everyone should have an exit option if their own society goes down the tubes. Millions of lives would have been saved if people could have gotten away from Nazi Germany.

This was absolutely the case for the Soviet Union and other former East Bloc countries.

Foreign-educated professionals are human just like the rest of us. Speaking broadly, they want comfortable lives, safe, interesting work, low crime, somewhere to bring up their kids, somewhere you can support a politician and still keep your livelihood if that politician is in opposition

Sure. And/or, they want affordable & deferential household servants, an assurance their kids will inherit their relative status, an inside track to political office & influence, politicians who will do what they’re paid to, and an exit option if their own society goes down the tubes. Just like the rest of us.

In general, that what elites what is unproblematically what’s good for everyone is, let’s say, not obviously the case.

Yes, really. The fraction of legal ones is lower in construction than some other occupations, but there are still plenty. Many feel the opportunities are better and threats fewer for their kids, so vast numbers at least try to go through the legal immigration process.